Posted on 05/18/2007 7:52:44 AM PDT by Reagan Man
It was the decisive moment of the South Carolina debate.
Hearing Rep. Ron Paul recite the reasons for Arab and Islamic resentment of the United States, including 10 years of bombing and sanctions that brought death to thousands of Iraqis after the Gulf War, Rudy Giuliani broke format and exploded:
"That's really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of 9-11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I have ever heard that before, and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.
"I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us what he really meant by it."
The applause for Rudy's rebuke was thunderous -- the soundbite of the night and best moment of Rudy's campaign.
After the debate, on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," came one of those delicious moments on live television. As Michael Steele, GOP spokesman, was saying that Paul should probably be cut out of future debates, the running tally of votes by Fox News viewers was showing Ron Paul, with 30 percent, the winner of the debate.
Brother Hannity seemed startled and perplexed by the votes being text-messaged in the thousands to Fox News saying Paul won, Romney was second, Rudy third and McCain far down the track at 4 percent.
"I would ask the congressman to ... tell us what he meant," said Rudy.
A fair question and a crucial question.
When Ron Paul said the 9-11 killers were "over here because we are over there," he was not excusing the mass murderers of 3,000 Americans. He was explaining the roots of hatred out of which the suicide-killers came. |
Lest we forget, Osama bin Laden was among the mujahideen whom we, in the Reagan decade, were aiding when they were fighting to expel the Red Army from Afghanistan. We sent them Stinger missiles, Spanish mortars, sniper rifles. And they helped drive the Russians out.
What Ron Paul was addressing was the question of what turned the allies we aided into haters of the United States. Was it the fact that they discovered we have freedom of speech or separation of church and state? Do they hate us because of who we are? Or do they hate us because of what we do?
Osama bin Laden in his declaration of war in the 1990s said it was U.S. troops on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia, U.S. bombing and sanctions of a crushed Iraqi people, and U.S. support of Israel's persecution of the Palestinians that were the reasons he and his mujahideen were declaring war on us.
Elsewhere, he has mentioned Sykes-Picot, the secret British-French deal that double-crossed the Arabs who had fought for their freedom alongside Lawrence of Arabia and were rewarded with a quarter century of British-French imperial domination and humiliation.
Almost all agree that, horrible as 9-11 was, it was not anarchic terror. It was political terror, done with a political motive and a political objective.
What does Rudy Giuliani think the political motive was for 9-11?
Was it because we are good and they are evil? Is it because they hate our freedom? Is it that simple?
Ron Paul says Osama bin Laden is delighted we invaded Iraq.
Does the man not have a point? The United States is now tied down in a bloody guerrilla war in the Middle East and increasingly hated in Arab and Islamic countries where we were once hugely admired as the first and greatest of the anti-colonial nations. Does anyone think that Osama is unhappy with what is happening to us in Iraq?
Of the 10 candidates on stage in South Carolina, Dr. Paul alone opposed the war. He alone voted against the war. Have not the last five years vindicated him, when two-thirds of the nation now agrees with him that the war was a mistake, and journalists and politicians left and right are babbling in confession, "If I had only known then what I know now ..."
Rudy implied that Ron Paul was unpatriotic to suggest the violence against us out of the Middle East may be in reaction to U.S. policy in the Middle East. Was President Hoover unpatriotic when, the day after Pearl Harbor, he wrote to friends, "You and I know that this continuous putting pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country bitten."
Pearl Harbor came out of the blue, but it also came out of the troubled history of U.S.-Japanese relations going back 40 years. Hitler's attack on Poland was naked aggression. But to understand it, we must understand what was done at Versailles -- after the Germans laid down their arms based on Wilson's 14 Points. We do not excuse -- but we must understand.
Ron Paul is no TV debater. But up on that stage in Columbia, he was speaking intolerable truths. Understandably, Republicans do not want him back, telling the country how the party blundered into this misbegotten war.
By all means, throw out of the debate the only man who was right from the beginning on Iraq.
That is exactly why we should not cut and run from Iraq?
So why haven't we attacked Syria or Iran? Why continue the proxy war in Iraq without striking at the source of the money, men and equipment of the war we are fighting there? Is that a sane policy?
What a disgrace. Yeah, bar the only patriot and person who isn’t a robot for the globalists.
