A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Is Ron Paul right?

The debate kerfuffle between Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani over the question of the causes behind the 9/11 attacks has generated a fair amount of comment. I think Paul got the better of the exchange and Giuliani came across as a bit of a demagogue, but it’s still worth asking whether Paul is right here.

Talking about the connection between our interventionist foreign policy and “blowback” in the form of terrorism has been the genuine third rail of US politics over the last 5+ years. What I didn’t hear Paul say was that we in any way deserved the 9/11 attacks. This is the canard frequently used against people who try to explain the motives of the terrorists with reference to US foreign policy. But there’s a big difference between explaining something and justifying it. Saying that OBL and co. want to attack us because we’re “over there” as Paul puts it does not imply that they were right to do so.

My view has been that our interventions in the Middle East are at least a contributing factor in Islamist terrorism and the 9/11 attacks. I don’t want to discount the role of Islamic extremism, as some leftists and anti-war conservatives seem to do. The former often advert to sheerly economic or political explanations, while the latter sometimes fixate on the role of Israel. Nevertheless, as Paul pointed out in the debate, bin Laden and his confederates have explicitly said that they attacked us because of our presence over there. It would be extremely foolish to disregard their own account of their motives, even if it’s not the full story.

An important component, I would think, of any sound strategy against terrorism would be to “peel off” potential supporters of terrorist groups by listening to their concerns about our presence in the region. Granted there are a hard core of radicalized jihadists who will be swayed by nothing, terrorist groups seem to thrive only when they have some kind of support from the larger public. Presumably one of the reasons the IRA was able to carry on its campaigns for so long was that there were people not directly involved who at least sympathized to some degree. Paul is surely right that it’s important to ask how we would feel if some other country was meddling in our affairs like we do in the Middle East (and elsewhere).

And even apart from the question of blowback, we need to ask whether our interventions are a) good for the US on the whole and in the long run and b) morally legitimate. Even if Osama bin Laden didn’t oppose it, there’s still reason to doubt whether US forces should’ve be stationed in Saudi Arabia, just like there’s a legitimate question whether our forces should remain stationed in Iraq. And the fact that it would likely make the Iranian people dislike us even more (possibly leading to terrorist reprisals) is not the only reason to doubt the wisdom of attacking Iran to prevent the government there from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Conservatives have reacted (at times understandably) against the leftist litany of American misdeeds, but this has all too often spilled over into an uncritical approval of everything the US does or has ever done. If conservatism means anything it means dealing with reality as it is, not as you would wish it to be. At least the kinds of conservative thinkers I’ve always found congenial are those who criticize simplistic, utopian, and ideological thinking. Repeating the mantra that “they hate us because we’re free” won’t help us understand our enemies and ultimately deal more intelligently with them.

Moreover, Christians of all people should be able to look unflinchingly at their own sins. We don’t need to pretend that we, individually or collectively, are free from fault. Believing in the power of forgiveness ought to enable us to look honestly at our own failings and those of our country, without sliding into self-loathing. We shouldn’t have to fear acknowledging them and, if necessary, changing course. That’s part of what I think Christians should bring to the civic conversation, especially when political parties seem institutionally committed to an uncritical nationalism.

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6 responses to “Is Ron Paul right?”

  1. The Giuliani-Paul Exchange « Eating Words

    […] 17th, 2007 at 12:52 pm (Politics/War) Lee has done me the favor of saying almost everything I considered saying about the much-discussed exchange between Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani in the recent Republican […]

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  2. Kepler

    There is a deep problem with this analysis, however. You said, “Nevertheless, as Paul pointed out in the debate, bin Laden and his confederates have explicitly said that they attacked us because of our presence over there. It would be extremely foolish to disregard their own account of their motives, even if it’s not the full story.”

    I think the simple facts of history put the lie to their motives. We do well to remember that Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman (aka the Blind Sheik) was preaching against growing secularization in the Middle East (specifically in his home country of Egypt) since the mid-1960s.

    When Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David Accords, Sheik Rahman issued a fatwa against Sadat for conspiring with the enemy (i.e., Israel). Sadat was assassinated 2 years later. Sheik Rahman was arrested, tortured and held in jail for three years, after which he went to Afghanistan. He participated in the resistance against the Soviets, but his main enemy was always Israel, and anyone who helped her.

    His principal confrères in Afghanistan were Ayman al-Zawahiri (of Egyptian Islamic Jihad), and Osama bin Laden. All three of them were under the tutelage of Abdullah Azzam, co-founder (along with bin Laden) of Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK). They referred to their primary encampment in Afghanistan as “the base,” which in Arabic is “Al-Qaeda”. (Sheik Rahman had been a student of Azzam in Egypt, while bin Laden had been his student after Azzam moved to Saudi Arabia.)

    He came to the US illegally in July 1990 (a month before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait), and masterminded the assassination of Rabbi Kahane in November 1990.

    Sheik Rahman later became the leader of the al Farooq mosque, where the plans to bomb the WTC in 1993 were hatched. Ramzi Yousef, the primary perpetrator in the bombing, was a member of that mosque. Yousef had this to say as his explanation of the bombing:

    “We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region.”

    There’s no mention of American occupation there. Support for Israel, yes. Perhaps even support for Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Occupation? No.

    The anti-western war began long before the first gulf war. One of the critical events which we Americans barely remember was the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia in 1979. (It was barely covered on the news here because we were all paying attention to the hostage crisis.) Islamic fundamentalists besieged the Mosque during the Hajj in protest of the westernization of the Saud family. The revolt was brutally put down, by both Saudi and French forces. The takeover and subsequent retaliation resulted in hundreds of deaths. Those who were captured were beheaded, bring the death-toll to about 500. One of Osama bin Laden’s brothers was allegedly among the rebels.

