Ron Paul's 9/11 explanation deserves serious debate

EDBM · 05-18-2007, 05:14 PM

(CNN) -- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was declared the winner of Tuesday's Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, largely for his smack down of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who suggested that America's foreign policy contributed to the destruction on September 11, 2001.

Paul, who is more of a libertarian than a Republican, was trying to offer some perspective on the pitfalls of an interventionist policy by the American government in the affairs of the Middle East and other countries.

"Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years," he said.

That set Giuliani off.

"That's really an extraordinary statement," said Giuliani. "As someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq; I don't think I've ever heard that before and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11."

As the crowd applauded wildly, Giuliani demanded that Paul retract his statements.

Paul tried to explain the process known as "blowback" -- which is the result of someone else's action coming back to afflict you -- but the audience drowned him out as the other candidates tried to pounce on him.

After watching all the network pundits laud Giuliani, it struck me that they must be the most clueless folks in the world.

First, Giuliani must be an idiot to not have heard Paul's rationale before. That issue has been raised countless times in the last six years by any number of experts.

Second, when we finish with our emotional response, it would behoove us to actually think about what Paul said and make the effort to understand his rationale.

Granted, Americans were severely damaged by the hijacking of U.S. planes, and it has resulted in a worldwide fight against terror. Was it proper for the United States to respond to the attack? Of course! But should we, as a matter of policy, and moral decency, learn to think and comprehend that our actions in one part of the world could very well come back to hurt us, or, as Paul would say, blow back in our face? Absolutely. His real problem wasn't his analysis, but how it came out of his mouth.

What has been overlooked is that Paul based his position on the effects of the 1953 ouster by the CIA of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.

An excellent account of this story is revealed in Stephen Kinzer's alarming and revealing book, "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq," where he writes that Iran was establishing a government close to a democracy. But Mossadegh wasn't happy that the profit from the country's primary resource -- oil -- was not staying in the country.

Instead, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now known British Petroleum, or BP) was getting 93 percent of the profits. Mossadegh didn't like that, and wanted a 50-50 split. Kinzer writes that that didn't sit too well with the British government, but it didn't want to use force to protect its interests. But their biggest friend, the United States, didn't mind, and sought to undermine Mossadegh's tenure as president. After all kinds of measures that disrupted the nation, a coup was financed and led by President Dwight Eisenhower's CIA, and the Shah of Iran was installed as the leader. We trained his goon squads, thus angering generations of Iranians for meddling in that nation's affairs.

As Paul noted, what happened in 1953 had a direct relationship to the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in 1979. We viewed that as terrorists who dared attack America. They saw it as ending years of oppression at the hands of the ruthless U.S.-backed Shah regime.

As Americans, we believe in forgiving and forgetting, and are terrible at understanding how history affects us today. We are arrogant in not recognizing that when we benefit, someone else may suffer. That will lead to resentment and anger, and if suppressed, will boil over one day.

Does that provide a moral justification for what the terrorists did on September 11?

Of course not. But we should at least attempt to understand why.

Think about it. Do we have the moral justification to explain the killings of more than 100,000 Iraqis as a result of this war? Can we defend the efforts to overthrow other governments whose actions we perceived would jeopardize American business interests?

The debate format didn't give Paul the time to explain all of this. But I'm confident this is what he was saying. And yes, we need to understand history and how it plays a vital role in determining matters today.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/18/martin/index.html

fighterforlife · 05-18-2007, 05:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EDBM

(CNN) -- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was declared the winner of Tuesday's Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, largely for his smack down of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who suggested that America's foreign policy contributed to the destruction on September 11, 2001.

Paul, who is more of a libertarian than a Republican, was trying to offer some perspective on the pitfalls of an interventionist policy by the American government in the affairs of the Middle East and other countries.

"Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years," he said.

That set Giuliani off.

"That's really an extraordinary statement," said Giuliani. "As someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq; I don't think I've ever heard that before and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11."

As the crowd applauded wildly, Giuliani demanded that Paul retract his statements.

Paul tried to explain the process known as "blowback" -- which is the result of someone else's action coming back to afflict you -- but the audience drowned him out as the other candidates tried to pounce on him.

After watching all the network pundits laud Giuliani, it struck me that they must be the most clueless folks in the world.

First, Giuliani must be an idiot to not have heard Paul's rationale before. That issue has been raised countless times in the last six years by any number of experts.

Second, when we finish with our emotional response, it would behoove us to actually think about what Paul said and make the effort to understand his rationale.

Granted, Americans were severely damaged by the hijacking of U.S. planes, and it has resulted in a worldwide fight against terror. Was it proper for the United States to respond to the attack? Of course! But should we, as a matter of policy, and moral decency, learn to think and comprehend that our actions in one part of the world could very well come back to hurt us, or, as Paul would say, blow back in our face? Absolutely. His real problem wasn't his analysis, but how it came out of his mouth.

What has been overlooked is that Paul based his position on the effects of the 1953 ouster by the CIA of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.

An excellent account of this story is revealed in Stephen Kinzer's alarming and revealing book, "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq," where he writes that Iran was establishing a government close to a democracy. But Mossadegh wasn't happy that the profit from the country's primary resource -- oil -- was not staying in the country.

