{"id":1378,"date":"2013-08-12T10:17:43","date_gmt":"2013-08-12T00:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/?p=1378"},"modified":"2013-08-12T10:17:43","modified_gmt":"2013-08-12T00:17:43","slug":"how-the-us-empire-provokes-terrorism-by-sheldon-richman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/?p=1378","title":{"rendered":"How the US Empire Provokes Terrorism by SHELDON RICHMAN"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps we\u2019ll never know if intercepted chatter between al-Qaeda leaders \u2014 which prompted the U.S. government to close dozens of diplomatic missions in the Muslim world and to issue a worldwide travel alert \u2014 was serious or not. But mischief shouldn\u2019t be ruled out. Without cost or risk, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden\u2019s successor, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, head of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen), can have a big laugh as they send American officials running around as though their hair were on fire. Why should they attempt to pull off some spectacular but risky action when they can disrupt things \u2014 closing embassies is no small deal \u2014 so easily? As a bonus, President Obama\u2019s claim about al-Qaeda\u2019s degradation is revealed as an empty boast. (Yemeni officials\u00a0claim<\/a>\u00a0they foiled a plot. But who knows?)<\/p>\n

The United States has been fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan for a dozen years, but not because the former rulers are a direct threat to the American people. Rather, the Bush and Obama administrations insisted, if the Taliban was not defeated, Afghanistan would again become a sanctuary for al-Qaeda. Now we see (if we hadn\u2019t already) that this was a mere rationalization for the projection of American power. Al-Qaeda doesn\u2019t need Afghanistan. Bin Laden wasn\u2019t found there. Al-Zawahiri presumably isn\u2019t there. And the latest alleged unspecified threat comes from Yemen, 2,000 miles from Kabul. Doesn\u2019t that expose the 12 years of American-inflicted death and destruction, not to mention the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars, as a monumental waste of life and treasure?<\/p>\n

If the Obama administration has any doubts about the seriousness of the chatter, it\u2019s not displaying them in public. CNN\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that the U.S. military has been readied for possible strikes against \u201cpotential al-Qaeda targets if those behind the most recent terror threats against U.S. interests can be identified.\u201d Moreover, the\u00a0Globe and Mail\u00a0<\/em>reported<\/a>\u00a0earlier that \u201ca suspected U.S. drone killed four alleged al-Qaeda members in Yemen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet we can assume that the administration\u2019s conduct would be the same whether or not it took the chatter seriously. Let\u2019s remember that the \u201cwar on terror\u201d (George W. Bush\u2019s label) is an industry from which many both inside and outside the government profit handsomely. Since the 9\/11 attacks, the U.S. response has poured trillions of dollars into the government-industrial complex. Agencies have multiplied and grown, and bureaucrats have acquired new power and prestige. None would want to give any of it up. But if things were to become too quiet, those Americans who pay the bill might wonder if it\u2019s all worth the great cost. Quietude breeds complacency.<\/p>\n

So a little heightened alert, from the complex\u2019s point of view, would be welcome.<\/p>\n

Of course, al-Qaeda did attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, as well as various other targets outside the United States before and afterwards. One of its so-called affiliates could certainly strike.<\/p>\n

Does that mean the U.S. government must maintain a global empire in order to eradicate the sources of anti-American terrorism? Absolutely not \u2014 quite the contrary. It is the global empire that provoked the al-Qaeda attacks in the first place. Contrary to the popular notion that the organization struck U.S. \u201cinterests\u201d out of the blue while our country minded its own business, the U.S. government for decades has supported violent regimes in the Middle East and North Africa: from Saudi Arabia\u2019s corrupt and brutal monarchy, to the Egyptian military dictatorship, to Saddam Hussein\u2019s Iraq, to Israel\u2019s unconscionable occupation of Palestine. American administrations, Republican and Democrat, have directly inflicted death and suffering on people in the Muslim world \u2014 through the 1990s economic sanctions on Iraq, for example. (Today\u2019s sanctions on Iran now impose hardship on another group of Muslims.) Every time an al-Qaeda official or operative has the chance, he points out that his hatred of America stems not from its \u201cfreedoms\u201d but from this bloody record. Unrelenting U.S. drone attacks on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia, in which noncombatants are killed, don\u2019t win friends. They recruit enemies bent on revenge.<\/p>\n

It follows therefore that the best way to dramatically reduce, if not eliminate, the threat of terrorism is to dramatically change U.S. foreign policy \u2014 from imperial intervention to strict nonintervention.<\/p>\n

Sheldon Richman<\/strong>\u00a0is vice president and editor at The Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org<\/a>) in Fairfax, Va. He can be reached through his blog,\u00a0Free Association.<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps we\u2019ll never know if intercepted chatter between al-Qaeda leaders \u2014 which prompted the U.S. government to close dozens of diplomatic missions in the Muslim world and to issue a worldwide travel alert \u2014 was serious or not. But mischief … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,38,44],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":1683,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ttSq-me","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}