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But Who Was Right – Rudy or Ron?
Buchanan.org ^ | May 18th, 2007 | Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on 05/18/2007 3:36:48 AM PDT by 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.


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KEYWORDS: buchanan; paul; propalironny
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To: Remember_Salamis
Still waiting for you to make one rational, factual response. Do you suppose we might see that any time today? Or do you find it utterly to painful to actual deal with the factual reality and so mindlessly cling to your preprogrammed dogmatic responses?
21 posted on 05/18/2007 3:59:33 AM PDT by MNJohnnie (If you will try being smarter, I will try being nicer.)
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To: MNJohnnie
Hey -- Like I said, I responded so quickly because I posted an original thread for that Fatwa a few days ago. Here is the link:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1834249/posts

You are a fool for making such comments. I can respond in 2 min. because I already read it!

22 posted on 05/18/2007 4:00:25 AM PDT by Remember_Salamis (A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one!)
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To: Remember_Salamis
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.

Ron Paul is very good on most issues.

However to state that the United States was somehow responsible for 9/11 by its foreign policy actions is beyond the pale.

We were fighting the Mid-East because of Iraqi aggression against Kuwait.

We have legimate interests in that region.

23 posted on 05/18/2007 4:02:33 AM PDT by fortheDeclaration (We must beat the Democrats or the Country will be ruined! -Abe Lincoln)
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To: Remember_Salamis
Still waiting for you to READ the link so you ACTUALLY ONE TIME have a clue what you are talking about. Until then I am simply going to post this to you. So sit down, shut up and actually LEARN something instead of mindlessly clinging to your 09-10-01 political dogmas.

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

24 posted on 05/18/2007 4:06:31 AM PDT by MNJohnnie (If you will try being smarter, I will try being nicer.)
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To: fortheDeclaration
If you actually read or heard what he said, he DID NOT say we were responsible. He said that our previous actions make us hated, which motivated al-Qaida to attack.

It would be like saying that Welfare causes crime, but the criminal still committed it. Without said government welfare, however, that crime may not have happened.

Understand? It's consistent conservatism. Government is usually not a force for good.

25 posted on 05/18/2007 4:06:41 AM PDT by Remember_Salamis (A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one!)
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To: MNJohnnie

Nice copy-and-paste. Don’t care that I’ve already read the link and posted it to FR days ago huh?


26 posted on 05/18/2007 4:07:40 AM PDT by Remember_Salamis (A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one!)
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To: Remember_Salamis

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

Read and learn something instead of mindlessly screaming your ignorance louder.


27 posted on 05/18/2007 4:10:21 AM PDT by MNJohnnie (If you will try being smarter, I will try being nicer.)
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To: MNJohnnie
Guess someone better point out to the Do Nothings that Saddam invaded Kuwait and was headed for Saudi Arabia.

You can point it out, but it would be wrong. He invaded Kuwait--with our ambassador's (April Glasbie) imprimatur--because it was a rich province that had formerly been part of Iraq.

Even if he had gone on to Saudi Arabia, so what? The oil would have still flowed. And perhaps he would have killed OBL or some of those 19 Saudi people who hijacked the airplanes.

28 posted on 05/18/2007 4:11:18 AM PDT by jammer
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To: Remember_Salamis

Greetings Remember_Salamis:

Libertarians were often described as Republicans on dope. And Congresscritter Ron Paul delivers an aura of credibility to such an assertion.

Cheers,
OLA


29 posted on 05/18/2007 4:11:46 AM PDT by OneLoyalAmerican (Truth was the first casualty in the MSM's war on President Bush.)
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To: fortheDeclaration
Well, let's think about this for a second . . .

The 9/11 attacks were actually pretty simple to plan and execute, and could have been done at any time in history since the advent of passenger flight. It's worth asking ourselves why this kind of airliner-as-a-suicide-weapon concept was never even discussed before the mid-1990s.

I found this statement by Rudy Giuliani to be particularly comical:

"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."

This is coming from the same A-hole who had to deal with another terrorist attack in New York City before 9/11 (the 1997 mass shooting on the observation deck of the Empire State Building by a Palestinian terrorist), and on that previous occasion made every attempt to hide the shooter's motives and instead cited the lack of adequate gun control laws in other states as the cause of the incident.

