=======================================
NEWS FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY
2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100
Washington DC 20037
=======================================
For release: August 28, 1998
=======================================
For additional information:
George Getz, Press Secretary
Phone: (202) 333-0008 Ext. 222
E-Mail: 76214.3676@Compuserve.com
=======================================
If we hate terrorism, why does the U.S. keep arming and training terrorists?
WASHINGTON, DC -- Before we launch a bloody, decades-long war
against terrorists, Libertarians have a question: Why doesn't the U.S.
government simply stop arming and training terrorists and the dictators
who support them?
"When will our government learn?" asked David Bergland, the
party's national chairman. "From the African embassy bombings to the
Persian Gulf War to Somalia, why do we keep furnishing the guns, money,
and advanced military training that terrorists and foreign soldiers use
to kill Americans?"
Bergland posed those questions after American missile attacks
against alleged terrorist bases in Afghanistan and Sudan caused Islamic
terrorists around the world to redouble their threats against the
United States.
As a result, concrete anti-bomb barriers now circle the
Washington Monument, black-clad SWAT teams with automatic weapons roam
the grounds of the Pentagon, and politicians warn that America must
fight a "new war" against terrorists.
Lost in all the anti-terrorist frenzy, said Bergland, is the
fact that most of our nation's military encounters over the past
decade -- whether anti-terrorist strikes, conventional warfare, or
peace-keeping missions -- have been against enemies the American
government armed or trained.
For example, to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in
the 1980s, the U.S. supplied Islamic rebels in that country with over
$2 billion in covert military assistance, and Afghan rebels were
trained by the CIA.
The result: The "floating army of Islamic fundamentalist
fighters who received weapons and training in Afghanistan [are] now
mounting terrorists attacks on U.S.-backed governments in Algeria,
Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia," reported the World Policy Institute.
"Two of the men convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center
had received weapons and explosives training from CIA-backed rebels in
Afghanistan prior to their attack in New York City."
These same Islamic fundamentalists also provided support for
the terrorists who bombed American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
But the problem goes beyond terrorism.
"The last four times the United States has sent troops into
conflict in substantial numbers -- in Panama, Iraq, Somalia, and
Haiti -- they faced forces on the other side that had received U.S.
weapons, training, or military technology in the period leading up
to the outbreak of hostilities," reported the World Policy Institute
in 1995. For example:
* Panama: Before the 1989 invasion to oust strongman Manuel
Noriega, the United States had provided the Central American nation
with $33.5 million worth of U.S. weapons, and spent $8.2 million to
train Panamanian military personnel at the Pentagon's International
Military Education and Training program (IMET). Even Noriega himself
was a graduate of IMET.
* Iraq: In the years leading up to the Gulf War in 1991, "the
Reagan and Bush administrations supplied critical military technologies
that were put directly to use in the construction of the Iraqi war
machine," according to the World Policy Institute.
*Somalia: Before sending the ill-fated peace-keeping mission to
Somalia in 1991, the U.S. government furnished more than $1 billion in
aid to that nation's oppressive government -- including $154 million in
weapons. When American troops arrived to quell the civil war,
American-supplied M-16 rifles, machine guns, mortars, howitzers,
armored personnel carriers, land mines, and anti-tank missiles were
used against U.S. military forces.
* Haiti: Prior to U.S troops being dispatched to the
impoverished Caribbean nation in 1994, the American government had
delivered $2.6 million in weapons to dictator Jean Bertrand Aristide.
In all, between the end of World War II and the early 1990s,
the United States government gave away more than $950 billion (in
constant 1989 dollars) in foreign or military aid to "more than 100
nations," according to the Cato Institute.
"Given that 101 armed conflicts occurred around the world
between 1989 and 1996, it's inevitable that our government was somehow
involved -- whether by furnishing money, arms, or military personnel --
in dozens of those skirmishes and wars," said Bergland. "And every time
we got involved in another nation's war, it's inevitable that we made
more enemies who became more determined to strike back at us."
That's why the Libertarian Party supports a non-interventionist
foreign policy, he said -- which would keep America safer by reducing
the number of nations and terrorist organizations that have reason to
hate our country.
"The best way to defend America is by defending America -- not
by intervening in the affairs of foreign nations," said Bergland. "And
the best way to live free from the threat of terrorists is by not
getting into a bloody, protracted, unwinnable war with terrorists in
the first place.
"The sooner we learn that, the sooner Americans can stop
worrying about becoming the next target of bloodthirsty, fanatical
terrorists," he said. "In a non-interventionist, Libertarian nation, we
could take down the anti-bomb barriers around the Washington Monument,
retire the anti-terrorist SWAT teams, and live in peace."
|