America Must Evaulate its Security Agenda for Today

To the Editor:

As indicated by the current trial of the accused bombers of the American Embassies in Africa, and by the recently ended Lockerbie bombing trial, Washington is taking modest steps to bring to justice those responsible for terrorist acts against U.S. citizens. But the architects of our unprincipled foreign policy also deserve to be prosecuted, for making such terrorism possible.
Since 1988, violence against Americans by Islamic militants has risen to gruesome new levels: the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie in 1988 (270 dead); the World Trade Center in New York in 1993 (6 dead, over 1,000 wounded); the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 (19 dead, hundreds wounded); the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 (224 dead, over 5,000 wounded); the USS Cole in 2000 (17 dead, 39 wounded).
By contrast, hordes of militant Iranian students captured the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 by sheer force of numbers. The growing devastation wrought by sophisticated Islamic terrorists is the result of special training and funding –– provided by America, in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
At the time, our policy-makers felt a vague need to respond in some way. But, unwilling to take direct and decisive action against the Soviets, they chose to find others — any others — to do the fighting. Since Afghanistan was predominantly Muslim, and the Muslims hated Communists, Washington decided to support Muslim militants, who believed that death while fighting a “jihad,” or holy war, guaranteed entry into paradise.
During the 1980s, some 50,000 militants from around the world journeyed to camps in Pakistan, where they were rigorously drilled in weaponry, explosives, infiltration, counter-intelligence, sabotage and murder. They received millions of dollars in covert U.S. aid, along with state-of-the-art information from American Green Berets and Navy SEALs. 
These were the people who became, or who trained, the Islamic fighters now waging a bloody jihad against America.
The militants hated the Communists for being “infidels” who rejected the authority of Allah, and for the very same reason, they detested the secular capitalist West. Once the USSR collapsed, their natural target –– the lone superpower –– was the U.S. “To kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty of every Muslim who is able, in any country where this is possible,” decreed master terrorist Osama bin Laden in 1998. Bin Laden now operates out of a camp in Afghanistan that was built in the 1980s to CIA specifications, by bin Laden’s own construction company.
By the late 1980s these Muslim zealots had been given the technical expertise with which to wreak massive destruction. A single suitcase packed with high-tech explosives downed Pan Am Flight 103. The World Trade Center bombers used ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, a formula taught in CIA manuals, versions of which were found in the possession of the conspirators. The gaping 40-foot hole in the USS Cole’s reinforced steel hull was caused by explosives designed and positioned with precision to direct their force in one direction, rather than to dissipate in a fireball.
All these attacks were the product of a fatal combination of hatred and knowledge. The hatred was more than adequately supplied by the militants. The knowledge came mainly from America’s short-sighted policy-makers. In seeking the pragmatist’s typical “quick-fix,” they did not bother to worry about the consequences for the day after tomorrow. They chose to evade the fact that the enemy of our enemy may regard us as an even worse enemy.
This same vacillating, pragmatic approach defines our policy toward terrorism today. We bombed bin Laden’s camp in Afghanistan, when he wasn’t there, then took no further action. We withdrew from investigating the Khobar Towers bombing when it seemed that Iran (to which we were making diplomatic overtures) was involved. We patiently “co-operated” with Yemeni authorities as they stalled and sabotaged the investigation of the Cole bombing. More important, we know that such nations as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Iran and the Sudan actively support terrorism, and yet we take no direct military action against them to stop this threat to American lives.
Appeasement is the essence of our foreign policy. We try to placate our overt enemies in the blind, range-of-the-moment hope that if we do not treat them as implacable enemies they will cease being such. This pragmatic approach is impractical. Only a firm commitment to the principle of self-defense can protect us. Those countries that support the use of force against us must become targets of military retaliation by us. If we fail to take principled action now, more American deaths are inevitable.

–Dianne Durante 
Senior writer, Ayn Rand Institute 
Marina del Rey, Calif.