Why they hate us
What Motivates the Terrorists?
10/04/08 “fff” — –Immediately after 9/11, U.S. officials, led by President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, announced that the attacks were motivated by hatred for America’s freedom and values.
Not so, responded we libertarians. Instead, the anger and hatred that people have in the Middle East for the United States is rooted in U.S. foreign policy, specifically the bad things that the U.S. government has done to people in that part of the world.
What libertarians were referring to were such things as the ouster of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, the support of Saddam Hussein, the Persian Gulf intervention, the intentional destruction of Iraq’s water-and-sewage treatment plants, the more than a decade of brutal sanctions, the statement by UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it,” the illegal and deadly no-fly zones, the stationing of U.S. troops on Islamic holy lands, the support of authoritarian monarchies, and the unconditional financial and military support of the Israeli government. </em>
