But Who Was Right – Rudy or Ron?

Buchanan.org ^ | May 18th, 2007 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[Remember_Salamis]

But Who Was Right – Rudy or Ron?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

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 that he didn't really mean that."

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.

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.

May 18, 2007

Patrick J. Buchanan [send him mail] is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books, including Where the Right Went Wrong, and A Republic Not An Empire.

[Jake The Goose]

OH Pat - there are days I love you and days I want to ring your neck.

[MNJohnnie]

Rudy was. He may be a closet Liberal but he gets the war. Ron Paul is just another one of those lunatic losers, like Buchanan, who thinks if he just screams loud enough, the world will magical reset itself to 09-10-01.

Paul is not just stupid, he is dangerously stupid. He seems to just disregard all factual reality that does not conform to his own emotion based world view and political dogmas. Ron Paul not only has NO business running for President, he has utterly no business being in the US Congress

[fkabuckeyesrule]

***that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq.***

But haven't the all-knowing liberals assured us that Iraq had nothing to do with Al-Queada.

[fortheDeclaration]

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.

The major issue that 'troubled' U.S.-Japanese relations was the fact that the U.S. was the only power able to block Japanese expansion.

That is the same reason that Islam has targeted us as well.

[MNJohnnie]

One again for the Neo Isolations Al Qeda cheerleaders around here, who simply cling to their Neo Isolationist dogmas, instead of bothering to learn even ONE fact about our enemies, here is Bin Laden’s Fatwa. They should actually try READING it.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html

[Remember_Salamis]

Great; another reply by you devoid of facts.

I'm sure you don't give a rat's ass that Ron Paul was only repeating the official conclusion of the 9/11 Commission Report.

Or that Super NeoCon Paul Wolfowitz has made the same claim. Or that countless others have.

[Enduring Freedom]

azzwholes like buchanan have a problem with consistency

1. bush is to blame for letting 9/11 happen;
2. he should have taken out osama and the taliban pre-emptively because they were a potential threat;
3. saddam was a proven threat to the u.s. and the middle east, controlled a modern state with a sophisticated military and had a proven desire and ability to develop and use weapons of mass destruction;
4. bush took out saddam pre-emptively

the only complaint i have about bush and company is they tried to fight a politically-correct war

i would have been far more ruthless and uncompromising and installed an american-friendly military leader until such time as iraq found stability

taking iraq from dictator to democracy in a year or two was complete folly from a naive and pious man

[Vaquero]

NO QUARTER

NO BENDING

NO SUBMISSION

It seems Pat forgets what it means to be American.

[MNJohnnie]

Guess someone better point out to the Do Nothings that Saddam invaded Kuwait and was headed for Saudi Arabia. THEY may think they can just hide their heads up their butts and ignore the fact that the West’s economic viablity rests on the free flow of Oil from the ME, but the rest of us do not have the luxury of being that stupid.

[Remember_Salamis]

The only liberal to participate in that exchange was Rudy Giuliani.

Ron Paul is the most conservative candidate in the debate. In fact, National Review's John Derbyshire wrote yesterday that Paul is "to conservative for the Republican Party" and suggested the Constitution Party.

So when did the GOP put up the "conservatives not welcome" sign up front, but infanticidal cross-dressing mayors welcome.

[PeteB570]

This whole deal started in the 70s when the Arab Dictators realized the PLO would never go “home”. They needed to pick a “bogeyman” to focus the radicals on and they picked the West.

Keeps the little buggers busy and the dictators in power.

[Remember_Salamis]

I posted that same Fatwa to FR a few days ago. Iraq is explicitly mentioned FIVE times, while a US presence in the Holy Land is mentioned THREE times.

The Emphasis of this Fatwa, and all other Fatwas, is on US middle east policy.

[mylife]

sigh.... here we go again with Pats Isolationist BS

[Chode]

i don't like you dad... all you ever do is spank me!!!

but you broke the picture window on purpose, and you set the cat on fire on purpose, and you keep beating on your sister on purpose...

yeah... but all you ever do is spank me so i must!!!

that about cover it???

[MNJohnnie]

This time idiot, read the link and respond to it instead of just flaming out with the same rabidly stupid knee jerk response because the facts do not conform to your emotion based political bigotry. The facts simply do NOT validate your hyper emotional ignorance. TRY one time actually bothering to LEARN something instead of clinging desperately to your 09-10-01 mindset.

There is simply NO excuse what so ever for ANY Freeper to be so willfully stupid about just what, and why, we are fighting. Instead of arrogantly clinging to your own emotion based ignorance try ONE time actually LEARNING something instead of just mindlessly screaming down anything that does not validate your rabid emotional stupidity.

Learn Dinosaur or simply shuffle off to the tar pits of irrelevance. In a world with suitcase nukes and plague in a bottle we can NO longer afford this sort of Neo Isolationist stupidity and hysteric political bigotry.

How many more American civilians have to die before you arrogant butt heads quit mindlessly screaming your ignorant dogmas and deal with the world AS IT IS, not as YOU WISH it were?

[Remember_Salamis]

Western "reliance" on Middle Eastern oil is a major fallacy.

First, we import far more oil from non-middle eastern sources than from the middle east.

Second, we import so much oil because we legally cannot extract oil in the US.

Third, if oil was more expensive, extracting oil from shale in the US would be profitable.

[MNJohnnie]

Instead of just fringing off the same stupid responses day in and day out. Actually TRY reading the links and facts. Responding within 2 mins of the post show not only have you not bothered to read the facts, but that you are also just an ignorant political bigot totally uninterested in any facts that don’t validate your emotion based preconceived notions.

[Remember_Salamis]

Talk about a flame! Look, I posted the original Fatwa link a few days ago, so I know what it says.

I have deployed to Iraq; I have seen.

I used to be a hardcore interventionist, but have changed my opinions. Look at my previous posts from a couple of years ago to confirm that if you want.

I changed my opinion through research and experience.

[MNJohnnie]

Read the post before you respond. As long as ALL you do is fire off the same stupid pre-programed responses, you just make yourself look like an utter moron.