Ron Paul and Jerry Falwell: 'We caused them to hate us'

Posted by Ray Robison on 05.26.2007

Ron Paul recently commented at a Republican presidential debate on Fox News that 9/11 was the undesired result of US foreign policy or “blowback”. Republicans and many centrists were repelled by Paul’s statement prompting many on the left to remark - over and over again - about a lack of introspection on the right. What the left has failed to understand is that those of us who actually desire this country to succeed in Iraq don’t do so out of a knee-jerk, flag waving, gun rack sportin’ sense of patriotism.



Those of us who were appalled by his comment simply don't agree that the "hate ourselves here so they don't have to hate us over there" brand of foreign policy will work. We know our government is flawed but those flaws are far outweighed by the good we do for the world. And we know that no amount of self-loathing or disengagement will placate fanatic enemies and that we can not be held responsible for other people's intolerance.

There is after all a distinction between objective analysis of your own place in the world and blind nationalism. There is also a distinction between seeing your own faults and self loathing. Some of us understand that by simply being free some religious extremists will hate us.

For example, what did gay people do to offend Falwell? Just as the left cheers at Paul's blaming of us for 9/11, they jeer at Falwell's loathsome attempt to do the same thing because he went a degree further in refining it to a few segments of the population. In the end, there is not much difference to what they both said. It's our fault because our own actions caused them to hate us.

Did Falwell blame gays because of blowback? Or was he just intolerant of gay people? In the same way, other people's prejudices can metastasize as hatred and aggression towards us, as long as we fail to abide by their theocracy, ideology, philosophy, politics, etc. Is the hatred of gay people by Islamic extremists a case of blowback caused by US foreign policy? Of course not, they just hate gay people and the societies that foster homosexuality by allowing free people to be gay. This is why it is absolutely correct to say they hate us because of our freedom. They loath our democracy and civil liberties (the true foundations of liberalism in its traditional meaning) that allow the activities they hate to occur. Islamic extremists say so in their own writings.

So Paul and Falwell were correct in noting that we contribute to our own fate, an unfortunate smattering of truthfulness that scintillates the American liberal senses. Only a fool would deny what we should all know; that just by existing our actions influence other people either directly or indirectly. But in this case, that influence is in the form of how we live as a free people which threatens their extremist theocracy not in how we treated Iraqis or anybody else for that matter. Paul's and Falwell's assignment of blame to us for the intolerance of Islamic extremists is flawed and offensive.

Paul cites the US bombing of Iraq throughout the 90's as a root cause of the 9/11 attacks. While the left was cheering the doctor they forgot everything else they have been telling us for four years now.

Remember, according to them al Qaeda hated Saddam and wanted to depose his "secular" government and Saddam reciprocated their malevolence. In that context the democrats have foisted the ‘secular/Islamic extremist' divide theory on the rest of us that says they could never have worked together. Now apparently there is an exception; if the United States can be blamed for it, then you bet Usama bin Laden cares about Saddam! Usama bin Laden used the UN sanctions on Iraq as a justification for war on the US in his fatwas and the left now takes him at his word on that just as they take Saddam at his word that he hated bin Laden. (Find the truth about Saddam and his support at Islamic terrorism here in my ebook Both in One Trench: Saddam and International Terrorism)

Of course the left will counter that Usama bin Laden cared about the fate of the Iraqi people, not Saddam. The problem the Democrats face with such reasoning is that Saddam still held Iraq in his clutches and the lifting of UN sanctions on Iraq could have only helped him. There is no scenario in which it would have weakened him. And bin Laden certainly knew this would only help Saddam. So following the reasoning of the left and Dr. Paul, US actions in Iraq caused al Qaeda to attack the US in support of Saddam Hussein (by stopping UN action), a direct conflict within the lefts' own framework.

Yet the Democrats also claim that George Bush has played right into al Qaeda's hands because bin Laden wanted the US in Iraq. So which is it? Did al Qaeda want to help Saddam by lifting UN sanctions as demanded in its' own fatwas or topple Saddam by mystically insuring a US defeat of Saddam by attacking the US on 9/11?

If your answer is that al Qaeda wanted the US to depose Saddam then why were they offended at the US attempts to do just that? And if al Qaeda truly wanted to depose Saddam why didn't they just do it themselves? There was never any question that the US military was vastly superior to Saddam's forces. So if al Qaeda wanted to defeat Saddam and take over Iraq why chose to fight the US and British military (and sundry other small national contributions) instead of just Saddam? Common sense says if they hated Saddam and wanted to take Iraq then they should have just gone after the Ba'athists themselves. But that is not what happened is it? In fact, you would be hard pressed to find evidence of al Qaeda attacks on the Ba'athist regime.

Many on the left love to point to that fact and say "al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq before we got there". What world does the left live in that the absence of aggression against his regime supports the theory that they were enemies? Is the converse then also true? They must only attack their friends? That sounds ridiculous but may be truly how they think given new polling data that finds over fifty percent of Democrats who think it is possible that the President knew about the attacks beforehand or that he even engineered 9/11 himself. So in the liberal estimation al Qaeda wanted to attack the US via its' friend George Bush who simultaneously offended them with his policies while aiding them but yet al Qaeda wouldn't stand for the US attacking its' bitter enemy in Iraq who was supposedly hunting them down, and oh by the way, was a CIA creation in the first place just like bin Laden.

So those now carrying the introspection mantle simultaneously hold the positions that al Qaeda wanted to depose Saddam as an enemy, yet demanded UN action that would only help him, while baiting the US into Iraq to topple Saddam so they could fight a much tougher military presence than was in Iraq before, and believe so despite the lack of al Qaeda attacks upon the Saddam regime beforehand. And of course they will now point out that al Qaeda wanted to pit its' enemies against each other while in the same breadth noting that bin Laden offered to fight Saddam himself during the Gulf War in order to keep the US out of the Middle East. Again, which is it? Did al Qaeda want the US in the Middle East or not? Pick your poison, it's all madness.

Never mind that the "ten years of bombing" was mostly against Saddam's air defense systems in non-civilian populated areas. Never mind that this combat weakened the same Iraqi regime the left proclaims al Qaeda hated and wanted gone. Never mind that it was universally known that Saddam was flaunting the UN sanctions while none of the booty was getting down to the average Muslim household that they think Usama was so concerned about. Never mind that al Qaeda indiscriminately bombs the same people (Iraqi Sunni Muslims) it was supposedly so concerned about us bombing that it fomented 9/11. Never mind that the Taliban was nearly as ruthless to the Afghans as Saddam was to the Iraqis which didn't seem to cause any love lost there. Details, details, details….

Despite all of this, the left believes that we caused al Qaeda to hate us by attacking Iraq. They are willing and ready to ascribe the noblest attributes of compassion for the Iraq people to the same vile theocrats that now incessantly bomb the Iraqis in their markets and drill holes in and behead them for sport. Yes, in a sense we did contribute to our own fate by supporting the Saudi government against Islamic extremists who want to establish a theocratic regime in Saudi Arabia (bin Laden). Is that what we are supposed to feel bad about? That we helped to stop the Talibanization of Saudi Arabia? Its' militant Islamic ideology is already quite severe isn't it? Should we have allowed it to get worse?

Do they even realize that this is exact same theocratic extremism that our soldiers and marines are stopping in Iraq and around the world? We are stopping people with the same hateful motivations as Falwell (a context the left can understand) but with murderous intent and far more powerful weapons than TV evangelism.

Details are of no concern as the left cries about a lack of introspective on the right. Introspection? How about the left's lack of sanity?