The Foreign Policy of Guilt
Aug 3, 2005

IRVINE, CA--If a President stated that this country was evil and had no moral right to exist, and that Americans must engage in penance for the wrongs we've committed, we would instantly kick him out of office. Yet, we hear the equivalent condemnation implied on a daily basis from our President and his foreign policy.

This was the meaning of the recent G8 meeting. The G8 declared, in effect, that it's not the Palestinians, with their rejection of the freedoms attainable in Israel and their embrace of thugs and killers, who are responsible for the Palestinians' degradation. It's the West. Thus, we must help build up Palestine by supplying the terrorist-sponsoring Palestinian Authority with billions in aid. And it's not Africans, with their decades of tribal, collectivist and anticapitalist ideas, who are responsible for Africa's poverty. It's the West. Thus we must lift Africa out of its plight with $50 billion in aid. This, Bush and the other members of the G8 believe, will help us triumph over terrorism by showing the world we really mean well.

The campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq might be considered exceptions to this orgy of penance, but that would be an error. In neither war is the aim to crush the enemy. Unlike in WWII, when the Allies would flatten cities to achieve victory, the American and British armies, by explicit order, consult lawyers before firing at the enemy. Terrorists and insurgents go free, free to return to kill our young men, because we subordinate the lives of our soldiers to concern for the enemy's well-being and civilian casualties. Our goal is not victory but, as Bush so often tells us, to bestow--with our soldiers' blood--an unearned gift on these people, "freedom" and "democracy," with the hope that they will 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 "democracy." 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 soldiers' lives, the "guilty" 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 un-free.

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Dr. Yaron Brook and Dr. Onkar Ghate are available for interviews on this topic.

Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews. To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please e-mail media@aynrandcenter.org

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