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
The Saudi family already claimed all their land and any natural wealth discovered in the future in their land as the property of the state, the family, or all Saudi citizens, I'd bet. Perhaps they signed some profit sharing contracts with U.S. oil companies, but I doubt they signed away the rights to all oil as discovered in the future.
As to the rights of the discoverer, I think Demidog gives us a good starting point in that discussion:
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.
No, but you can check it and the other lists here.
Wait a minute. Oil under someone's desert belongs to the person who owns the desert.
What you just said would mean that if there's oil under my house, the first person who has the ability to drill can claim it, and he now owns the oil. Owning oil implies the right to drill it, which would mean having a right to set up an oil rig on my land without my permission and perhaps even a right to demolish my house to make room for it. Surely you can't mean that.
Our disagreement is that in my view the program in #37 is not enough to protect our lives and property at this point. Before we rebuild our foreign policy as per #37, we should occupy the countries that bred the terrorists or otherwise install governments there that can do our bidding on matters of security. Osama, Hezbollah and the like will not stop to hate us if we reform our charities or repeal H1B. Thus we need governments there that use sufficient force to deprive the terrorists of oxygen, while attractive to the passive Muslims. Such governments will not develop there organically, they have to be created top-down, a la General MacArthur.
I am not willing to take the chances with the Muslim world figuring out a Lockean society and it would be criminal of our government to leave our safety to such a long chance.
I am. They could form an absolute dictatorship under a monarchic despot, they could go totally socialist, they could read the US Constitution and do what it says just to shame us (now that would be novel), or they could commit mass suicide for all I care, just as long as they don't export the consequences beyond their borders.
If the owner owns the land for farming, industrial or recreational use, characteristic of real estate ownership in the West, his use of the property will be disrupted by the arrival of oil drilling equipment and such. Thus the common law develops the concept of the real estate as a cone extending from the center of the earth through the boundary and into the outer space, which implies the ownership of the mineral deposits underneath.
When violations of the cone occur in a way that does not disrupt the established use of the land, the common law quickly relaxes the rules of tresspass. Since an airplane at cruising altitude does not interfere with any land use, air travel across property lines does not constitute a tresspass; and conversely, one cannot claim celestial objects by choosing a moment in time when they pass through one's real estate cone and are not claimed by an equally enterpising neighbor.
If oil is discovered under an Arab dwelling, then, of course, in equity the dweller claims the oil regardless of his technological abilities. Unable to exploit the find, he may be willing to sell his oil rights, but that is a different story.
A typical for the Middle East scenario is that oil is discovered in the desert. While a royalty, or a government of the country may have a technical claim on the desert, there is no natural law provision for such claim, because the oil exploration in the desert will not disrupt any activity there.
This is an interesting instance of property rights refracting differently across civilizations.
I believe that the hemorrhaging of so-called moderate Muslims away from Islamic fundamentalism is the underlying motive for the Twin Tower attack. Part of the Western worldview that the Muslim East is gradually adopting is the desirability of global trade, which includes the trade in oil.
Yes. We do not have a conflict at the present time with the moderate Muslims anywhere; the militant fundamentalist Islam does. At the same time, as you point out, nothing good has come out of the Left's adventures in multiculturalism. I sincerely hope that the mass immigration coupled with easy welfare will be roundly discarded now.
But of course they'll "export the consequences". The Twin towers attack was such "export", adn there will be more to come.
About that you're right. Of course, bedouin tribes might well have a legitimate claim on the land. Peikoff's point, that Western companies owned the oil, is probably true. I don't know the history behind it, but I'd bet they bought the land, or at least the oil rights.
Not sure if the disruption of the owner's surface activity forms the main basis for his claim to subsurface wealth, but interesting.
When violations of the cone occur in a way that does not disrupt the established use of the land, the common law quickly relaxes the rules of tresspass. Since an airplane at cruising altitude does not interfere with any land use, air travel across property lines does not constitute a tresspass; and conversely, one cannot claim celestial objects by choosing a moment in time when they pass through one's real estate cone and are not claimed by an equally enterpising neighbor.
Elegantly put, that last bit.
If oil is discovered under an Arab dwelling, then, of course, in equity the dweller claims the oil regardless of his technological abilities. Unable to exploit the find, he may be willing to sell his oil rights, but that is a different story.
Seems normal enough.
A typical for the Middle East scenario is that oil is discovered in the desert. While a royalty, or a government of the country may have a technical claim on the desert, there is no natural law provision for such claim, because the oil exploration in the desert will not disrupt any activity there.
