“We need to come to our senses: it cannot be tolerable..."

“We need to come to our senses: it cannot be tolerable for the president to have the right to detain people indefinitely, even for life, and not even permit them to review the charges against them.  The argument is not that criminals or terrorists should be let loose.  Constitutionalists are merely saying that people are at least entitled to confront the charges against them.” -Pages 120 & 121 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“The misnamed Patriot Act, presented to the public..."

“The misnamed Patriot Act, presented to the public as an antiterrorism measure, actually focuses on American citizens rather than foreign terrorists.  The definition of “terrorism” for federal criminal purposes is greatly expanded, such that legitimate protest against the government could someday place an American under federal surveillance.  Similarly, your Internet use can be monitored without your knowledge, and your Internet provider can be forced to hand over user information to law enforcement without a warrant or subpoena.

The biggest problem with these new law enforcement powers is that they bear little relationship to fighting terrorism.  Surveillance powers are greatly expanded, and checks and balances on government are greatly reduced. “Sneak and peek” and blanket searches are becoming more frequent every day.  Most of the provisions have been sought by domestic law enforcement agencies for years, not to fight terrorism but rather to increase their police power over the American people.  The federal government has not shown us that it failed to detect or prevent the September 11 attacks because it lacked the powers over our lives that it was granted under the Patriot Act.” -Pages 114 & 115 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“What was frequently overlooked amid the..."

“What was frequently overlooked amid the ensuing controversy was that the executive branch apparently carried out even more invasive activities, but we never got any answers about those.  When asked whether they had engaged in domestic wiretapping or carried out warrantless searches of people’s homes or correspondence, officials have responded with carefully worded assurances that these things were not done under the program then under discussion - i.e., the Terrorist Surveillance Program.  But were these things being done pursuant to some other program?  No answer.  

When the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2006, for example, he dealt with questions about whether the administration had engaged in warrantless wiretapping of purely domestic calls.  “Not under the program in which I’m testifying,” came the reply.  Such activity, the attorney general said, was “beyond the bound of the program which I’m testifying about today.”

We do know that for some period of time between September 11, 2001, and March 2004, the executive branch was engaged in a kind of surveillance that was so at odds with American law that then Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Deputy Attorney General James Comey threatened to resign if it continued.  What exactly was the executive branch up to that caused so much dissent even among its own loyalists? Who was victimized during this time?  Why are we not hearing the answers - or even the questions?” -Pages 113 & 114 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"James Bamford observes that the leadership of al Qaeda...."

"James Bamford observes that the leadership of al Qaeda hoped to lure us into a "desert Vietnam," an enormously expensive war that would deplete our resources and help their own recruitment by stirring up the locals against us.  And that is just what happened.  The war's ultimate cost is being estimated in the trillions.  The dollar is collapsing.  And more terrorists are being created.  According to a study by the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel, the vast bulk of the foreign fighters in Iraq are people who had never been involved in terrorist activity before but have been radicalized by the U.S. presence in Iraq - the second holiest place in Islam. 

The terrorist, in short, have played us like a fiddle.  With the unnecessary and unprovoked attack on Iraq, our government gave them just what they wanted.

Americans have the right to defend themselves against attack; that is not at issue.  But that is very different from launching a preemptive war against a country that had not attacked us and could not attack us, that lacked a navy and an air force, and whose military budget was a fraction of a percent of our own.  A policy of overthrowing or destabilizing every regime our government dislikes is no strategy at all, unless our goal is international chaos and domestic impoverishment. 

It is time for us to consider a strategic reassessment of our policy of foreign interventionism, occupation, and nation building.  It is in our own national interest to do so and in the interest of world peace.  This is a message that resonates not only with the American people at large but also with U.S. military personnel:  in the second quarter of 2007 our campaign raised more money from active duty and retired military than did any other Republican candidate in either party.  Then in the fourth quarter we received more money in our military donations than all Republicans put together.  This message is popular, and it is based on American security, fiscal sanity, and common sense."  Pages 38 & 39 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