Author blames attacks on U.S.

Andrew Lewis, a writer for the Ayn Rand Objectivist Institute, says the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks resulted from the United States' moral failure to fight terrorism that began nearly a century ago.

"A number of people in the last weeks have said America brought this on itself because of it's meddling in the affairs of other countries," he said during a lecture Tuesday sponsored by the UNM Objectivist Society. "But the moral failure is that we have meddled far too little. That has contributed to our vulnerability."

Lewis, who also hosts a radio show for the objectivist institute, described what he called a nightmare analogy to illustrate why the United States and its allies had failed to protect themselves from terrorism by loosening control in the Middle East since World War II.

In Lewis' analogy, Superman starts a school for truth, justice and the American way. People move to be near the school, creating a city. Eventually a bully moves into town, forms a gang, and starts terrorizing people, while Superman watches and does nothing.

"This is the same as what we're experiencing now," he said. "You have failed in your morality if you surrender to an opponent who is less than you are. The United States has surrendered its principles in the last 60 to 70 years by failing to protect its own society and civilized people anywhere in the world."

Lewis said America's right to claim moral superiority stemmed from the principle of objectivism, a philosophy founded by the late Ayn Rand, author of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged."

"It's founded on a crucial principle - man's right to live his own life, free of interference and obstruction from others to use his own mind to follow the course of his life," he said, calling freedom the proper state of man.

Lewis said the country got off to a good start when Thomas Jefferson sent troops to Africa at the turn of the 19th century to fight the Barbary pirates.

"Jefferson and the founding fathers recognized that allowing that kind of threat would allow attack on our own shores," he said. "We didn't suffer that kind of threat again until the mid-1900s."

He said the Middle East was a desert wasteland until Western scientists discovered oil there in the early part of the 20th century. He said the discovery brought civilization to what he called barbaric tribal nomads in the area, adding that the tribes had no claim to the land, which belonged to those who developed it and made it a valuable property - the United States and Europe.

Mistakes made during World War II, however, sowed the seeds of today's instability. He cited the founding of the United Nations, the formation and subsequent abandonment of Israel and the U.S. allowing Iran to take over oil wells in 1951 as causes for fueling terrorism and lawlessness in the area.

"America is allowing the Middle East to be taken over by barbarians who deny everyone else rights," Lewis said. "If you let that bully take your lunch Thursday, how many bullies will be lined up on day two? This indicates just how weak and pathetic the U.S. foreign policy had become."

Lewis listed an eruption of terrorist attacks from the kidnapping and eventual killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland and the Iran hostage crisis in the mid-1980s and said they could have been prevented if the United States had taken action.

He said the United States would have to take decisive and planned action against terrorism if it hopes to stop it.

"The most important first step is to learn that America has failed to act - we didn't understand that we had a fundamental right to protect our interests and those of individuals around the world," he said.

The event was billed as the semester's introductory meeting for the UNM Objectivist Society.

Founder Ryan Molecke called the group's philosophy radical capitalism.

"It's based on reason, the ethics of enlightened self-interest or egoism," he said. "We would argue that reason is the only means of gaining knowledge."