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Date sent: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 17:51:26 -0400 (EDT)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:Release: Yemen Bombing
From: Libertarian Party Announcements [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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NEWS FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY
2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100
Washington DC 20037
World Wide Web: http://www.LP.org
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For release: October 13, 2000
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For additional information:
George Getz, Press Secretary
Phone: (202) 333-0008 Ext. 222
E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Tragic bombing in Yemen was result
of our interventionist foreign policy
WASHINGTON, DC -- The apparent terrorist attack on a U.S. Navy
destroyer that killed 17 Americans in Yemen on Thursday is another
bloody reminder that an interventionist foreign policy inevitably
results in the deaths of innocent Americans, the Libertarian Party
says.
"These U.S. servicemen were murdered in part because their own
government sent them to a dangerous, unstable region where hundreds of
U.S. soldiers have been slaughtered before," charged Steve Dasbach,
national director of the Libertarian Party.
"Bill Clinton says he is 'horrified' by this attack. But what's
truly horrifying are the politicians who keep putting U.S. servicemen
and women in harm's way -- knowing that more will almost certainly be
killed in the future."
At least 17 U.S. servicemen were killed and three dozen injured
after a small boat pulled alongside the USS Cole and set off an
explosion as the destroyer was docked in Yemen on Thursday. U.S.
officials say they believe the bombing was a terrorist attack, most
likely in retaliation for the American role in the Middle East
conflict.
"We mourn the loss of these U.S. servicemen, and condemn the
terrorists who bombed the USS Cole as the cold-blooded killers they
are," Dasbach said. "But the only reason they had the opportunity to
strike is because those servicemen's own government put them there in
the first place."
And our government tacitly admits that such attacks on
Americans are inevitable, he said.
"These attacks happen with such regularity that the FBI has set
up five Rapid Deployment Teams solely to investigate attacks on
Americans overseas," Dasbach said. "The majority of the agents
dispatched to Yemen on Thursday were in the Middle East to investigate
the 1996 truck bombing that killed 19 U.S. airmen in Saudi Arabia and
the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that
killed 12 Americans.
"But instead of eliminating the cause of these killings --
foreign intervention -- the government seems content to set up more
Rapid Deployment Teams and dispatch more investigators and more
bodybags to clean up after the terrorists."
The reason that future bombings are so predictable, Dasbach
said, is that U.S. policies virtually invite terrorist attacks.
"The U.S. government's willingness to take both sides in the
Middle East dispute has put billions of dollars of lethal weapons in
the hands of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and Iran," he said. "No
wonder both sides have reason to dislike the United States, since we've
armed and aided both sides' enemies."
On Thursday, President Clinton said the terrorist bombing
should not "deter us from our mission of promoting peace and security
in the Middle East" -- when such a policy actually promotes war and
insecurity, said Dasbach.
"A government concerned with preventing the killing of
additional soldiers would be deploying U.S. troops back home, instead
of deploying more FBI agents and more bodybags to the Middle East," he
said.
Unfortunately, a Libertarian policy of non-intervention doesn't
appeal to Democratic and Republican politicians, who appear to see
foreign crises as opportunities for greater power, more government
spending, and a chance to demonstrate their courage by risking the
lives of others, said Dasbach.
Case in point: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who said
on Thursday, "This is no time for the United States to retreat from its
responsibilities in the region. We are operating in a world filled with
a variety of threats. But that doesn't mean that we can crawl into an
ostrich-like mode. We are eagles."
In fact, said Dasbach, "In the Middle East, the United States
is neither an ostrich nor an eagle -- thanks to the U.S. government's
reckless interventionism, we're a sitting duck."
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