Regime Change? by William L. Anderson

I am choosing this venue to announce that I am breaking ranks with many of my friends and am calling for regime change in the country about which I am writing. I have been observing the behavior of the sometimes-maniacal political leaders of this nation and have concluded that not only the rogue at the top, but many others who are part of this particular government also need to go.

Since a harsh statement like mine needs evidence, let me present the facts and permit the readers to judge whether or not I have a case. In the past six decades, the government of this country has engaged in the following atrocities:

It has used its armed forced to invade a large number of countries, none of which were at war with this particular country. The air forces of this belligerent nation have bombed numerous cities into rubble and literally millions of non-combatants have lost their lives.
It has used weapons of mass destruction twice, killing perhaps 200,000 civilians in the process.
It has placed its armed forces all over the world, often at the displeasure of the host nation that has been given little or no choice in the matter.
It has insisted that when its citizens are murdered abroad, that the law enforcement organizations of the country where the crime occurred send the accused criminal to this rogue country for trial there. At the same time, it often refuses to extradite people to other countries where they are accused of committing crimes.
On the home front, it has taken to imprisoning a fourth of the world’s prisoners, even though it has only about five percent of the world’s population.
The government of this country has gassed and burned its own people, and placed the survivors of that internal massacre on trial, charging them with crimes they clearly did not commit.
It has taken cherished legal traditions that safeguarded individuals from the excessive powers of the state and has transformed law into a mechanism to protect the state and intimidate the people.
It has supported some of the most repressive dictatorships in the world, giving financial and military support to these regimes.
It has harbored terrorists and even provided much of the funding that the 9/11 attackers needed while they trained to commit their evil acts.

William L. Anderson, Ph.D. [send him mail], teaches economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland, and is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.