“Mine is an “isolationist” position only to those..."

“Mine is an “isolationist” position only to those who believe that the world’s peoples can interact with each other only through their governments, or only through the intermediary of a supranational bureaucracy.  That unspoken assumption is dangerous and dehumanizing.  There is nothing isolationist about opposing coercive government-to-government wealth transfers.  Individuals who wish to contribute directly to some worthy cause abroad- and Third World governments whose destructive policies have kept their peoples in miserable poverty are not such a cause - should be perfectly at liberty to do so.  In fact, a recent Hudson Institute study found that in 2006, American citizens voluntarily contributed three times more to help people overseas than did the United States government.  Freedom works.” -Page 102 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"The costs of our foreign policy have become so great that...."

"The costs of our foreign policy have become so great that they risk bringing our country to bankruptcy.  When I say "bankruptcy," I do not mean that the federal government will stop writing checks and spending money.  The federal government is not likely to go out of business anytime soon.  I mean that the checks and the money won't buy anything because the dollar will have been destroyed." -Pages 35 & 36 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"... where is the exposure for those who favor a noninterventionist foreign policy?"

"... where is the exposure for those who favor a noninterventionist foreign policy?  These individuals would have avoided the Iraq fiasco altogether.  America would be trillions richer over the long term, Iraqi society would not be in shambles, and countless Americans and Iraqis alike would still be alive.  Noninterventionists have been entirely vindicated.  And yet they do not enjoy the places of prominence that the establishment has bestowed on those who have been consistently wrong, and responsible for carnage and destruction that have destroyed our good name around the world and isolated us more than ever in our history.  In fact, they are scarcely to be found at all."  -Page 29 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"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

"...it is unreasonable, even utopian, not to expect..."

"...it is unreasonable, even utopian, not to expect people to grow resentful, and desirous of revenge, when your government bombs them, supports police states in their countries, and imposes murderous sanctions on them.  That revenge, in its various forms, is what our CIA calls blowback- the unintended consequences of military intervention.

Obviously the onus of blame rests with those who perpetrate acts of terror, regardless of their motivation.  The question Scheuer and I are asking is not who is morally responsible for terrorism- only a fool would place the moral responsibility for terrorism on anyone other than the terrorists themselves.  The question we are asking is less doltish and more serious: given that a hyper-interventionist foreign policy is very likely to lead to this kind of blowback, are we still sure we want such a foreign policy? It is really worth it to us? The main focus of our criticism, in other words, is that our government's foreign policy has put the American people in greater danger and made us more vulnerable to attack than we would otherwise have been."  -Page 16 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"What the Founding Fathers have to teach us about...."

"What the Founding Fathers have to teach us about foreign policy became all the more important, and yet all the more ignored, in the wake of the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001. 

In the weeks that followed that fateful day, most Americans' focus was on identifying the sponsors of the attacks and punishing them.  That was sensible enough.  I myself voted to track down al Queda in Afghanistan.  But people were bound to start wondering, eventually, why we were attacked- not because they sought to excuse the attackers, of course, but out of a natural curiosity regarding what made these men tick.  Looking for motive is not the same thing as making excuses; detectives always look for the motive behind crime, but no one thinks they are looking to excuse murder.

Seven years later, though, our political class still refuses to deal with the issue in anything but sound bites and propaganda.  The rest of the world is astonished at this refusal to speak frankly about the reality of our situation.  And yet our safety and security may depend on it."  -Page 15 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Anyone who advocates the noninterventionist foreign policy....."

"Anyone who advocates the noninterventionist foreign policy of the Founding Fathers can expect to be derided as an isolationist.  I myself have never been an isolationist.  I favor the very opposite of isolation: diplomacy, free trade, and freedom of travel.  The real isolationists are those who impose sanctions and embargoes on countries and peoples across the globe because they disagree with the internal and foreign policies of their leaders.  The real isolationists are those who choose to use force overseas to promote democracy, rather than seeking change through diplomacy, rather than seeking change through diplomacy, engagement, and by setting a positive example.  The real isolationists are those who isolate their country in the court of world opinion by pursuing needless belligerence and war that have nothing to do with legitimate national security concerns." -Pages 10-11 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Our Founding Fathers gave us excellent advice on foreign policy. "

"Our Founding Fathers gave us excellent advice on foreign policy.  Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address, called for "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." -Page 9 of The Revolution, A Manifesto