Instead, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now known British Petroleum, or BP) was getting 93 percent of the profits. Mossadegh didn't like that, and wanted a 50-50 split. Kinzer writes that that didn't sit too well with the British government, but it didn't want to use force to protect its interests. But their biggest friend, the United States, didn't mind, and sought to undermine Mossadegh's tenure as president. After all kinds of measures that disrupted the nation, a coup was financed and led by President Dwight Eisenhower's CIA, and the Shah of Iran was installed as the leader. We trained his goon squads, thus angering generations of Iranians for meddling in that nation's affairs.

As Paul noted, what happened in 1953 had a direct relationship to the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in 1979. We viewed that as terrorists who dared attack America. They saw it as ending years of oppression at the hands of the ruthless U.S.-backed Shah regime.

As Americans, we believe in forgiving and forgetting, and are terrible at understanding how history affects us today. We are arrogant in not recognizing that when we benefit, someone else may suffer. That will lead to resentment and anger, and if suppressed, will boil over one day.

Does that provide a moral justification for what the terrorists did on September 11?

Of course not. But we should at least attempt to understand why.

Think about it. Do we have the moral justification to explain the killings of more than 100,000 Iraqis as a result of this war? Can we defend the efforts to overthrow other governments whose actions we perceived would jeopardize American business interests?

The debate format didn't give Paul the time to explain all of this. But I'm confident this is what he was saying. And yes, we need to understand history and how it plays a vital role in determining matters today.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/18/martin/index.html

Ron Paul was a little off and Rudy jumped on it. The "blowback he speaks of and when he says "over there" he really means in the middle east. If we didn't think our presence was the real cause of 9/11, why in gods name did we shut down the Bin Sultan Air base in Saudi Arabia. Most folks don't know that we did that. The media didn't cover it. Bin Laden's number 1 complaint was US soldiers on the holy land.

**Zankou** · 05-18-2007, 05:24 PM

I agree; this comment by Giuliani is absolutely despicable. We are being lied to, it is indefensible, and it is unacceptable. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11? What did Osama himself say about it? Taken from Osama's own speech:

"The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced.

I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy.

The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond.

In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul, but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors.

And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.

And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance.

This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr did in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known, and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and explosives at millions of children - also in Iraq - as Bush Jr did, in order to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet to assist in the pilfering of Iraq's oil and other outrages.

So with these images and their like as their background, the events of September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs, should a man be blamed for defending his sanctuary?

Is defending oneself and punishing the aggressor in kind, objectionable terrorism? If it is such, then it is unavoidable for us.

This is the message which I sought to communicate to you in word and deed, repeatedly, for years before September 11th. "

I remember one comic (not usually a source of good political analysis, but still) putting the issue this way: "I believe that Israel was one of the reasons Osama bin Laden has acted against the United States. I know others disagree, but I think they're wrong. How do I know? BECAUSE HE FUCKING SAID SO." It's amazing that our discourse has gotten to the point where the Islamic terrorists will explain what they are doing and why, and we will nod, and say "you hate freedom, I understand, you want to destroy freedom."

MicroBrew · 05-18-2007, 05:53 PM

What buggs me is Guilinai saying he survived through 9/11.Puuleasse.Any New Yorker can say that if he says it.Anyone else as Mayor at the time would have done the necessary job too.The country,state and federal governments all pitched in and were a major of the 9/11 scene.
Not to dimnish the dead, but this was an attack on a cluster of buldings in 1 section of Manhattan, it wasn't all of New York city encompassing debilitating destruction like a major earth quake or Katrina where all or most services and power and transport is gone and pretty much there is a break down of society.

**Zankou** · 05-18-2007, 05:57 PM

I was in midtown Manhattan during 9/11, defending a deposition. I suppose I should start calling myself a "9/11 survivor" now.

fighterforlife · 05-18-2007, 06:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MicroBrew

What buggs me is Guilinai saying he survived through 9/11.Puuleasse.Any New Yorker can say that if he says it.Anyone else as Mayor at the time would have done the necessary job too.The country,state and federal governments all pitched in and were a major of the 9/11 scene.
Not to dimnish the dead, but this was an attack on a cluster of buldings in 1 section of Manhattan, it wasn't all of New York city encompassing debilitating destruction like a major earth quake or Katrina where all or most services and power and transport is gone and pretty much there is a break down of society.

I agree with you here. Dude put the command and control center in the World trade towers even after he was told not to. He porked his cousin.... yucky! I think Rudy might be 10th or 11th in ranking amongst the (10 candidates and 1 maybe candidate). Not because of his policies, or that he lived with gay guys, or that he got divorced on TV, and not even because he is the only pro choice candidate. He married his cousin!!!!! Why isn't this a bigger deal to people?

flatline · 05-18-2007, 06:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zankou

I was in midtown Manhattan during 9/11, defending a deposition. I suppose I should start calling myself a "9/11 survivor" now.

You'd actually be a war hero, seeing as you didn't avoid going to the vicinity of the WTC before the attacks like Giuliani did.

flatline · 05-18-2007, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fighterforlife

I agree with you here. Dude put the command and control center in the World trade towers even after he was told not to. He porked his cousin.... yucky! I think Rudy might be 10th or 11th in ranking amongst the (10 candidates and 1 maybe candidate). Not because of his policies, or that he lived with gay guys, or that he got divorced on TV, and not even because he is the only pro choice candidate. He married his cousin!!!!! Why isn't this a bigger deal to people?

Don't forget that he's a crossdresser.