Editor’s note: Over the years I’ve read the arguments for a lot of overseas intervention and have been persuaded by much of the content — but there are limits — and this article by Wayne Isaac about American empire at American Greatness makes a case I agree with today:
Clear-headed foreign policy requires serious thought, not stale slogans. An op-ed by Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) in the Wall Street Journalheadlined “Troops in the Mideast Keep Terror Away” exemplifies why.
After $6 trillion, 6,000 American dead, and 17 largely fruitless years, Crenshaw and Gallagher argue that America must remain in the Middle East in order to “prevent another 9/11.” But how? How does the American military spending $45 billion a year to kill semi-literate Pashtun tribesmen in the Hindu Kush prevent another 9/11?
Crenshaw and Gallagher assert that America must remain in Afghanistan because “‘far-off lands’ no longer exist. An ISIS terrorist can reach America after a 12-hour flight.” Ideology, they argue, “travels even faster, weaponizing the internet to influence vulnerable Americans and resulting in attacks like San Bernardino in 2015 and Orlando in 2016. The world has become a small, interconnected place, and America ignores it at our peril.”This is too abstract. The common noun “ideology” did not kill Americans on 9/11. And what does it mean for the Internet to be “weaponized?” Did Google Chrome open fire in a gay bar in Florida or blast its way through the streets of San Bernardino?
Crenshaw and Gallagher’s lack of precision in speech prevents clarity of thought. The attacks they mention were committed not by phantasms like “ideology” but by living, breathing human beings. These attackers were not random, either. They were Arab Muslims motivated to kill by the preaching of radical Sunni teachings.
And they came here legally.Every last one of the 9/11 hijackers came into the United States on legitimate visas. Syed Rizwan Farook, who committed the 2015 San Bernardino shooting, was a citizen. His wife, Tashfeen Malik, came here on a K-1 fiancée visa.
Read more: American Greatness
Image credit: www.amgreatness.com.