30 posted on 05/18/2007 4:15:45 AM PDT by Alberta's Child (I'm out on the outskirts of nowhere . . . with ghosts on my trail, chasing me there.)
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To: jammer
Ah I see. Waste of time. The Ron Paulites, because he screams the same nonsensical slogans and talking points of their pet pretend Conservative Talk Radio hosts, simply tune out ALL factual reality. So much easier for them to simply scream slogans and emotion based dogmas then to actually LEARN anything.
31 posted on 05/18/2007 4:15:48 AM PDT by MNJohnnie (If you will try being smarter, I will try being nicer.)
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To: Remember_Salamis
If you actually read or heard what he said, he DID NOT say we were responsible. He said that our previous actions make us hated, which motivated al-Qaida to attack.

And that would make us responsible, since it is our fault they hate us.

That is the clear implication of the statement.

Now, what excuse does Al Qaida have for attacking the rest of the civilized world?

To give any creditability to Bin Laden's statements is like giving credence to Hilter's excuse for starting his own aggression (Germany needed more living space).

It would be like saying that Welfare causes crime, but the criminal still committed it. Without said government welfare, however, that crime may not have happened.

And if you state this, that is not the Conservative view.

We do not ascribe environmental causes to evil acts.

We ascribe evil acts to the will of those committing the acts.

If not, then they would not be responsible.

Your view is the same reason why Liberal judges let criminals go free (they are not resonsible)

Understand? It's consistent conservatism. Government is usually not a force for good.

A legitimate role for Government is defense and that was what it was doing when it went to the Mid-East to protect our interests there.

32 posted on 05/18/2007 4:19:37 AM PDT by fortheDeclaration (We must beat the Democrats or the Country will be ruined! -Abe Lincoln)
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To: MNJohnnie
Of course it's a waste of time. We don't disregard facts; we form our conclusions from them. You arrive at a conclusion, and don't even bother to try to find data to buttress it. Just loudly spew (moronic) ad hominems.

Yes, it's a waste of time on your part because you can't B.S. people with knowledge. And a waste of time on my part because you won't be swayed by the facts.

By the way, I haven't listened to a radio talk show in years, since it was apparent that Rush was Bush's lackey, carrying his water, no matter that even he must have gotten fed up after a while.

33 posted on 05/18/2007 4:21:21 AM PDT by jammer
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To: Remember_Salamis
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.

This is wrong. Absolutely wrong.

Listen.

The al-Qa'ida brand of Islam is a very harsh Salafist/apocalyptic strain that is very unpopular with your average Muslim. Far more so that garden variety Wahabbism.

The reason that al-Qa'ida is able to flourish from London to Johannesburg to Jakarta isn't because of the appeal of their convictions. It's because UBL is an expert at absorbing local regional conflicts into the framework of a Global War on Infidels.

His fatwas are advertisements, and what he's selling is context. He doesn't give a hot flying half of a damn about the plight of Iraqi children. What he's doing, which he's done from Algeria to the Philippines, is to tell far flung and unconnected Muslims that their local struggle is part of a greater cause, and that if they join him, they'll have a global network to rely on. It's a deal with the devil, but many make it gladly because they want the power to hurt their enemies more than they hate Salafism.

Al-Qa'ida is a world wide grievance absorption machine, rechanneling the frustration and hate of the world back at the powers-that-be. That's why UBL quoted Iraq and Saudi Arabia in his fatwas, and has quoted everything from racism to Kyoto to the occupation of Andalusia. It's advertising, reaching out to anyone that might join him. He doesn't mean a word of it, and until you realize that, you don't understand him.

To actually believe that UBL will stop fighting once his Middle Eastern grievances are resolved is to be utterly ignorant of his methods and motives. He will keep moving the goal line of grievances until there are no non-Muslims left to defeat.

34 posted on 05/18/2007 4:23:54 AM PDT by Steel Wolf (If every Republican is a RINO, then no Republican is a RINO.)
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To: Alberta's Child
I do not see how anything in your post justifies what Ron Paul stated in giving credence to the notion that the 'poor' Muslims, felt victimized by U.S. bombing.

