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by Jacob G. Hornberger

If only the American people were as angry and outraged over the U.S. government’s partnerships with foreign dictatorships as the Egyptian people are with the U.S-supported dictatorship under which they have been suffering for 30 years. If that were the case, we would stand a good chance of restoring a limited-government republic to our land. So far it seems, however, Americans are still deferring to authority in the quaint belief that the conservative-liberal vision of an interventionist foreign policy is the way to go.

Look at the various positions that are being taken by the statists, both liberals and conservatives. All of a sudden, some of them have become born-again democracy supporters, calling on Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak to resign. Others, especially in the conservative camp, are still clinging to the dictatorship with the conviction that dictatorship brings “order and stability” while democracy brings “chaos and disorder.”

Make no mistake about it: If the Egyptian people were still quietly suffering under the U.S.-supported dictatorship under which they’ve suffered for 30 years, both liberals and conservatives would be doing what they’ve been doing for 30 years—ardently supporting the Egyptian dictatorship and continuing to send it billions of dollars, especially in military armaments that have ensured “order and stability” through a terrifying regime of torture and terrorism against the Egyptian people.

Not surprisingly, President Obama has a plan for Egypt. Statists always have a plan. The notion that foreigners should be left alone to manage their own problems doesn’t even enter the mind of a statist. In Obama’s mind, the U.S. government must manage affairs in Egypt, in the name of protecting “national security” and the interests of the U.S. Empire.

What’s Obama’s plan? To have the U.S. government’s old, loyal partner, Mubarak, resign in favor of Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman. Who’s he? you ask. Well, only Egypt’s torturer-in-chief. You know, the guy that conservative President George W. Bush partnered with to torture U.S. prisoners on behalf of the United States so that Bush and his people could tell Americans, “The U.S. government continues to be exceptional because unlike dictatorial regimes, we don’t torture people.”

Can you see how there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between liberals and conservatives? Their foreign-policy vision is the same — interventionism through such lovely devices as coups, assassinations, support of dictatorships, invasions, occupations, foreign aid, kidnapping, rendition, and torture. But when it all starts to collapse through resistance to tyranny, many of the statists all of sudden become enthusiastic democracy-lovers. Can you see why so many foreigners hate the U.S. government for its duplicity and hypocrisy?

Leave it to conservative statists though to inject a bit of humor into the situation, albeit unintentionally. Some of them are claiming that George W. Bush’s violent invasion and war of aggression against Iraq and against the Empire’s old, loyal partner Saddam Hussein inspired the pro-democracy protests in Egypt. Why is that funny? Because it was Bush and his people who cut the torture deal with the guy that Obama now wants to make president of Egypt!

Bush was using the CIA to kidnap people and then rendition them to Egypt where Vice President Suleiman, who was head of Egypt’s CIA before he was elevated in a non-democratic way to the vice presidency. As director of Mubarak’s CIA, Suleiman coordinated with Bush’s CIA to torture people on behalf of the U.S. Empire.

So, I suppose conservatives are saying, “Bush inspired the pro-democracy protests by employing Egypt’s torture machinery, which the Empire’s partner Mubarak was using against the Egyptian people, for the benefit of the U.S. Empire.” If you’re having trouble understanding the logic, I can sympathize.

Oh, did I mention that Suleiman received some of his training at the Pentagon’s military schools here in the United States?

The statist vision of interventionism, which liberal and conservative statists have imported to our land, is not limited to Egypt. The statists have been supporting dictatorships and partnering with them ever since World War II.

Just ask the people of Latin America, where right-wing death squads who were raping and massacring the citizenry received their training at the infamous School of the Americas, which is still renowned for the torture manuals that it used in its training.

What about all that chaos and disorder that liberal and conservative statists fear? What they fear is the anger and hatred that the pro-democracy crowd is going to have to the United States, given that it’s the U.S. government that is, in large part, responsible for their tyranny and oppression. Why wouldn’t they be angry about that? You don’t see any anger directed to Switzerland, whose government minds its own business, do you? No, the anger is directed to the intervener, interloper, and meddler-in-chief, the U.S. government.

Here’s the libertarian vision: Prohibit the U.S. government from intervening in the affairs of other nations. Prohibit it from trying to get its people in public office in foreign lands. End all foreign aid to every single regime in the world. Dismantle all U.S. foreign military bases and bring all the troops home and discharge them. End all mutual defense treaties and alliances. Lift all U.S. embargoes and sanctions everywhere. Open the borders to receive people suffering from foreign dictatorships. Liberate the private sector — the American people — to travel and trade freely with the people of the world.

That was the vision on which our nation was founded. We need to restore it with a peaceful revolution here at home.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.