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Defense of Liberty: Two Articles On Anti-Terrorist Policy by Peikoff
The Ayn Rand Institute ^ | September 15, 1998 - September 12, 2001 | Dr. Leonard Peikoff, Andrew Lewis

Posted on 10/13/2001 8:34:37 AM PDT by annalex

Released: September 15, 1998

Fanning the Flames of Terrorism
Clinton’s “Anti-Terrorist Policy” Should Target Governments Not Individuals
By Leonard Peikoff and Andrew Lewis

     The recent attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were a bloody reminder of the threat posed by terrorists. Almost all commentators and politicians hailed America’s swift response as a positive step. In fact, however, Clinton’s assault on Osama bin Laden will only encourage the terrorists.
     In recent years, America’s reaction to terrorist acts has been a mixture of cowardly compromise and empty legalistic threats. In the two months prior to the embassy attacks alone, the Clinton Administration made three outstanding concessions. It capitulated to Libya, promising to drop all UN sanctions if it releases the prime suspects in the Lockerbie bombing for trial in the Netherlands under Scottish law. It closed the investigation into TWA 800, leaving forever unresolved the cause of the disaster. It emasculated the investigation of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, because evidence emerged linking the bombing to Iran, whose regime Clinton is now courting.
     By promising only trials and international courts, Clinton has made a mockery of the atrocities. Terrorists have no respect for the rule of law; that is why they are called “terrorists.” Administration officials repeatedly assert that we are engaged in a “war against terrorism.” True — and wars are not fought or won in a courtroom.
     The attacks on Osama bin Laden’s facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan were lauded by many as a welcome change from years of this legalistic claptrap. However, the attacks were deliberately toothless. Clinton aimed at a few peripheral installations, while proudly proclaiming his commitment that no “innocent” working a night shift in the Sudan would die. There are no innocents in a war — and certainly none in a chemical weapons facility. The clear implication is that saving terrorist agents is more important to the President than protecting Americans who will be killed by their weapons. In essence, Clinton has declared “open season” on Americans.
     Most important, Clinton’s attacks diverted attention from the real agents of terrorism. In blaming and targeting a single individual — in insisting that an isolated maniac was responsible and lying to deny that man’s proven connections with Middle East governments — Clinton exonerated all terrorist-sponsoring regimes, including Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, and others. It is not merely that Clinton wanted to avoid offending the Afghani Taliban and the Sudanese government. He wanted to avoid offending any governments involved in terrorism, despite their proven function as protector and sanctioner of the killers. The result: he showed each and every one of these governments that they are safe to sponsor as many bin Ladens as they want.
     Terrorism is a form of war. Evil men such as bin Laden cannot wage it alone. Although bin Laden certainly deserves to die, his capacity to kill and maim is made possible only by the governments that shelter his kind. Only governments have the power to protect terrorists, sponsor or wink at their training camps, and provide or applaud their weapons, transport and all the other support necessary to enter and exit their target countries. Targeting the individual killer leaves the real mass murderer — the terrorist-loving government — unpunished, secure in the knowledge that their victim is too cowardly to retaliate in kind.
     The inevitable result of this policy is exactly what bin Laden has promised: a continuing war against Americans. The bombing of an American restaurant in South Africa a few days later was only the beginning. From Teheran to Tripoli, the governmental sponsors of terrorism will continue to protect the bin Ladens of this world until and unless they are shown that they themselves will suffer massively for doing so.
     The only way to end terrorism is through a policy of real military strikes against the aggressors. If, as the Clinton Administration tells us repeatedly, we are engaged in a war, then let us see a war, fought not with words, but with the full, untrammeled power of our military, including, as and when necessary, the use of our most potent and destructive weapons against the seat of the governments involved.
     The only alternative is the continued slaughter of Americans by terrorist bombs ignited by the cowardice of American policy-makers.

