"The interventionist policies that have given rise to blowback...."

"The interventionist policies that have given rise to blowback have been bipartisan in their implementation.  For instance, it was Bill Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, who said on 60 Minutes that half a million dead Iraqi children as a result of the sanctions on that country during the 1990s were "worth it." Who could be so utopian, so detached from reality, as to think a remark like that- which was broadcast all over the Arab world, you can be sure- and policies like these would not provoke a response?  If Americans lost that many of their family members, friends, and fellow citizens, would they not seek to hunt down the perpetrators and be unsatisfied until they were apprehended?  The question answers itself.  So why wouldn't we expect people to try to take revenge for these policies?  I have never received an answer to this simple and obvious question. 

This does not mean Americans are bad people, or that they are to blame for terrorism-- straw-man arguments that supporters of intervention raise in order to cloud the issue and demonize their opponents.  It means only that actions cause reactions, and that Americans will need to prepare themselves for these reactions if their government is going to continue to intervene around the world.  In the year 2000, I wrote: "The cost in terms of liberties lost and the unnecessary exposure to terrorism are difficult to determine, but in time it will become apparent to all of us that foreign interventionism is of no benefit to American citizens, but instead is a threat to our liberties."  I stand by every word of that.

To those who say that the attackers are motivated by a hatred of Western liberalism or the moral degeneracy of American culture, Scheuer points out that Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini tried in vain for a decade to instigate an anti-Western jihad on exactly that basis.  It went nowhere.  Bin Laden's message, on the other hand, has been so attractive to so many people because it is fundamentally defensive.  Bin Laden, says Scheuer, has "spurned the Ayatollah's wholesale condemnation of Western society," focusing instead on "specific, bread and butter issues on which there is widespread agreement amount Muslims.

What bin Laden's sympathizers object to, as they have said again and again, is our government's propping up of unpopular regimes in the Middle East, the presence of American troops on the Arabian Peninsula, the American government's support for the activities of governments (like Russia) that are hostile to their Muslim populations, and what they believe to be an American bias toward Israel.  This point is not that we need to agree with these arguments, but that we need to be aware of them if we want to understand what is motivating so many people to rally to bin Laden's banner. 

At a press conference I held at the National Press Club in May 2007, Scheuer told reporters: "About the only thing that can hold together the very loose coalition that Osama bin Laden has assembled is a common Muslim hatred for the impact of U.S. foreign policy.... They all agree they hate U.S. foreign policy.  To the degree we change that policy in the interest of the United States, they become more and more focused on their local problems."  That's not what a lot of our talking heads tell us on television every day...

Phillip Giraldi, another conservative and former counterterrorism expert with the CIA, adds that "anybody who knows anything about what's been going on for the last ten years would realize that cause and effect are operating here - that, essentially, al Qaeda has an agenda which very specifically says what its grievances are.  And its grievances are basically that 'we're over there.' " The simple fact is that "there [are] consequences for our presence in the Middle East, and if we seriously want to address the terrorism problem we have to be serious about that issue."

The point is a simple one: when our government meddles around the world, it can stir up a hornet's nest and thereby jeopardize the safety of the American people.  That's just common sense.  But hardly anyone in our government dares to level with the American people about our fiasco of a foreign policy."  -Pages 16-19 of The Revolution, A Manifesto