TOS Blog: Daily Commentary from an Objectivist Perspective

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Afghan Riots Indicate Deadly Consequences of Loving Our Enemies

Posted by Ari Armstrong at 5:31 pm ET

“Operation Enduring Freedom.” That’s what the U.S. government called the military action in Afghanistan. In pursuit of that mission, the U.S. government has sacrificed the lives of more than a thousand U.S. troops and spent trillions of dollars (including tens of billions of dollars in aid). The result has been not enduring freedom but enduring hatred and violence directed toward the United States by Afghan Islamists.

A recent Fox News headline summarizes the current state of affairs: “7 US troops wounded in Afghanistan, as protests against Koran burnings continue.” And why were the Korans burned at a U.S. military base? “Officials said they were removed from the detention center library because the detainees were using them to pass secret and what were described as ‘extremist’ messages to one another,” another Fox article reports.

In answer to Afghan Islamists attacking U.S. troops (as well as murdering two U.S. Nato officers and slaughtering dozens of Afghan Muslims), the Obama administration apologized for the burnings and professed the U.S.’s “respect for Islam.”

A proper American foreign policy would direct military action toward one and only one goal: the protection of Americans from foreign threats. Regarding Islamist terrorism, the goal of the U.S. government should be to destroy terrorist organizations—including, most importantly, the nations that support them. Instead we are witnessing the revolting spectacle of the U.S. government sacrificing American lives and wealth in an absurd attempt to bring “freedom” and prosperity to those trying to kill us.

Let’s stop loving our enemies and start killing them.

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

Posted in: Foreign Policy and War

Comments are welcome so long as they are civil.
  • Anonymous

    You cannot bring freedom to those who would rather be slaves or enslavers of others.   Freedom is for those who recognize that life without it, is not life at all.

  • http://twitter.com/dirtydog1776 dirtydog1776

    Most people in the world do not believe in democracy but believe and support either a tribal or “strong man” type of government. The concept of freedom and making individual  decisions is completely foreign and repugnant to them.  They condemn democracy and capitalism as decadent and as something to be destroyed.  Their history shows they have no commitment to self government.  They need to learn on their own, if such a thing is possible, and we need to get the hell out of their countries and secure our own borders.  

    follow dirtydog1776 on Twitter and I will let you rub my soft, furry tummy.

  • Robert Ostrowski

    I share a very similar sentiment.

    NATO commander in Afghanistan Gen. John R. Allen, who confirmed the incident said it was unintentional and offered profuse apologies “to the president of Afghanistan, the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and most importantly, to the noble people of Afghanistan.”

    Why apologize? It’s just a book. Paper, ink, and little more. I demand an apology from the thousands of muslims threatening
    “Death to America” over burnt paper. How are these people noble Gen. Allen? Is it because they’re willing to kill blindly for an idea?
    That, good sir, makes them fanatics, not noble.

    Instead of pathetically apologizing to these lunatic zealots we should be reminding them that we’re there because they sheltered murderers who attacked America. Instead of apologizing we should be warning them, that if they turn and now bite the hand that has fed them that we will not hesitate to undo all the construction we’ve done in the past 8 years of nation building in the next 8 days, and that when we’re done we will then grant them their wish; we’ll pack up and leave their miserable Islamic Republic a shambles and they can read their so-called “holy” book all they want in their ruins by candle light. Maybe they can even reflect on the lesson that the next time they attack Americans, there will be no new schools, no new hospitals, no revitalization at the expense of the American people, none. The only thing I’d have them receive from my tax dollars, so long as they openly declare that their goal is my capitulation to Islam and that their method is murder, are bombs and guided missiles.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CRE6REGHBOCNFLN4NJIXNMIEFM Mike Kevitt

    Ari Armstrong is saying, literally [so I believe (if I may speak for him, here)], that we should kill the enemy over there which wants to kill us, not that we should bring them democracy and/or freedom.  But, instead, we HAVE been trying to bring them democracy and freedom, so, “Operation Enduring Freedom” is appropriately named for that wayward policy.

    The proper policy, not just in Afghanistan, but, everywhere from Morroco thru Pakistan, should(‘ve) been identification and destruction of the enemy, post 9/11.  We can’t worry about whether they have freedom, democracy or slavery, but, given our overall interests in history and today, we probably just can’t pull out and go home after destroying the enemy.  We’d need an indefinite, directed (by us) OCCUPYING presence, with similarities to those after WWll.  We’d have to insist on certain permanent conditions before any careful withdrawl, around which they might establish their own system for running themselves.