Leonard Peikoff, who founded the Ayn Rand Institute, is the foremost authority on Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. http://www.aynrand.org


Released: September 12, 2001

Fifty Years of Appeasement Led to Black Tuesday
By Leonard Peikoff Download an image of this author for print publication.)-->

       Fifty years of increasing American appeasement in the Mideast have led to fifty years of increasing contempt in the Muslim world for the United States. The inevitable climax was the tens of thousands of deaths on September 11, 2001—the blackest day in our history, so far. The Palestinians, among others, responded by dancing in the streets and handing out candy.
       Fifty years ago, Truman and Eisenhower ceded to the Arabs the West's property rights in oil—although that oil properly belonged to those in the West whose science and technology made its discovery and use possible.
       This capitulation was not practical, but philosophical. The Arab dictators were denouncing the wealthy egoistic West. They were crying that the masses of their poor needed our sacrifice; that oil, like all property, is owned collectively, by virtue of birth; and that they knew all this by means of ineffable or otherworldly emotion. Our Presidents had no answer. Implicitly, they were ashamed of the Declaration of Independence. They did not dare to answer aloud that Americans, rightfully, were motivated by the selfish desire to pursue personal happiness in a rich, secular, individualist society.
       The Arabs embodied in extreme form every idea—selfless duty, anti-materialism, faith or feeling above science, the supremacy of the group—which our universities and churches, and our own political Establishment, had long been preaching as the essence of virtue. When two groups, our leadership and theirs, accept the same basic ideas, the most consistent wins.
       After property came liberty. The Iranian dictator Khomeini threatened with death a British author—and with destruction his American publisher—if they exercised their right to free speech. He explained that the book in question offended the religion of his people. The Bush Administration looked the other way.
       After liberty came American life itself—as in Iran's support of the massacre of our soldiers in Saudi Arabia, and the Afghanistan-based assault on our embassies in East Africa. Again, the American response was unbridled appeasement: a Realpolitikisch desire not to "jeopardize relations" with the aggressor country, covered up by a purely rhetorical vow to punish the guilty, along with an occasional pretend bombing. By now, the world knows that we are indeed a paper tiger.
       We have not only appeased terrorists, we have actively created them. The Reagan Administration—holding that Islamic fundamentalists were our ideological allies in the fight against the atheistic Soviets—poured money and expertise into Afghanistan to create an ever-growing band of terrorists recruited from all over the Mideast. Most of these terrorists knew what to do with their American training; their goal was not to save Afghanistan.
       The final guarantee of American impotence is the bipartisan proclamation that a terrorist is an individual alone responsible for his actions, and that "we must try each before a court of law." This is tantamount, while under a Nazi aerial bombardment, to seeking out and trying the pilots involved while ignoring Hitler and Germany.
       Terrorists exist only through the sanction and support of the governments behind them. Their lethal behavior is that of the regimes that make them possible. Their killings are not crimes, but acts of war. The only proper response to such acts is war in self-defense.
       We do not need more evidence to "pinpoint" the perpetrators of any one of these atrocities, including the latest and most egregious—we already have total certainty with regard to the governments primarily responsible for the repeated slaughter of Americans in recent years. We must now use our unsurpassed military to destroy all branches of the Iranian and Afghani governments, regardless of the suffering and death this will bring to the many innocents caught in the line of fire. We must wipe out the terrorist training camps or sanctuaries, and eliminate any retaliatory military capability—and thereby terrorize and paralyze all the tyrannies watching, who will now know what is in store for them if they choose in any form to attack the United States. That will be the end of the terrorists.
       Our missiles and occupation troops, however, will be effective only if they are preceded by our President's morally righteous statement that we intend hereafter to defend by every means possible each American's right to his property, his liberty, and his secure enjoyment of life here on earth.
       To those who oppose war, I ask: If not now, when? How many more corpses are necessary before this country should take action?
       The choice today is mass death in the United States or mass death in the terrorist nations. President Bush must decide whether it is his duty to save Americans or the governments who seek to kill them.

Leonard Peikoff is the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey, California. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.     Send Feedback


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial
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To: Clinton's a rapist
What didn't you understand about what I said?
21 posted on 10/13/2001 12:43:31 PM PDT by Demidog
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Comment #22 Removed by Moderator

To: annalex
Nice graphic on St. George at #2.

Raphael did (at least) two great st. George's:

One is at the Louvre; one at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

23 posted on 10/13/2001 1:21:04 PM PDT by FReethesheeples
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To: tex-oma
First he rails against "Islamic Fundamentalists" and one wonders if this is who he's going to say we need to eliminate. But, no...he goes on to say it's the governments of Iran(Iran?) and Afghanistan.

