What will happen if we leave before we achieve victory?
The terrorists whether they are Al Qaeda or the Iranian and Syrian terrorist regimes or a combination of all of them will not only control Iraq but the whole Middle East and with it come consequences to the US and the West that is worst than our most horrible nightmares. The islamic terrorists will be emboldened beyond imagination. The islamic terrorists will use the hundred of billions of dollars from oil revenues to conduct terrorists attacks that are hundreds of folds more horrible, more deadly, and more destructive than the 9/11 terrorists attacks, including the use of nuclear weapons. They will also use the oil weapon to blackmail the Western and the world economy for many years to come.
If some terrorists dwelling in camps in Afghanistan with a limited budget and few volunteers were able to do 9/11 terrorist attacks, killed 3000 people and caused one trillion dollars in economic losses, imagine the incredible horrors that the terrorists can inflict on us if they control the whole Middle East and it vast revenues.
Any person who has a shred of patriotism and a basic common sense will realize that we simply cannot afford to leave Iraq before we defeat terrorism there.
While RudyTooty is getting all righteous about Ron Paul’s absurd babblings, it needs to be pointed out that due to Giuliani’s lax enforcement of immigrations laws while Mayor of NYC, that he actually made it easier for some of the 9/11 hijackers to work, live and prepare for their dastardly attacks right in the heart of Brooklyn.
In some ways, it would not be too much of a stretch to define Rudy as the ‘20th hijacker’, as he helped to make the attacks possible through his own incompetence, negligence and malfeasance.
Rudy was right - Ron was pandering to the lefties using the enemy’s talking points.
Had our own government not passed laws against American companies to force them to stop drilling here and crippled our own oil industry, we would not even be in the middle east for oil.
Paul was factually correct, but who cares, we are there and in a fight. Let’s win the fight and then play the blame game later. Finger pointing now is not helpful, in fact it is down right stupid.
We did not start this war. We cannot stop this war. But, we have chosen the battlefield.
If we withdraw from this engagement of our choice, then the next choice of battlefield will be theirs.
Did you like their last choice?
I don’t really care about their grievances. I just want to instill such fear that parents will kill their own children rather allow them to participate in terrorist actions...
Don't care what Ronnie 'meant by' this. It was an idiotic statement.
Pat Buchanan is an isolationist nutball who jumped the shark in the mid 1990’s. Libertarians should rarely be taken seriously when it comes to foreign policy.
Of course Ron Paul was correct. He just restated what every US intelligence expert has stated many times...that AQ exploits widespread Muslim dislike of US policies in the middle east. There is zero evidence for Rudy's position that we were attacked because Muslims "hate our freedom."
That is not to say the AQ's onjections to US policies mean we must abandon them...but we need to know that the threat of terrorism is a cost of those policies. This ridiculous "they hate our freedoms" line seems designed to try to convince Americans that there is no cost to foreign interventionism
As part of its global power position, the United States is called upon frequently to respond to international causes and and deploy forces around the world. America's position in the world invites attack simply because of its presence. Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States
--The Defense Science Board 1997 Summer Study Task Force on DoD Responses to Transnational Threats
What does Rudy Giuliani think the political motive was for 9-11?
Why does there need to be a political motive to answer a Fatwa calling for the deaths of Americans everywhere? What happened to "lock and load" Puchanan? The islamo-facists are coming for him and he is looking for a political answer.
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
No. just more mis-interpretation.
Those "same" 2/3 polled just recently by CBSNews poll responded
When asked specifically about removing Saddam Hussein from power, 64% answer that the U.S. should have removed Saddam Hussein, but only 32% now say it was right to remain in Iraq to help the country build a new government there. 32% believe the U.S. should have removed Hussein and then left Iraq soon after that, and 34% that the U.S. should never have gotten involved in Iraq in the first place.
the primary focus of the debate is "nation building" and the role of the US in doing so. What does this mean for PJ Puchanan and Ron Paul? more disinformation and propaganda for the isolationist extremists still hanging on to Republican party sentimentalism...
Was it because we are good and they are evil? Is it because they hate our freedom? Is it that simple?
It's amazing how many conservatives think that it is because of our (relative) freedom, and that we are hated simply because we are the "good guys".
By the same logic, the Union were the "good guys" in the Civil War - and Free Republic is full of neo-Confederates who haven't forgiven them 150 years later.
Try to change a people's way of life at gunpoint and you will be hated by the majority of those people, no matter how noble your motives. US military action should be limited to the elimination of threats to the US - which is all Ron Paul was saying.
The nation-building stuff was stupid under Clinton and it's stupid under Bush...and it would have been equally stupid in Germany and Japan had we not imposed ten-year-long military regencies on both nations and hanged anyone who didn't like it.
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.
Not the fact that he said it at all. That's true. He did say it. The lie is the argument itself.
Usama Bin Laden does not care one iota about Saudi Arabia, Iraqi people, the Palestinians, Kyoto, western racism, or the conquest of Andalusia.
Al Qaida is a growing force worldwide because it's a parasite. It latches on to already existing conflicts, and draws their partisans into his ranks. From the jungles of the Philippines to the Sudanese plains to the hills of Chechnya to the streets of London. Bin Laden exploits regional conflicts, then offers them a worldwide religious context, and the resources of al-Qa'ida, to help fight their personal battle. AQ grants the power to fight back, allies to help them, and the conviction that God Himself is on their side.
Few Muslims would ever subscribe to al-Qa'idas' core philosophy on it's own. It's far more ugly and twisted than Wahabbism itself. But people fighting for their land, families or culture can become open to some very ugly and twisted things. Bin Laden knows this, and seeks out to these groups. He subverts their desperation and passion, and rechannels it against his enemies.
So is Ron Paul wrong in saying that UBL claimed the Iraq/Saudi rationale for declaring war? Not at all. He did claim it. Ron Paul is wrong because he takes it at face value, which is exactly the wrong way to look at it. If don't understand that UBL doesn't actually care about the specific grievances it claims, you're buying into the sales pitch, without understand the threat al-Qa'ida actually poses.
Iraq is a recruiting tool to Bin Laden, nothing more. If we leave, he'll find another. If we win, he'll find another. But what he won't do, ever, is stop. That's why Paul is wrong. Isolationism is absolutely no defense against AQ's Salafist goals.
Well that and they hate our easy access to ATMs. I know because Fox News and Sean Hannity told me. And instead of reading factual documentation, and having an understanding of history (past 1980), I'll just take their word for it....
Unfortunately too many people really think like that. To them St. Rudy was right and it's inconceivable that other nations may not always agree with our foreign policy
He wanted us to go kill terrorists.
Why is this so hard to understand?
Bin Laden and his followers are furious that we invaded Iraq and they want us to cut and run, just like Buchanan and the rat party.
Ah yes, another lovely Buchanan thread, where facts are thrown out the window by hysterical FReepers in favor of the usual ad-hominems and Buchanan name-calling.