If anything, it was our tepid responses to terrorist acts during the Clinton administration and even our withdrawal from Lebanon during the Reagan era, that 'motivated' this crime.

35 posted on 05/18/2007 4:25:10 AM PDT by fortheDeclaration (We must beat the Democrats or the country will be ruined! -Abe Lincoln)
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To: Remember_Salamis

Good luck reasoning with the “Americans always good, Arabs always bad” crowd. IMO, The best way to get along with muslims is to disconnect - have as little to do with them as possible - do not let muslims into the U.S. and do not send U.S. troops into muslim countries like Iraq.

Personally, I’m not surprised that some Arabs want to attack the country that produced the Jerry Springer show, Oprah, and Michael Jackson - my question is why George Bush still is in love with having open borders and amnesty after 9/11. How many muslim terrorists (like those in New Jersey) will get amnesty with the latest McCain Kennedy amnesty bill?


36 posted on 05/18/2007 4:25:23 AM PDT by Howard Jarvis Admirer (Howard Jarvis, the foe of the tax collector and friend of the California homeowner)
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To: Remember_Salamis
In fact, National Review's John Derbyshire wrote yesterday that Paul is "to conservative for the Republican Party"

Well when you have a liberal like Rudy still polling at the top of the Republican primary, you have to wonder... Too many 'pubbies are so obsessed with the Islamofascists hiding under their beds that they can't see the forest for the trees. This is going to come back to bite them in '08 when they find out that a majority of Americans have had enough of nation building and are looking for a new game plan.

37 posted on 05/18/2007 4:28:30 AM PDT by yuta250
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To: Steel Wolf
Al-Qa'ida is a world wide grievance absorption machine
It has to be said that the US government in particular and American society in general has global effects, and that those are far from universally popular - indeed, are controversial within the US itself. And that is why it makes sense to consider the possibilty that that influence motivated 9/11. Heck, some of what American society does and is infuriates FReepers - Democrats, after all, are Americans.

So saying that resentment of American influences generally, or even US government actions specifically, motivated 911 is a different proposition from excusing 911, in the sense that Democrats tend to when they say that. Because if you say that "Al-Qa'ida is a world wide grievance absorption machine," what do you think the Democratic Party is?

And what do we want the Republican Party to be? I submit that in a sea of grievance cultivators such as Democratic politicians and worldwide socialists, the Republican Party is to be the voice of candor, and of the reality check. The party of rational economics and love of society - of Thomas Sowell - to protect the middle class from the grievance industry and to recruit the lower class into middle class values and prosperity.

Does America have faults? Surely. Does that mean that killing Americans isn't murder? Certainly not. And that applies to office workers in America, and to US soldiers in Iraq (now that the government of Iraq is not hostile to the US), and everywhere in between. Prevention of the killing Americans without due process is a primary reason for the existence of the US government.


38 posted on 05/18/2007 6:19:43 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters except PR.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

Actually, the preventing of killing Americans without due process is up to the States via police and murder statutes. The preventing of foreign invasion is up to the Federal Government - just don’t expect very much from Bush and the Feds considering the 20 million illegals already here.


39 posted on 05/18/2007 6:33:32 AM PDT by Howard Jarvis Admirer (Howard Jarvis, the foe of the tax collector and friend of the California homeowner)
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To: fortheDeclaration
If I were in Ron Paul's position, I would have made the following statement:

"The United States has been involved in a major military campaign in the Middle East over the last 17 years, ostensibly to accomplish the following goals: 1) to restore an Islamic royal family to the throne in Kuwait; 2) to protect an Islamic royal family (one of the world's biggest and most notorious supporters of radical Islam around the globe) in Saudi Arabia; and 3) to establish a nation in Iraq in which Islam is enshrined as the official state religion. If this bizarre chain of events makes sense to anyone, then please fill me in on what the hell is going on here."

"And if you think 9/11 -- along with all of the other various acts of terrorism that we've dealt with (and/or prevented) over the last decade -- has had nothing to do with any of this, then you're delusional."

40 posted on 05/18/2007 8:43:10 AM PDT by Alberta's Child (I'm out on the outskirts of nowhere . . . with ghosts on my trail, chasing me there.)
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