Uh, maybe the paradox that is straining your tiny brain is resolved by the fact that Iran and Afghanistan have Islamic Fundamentalist governments?

24 posted on 10/13/2001 3:46:48 PM PDT by Clinton's a rapist
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To: annalex
Fifty years ago, Truman and Eisenhower ceded to the Arabs the West's property rights in oil—although that oil properly belonged to those in the West whose science and technology made its discovery and use possible.

I didn't know the "West" had any property rights in Arabian Oil, and how that happened. I need some referrence to the relevant treaties or contracts.

25 posted on 10/13/2001 5:00:30 PM PDT by secretagent
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To: Demidog
No, he doesn't explain many things in these two short articles, which are focused not on the theory of property rights, and not on the history of Arab-Western relations, but on the proper policy today.

The question of claiming unclaimed property is very difficult, and it is central to any theory of property rights. I am fully aware of the need to systematize it, and in fact was preparing a theoretical article on this, that after 9/11 needed major reworking. We'll return to that if you keep yourself from getting banned :)))

Here is a short outline. Oil under someone else's desert is unclaimed property. The property right to oil go to the one with technology to extract it. The only way to argue otherwise is to say that the government claims the property just by the virtue of a national border, a dubious proposition.

26 posted on 10/13/2001 5:33:40 PM PDT by annalex
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To: Common Tator; Carry_Okie
General McArthur

Absolutely. The good general is the model to follow in this war. The numerical population argument doesn't stand because (1) we have the military technology that is in proportion to what militant Islam has is also an order of magnitude stronger; and (2) militant Islam is only a fraction of the Muslim world, that is lucky to control one country -- Afghanistan and one junkyard next to Jerusalem, which is far less that all these billions and billions Carry_Okie is talking about in #17.

27 posted on 10/13/2001 5:39:31 PM PDT by annalex
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To: annalex
Clinton was Wrong:

Humane treatment for Terrorists:

Cut heads off and sew them into pig bellies and send to the families.

28 posted on 10/13/2001 5:43:07 PM PDT by FReethesheeples
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To: The Right Stuff
OkieRedDust and Gecko

Gecko got banned a long time ago, and Okiereddust about two months ago, for offenses related to perceived antisemitism and racism. I miss them, despite their misguided views. I should also admit that Okiereddust in particular had an influence on me by pointing out the profound role that national culture plays in any political philosophy.

29 posted on 10/13/2001 5:44:01 PM PDT by annalex
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To: annalex
Militant Islam is fairly well dispersed throughout the Muslim world. Any military technique sufficient to dominate them, that was conducted by or for the United States would produce a billion militant Islamics. Congratulations. You have just produced a recipe for murdering a billion people in World War III.
30 posted on 10/13/2001 5:51:57 PM PDT by Carry_Okie
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To: tex-oma
a fit of rage

Well, a certain amount of rage befits the events, no?

Peikoff's logic though is sound. An individual may commit an offense individually and then it is the job of the government that has jurisdiction to punish him. If the government doesn't, then what we have is a war on that government, which makes otherwise innocent individuals complicit in that government's misdeed. Afghanistan and Iran are the two governments that fall into that category. Other governments that I don't particularly like, for example, Syria and possibly PA, made sounds disassociating themselves from the thuggery. Thus, we can argue about Dr. Peikoff's two-nation list further, but he has a justification for presenting the list the way he did.

I am amazed that you followed my debate about imperialism and still didn't find my thoughts convincing. What can I do to elucidate?

31 posted on 10/13/2001 5:53:28 PM PDT by annalex
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To: FReethesheeples; Romulus
I love that one, perhaps because I am Russian. In particular, note the ease with which he slays the dragon. It is an afterthought, -- he is ahead as he is.

Romulus had a comment on another thread where I posted that icon, -- that it reminds us who the real enemy is.

