Posted on 05/17/2007 11:38:25 AM PDT by Kitten Festival
War On Terror: GOP gadfly Rep. Ron Paul claims 9/11 was "blowback" for bombing and sanctioning Iraq the previous decade. But that's another romantic notion of isolationists. Just ask Osama bin Laden.
Paul, an idealistic White House hopeful from Texas who opposes the Iraq War, shocked fellow Republicans at the presidential debate in South Carolina on Tuesday when he argued that al-Qaida terrorists "attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years."
A visibly agitated Rudy Giuliani cut Paul off.
"That's really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq," the former New York mayor said. "I don't think I have ever heard that before, and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11."
It took another long-shot candidate, Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, to straighten Paul out, however.
"Whether or not we were in Iraq, they would be trying to kill us, because it is a dictate of their religion," Tancredo explained. "And we have to defend ourselves."
Indeed, al-Qaida's fatwas include a long list of grievances. Not only do terrorists liberally quote the Quran to support a broader jihad against the West, but they map out at least six fronts — only one of which is Iraq.
Their real grievance regarding Iraq predates U.S. occupation. Baghdad was once the seat of the ancient Islamic empire, the so-called caliphate, and the terrorists have always dreamed of restoring it. Saddam Hussein, a secular nationalist (or "infidel," in the words of bin Laden), was just as much a hindrance to their dream as we are today.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
I don’t take the words of terrorists at face value nor do I support Ron Paul for President.
That's why they keep showing up in places like Iran, Syria, Somalia, etc. They're not rational governments. We're trying to establish one in Iraq, and there's nothing to build on.
Mr. Lindbergh made exactly the same argument about Hitler and his boys. And in case you missed it, it cost trillions of American taxpayers dollars and the lives of American soldiers to make up for the world's unwillingness to address Hitler while it was still relatively cheap to do so.
One, do we really care?
Even to ask such a question suggests either that you have not bothered to consider the question carefully, or that you're deliberately avoiding the topic (oil, and who controls it) that will cause your whole argument to crumble.
And we got WTC I, Khobar, the Africa Embassies and the Cole besides 9-11. I don't suppose Ronbo has a theory why we haven't been hit on our soil since we went on offense?
That's almost certainly true, and I believe the main foreign policy goal of the U.S. (other than stuff directly related to the WOT) should be to leave the UN and oppoise their agenda whereever possible.
That said, it amazes me how so many Paul supporters can claim that we should believe bin Laden when he says "I attack you because..." but we shouldn't worry about that whole thing where he said Mogadishu showed him we're paper tigers. When somebody kills your guys, you obliterate them, you don't run home to mommy. Whether an intervention is a mistake or not, people around the world should know that killing and desecrating an American soldier is a quick way to a messy suicide.
That may be true of many members of AQ...that has probably always been true of a small number of Muslims...nevertheless, radical Islam is like Communism...it will, if left to itself, never amount to much. Its a nihilistic, regressive movement that will be rejected by the vast majority of Muslims. Its only strength now comes from being able to recruit large numbers of young Muslim males willing to kill themselves...and, US intelligence and experts on this have said over and over that they have successfully exploited Amercian policy to spread their jihadist message.
Its amazing to me that a Presidential candidate can claim he's never heard that US interventionism in the middle east and US-led sanctions on Iraq were reasons AQ attacked the US on 9/11...and Rudy claims to be expert on terrorism?
Well, if he gets his way and we run out of Iraq like a scalded dog, maybe he'll have a theory then, if he lives through the subsequent attack. Those guys we're killing in Iraq ain't gonna settle down and open flower shops in the Baghdad suburbs if we leave. They'll go back on offense, which is where they were every day between the Battle of Mogadishu and September 12, 2001.
I hear sounds coming from that Black Forest clock I keep on the wall.
However, we have been involved around the world for almost seventy years. What I want to hear from Representative Paul (and others who agree with him) how he proposes getting from here to there.
Exactly how we are going to extricate ourselves from the rest of the world? Who will fill the vacuum? How will we manage the new threats that will undoubtedly arise?
My guess is he'd blame Israel. On that the Brigadiers and liberals seem to agree.
One of the decisions that came out of the Second World War, where we lost several hundred thousand military dead, is that it was a mistake to wait until an enemy had fully matured, that if you acted early you could defuse or contain an enemy at far less human cost.
So if a madman is trying to get control of large swaths of territory, if he is looking to get his hands on a nuke, its better to act early. Don’t wait until the situation has developed to the point that only the sacrifice of a whole generation of your best people can, maybe, save you.
