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.
Congress voted to authorize the President to use force in Iraq. If we didn’t declare war on the Taliban after 9/11, I suspect this country will never have another declared war again.
“We are not fighting in Iraq for the Iraqis, we are fighting for our freedom and our way of life and those of our children, grandchildren, and for many generations to come.”
Actually we are not fighting in Iraq for those reasons. We originally were fighting in Iraq to enforce UN Resolutions. So technically we are fighting for the UN. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
You can bet exactly that will happen regardless of who becomes President. A week or two after inauguration, 'new facts will come to light' that require us to stay in Iraq. -- Namely, that the middle east will explode into WWIII if we leave.
What else is new?
Unfortunately Julie Annie was right.
According to Ron Paul, we should understand the grievances of the citizen of Aztlan.
Actually, Buchanan is opposed to “cutting and running” - I saw him on the Scarborough Country program. Scarborough admitted Buchanan was right to oppose the Iraq War when he supported it, and was surprised that Buchanan wanted to continue there. Buchanan said the U.S. cannot afford to lose now that we are in Iraq.
You mean Ron Paul would need the direct line to bin Laden who, if still alive, is probably not too happy about his boys getting their asses kicked left, right, and sideways in Iraq.
No, if Rudy believes in what he said he would need to know something that not even the former head of the Bin Laden unit in the CIA would know. I find that highly unlikely.
To say the islamofascism we face to today was caused by the United States is profoundly ignorant and reflects the same kind of self-hating mentality practiced by the liberals.
It is really sad that you cannot see that in Iraq we are fighting the ultimate war on terror and that Iraq is the center front of that war.
Who is this WE you refer to non-Citizen? Blackbird.
You are right.
How did you come up with this stupid conclusion that what I posted sounds like a liberal. What I posted is the most anti-liberal. The liberals want to surrender in the war on terror, I want to fight until we crush terrorism.
You seem like a sharp guy, and the rest of your post is actually quite acccurate. Allow me to unscramble the last few steps, which are hidden in this quote above.
Whether or not OBL himself is angered by sanctions on Iraq is irrelevant...he says it because he knows its a good recruiting tool.
Think about it. Recruiting for what? Why does a Sunni/Salafist group created to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan need a recruiting tool in the late 90s? That answer, once you come to it, will put everything else in context.
when the US invades Iraq (whether the reasons were noble or not), Muslims see it as validation of what AQ has said about the US.
And if AQ is right about that, Muslims wonder, what else might they be right about?
Truth is, Bin Laden wants a Global War on Infidels. All of them. His core followers believe that they are living in end times, and that the time for a final struggle between pure Muslims and others is at hand. Unfortunately for him, most Muslims don't really feel that way. It's way to extreme too extreme at first glance. So how does he recruit for his holy war, then?
Easy. He does it in installments.
From Algeria to Sudan to England to Indonesia, there are Muslims facing local problems. Problems ranging from Sharia unfriendly natives to open warfare. Problems that Bin Laden doesn't really care about, except as recruiting tools. The people want to resist, and he is a resistance fighter of great credibility. He offers expertise, resources, and theological support in their struggles.
These struggles, including Iraq, are all local in nature, but provide him moral context and generate societal support within the entire Muslim world. As a Salafist, he has no real base of support, aside from a tiny band of religious fanatics. In order to broaden his appeal to wage a global war, he must absorb major conflicts and the affected Muslims therin, or his movement will perish.
This is precisely why his fatwas on Iraq and Saudi Arabia are a ruse.
If America sank beneath the ocean tomorrow in a massive earthquake, the next day the jihad wouldn't end. It didn't end when the Soviet Union fell, and it won't end if we fall. There's nothing we can do to avoid it. Certainly, as you stated, we can exacerbate it, but we cannot appease it. Trying to blow it apart with JDAMs only seems to inflame it.
Once you accept the true nature of the global jihad, you realize how delicate the problem really is. But rest assured, Bin Laden and the 19 hijackers did not attack America because of Iraq.
PS: I do not call the President of the US a traitor in time of war as you are doing. Shame on you.
What would he need to know?
He would need to know that Bin Laden has some motivation that he has never shared.
"...Ron, about the issue of whether ... Israel existed or didn't, whether or not we were in Iraq or not, they would be trying to kill us, because it is a dictate of their religion, at least a part of it. And we have to defend ourselves," he said."
We can not win anything trying to achieve the goals of the UN. We should have just Nuked Bin laden when we knew where he was. Then any stupid mohammedian that came along with the same ideas might pick on someone else.
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