32 posted on 10/13/2001 5:57:59 PM PDT by annalex
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To: secretagent; SwimmingUpstream
I didn't know the "West" had any property rights in Arabian Oil,

I don't know about contracts. We can safely assume that some paperwork was filled in at the time. Under natural law, a discoverer should be able to claim rights when the object he discovers is otherwise unclaimed. SwimmingUpstream is going to disagree, so I am bumping him. I plan to discuss this difficult topic in a theoretical way at some calmer time.

33 posted on 10/13/2001 6:03:22 PM PDT by annalex
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To: annalex
Peikoff is such a fraud. He has all the same normal human reactions as the rest of us -- that I can understand and respect. But he has to clothe everything in his tired Randian rhetoric and dialectic, because his reputation and authority come from being the Objectivist pope. The Randian shell really doesn't correspond closely enough with the emotional core. Does Randian objectivism even apply to situations like this where one must subordinate one's individualism to the common cause and band together to fight? I think of Ayatollah Peikoff as another Woodrow Wilson committed to fighting war after war to bring about the victory of his concept of reason and morality, and pushed ever further from his unrealistic ideal by the needs of the war. One might have thought that making a dogma out of individualism would save us from meddlers like Peikoff, but the dogma demands implementers, theorists and theologians, which keeps Peikoff, the mad Mullah of rationalist objectivism in business.
34 posted on 10/13/2001 6:04:50 PM PDT by x
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To: Carry_Okie
murdering a billion people in World War III.

It looks like World War III, correct. It won't be a murder though. Does it occur to you that our options are to win the war militarily, or, well, lose it?

You are right that it is in our interest to contain this war to the militant Islam while not attempting to annihilate or rule over the passive Islam. There is no sure way to do so; at some point an offer of partenrship to the peaceful Islam will turn into appeasement, and have harmful consequences. So far, the Republican administration is striking this difficult balance rather well.

35 posted on 10/13/2001 6:11:29 PM PDT by annalex
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To: x
mad Mullah of rationalist objectivism

Objectivism, or at least libertarianism, teaches that governments exist to provide a violent response to initiated violence. Such were the events of 9/11. Dr. Peikoff is sticking to the libertarian principles. A mushy praise of individualism above other considerations may be applicable to libertarianism at times; but individualism does not define libertarianism, non-initiation of violence does.

36 posted on 10/13/2001 6:17:35 PM PDT by annalex
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To: annalex; The Kitten; Askel5
That is why I stressed the need to identify and work with indigenous Muslim elements of each nation involved. The Japanese model is a poor one. In that case the opposition organized itself into a regular uniformed military. In this case (much as it was in Vietnam), the opponent is well hidden and dispersed within a sympathetic native population (including our own, which has its own sympathetic elements).

This is a political and religious war. We can fight parts of it militarily, but it must be won polititically and morally. We can and must use covert action to quietly eliminate the militant Islamic leadership. Anything else consolidates a sympathetic population into a global oppostion and will turn into a genocidal bloodbath.

Here are some concrete suggestions of what I mean:

In short, start acting like a nation interested in treating them like one. Develop our strengths and let them stew in their weaknesses until they figure it out. Start respecting their sovereignty, if for no other reason, to protect our own. Develop within their countries those individual leaders with respect for the rule of law, and murder ruthlessly and quietly in the dead of night any bastard who threatens to take his case against the US.
37 posted on 10/13/2001 6:49:12 PM PDT by Carry_Okie
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To: Carry_Okie
You are one of the very few here with whom I agree almost completely. (WRT to Islamic terrorism, anyway!)

Get rid of the terrorists and let the Muslim world figure out how to solve its own problems. And one of them is going to be how to live with Israel.

38 posted on 10/13/2001 6:55:16 PM PDT by independentmind
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To: annalex
Here is a short outline. Oil under someone else's desert is unclaimed property.

Balogney. I own the mineral and water rights to my property and I have no technological ability to drill for oil. Nobody may enter my property and drill for oil simply because they own the technology. That would be theft. What you and Piekoff are advocating is a justification for theft which has no basis in property rights but an imagined absence of property rights.

39 posted on 10/13/2001 7:08:08 PM PDT by Demidog
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To: annalex
Coming around to my way of thinking yet? Is the oil pipeline the underlying motive for beginning WWIII?
40 posted on 10/13/2001 7:34:35 PM PDT by lakey
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