We were pulled into the Persian Gulf originally as a part of our Cold War strategy, looking for allies against the Soviets and trying to woo pro-soviet states away. Unless you are prepared to say that we ought not to have opposed the soviets during the Cold War, our presence in the Persian Gulf was a logical outcome of that. The Navy is in the Persian Gulf since prior to the First Gulf War, when Iran tried to cut off the flow of oil to the outside world. We went in to patrol the gulf and supply protection for the tankers.
And Bin Ladin’s remarks about our “occupation” of Saudi Arabia are not to be taken at face value. In effect Bin Ladin sided with Saddam. What did he say? That he would defend his homeland “if” the Sauds put him in charge of their military defense. Right. Fat chance. That is a pretty obvious evasion, he is saying that in a war between his country and Iraq, he effectively has sided with Iraq.
When he later declared war on the US, what were his reasons? Our containment of Iraq, and the supposed resulting harm to Iraqis. Bin Ladin was a Saddam ally, but he couched it in religious terms. When we indicted Bin Ladin in the late nineties we seemed quite clear on their alliance, we only developed amnesia after 911.
It doesn't matter whether the statements are truthful...they are believed by a vast majority of Muslims and by the young Muslims that OBL is trying to recruit. When a US Secretary of State says that the death of half a million Iraqi children "was worth it"...that will bother some Muslims...it should also bother some Americans...or at least get them to think about what the beneits to the sanctions were and whether they were worth the cost...to the Iraqi people and to Americans (if we can assume that bin Laden was able to recruit jihadists by citing US policies in Iraq)...did imposing sanctions on Iraq and bombing Iraq for 10 years help you and I and other Americans in any way?
Nobody's trying to silence you, we're just telling you that you sound like idiots...useful idiots
The head of the Michigan Republican party is trying to have Ron Paul excluded from any other debates...essentially for saying what US intelligence has already said on numerous occasions about the reasons behind the attack
America's position in the world invites attack simply because of its presence.
B-17s, by their very presence over Western Europe, invited attack by the Luftwaffe. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't have been there.
That quote came directly from a Department of Defense study of terorism in 1997...again, supporting exactly what Ron Paul said...should we now assume that the Pentagon authors of this report are "blame America first cut and runners"?
The other Republican candidates can continue to bury their heads in the sand and keep repeating what they think Americans want to believe...that evil Islamists want to kill Americans only because they hate freedom and because the US government is so good and benevolent...but they're not doing Americans any favors
At the same time, I have to recognize that radical Islam does exist, and that they are actively exporting it. The nature of the beast is such that letting them come here and build mosques is not substantially different than having a foreign military presence on our own soil.
I think not. Their complaint isn't our troops, it's our culture which they want removed from the region, which streches from Northern Africa and Southern Europe through eastern Europe, the mideast, Pakistan and India, to Indonesia and the Phillipines.
Their objective is cultural and religious dominance, not solely the removal of American troops. McDonalds, Levis and American business, including oil, need to go too.
It is something like walk softly but carry a big stick. In essense, the guiding principle is don't use force unless you mean it. And when you mean it, mean it.
For example, after Sept 11, the invasion of Afghanistan and the toppling of the Taliban qualified. And, if Bin Laden is hiding in NW Pakistan, and the Pakistani government will not deal with him, then deal with him and those who protect him. I would be willing to use nuclear weapons in an area like that if that is what it would take to accomplish the goal. And I would not care if "our allies" chose to join us or not.
And please be clear. I do not care a whit about rebuilding an area we devastate in self defense. We make war to destroy our enemies not remake the world. Those who want to deal with use peacefully we deal with peacefully. Those who don't want to deal with us we leave alone. Those who threaten us we destroy.
Ron Paul may or may not agree with this posture. I have no idea. But where Ron Paul and I do agree is on the need to get a Congressional declaration of War before engaging in the above. This indicates National resolve. And it avoids things like the horrendous backstabbing of our deployed forces you see being played out today.
I agree that's their objective. I don't think they'll be able to maintain it, but I think that change has to happen from the bottom up. You can effect a "top down" change of a culture, but it's a violent, ugly process. I give you Mao's "cultural revolution" as an example. I don't think we'll do ourselves proud to undertake that kind of endeavor.
Amen.
Add to it Reagan's withdrawal after the Lebanon bombing, which Ron Paul took as an example to emulate.
This link will show you one way to do exactly that:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1835454/posts
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