I am not a libertarian. Though I am sympathetic to many libertarian views and believe its current popularity is pushing the GOP in a more limited-government direction, I have long considered myself simply a traditional conservative.
Philosopher and author Russell Kirk had a much less sympathetic view of libertarians, once describing them as “chirping sectaries” whose philosophy was incompatible with true conservatism. Still, discovering Kirk’s groundbreaking 1953 book “The Conservative Mind” at an early age was a significant influence on my political identity. The same has been true for generations of conservatives, or as William F. Buckley once wrote: “It is inconceivable even to imagine, let alone hope for, a dominant conservative movement in America without [Kirk’s] labor.”
As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 coincided with the Republican presidential primaries, naturally the candidates were asked to comment on the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history. Alone amongst the GOP field, Congressman Ron Paul has consistently contended that American foreign policy in the Middle East throughout the 1990s — a significant U.S. troop presence on the Arabian Peninsula, constant bombings, sanctions costing millions of lives — ultimately created “blowback” against this country.
“Blowback” is a term that was invented by the CIA to describe the often unforeseen and unintended consequences of foreign intervention. The 9/11 Commission Report lists blowback as a primary cause of the 9/11 attacks. Osama bin Laden also cited American foreign policy as a primary reason for radical Islamic outrage.
So did Russell Kirk. In a 1991 speech to the Heritage Foundation, Kirk called President George H.W. Bush’s Operation Desert Storm “a radical course of intervention in the region of the Persian Gulf… Now indubitably Saddam Hussein is unrighteous … [but] are we to saturation-bomb most of Africa and Asia into righteousness, freedom and democracy?”
Is it “blaming America” to examine whether our history of intervention in the Middle East might have fostered 9/11? Is it unpatriotic to reconsider our foreign policy and examine whether it makes us more safe or less? Paul has asked his fellow Americans to consider these rudimentary lessons of history, common sense and human nature.
So did Russell Kirk, or as he told the Heritage audience:
“We must expect to suffer during a very long period of widespread hostility toward the United States — even, or perhaps especially, from the people of certain states that America bribed or bullied into combining against Iraq. In Egypt, in Syria, in Pakistan, in Algeria, in Morocco, in all of the world of Islam, the masses now regard the United States as their arrogant adversary…”
Kirk died in 1994, yet some might say he predicted 9/11 a full decade before it occurred.