That was the question posed by Osama bin Laden in a 2006 speech, in which he blamed the 9/11 attacks on U.S. “imperialist” foreign policy. Apparently, this statement seemed like watertight logic to a certain species of non-interventionists, who immediately began quoting the terror leader as if he was a dependable, trustworthy source.

“Why is America the target of terrorists and suicide bombers?” asked Philip Giraldi at CPAC just last February. “Surely not because it has freedoms that some view negatively. As Usama bin Laden put it, in possibly the only known joke made by a terrorist, if freedoms were the issue, al-Qaeda would be attacking Sweden.”

Of course, in light of some recent events in Stockholm, I think we can now safely assume that terrorists fall into the anti-freedom camp. As Elliot Jager notes at Jewish Ideas Daily, even the Swedish foreign policy praised by so many non-interventionists wasn’t enough to protect the country from getting targeted by radical Islamists:

Given Sweden’s lusty embrace of multiculturalism and an immigration policy that many observers regard as suicidal; its diplomatic predisposition to the Palestinian cause; and its tepid response to violent Muslim anti-Semitism, what could it possibly have done to deserve an Islamist suicide bombing? In his recording, al-Abdaly, for one, named the ongoing war in Afghanistan and a 2007 cartoon depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a dog. But is this credible? Sweden has a mere 500 soldiers in northern Afghanistan, where they are involved mostly in reconstruction work and social services like training midwives. As for the allegedly offensive cartoons, they appeared in a regional newspaper and were intended only as a protest against the widespread media self-censorship that followed in the wake of the 2005 Muhammad cartoons published in Denmark.

And the Stockholm attack is only the latest in a string of international terrorist acts and plots that have helped discredit the “blowback” theory. Nearly every country that non-interventionists have claimed was “safe” from terrorism has been forced to fight Islamic terrorists on its own soil in recent years.

“A growing number of Americans are concluding that the threat we now face comes more as a consequence of our foreign policy than because the bad guys envy our freedoms and prosperity,” said Rep. Ron Paul on the floor of the House in 2002. “How many terrorist attacks have been directed toward Switzerland, Australia, Canada, or Sweden? They too are rich and free, and would be easy targets, but the Islamic fundamentalists see no purpose in doing so.”

Let’s look back on that statement knowing what we know today. Have Islamic terrorists targeted Switzerland? Yes. Australia? Several times. Canada? Definitely. Sweden? Of course.

So to say that the U.S. would be safe from terrorism by adapting a non-interventionist foreign policy simply ignores the reality on the ground. Enemies who will gladly kill us over a petty cartoon in a small-circulation newspaper certainly don’t need to use foreign policy as a justification to fly planes into our buildings.