Posted on 05/18/2007 8:13:13 AM PDT by traviskicks
Quixotic presidential candidate Ron Paul landed himself in a bit of hot water - make that a boiling cauldron - for remarks he made in last week's GOP debate suggesting that America's containment of Saddam Hussein led to 9/11.
Responding to a question about whether Paul was blaming America for the 9/11 attacks, he stated: "They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there."
Mayor Giuliani interjected in high dudgeon sending the crowd, and later conservative pundits, to their feet. But what Ron Paul said is, in fact, utterly uncontroversial and utterly true. Nowhere did Paul suggest ala Ward Churchill that the U.S. deserved to be attacked, he merely sought to explain the motives of those who attacked us. His explanation was certainly incomplete and a bit ham-handed, but it was not inaccurate or blatantly false.
In fact, if Ron Paul was "blaming the victim" as Mayor Giuliani indignantly implied, then he is in the company of such notorious America-haters as the current President of the United States, the former Assistant Secretary of Defense, the editorial boards of the Weekly Standard and Wall Street Journal, and many, many conservative pundits and intellectuals.
Cause & Effect
In a now famous November 6, 2003 address, President Bush explicitly linked U.S. policy with the rise of Islamic terrorism:
"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export."
This "accommodation" takes many forms, from the generous subsidies to the Mubarak regime in Egypt to the protection of the Saudi "royal" family and other Gulf potentates, first from Saddam Hussein and now from Iran.
In fact, the entire neoconservative argument for "regional transformation" rests on the notion that the prevailing political order in the Middle East - a political order sustained by American patronage and protection - has nurtured the conditions for bin Ladenism and must therefore be overturned.
Paul Wolfowitz - hardly a blame-America-firster - defended the removal of Saddam Hussein explicitly on the grounds that it would assuage one of bin Laden's grievances. In an interview with Vanity Fair the former Assistant Defense Secretary said that U.S. forces stationed in Saudi Arabia had "been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It's been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina."
Wolfowitz was correct, of course. In a 1998 fatwa signaling his jihad against America and the West and in interviews, bin Laden cited the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia (necessary for containing Saddam) and the supposed depredations visited upon Iraq by the U.S. through sanctions and the no-fly-zones among his principle grievances. More significantly, America's support for "infidel" regimes led bin Laden to conclude that only by striking the "far enemy" (the U.S.) could he sufficiently weaken American support for the "near enemy" regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, making them easier targets. This initially put him at odds with his number two, Ayman al Zawahiri, who wanted to focus the jihadist firepower on Middle Eastern governments.
On a more transactional level, American support for anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan is widely understood as have playing an instrumental role in the formation of al Qaeda. Pakistan's intelligence service routed American arms and Saudi money to radical forces in Afghanistan to beat back the Soviet invasion. The beneficiaries of this covert subsidy included Osama bin Laden and many of the "Arab Afghans" volunteers who would later form the nucleus of al Qaeda.
Lastly, opinion polls in the Middle East routinely portray a region bristling against American policies and influence (though not, it should be noted, with unrestrained hostility for Americans as a people). Throw in radical Islamic teachings, which reinforce the need to cleanse "holy soil" of any infidel influence, and you have the toxic stew from which al Qaeda sips.
Different analysts weight these two factors - radical theology and nationalistic umbrage - differently. I've argued earlier that this interpretative divide is largely fictitious, that radical Islam is both a reaction to American policies and an expression of Islamic fundamentalism. But it is simply counter-factual to suggest that America's Middle East policy has played no role whatsoever in the terrorist threat we're now confronting.
So why was Paul savaged?
I believe it's because many conservatives, especially since 9/11, have become increasingly unwilling to internalize the simple maxim that government actions have consequences - many of them unintended, some of them negative. Conservatives are rightly skeptical of grand government initiatives aimed at curing various domestic ills. Yet some have become convinced that the same bureaucrats who cannot balance the budget will nonetheless be able to deftly manage the political outcomes of nations half a world away. The tendency is so acute that it led the libertarian blogger Jim Henley to wryly observe that for some "Hayek stops at the water's edge."
Furthermore, understanding why bin Laden struck at America is not the same as excusing the murderers of 9/11 anymore than observing that Hitler desired Lebensraum excuses his invasion of Poland. Knowing your enemy is the all-important first step to defeating him.
