Reap the Whirlwind - by Bevin Chu : Antiwar.com

"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."

~ Hosea 8:7

Executive Summary: When our Washington elites funded and trained Afghanistan's Mujahadeen "freedom fighters" to harass the Soviet Union, America sowed the wind. On September 11, 2001, if our talking heads are to be believed, Osama bin Laden, one of numerous Dogs of War unleashed upon the world by our CIA, took a bite out of his former master. Like the ancient Israelites who ignored their prophet Hosea, Americans ignored our prophets George Washington and John Quincy Adams, and are now reaping the whirlwind.

DIVINE WIND

"For Israel has forgotten his Maker, and built palaces; and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour his strongholds."

~ Hosea 8:14

The terrorists struck on Tuesday September 11, on a clear Manhattan morning. Two hijacked civilian airliners, one plane for each of the twin 110 story towers, were aimed directly at New York's World Trade Center towers, and flown into them head on, "kamikaze" style.

An hour or so later, the two burning towers crumbled and disintegrated, one after the other, in agonizing slow motion, collapsing into roiling clouds of dust and debris before our very eyes.

The date the terrorists chose to launch their highly-coordinated surprise attack was no accident. It was not the result of tossing a dart at a calendar while blindfolded. September 11 is 9/11 or 911, the number the terrorists knew their shocked and disoriented victims would be dialing, begging emergency personnel to "Please, help me!"

Like criminal masterminds depicted in Hollywood thrillers like Se7en (1995, directed by David Fincher, written by Andrew Kevin Walker) or The Bone Collector, (1999, directed by Phillip Noyce, written by Jeffery Deaver and Jeremy Iacone) the terrorists were taunting us, anticipating each of our reactions in advance like an evil chessmaster. Even the names of the airlines targeted, "American" and "United," were likely intended as cruel irony.

FORTIFIED CITIES

When the World Trade Center towers were first topped off in the early '70s, I was an apprentice at I.M. Pei and Partners uptown at Fifth and Madison. Even then, from a purely aesthetic perspective, I never cared for the WTC. They were featureless, scaleless white prisms with closely spaced thin vertical lines on all four elevations, and little else. Mies van der Rohe's masterpiece Seagram's Building is simple, elegant. The WTC towers were merely plain, boring.

Nevertheless like millions of others, architects and laymen alike, I had gotten used to seeing them, and could no longer imagine "Noo Yawk Ciddy" without them.

Part of me said the images I was watching live on CNN weren't real. What I was watching was CGI. Computer generated images. Special effects. Trailers from the latest big budget Hollywood blockbuster. Independence Day, Armageddon, Deep Impact.

Part of me however, knew better.

"So it finally happened," I muttered to myself.

"Now do you get it? Finally? Now do you understand why libertarians have insisted the World's Only Remaining Superpower could not get away with dispatching carrier task forces and stealth bombers all over the world, casually inflicting 'collateral damage' from 15,000 ft. on anyone we labeled 'evil,' blithely assuming the American public would remain safe and snug, immune from deadly retaliation?"

OUR FOUNDING FATHERS' FOREIGN POLICY, A STRANGE THING

"The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible."

~ George Washington's farewell address, September 19, 1796

"[America] does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

~ John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State to James Monroe and author of the Monroe Doctrine, 1821

"I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing."

~ Hosea 8:12

Anti-interventionists get no satisfaction out of saying "We told you so!" The disaster is too horrific to permit gloating. But the fact is we did tell you so. We at antiwar.com, lewrockwell.com, fff.org, among others, warned there would be hell to pay for our uninvited, unwelcome global meddling, but neither wing of our One Party political establishment paid us the slightest attention.

Instead, Benevolent Global Hegemonists on the right and Humanitarian Interventionists on the left portrayed themselves as sophisticated practitioners of realpolitik, and dismissed libertarian anti-interventionists who quoted George Washington and John Quincy Adams chapter and verse as quaintly irrelevant ivory tower utopians.

Until a "nameless, faceless enemy" struck a crippling blow against America's financial and political nerve centers.

PLANT MELONS, GET MELONS

"You have plowed iniquity, you have reaped injustice, you have eaten the fruit of lies."

~ Hosea 10:13

"Plant melons, get melons. Plant beans, get beans."

~ Chinese Folk Expression

Why did terrorists hijack Boeing 757s and 767s belonging to American Airlines and United Airlines and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.?

Why didn't they hijack airliners belonging to Air Canada and crash them into Canada's parliament buildings overlooking the Ottawa River? Why didn't they hijack airliners belonging to Aero Mexico and crash them into the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City's Zocalo?

Why didn't they attack Bern and Stockholm, European capitols geographically far more accessible from terrorist bases in the Middle East?

PLANT BEANS, GET BEANS

"Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of steadfast love..."

~ Hosea 10:12

The terrorists attacked America and not America's neighbors Canada and Mexico, because Canada and Mexico, whatever their other faults, mind their own damned business. Canada and Mexico don't hold guns to the heads of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other Muslim states, demanding that they obey Washington's high-handed dictates, "or else."

The terrorists attacked America, not Switzerland and Sweden because Switzerland and Sweden are politically neutral nations which have wisely rejected foreign military adventurism.

This is not rocket science. Even Dubya ought to be able to understand this without "Diplomacy for Dummies" Cliff Notes thoughtfully provided by Condoleeza Rice.

Political neutrality, by the way, is not "isolationism." As anyone who has ever heard of Credit Suisse and Ericcson knows, Switzerland and Sweden couldn't be any more thoroughly integrated into the European and world communities.

The economic success of these highly civilized European powerhouses demonstrates there is nothing "unrealistic" or "utopian" about advanced nations maintaining scrupulously anti-interventionist foreign policies.

The political viability of these neutral nation states puts the lie to preposterous Blue Team assertions that "America has no alternative but to be an imperialist hegemon, because it's still a dangerous world out there."