Back on November 9, 1999, the Cato Daily Dispatch presented an isolationist argument for appeasement of the same form that some antiwar liberals did. Guess who they hoped to appease?
"Osama bin Laden--who seeks to overthrow the Saudi government and is related by marriage to Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a recruiter of Islamic extremists in the Philippines--asserts that 'Muslims burn with anger at America,'" Ivan Eland wrote in the Cato Policy Analysis "Protecting the Homeland: The Best Defense Is to Give No Offense". "The wealthy Saudi's anti-Americanism and financing of terrorism are motivated by his perception that American assistance to Saudi Arabia against Iraq in the Gulf War was an act against Arabs. Such American intervention can spur even normally moderate groups to threaten terrorist acts... Terrorists and religious cults have an obsession with the United States because of its superpower status and behavior...
"If the United States adopted a less interventionist foreign policy, it would be much less of a target for acts of both minor and mass terror. Using similar logic, the nation's Founders, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, fashioned a foreign policy that kept us out of Europe's conflicts so that the European powers would have little cause to intervene in America. That restrained foreign policy served the country well for more than a century and a half, and it should be reinstated...
"With the best of intentions--enhancing stability--the United States has conducted a number of ill-advised interventions in the post-Cold War environment, most notably in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. Instability in such far-flung and international system. In none of those cases did the intervention have any significant relationship to U.S. security. Furthermore, such interventions rarely increase stability or make things better, even in the target country... In response to those types of interventions, a disgruntled faction could sponsor a terrorist attack using WMD or information warfare on U.S. soil. As the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs noted in Proliferation Primer, the United States is now, like Gulliver, a vulnerable giant. Are such questionable interventions really worth the potential catastrophic consequences to the American people? The answer is a resounding no."
Structurally, the latter part is parallel to some antiwar arguments as to why the USA should not have invaded Afghanistan or Iraq.
In retrospect, it appears conservatives were wrong to label Clinton's attacks on Osama bin Laden to be a case of "wag the dog". It would appear that Clinton's push into Kosovo ultimately increased American influence in "New Europe" and Central Asia. I was struck by this passage from the March 1999 Phylllis Schlafly Report:
...by putting U.S. troops in Kosovo, Clinton is provoking terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals connected to Saudi renegade Osama bin Laden, who has declared a worldwide war on Americans. Fanatics bent on jihad against the "Great Satan" United States could hardly ask for a more tempting target than Americans deployed close to terrorist bases in northern Albania. Even more dangerous, entering the Kosovo war may provoke terrorist retaliation within the United States. It's not only our U.S. troops who will be put in mortal danger. Bin Laden has stated unequivocally that all Americans, including "those who pay taxes," are targets. At a recent Senate hearing, CIA Director George Tenet warned against the danger of a stepped-up terrorist campaign, saying, "There is not the slightest doubt that Osama bin Laden, his worldwide allies, and his sympathizers are planning further attacks against us."
Replace Albania with Iraq and Clinton with Bush, and this could be the same argument used by some in the antiwar movement why the USA should not attack Afghanistan or Iraq. History is full of ironies.
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