Indeed, Paul has done the debate a fundamental service by raising the complex issues of cost and benefit when it comes to America's Middle East policy. You can argue, as former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski did, that a few "stirred up Muslims" was worth the price of driving a defeated Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. You can also argue, as the Bush administration has done, that 9/11 was not a serious enough event to merit a substantial rethinking of our relationship with Saudi Arabia. You can even claim that more, not less, intervention in the Middle East is what is required to bring about needed change.
What you cannot seriously argue is that the world is a "consequence free" zone in which U.S. actions can never catalyze harmful reactions.
American policy cannot be held hostage to the umbrage of religious fanatics, but we should pursue our policies with the clear-eyed understanding that government is a blunt instrument and that bureaucrats in Washington are not all-knowing sages capable of fine-tuning events and people in far away countries to precisely accord with our interests.
Indeed, beneath his awkward syntax, Ron Paul was making a serious point: that less intervention in the Middle East would ultimately improve American security. If Mayor Giuliani disagrees, he should at least explain why.
There are free non-Muslims in Peru, Norway, South Africa, Mongolia, and Australia. Why don’t Muslims fly planes into buildings and pursue jihad against these nations?
Paul definately broke a taboo in America. I can’t remember the last time a politician suggested all foreigners might not be completely happy with US foreign policy over the past 50 years...It took courage, and it’s a shame he is being smeared for pointing out the obvious.
Actually we, and I do mean we, were in Lebanon. That's why they attacked us in Lebanon you frigging twit.
L
There were plenty of women in London who Jack the Ripper didn't knife. So obviously the girls he did stab must have done something to deserve it. It's all so clear now.
Ron Paul got ZERO percent in the latest Gallup poll.
The better news is someone will challenge his seat in 2008.
We have troops in Israel? Who knew?
L
This is where Bush's naivete got him into trouble. The idea that every nation in the world needs democracy is fatally flawed. Democracy is fundamentally incompatible with Islam.
” So, you think that it’s conservative to be against personal freedom?!’
You can’t be serious. Social conservatism is founded on telling other people how to live.
Paul is a blame America candidate and he’ll never win election. He’ll only get praise from the democRATS for being a RINO.
Great news and I agree. Thanks.
Neocons = Woodrow Wilson Democrats.
Conservativism and Libertarianism are diametrically opposed. This article doesn’t belong on this website. Neither do you.
Bin Laden was not then, is not now, nor will he in the future, open to being placated by a U.S. withdrawl from the Middle East, troops, aid, and politically speaking. No apology will appease him. No action or inaction will prove our contrition to him.
Ron Paul isn't wrong, as far as remembering how the transcript of Bin Laden's fatwa reads. Paul is wrong because he's taking UBL at face value.
He's wrong because he believes him.
Excellent answer, L. It’s hard to attack us in countries we aren’t in.
Your wit is overwhelming. Please cover it with a sheet so others are not blinded.
Jack the Ripper killed whores. Other women were left alone.
Muslims war against nations that incessantly stick their nose into Middle Eastern affairs. Other nations are left alone.
lol, see post 19, you appear to have some misconceptions about libertarianism...
Ron Paul is very different fromt he LP onthe issue of borders/immigration. In fact, he is the only candidate besides Tancredo to stand firmaly against amnesty.
Both Norway and Australia have had problems with rapes specifically directed at non-Muslim women from Muslim immigrants. It's all jihad, it's the same violent hatred directed against non-muslims that knocked down the WTC.
This malevolent and irrational enmity is percolated through innumerable madrassas and mosques and promulgated by hate-filled Imams: false prophets but true students of the Quran.
I agree that America is more in the firing line than Peru: but then so is France, which has bent over backwards to accomodate Islam since Napoleon's day. That didn't stop the terrorists from bombing one of their Oil tankers. The money quote from the terrorists on that occasion was, IIRC "We would have preferred to attack an American ship, but no problem, they are all infidels"
We have troops in Israel? Who knew?
Just FYI, but "support", insofar as military aid, runs in the billions of dollars a year. Isreal has huge amounts of American weapons, including Apache attack helicopters and F16s with precision munitions.
That may possibly qualify as "support".
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