Yesterday, the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity posted a story where Paul attempted to paint the murders of French cartoonists as a form of blowback for French interventionism. As a friend of mine said, If Dr. Paul thinks that French foreign policy is too aggressive, then it’s clear that no level of passivity would meet his standards.
The attacks by Islamic authoritarians shocked the world for their callousness, and pitiless disregard for free speech and human life. Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly newspaper, was targeted specifically due to their cartoons which mocked the prophet Muhammed. It’s the latest in a long line of attacks on artists by Islamic radicals, whose barbarism calls their entire creed into question.
Paul called the attacks “obscene,” but went on to try to link them to an interventionist foreign policy. Paul’s argument for why the terrorists attacked the cartoonists was as follows:
France has been a target for many, many years, because they’ve been involved in foreign affairs in Libya, and they really prodded us along in — recently in Libya, but they’ve been involved in Algeria, so they’ve had attacks like this, you know, not infrequently. So, it does involve, you know, their foreign policy as well.
It’s that overall policy which invites retaliation, and they see us as intruders. But it’s a little bit more complex, you know, when they hit us, either here at home, and hit civilians, and what’s happening in France. But I don’t think you can divorce these instances from the overall foreign policy.
The problem with that argument specifically is that there is no end to what you can attribute these types of attacks to if you just label them as “blowback.” The 9/11 attacks were a result of blowback because of the American base in Saudi Arabia, Paul once said. Perhaps, but are the Mexican incursions into Texas blowback from the annexation of the Lone Star State? Some La Razans might argue that. How far back do we have to go to be able to lay blame for every attack on the victim? Do you think modern Iranians still are that upset about operation Ajax that it’s their entire reason for desiring a nuclear weapon? Theoretically you could use any incident in history as justification or explanation for the use of violence. But that is incoherent.
The problem with blaming every attack on Western powers on blowback is that it reeks of justification for violence, as if there was a good excuse, not just an explanation. I’m personally sympathetic to the idea of blowback as a single theory, but not as the only theory of terrorism. It’s merely one explanation, and sometimes it is absolutely NOT the reason that people want to attack us. Sadly, many people do indeed hate us for our freedoms.
Consider the story of Sayidd Qutb.
Qutb was an Egyptian radical who came to the United States in the early part of the 20th century. He was educated in an American school in Colorado, but hated it here, and disdained our culture. “The American’s enjoyment of jazz does not fully begin until he couples it with singing like crude screaming,” Qutb wrote. “It is this music that the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires.”
Qutb despised America because he believed, as many modern Muslims do, that the zenith of civilization occurred in the Middle Ages. He rejected the Enlightenment, the Industrial Age, and modernity. He wrote of our American pioneers that “interminable, incalculable expanses of virgin land” were settled by “groups of adventurers and groups of criminals.”
One night while at a school dance in Colorado, the song “Baby, it’s cold outside” came on. Qutb was disgusted at the sight of innocent American boys and girls dancing with one another. This simple act of love and affection that we all enjoy was at the very center of his hatred for us.
Truly, he hated us for our freedoms.
Qutb’s return to Egypt and subsequent martyrdom paved the way for the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the violent radicalization of Islam as we see today in Syria and the Levant.
So, continuing my earlier point and the title of this article; what is the problem with non-interventionists? The problem with non-interventionists is not the entirety of non-intervention itself, but rather the people who call themselves such. They are so inherently full of contradictions and ignorance as to when self-defense is necessary, and the means to defend oneself that it is discrediting to the ideas of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Yes, of course we should not go abroad in search of dragons to slay. Those who do invite trouble for themselves and often deserve what they get. However, there are some who have argued that the cartoonists are not innocent. Swedish foreign correspondent Alice Petrén stated plainly that the people murdered at the newspaper were “not innocent.” This is victim blaming taken to the extreme, and not indicative of the philosophy of most non-interventionists I believe. However, it does stand as an example of how some people want to blame everyone but the perpetrator when someone commits an act of violence.
In the case of modern libertarian non-interventionists such as Ron Paul, and perhaps many who agree with him, they are seeking to make hay out of their worldview by using this tragedy to advance their principles. That alone is not always wrong, as many others are doing the same thing. But in at least this one instance of terrorism, it is absolutely not the case that it is due to blowback from foreign policy. The terrorist’s clear motives were to kill the cartoonists because they blasphemed their god. That is a problem that we as classical liberals must oppose vigorously.
