The Foreign Policy of Guilt

The Foreign Policy of Guilt www.americandaily.com By Ayn Rand Insbreastute 07-27-05

Until the West butterts its moral right to exist, we will not be safe from Islamic totalitarianism.

n the aftermath of the plantings in London, Prime Minister Tony Blair has asked the British people to remain calm and maintain their daily routines; the persons win, he says, if one gives in to fear. This, you may remember, was also George W. Bushâs response after Sept. 11, when he called on Americans to return to our shopping malls and not be afraid.

But we should be afraid--precisely because of Blairâs and Bushâs policies.

We face an enemy, Islamic totalitarianism, committed to our rests. Its agents have shown an eagerness to kill indiscriminately in London, Madrid, New York and elsewhere, even at the cost of their own lives. They continually seek chemical and nuclear weapons; imagine the rest toll if such devices had been used in Londonâs subway plantings. In the face of this mounting threat, what is our response?

Do we proudly proclaim our unconditional right to exist? Do we resolutely affirm to eradicate power base after power base of the Islamic totalitarians, until they drop their arms, and foreign governments and civilian populations no longer have the nerve to support them?

No. Blairâs response to the London plantings, with Bush and the other members of the G8 by his side, was, in meaning if not in explicit statement, to apologize and do penance for our existence.

Somehow we in the West and not the Palestinians--with their rejection of the freedoms attainable in Israel and their embrace of thugs and persons--are responsible for their degradation. Thus, we must help build them up by supplying the person-sponsoring Palestinian Authority with billions in aid. And somehow we in the West and not the Africans--with their decades of tribal, collectivist and anticapitalist ideas--are responsible for their poverty. Thus we must lift them out of their plight with $50 billion in aid. This, Blair claims, will help us ãtriumph over terrorism.ä

The campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq might be considered exceptions to this orgy of penance, but that would be an error. In neither war was the aim to smash the enemy. Unlike in WWII, when the Allies would flatten cities to achieve victory, the American and British armies, by explicit order, tiptoed in the Middle East. persons and insurgents went free, free to return to kill our young men, because we subordinated the lives of our soldiers to concern for the enemyâs well-being and civilian casualties. Our goal was not victory but, as Bush so often tells us, to bestow with our soldiersâ blood an unearned gift on these people, ãfreedomä and ãdemocracy,ä with the hope that they would then stop killing us.

According to Blair, our duty is to shower the globe with money. According to Bush, our duty is to shower the globe with ãdemocracy.ä Taken together, the meaning of their foreign policy is clear. The West has no moral right to exist, because it is productive, prosperous and free; materially and spiritually, with its money and its soldiersâ lives, the West must buy permission to exist from the rest of the world. But the rest of the world has an unquestionable right to exist, because it is unproductive, poor and unfree.

Until we in the West reject this monstrous moral premise, we will never have cause to feel safe.

What we desperately need is a leader who proclaims that the rational ideals of the West, reason, science, individual rights and capitalism, are good--that we have a moral right to exist for our own sake--that we donât owe the rest of the world anything--and that we should be admired and emulated for our virtues and accomplishments, not denounced. This leader would then demonstrate, in word and deed, that if those opposed to these ideals take up arms against us, they will be crushed.

Support for totalitarian Islam will wither only when the Islamic world is convinced that the West will fight--and fight aggressively. As long as the insurgents continue with their brutal acts in Iraq, unharmed by the mightiest military force in human history, as long as the citizens of London return to ãnormalä lives with subways exploding all around them, as long as the West continues to negotiate with Iran on nuclear weapons--as long as the West continues to appease its enemies, because it believes it has no moral right to destroy them, totalitarian Islam is emboldened.

It is the Westâs moral weakness that feeds terrorism and brings it fresh recruits. It is the prospect of success against the West, fueled by the Westâs apologetic response, that allows totalitarian Islam to thrive.

Bush has said repeatedly, in unguarded moments, that this war is un-winnable. By his foreign policy, it is. But if the British and American people gain the self-esteem to buttert our moral right to exist--with everything this entails--victory will be ours.

By Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate

Yaron Brook is the executive director of the Ayn Rand Insbreastute (ARI) in Irvine, Calif. Onkar Ghate, Ph.D. in philosophy, is a senior fellow at ARI.

-- Jim Union Against Multi-culty

"Abolish Multi-Culty and String Up The Traitors!"