CNN's Roland S. Martin defends Ron Paul with a great article

[gonebroke2]

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

Have at it

[Taxman]

Very good analysis. I am sick of the culture of fear that even today lets slimeballs like Guiliani manipulate the American people into supporting them. Paul's delivery may have been bad, but let's not kid ourselves about his motives. Such trigger-happy behavior is exactly the kind of attitude that makes people around the world hate us. Obviously, no one is ever justified in killing thousands of innocents. Obviously, our foreign policy currently sucks. Ready......call me an American hating terrorist, GO!

[Misfire]

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Obviously, no one is ever justified in killing thousands of innocents.

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This is a point Ron Paul should have made. The perception of Ron Paul's remarks (and many democrats who have made the same point) is that it places all the blame on America. The anti-war crowd really needs to make the case that this is about security, not about giving in to the enemy's wishes. We should practice non-intervention not because that's what bin Laden wants, but because it's the best policy for us on its own merit.

[adios]

From the article:

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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.

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Yet many Bush opponents, including many on this forum, state that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Can't have it both ways i.e. saying that U.S. policy in Iraq contributed to 9/11 and then state that 9/11 is unrelated to Iraq.

The columnist wrote:

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.

An undesirable event of the cold war but what was the danger of Iran coming under Soviet control at that time? Looking at events in a vacum and in a one sided way is disingenuous at best.

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.

Maybe the allies should have fought for Eastern Europe immediately after WWII as well.

[DVaut1]

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Yet many Bush opponents, including many on this forum, state that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Can't have it both ways i.e. saying that U.S. policy in Iraq contributed to 9/11 and then state that 9/11 is unrelated to Iraq.

[/ QUOTE ]

Woah, what? This is an obvious false dichotomy.

When people say "Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11", they mean "the Iraqi government had no hand in planning, facilitating, carrying out, etc. the attacks in the United States on 9/11".

That is completely unrelated from the claim that American foreign policy around the Middle East -- policies which caused tangible harm to the Iraqi people -- perhaps angered/motivated al Qaeda and "contributed" to 9/11. There's absolutely no contradiction here.

[adios]

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Yet many Bush opponents, including many on this forum, state that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Can't have it both ways i.e. saying that U.S. policy in Iraq contributed to 9/11 and then state that 9/11 is unrelated to Iraq.

[/ QUOTE ]

Woah, what? This is an obvious false dichotomy.

When people say "Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11", they mean "the Iraqi government had no hand in planning, facilitating, carrying out, etc. the attacks in the United States on 9/11".

That is completely unrelated from the claim that American foreign policy around the Middle East -- policies which caused tangible harm to the Iraqi people -- perhaps angered/motivated al Qaeda and "contributed" to 9/11. There's absolutely no contradiction here.

[/ QUOTE ]

No it's not here's what Paul said:

"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.

Paul is clearly inferring that bombing Iraq was a direct cause of 9/11.

[DVaut1]

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No it's not here's what Paul said:

"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.

Paul is clearly inferring that bombing Iraq was a direct cause of 9/11.

[/ QUOTE ]

There's no contradiction here. Claiming that "bombing Iraq was a direct cause of 9/11" in no way implicates the Iraqi government in the attacks of 9/11.

Imagine you burned my house down. Some hothead neighbor of mine then shoots your dog, in some kind of misguided attempt at vengeance, because he thinks you've been committing various crimes around his neck of the woods -- you've been funding and supporting various other jerks in the hothead's neighborhood, you burned my house down, etc. He thinks you're an unwelcome nuisance and an unwanted presence. In general, he doesn't like what you've been doing in his neighborhood. Given all this, am *I* responsible for shooting your dog?

There's no contradiction in "Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11" while claiming that "9/11 is unrelated to Iraq", when we understand here that 'unrelated' means something along the lines of 'is not culpable for'.

I didn't shoot your dog, but you burning down my house may have led my crazy neighbor to come seek out retaliation against you. I don't think there's any inconsistency in pointing this out.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
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No it's not here's what Paul said:

"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.

Paul is clearly inferring that bombing Iraq was a direct cause of 9/11.

[/ QUOTE ]

There's no contradiction here. Claiming that "bombing Iraq was a direct cause of 9/11" in no way implicates the Iraqi government in the attacks of 9/11.

Imagine you burned my house down. Some hothead neighbor of mine then shoots your dog, in some kind of misguided attempt at vengeance, because he thinks you've been committing various crimes around his neck of the woods -- you've been funding other jerks in the hothead's neighborhood, you burned my house down, etc. In general, he doesn't like what you've been doing in his neighborhood. Given all this, am I responsible for shooting your dog?

There's no contradiction "Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11" while claiming that "9/11 is unrelated to Iraq", when we understand here that 'unrelated' means something along the lines of 'is not culpable for'.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's not what I've taken from the criticism. Saddam had no affiliation with Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda had little use for the basically secular government of Saddam. If that's the case then what do operations like Desert Fox have to do with 9/11? I quess U.S. bombing of Iraq could have been some sort of minor irritent to Al Qaeda. However, my understanding is that Al Qaeda became an enemy of the U.S. as a result of having U.S. forces stationed in Saudi Arabia during and after Desert Storm when Al Qaeda supported the idea that Islamists should defend their holy land against the threat of Iraqi invasions of them. The implication by Paul seems to be that the Al Qaeda supported Iraq and was opposed to the U.S. Maybe Paul actually meant that Iraq should not have been opposed when it invaded Kuwait and threatened other Middle East oil producing nations.

[MrMon]

Al Qaeda is notoriously flexible in their excuses for doing things. Don't confuse their English language pronouncements, which cater to left wing and anti-war elements in the West, with what they release for the Middle East masses, which are something else entirely. Most of Al Qaeda's English language propaganda seems to be cribbed right from Chomsky and his ilk, it's not like they really give a damn about Iran in 1953 or Saddam and Iraq in the 1990's, they're just convenient arguments to make that sound good to Western ears. The Arabic language stuff is what we really need to pay attention to, and that doesn't sound so convincing to Western ears.

[gonebroke2]

[ QUOTE ]
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Yet many Bush opponents, including many on this forum, state that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Can't have it both ways i.e. saying that U.S. policy in Iraq contributed to 9/11 and then state that 9/11 is unrelated to Iraq.

[/ QUOTE ]

Woah, what? This is an obvious false dichotomy.

When people say "Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11", they mean "the Iraqi government had no hand in planning, facilitating, carrying out, etc. the attacks in the United States on 9/11".

That is completely unrelated from the claim that American foreign policy around the Middle East -- policies which caused tangible harm to the Iraqi people -- perhaps angered/motivated al Qaeda and "contributed" to 9/11. There's absolutely no contradiction here.

[/ QUOTE ]

No it's not here's what Paul said:

"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.

Paul is clearly inferring that bombing Iraq was a direct cause of 9/11.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ron Paul had a lot more reasons for the motive behind 9/11 besides the bombing of Iraq for 10 years. It is difficult to make your case and defend your comment in 60 seconds. He went into some of that on CNN the following day after the debate.