Paul was right. The good Dr. is always right. To think that our hairbrained unconstitutional policies of what can only be described as projecting empire have nothing to do with the great hatred so many have for the US is ludicrous. Giuliani with his “they hate our freedom and blah blah blah blah women” proves him to be just the dangerous crank and fool I always knew him to be.
It is pretty unbelievable (at least I am convinced as much) how Fox had set up the good Dr. right from the beginning all the while pimping Mr. real ID. However I will admit that I loved the laughable encounter with shammity at end when the good Dr, basically said, “I may not be the best orator boy, but sit down there sonny while I totally school your tiny little mind on the ways of foreign policy and facts”. Not that I ever had much to begin with, but what little respect I did have for Bush cheerleader #1 Shammity, evaporated like the water he carries for the pres. nauseously day after day.
I suspect the handlers in the Bush administration are becoming more and more eager to transfer this total disgrace of governance and global mayhem over to the Democrats. I say this because the only Republican with any chance at all to beat the democrats is indeed the good Dr.. Not the Weimar Republicans sqealing from the top of there lungs on who will promise the most severe form of torture and promise us the perverted unamerican national ID.
If president, Paul would attack Iran if Congress declared war.
I’d worry about any President who doesn’t think our actions abroad might have consequences.
I agree — I wish they would ask him about it (but I’m not holding my breath). I just don’t understand this meme that Giuliani would be great at fighting Islamofascists — his only experience is fighting crime...and I thought we discarded the idea of fighting terrorism as a crime after 9/11. He has zero foreign policy experience.
He’s good at staying calm after an attack, but certainly hasn’t any history of preventing attacks, or background in fighting global terrorism. Did you see what Mark Steyn said in April on Laura Ingraham’s radio show?
EXCERPT - STEYN: ‘The one I find actually rather disappointing is Giuliani . . . when you listen to him speak, what worries me is that he has a sort of airport security approach to the war. And he’s not actually very good when he’s talking about the big foreign policy aspects of it and the big geopolitical thing. He’s very good if you want to hunker down and have a security checkpoint. He’s the guy who’d be good for manning that checkpoint.’
Freepers should read "Through Our Enemies Eyes", "Dying to Win" and "Jawbreaker" for starters.
The outburst showed a lack of maturity, too
“Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States”
Aw, geez, you must be kidding...American interventionism causes people to want to attack us? It can’t be! We have to protect Americans everywhere, no matter what, no matter what laws they break in foreign countries, no matter how foolish their presence there, no matter how corrupt the American company has shown the foreign government to be! We must simply have a military presence so huge and strong that if an American sneezes and the government of the soil he’s on fails to present him with a ‘bless you’ and a hanky, we can impose our national will on those anti-nose-wiping heathens.
/bitter sarcasm
We are fighting for the freedom of the Iraqis too. I don’t think we would have gone into Iraq for that purpose alone, but it has been one of President Bush’s reasons all along.
And thank you for your steadfast support of President Bush! I’ve noticed you’re taking a lot of heat, I would have been banned long ago for ‘over’ defending myself;) Well done.
Thank you Yankee. My heart is really broken to see in the last 10 or 15 days some people on this great forum calling for surrender and defeat in Iraq and calling President Bush a traitor.
Saudi Arabia is our number two (maybe three) source of foreign oil, after Canada. Last I looked they were still in the middle east. The Saudi oil industry was built decades ago by an outfit called Aramco--short for Arab American Corporation. We have been in the middle east for oil for generations.
What you are saying then is that the Moozies hate us because we did not ascribe to their original goal of genocide against the Jews of Palestine? That was the goal of the Arabs states who first invaded Palestine in 1948 and it is the goal of the Jihadists now, and most Muslims would be delighted to see that fulfilled. So it is irrelevant that Muslims dislike our policies, since the prevention of genocide ought to be applauded by everyone. I don’t care to “understand” Muslim rage at this point. Their rage is as irrational as the Quranic ravings of the Mad Prophet himself, and I am not referring to Balaam, if you get my drift.
HEAR! HEAR! As the Brits would say. Enormous amount of wisdom said there, sir. Most Muslims sit in front of their TV sets and are fed a steady diet of anti-American and anti-Zionist rhetoric from government controlled outlets. Constantly exploited victimization deflects Muslim populations from the real failure brought them by their own governments and the religion these governments support.
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