Many who call themselves anarcho-capitalists today also claim to be non-interventionists. But the problem with that statement is that it is an inherent contradiction. To be an anarchist is to believe that the state should not exist at all. To be a non-interventionist is to believe that the government should follow a set of policy guidelines, namely stay out of foreign affairs. The non-interventionist one is at least slightly statist, in that it argues for a specific set of government policies, and would require working within the government to bring about those changes.
That would be fine in and of itself if so many of these same people did not then advocate that any intervention or retaliation is statist, or the philosophy of neoconservativism. Incredibly, many neoconservatives actually see themselves as anarchist libertarians precisely because they don’t believe in borders. They see Islamic authoritarianism as a threat to liberal values, and they are willing to use the U.S. government to stamp it out, irrespective of national sovereignty because, like anarchists, they don’t believe in borders. (RELATED: Why I’m a Libertarian Neocon by Todd Seavey)
Todd Seavey, a former writer for Judge Andrew Napolitano wrote:
To those of us coming of age on college campuses just after the Cold War ended (and reading books like The Closing of the American Mind by Leo Strauss-influenced Allan Bloom), the moralism of the neocons — or just plain “conservatives,” since we all seemed to be on the same side, opposed to the left, back then — was also a welcome alternative to the left’s relativism, which was one of the primary means of cloaking socialism: Who are we to say that what seems right in America is also right in Albania, and so on and so forth?
Far from harboring dreams of isolationism or even non-interventionism, most of us who came of age as libertarians in that cohort, I would guess, agreed that individual rights ought to be universally legally protected, even if that meant (ideally, one day) toppling every last government on Earth, including our own. But better to start, perhaps, with Moscow or Tehran — that is, if push came to shove, internal reform proved impossible, and lives were urgently at stake. Change without bloodshed is always best, but in a defensive situation, spilled blood is ultimately on the hands of those who began the coercion, including tyrants, commissars, and terrorists.
To suggest, by contrast, that libertarian rights apply inside the (presumably arbitrary) geographic boundary of the U.S. but do not apply to the (equally human) Albanians or Cubans or Iraqis overseas would be a bizarre relapse into leftist, geographically-arbitrary relativism, a way of thinking unbecoming a serious, committed libertarian. It still is.
Once I was asked to give a speech at a Young American’s for Liberty conference on the subject of international terrorism ( I imagine after this article that will never happen again). The speech came immediately after the Boston bombings, but before the suspects had been brought to justice.
My presentation asked the group of young libertarian students a simple question: Pop Quiz Hot Shots: Chechen terrorists bombed your marathon. Do you A: Send in Seal Team 6 or B: Hire Mercenaries to assassinate those involved. Remember, if you believe that someone must receive due process, it’s unlikely that you are an anarchist, because any mechanism of authority that seeks to punish individuals for crimes has the exact same effect as any government.
One half of the students voted to send in Seal Team 6. The other half voted for the mercenaries. Now can you see why we have a problem in the liberty movement advocating for a consistent foreign policy? We don’t have one.
Personally, I am in favor of the anarchist approach of dealing with Islamic terrorism with mercenaries, non-state actors. But when I suggest this approach I am roundly pilloried as statist, warmonger, interventionist.
This is ignorant.
It is not interventionist to defend oneself from terrorism, and to disregard national borders in seeking out those who have committed murder to your friends, neighbors, or loved ones. In fact, to disregard national borders and hire mercenaries to bring retribution and justice to criminals is the most anarcho-capitalist approach. But still, this is not enough for some people. There must be some way for libertarians to defend themselves from violence, but the way that many non-interventionists set the debate is to disarm those who would retaliate against aggression.
Some non-interventionists argued that since France is not our country, that it’s none of our business. But this is not the anarcho-capitalist approach, because in the anarchist’s mind, there are no borders. They are just imaginary lines. So if you are to call yourself an anarcho-capitalist, then technically all humans on this planet are our brothers and sisters, and we should encourage that justice be done against violent aggressors no matter what. To believe that it is none of “our” business is to be an isolationist nationalist, not an anarcho-capitalist, and NOT non-interventionist. You’re saying “America First.” When you say “it’s none of our business,” you’re saying it’s none of the U.S. government’s business.
Then whose business is it? The French government’s? You’re still a statist!
The problems of non-interventionism do not lie with non-interventionism. It lies with the people who advocate for the philosophy, who have confused non-intervention with pacifism and appeasement. We have a right to defend ourselves against violent extremists, and to do it either in a manner that accords due process to the accused (Government), or to investigate ourselves and assassinate those involved (mercenaries).
To lay the blame for these attacks on foreign policy is a red herring, meant to muddy the issue, and to provide cover for Islamic terrorists who threaten classical liberal values. It’s a disservice to libertarianism, and worse, it’s moral weakness.
And that is all.
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