I don't know that much about natural law theory, but I seem to remember that citizens delegate certain natural rights to legitimate governments in return for more effective protection of same. Within that fully developed and properly limited delegation, I can imagine that governments might limit land ownership to citizens.
When I said I owned the mineral rights to my property, I meant that I actually made the effort of purchasing those rights. The old owner has 49% and I have 51% with right of refusal for the other 49%. Meaning that not a drop of oil will leave the ground unless I say it's OK. It's a sad commentary that some shmuck could trespass on my land had I not purchased seperate mineral rights but I digress.
What Piekoff and you are suggesting is that the nations which owned claim to the terrirory could actually have their rights to decide what happens to that territory (ie; Soverignty) disregarded simply because an oil witch determined that there was oil underneath the supposed barren desert and had the technology to extract it.
This simply makes zero sense in any sense of the word common or otherwise.
Unless the mineral rights were explicitly purchased, then the government of whatever nation could tell the driller to pound sand. "Thanks for discovering oil. Now, get off my land."
Furthermore, it is the height of hubris to make such a bald attempt at stealing and to later get upset because the jig is up.
America and other nations seem to believe that it is fine for companies to plunder the resources of nations which do not have the technological capability to tap those resources. We're the advanced society after all.
If you want a fine example of ruthlessness in this regard simply examine the history of DeBeers and the various diamond mines that have operated under virtual slave labor conditions while the DeBeers family literally and figuratively strips the 3rd world of its riches.
I am not railing against capitalism in any sense. However, that type of activity is completely and wholly an anathema to the principles on which our nation was founded upon. I realize that DeBeers is not an American family so we need not confuse the issue too much. But American oil companies most certainly have acted in a similar fashion and Piekoff's disregard for historical facts and utter sloppiness in defining the issues undermines if not totally repudiates his own message.
It is not the job of our military to right the perceived wrongs of actions against U.S. corporations abroad.
What Piekoff and others suggest is that we would be within our rights to go annex that land which "we" "developed" since the third world countries which control this land consist of ignorant savages who are unable to advance themselves technologically.
This is the same sort of criminal and tyranical attitude which was used to decimate an American Indian population that was at 1780 or so estimated to be three million or more.
The excuse has been used time and time again to obliterate "savages" all over the world who didn't happen to live the way we felt was "civilized."
And you might have guessed by now that this particular attitude disgusts me. Because it is a lie. The rationalization is merely an excuse to rob and steal in the name of "higher good." And the mess that is the middle east is just another instance if this example only the savages were in this case nomadic Arab tribes who were existing quite well without the intervention of tyrants trying to "civilize" them. The world is full of "savages" and simply because one set of savages wear Armani suits and attend some sort of church service on Sunday does not make them any less savage.
That I can't imagine. Among the natural rights that an indivudual has is the right to exchange his property at will. If he wishes to exchange property with a non-citizen, the govenrment's job is to assist in the transaction, not to ban it.
Yes, I do suggest that in a free society under natural law a government's role is to protect rightful ownership claims of both citizens and non-citizens. While a citizen has some political rights in addition to his inalienable rights, a foreigner maintains his natural rights. So, if in absense of any government a discoverer can make a claim on the oil he discovered in the desert, the presence of national borders is not sufficient to deny his claim. His claim should be denied if he would materially disrupt the habitual land use.
I can see an argument for the opposite position: that a government can limit the claims of unclaimed land to its citizens. However, when there is no intention to actually explore the land and the minerals therein, -- such was the case in the technologically backward Arabia -- such government land grab would be, in my opinion, excessive.
Regarding our government defending property rights abroad, I agree that an American citizen (or a corporate citizen) should not expect our government to protect his rights abroad with the same energy as at home. The typical role of our government is to defer to the laws of the foreign land. However, when such laws are at significant variance with the natural law, or simply are not enforced, then our government may have a cause for war.
"Savage" is a vague term and I prefer not to use it.
And why do they have to have the intent on extracting the resources? Since when is that a test for property rights?
Regarding our government defending property rights abroad, I agree that an American citizen (or a corporate citizen) should not expect our government to protect his rights abroad with the same energy as at home. The typical role of our government is to defer to the laws of the foreign land. However, when such laws are at significant variance with the natural law, or simply are not enforced, then our government may have a cause for war.
The only cause for war should be to repel an act of aggression which threatens our Sovereignty. Nothing more, nothing less. Oil is no excuse.
Nor is being "technologically backward." While you inist you don't want to use the word "savages" you use an interchangable term and pretend that you aren't thinking within that box. Soveriegnty, if respected, allows countries to make their own decisions including being technologically backwards. The principles of freedom demand that we respect those decisions.
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