    This is an anti-Western fanatical ideology. Not Islam in general, but the radical groups who make up most of fundamentalist Islam. Just having an embassy in their country would have been enough of an offense.

    Whether or not we had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, they would have eventually brought the fight to us. Indeed, as the 1993 WTC bombing proves, they already had.

    So, the answer to the question in the title is, “No. Ron Paul is not correct.”

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  3. Lee

    Well , I don’t know if that invalidates Paul’s point, especially if, like me, you don’t see the fanatical ideology and the opposition to American intervention in the ME as mutually exclusive explanations. And if the presence of US troops on Arab soil is seen as part of this broader pattern of intervention (the presence of US soldiers in Saudi Arabia preceded the first WTC attacks, right?), then the litany of complaint you quoted also doesn’t contradict it: they’re fanatically anti-Western in part because of the Western presence in the region and the perception (often justified) of Western meddling.

    And of course the broader question is why these fanatics and extremists attract a broader following in the first place? And why do their campaigns take the form of anti-Western campaigns rather than campaigns directed exclusively against their own corrupt governments? Obviously part of the explanation is that they perceive Western nations as being in cahoots with those very governments.

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  4. Kepler

    Let me put a very fine point on it: our involvement with Israel is enough excuse for them to want to bring the fight to us.

    These people are religious fanatics, not idealogical fanatics (i.e., this isn’t about economics — not for them anyway). They see anything Western as inherently anti-Islam. It’s not about the US being there, it’s about the US . In their eyes, the west (and the US in particular) are the origin point of all the secularization these people see in their governments. They had this view at least as far back as the 1960s. If anything, this goes back to the Suez Crisis, in which we took the isolationist position. NEWS BULLETIN: taking the isolationist position did not win us any Brownie points.

    As for the 1993 WTC bombing… Ramzi Yousef joined the Muslim Brotherhood in the late 80s, prior to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. He was in Pakistan/Afghanistan by 1989, working with MaK, prior to the invasion of Kuwait. Thus he was already pre-disposed to the militant cause long before there were any troops in Afghanistan.

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  5. Pithlord

    Kepler,

    I think it is important to distinguish between (a) the utopian “ultimate goals” of a movement; (b) what motivates the existing hard core of that movement and (c) the grievances that help the movement grow and obtain support from the broader population.

    There will always be people who hate the US, and there will be some proportion of them who are willing to risk their own lives and kill civilians to express this hatred. Nothing anyone can do about that. But US actions can have the effect of increasing (or reducing) the number of such people, as well as the larger number of more passive sympathisers. Rumsfeld actually got the equation right: the question is whether the US is generating more terrorists than it is killing.

    Broadly speaking, most people kill and die about relatively local conflicts. An interventionist policy globalizes those conflicts. When the US takes a side, people who would otherwise have local enemies (and perhaps rhetorical denunciation of the West) see the US as the main enemy. Human nature being what it is, fighting the imperialists is always a popular rallying cry.

    There is also just the fact that when the US disregards international law, it has the effect of undermining that law for other states and non-state actors.

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  6. gaius sempronius gracchus

    Kepler makes a valid point in saying our support of Israel is certainly enough to generate hatred from the Islamists. But who ever denied that?

    Muslim hatred for the US and terrorism against the US directly resulting from our active support of Israel is just more blowback, no?

    If we did what consistent isolationsts actually want and disengaged altogether from the Middle East, that particular provocation would cease.

    But as for Ron Paul’s remarks, there is a sense in which he does, did, and should blame America, which raises more than one interesting point.

    First, he blames America for the regular bombing of Iraq that began after the first Gulf War and continued right through the Clinton era, as well as for the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths that resulted from the sanctions that cut off needed medicines and foods.

    He has repeatedly made these points about 9/11, and made them again the day after the debate when interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

    Now, who among credible Just War exponents would defend those US actions, so directly targeted against civilians?

    What honest judge does not regard them as every bit as immoral as, but far more devastating than, the anti-civilian terrorism of the Muslim fanatics?

    RP himself asked outright, again, in that inteview with Blitzer I mentioned, how we Americans feel would if someone had done that to us, and himself gave a shrug for an answer.

    Is he not here hinting, if not saying in so many words, that Muslim retribution would have been justified had it targeted American military or government targets and not civilians?

    If he not saying our government, so to speak, asked for it and had it coming?

    Second, RP has since the exchange defended himself by insisting he blames bad policy and not the American people.

    What a whopper of a confession that the American people have next to nothing to do with the policies pursued by the American government!

    What a confession that we are prisoners of our own elites, and of our radically anti-democratic Constitutional setup!

    I am next to continually amazed at how frankly the anti-war right nowadays attributes the persistence of American global interventionism to the anti-democratic nature of our government and the total control of policy by a runaway military industrial complex that is hiding the gratuitious and wicked violence of its policy behind a barrage of lies about the GWOT and the true motives of Islamic terrorists.

    You would think they would be afraid even dunderhead Americans could draw the lesson that we, at elast as much as anyone else in the world, need a regime change to free us from our elites and empower democracy!

    But not a one of them would support the slightest serious constitutional change to castrate the MIC and empower the people.

    Even though every word of their complaints is a confession that the US Constitution is a failure and the government it created and legitimates cannot be restrained, even to legality.

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