November 11, 2002

First Principles

All the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld policy formulations ignore the fact that terrorism against the U.S. is retaliatory. Terrorist acts are long-delayed reactions to U.S. incursions in other countries. It doesn't justify terrorism, but suggests meaningful ways to deal with it. Fighting terrorism with more violence and war -- that is, more terrorism -- is a policy destined for disaster.

The CATO Institute summed up these conclusions well in a foreign policy paper in 1998 called "Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism? The Historical Record"

Of course a more rational foreign policy would not serve the purpose of creating a police state at home, as the Bush administration is now doing.

Food for thought: In the late 1980s, Nicaraguan priest/then-Foreign Minister Miguel Descoto said that a government that exercises the kind of violent repression the U.S. unleashed in Central America would one day turn it against its own people, and then the people of the United States would become "the most repressed on earth."

Tick tock tick tock tick tock.

Back to Home Page