Ron Paul fallout


He was right, even if he doesn't get credit for it
Gregory Scoblete defends Ron Paul's comments at the GOP debate.

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.

He's right.

I just don't think Ron Paul is a viable candidate. And I don't see him winning a war.

Having "drawn the sword of war" so to speak, we're committed. The costs of pulling out before the job is done will be much higher than the costs if we had never done anything in Iraq. Not only would we lose credibility, but we would probably lose any hope for a decade or so to influence the Middle East in any reasonable fashion. We would go back to being a paper tiger.

It was a high stakes gamble that Bush took. Presidents do that.

I just wish I could come up with better than even odds.

If Bush is right, when things start to go our way, it's going to happen very fast.

Meanwhile, the former NYC mayor got away with wrapping himself in the flag.

Have I mentioned that I am really finding more and more to dislike about that man?

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - May 21, 2007 at 05:51 AM  Tag


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