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Giuliani to Paul: 'Take back' 9/11 comments

Gundampilotspaz

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Gundampilotspaz Post Whore

Gundampilotspaz

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Why did terrorists attack the U.S. on 9/11?

According to Texas Congressman Ron Paul, "They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East."

Restrained, but clearly angry, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani jumped in, calling Paul's statement "extraordinary."

"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 11th," he said.

Giuliani's fiery response prompted applause and the following demand from the former mayor: "I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that."

In response, Paul stood by his comments and said that "if we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem ... They come and they attack us because we're over there."

Giuliani isn't grounded in reality

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Gundampilotspaz Post Whore

Gundampilotspaz

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Someone gets it:

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

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.

At some point we have to accept the reality that playing big brother to the world -- and yes, sometimes acting as a bully by wrongly asserting our military might -- means that Americans alive at the time may not feel the effects of our foreign policy, but their innocent children will.

Even the Bible says that the children will pay for the sins of their fathers.

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Mithrandir Post Whore

Mithrandir

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........

seriously you guys

are you all raving radical leftists? o_o;

Well, I certainly am. Although, I tend to keep relatively quiet about it on the internet.

And I honestly don't see how any rational person could think that 9-11 didn't occur as a result of US Foreign Policy. I mean, America wouldn't be seen as an evil empire if we hadn't done so much evil empire stuff.

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No Sad Endings Post Whore

No Sad Endings

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Yes, because all those Islamic fundamentalist run countries over there are SU-PER~ great places :awesome: They don't want to kill all the heathens or oppress women like cattle, oh-ho, they're like utopia. And they totally wouldn't take over the US and turn it into an Islamic nation if they could. And running a plane into a building and killing thousands of civilians is A COMPLETELY RATIONAL RESPONSE. Right.

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Mithrandir Post Whore

Mithrandir

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Hey, I'm not saying that 95% of the fault doesn't lie with the terrorists themselves.

But if you provoke a bunch of crazy people, what the hell do you think is going to happen?

Besides, if something bad happens to you, it's infinitely more helpful to ask what you could have done differently than it would be to just say "it's all their fault" and continue doing things the exact same way.

Blaming the terrorists may be accurate, but it's not constructive.

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Satan Post Whore

Satan

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The funny thing about people who are ABSOLUTELY BATSHIT INSANE is that they are often unpredictable.

Yes, but almost anything, when shat upon for years, will eventually get pissed off at the thing shitting upon it. Giving batshit insane people a reason to hate you is generally considered stupid, since they are batshit insane and may do something unpredicatble, like kill themselves to kill you.

Obviously the batshit insane factor exists, but we can't control that. We can control giving them reasons to hate us, such as, I don't know, changing their governments.

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margot Post Whore

margot

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yeah I have read there is a recent wave of militant Islamists (militant, not ALL) to Sweden and the rape rates have been on the rise because they say Swedish women deserve it because they're whores for not wearing veils ect. =X It's bad enough the crazies are like that in their own country, but JC you don't go into another country and impose your morals.

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Gundampilotspaz Post Whore

Gundampilotspaz

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Yes, because all those Islamic fundamentalist run countries over there are SU-PER~ great places :awesome: They don't want to kill all the heathens or oppress women like cattle, oh-ho, they're like utopia. And they totally wouldn't take over the US and turn it into an Islamic nation if they could. And running a plane into a building and killing thousands of civilians is A COMPLETELY RATIONAL RESPONSE. Right.

What are you talking about? Of course those countries are fucked... but to say that our foreign policy has NOTHING to do with what happened on 9/11 is CRAZY

Who the fuck said ANYTHING positive about middle-eastern nations? You're becoming way to sensitive for no reason.

If you consider a world where the United States had no presence in the middle east.... what would they have to hate about us?

Do you know anything about how much we fucked up them in the 70's? Removing leaders and putting American friendly dictators into power and such.... but that has NOTHING to do with them being angry at us? They are just CRAZY?!

I don't see how any rational person can be content to see evil religious regimes as the victims in this situation.

Again... NO ONE SAID THAT

There needs to be a cause and effect...you understand cause and effect right?

So we have an evil religious regime (which is an negative, all religious regimes are evil) and then the United States goes over and shoves our lifestyle in their face, bomb them, removing and replace their governments.... and we expect nothing to happen? 9/11 was the end result of a long history between Western civilization and the Middle East.

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Nega-Brent Post Whore

Nega-Brent

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So they reason they attacked us lies in the fact that they believe we are wrong?

No one is that insane, there have to be something to set them off. The fact that we have a presence there.... would be that spark.

I don't understand why you're searching for reason here. Any fundamentalist group willing to brainwash their soldiers and convince them to transform themselves into bombs is beyond any reason.

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