| | To hold U.S. foreign policy blameless in the events leading up to 9/11 is to ignore the facts surrounding the empowerment of extremists like Bin Laden.
The U.S. Govt. made the decision to encourage and fund Islamic fanaticism in Afghanistan to provoke Soviet invasion of that country - and then further funding and assistance was given the Taleban in order to repel the Soviet invasion.
The interventionist foreign policy of the U.S.A. fostered terrorism in general, and 9/11 specifically, in the same way and to the same extent that countries which capitulate to terrorism (e.g. Spain) only encourage more terrorism.
That is to say, the decision to commit an act of terror is solely the terrorists to make - but one can certainly encourage or discourage him in making that decision. U.S. foreign policy has hitherto been (and, to an extent, still is) an encouraging, rather than discouraging, factor.
That *doesn't* make me an apologist for terrorism, any more than my view that Government 'social welfare' leads to an increase in crime makes me an apologist for conventional criminals!
Yes, the bastards need to be caught and made to pay for their crimes, and no, such policies aren't an excuse, or even a mitigating factor - but that doesn't mean they're the right policies, either.
Not *everyone* who says "interventionist foreign policy fosters terrorism" is an anti-American apologist for terrorism, you know!
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