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Local News & Opinion
Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
Films, Arts & Education
Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable Health & Environment
06.29 Thinking about Climate 06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN 06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare 06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All 06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate 06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex 06.22 Thinking about Recoveries 06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo 06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform 06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers 06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care 06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations Media Watching
06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform 06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage 06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right 06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess US Politics, Policy & Culture
06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy 06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity 06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail 06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission? 06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership 06.25 America's "Bases of Empire" 06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town 06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins 06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program 06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black 06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix 06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran? 06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program? 06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory 06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed High Crimes?
07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement" 07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure 06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq 06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release 06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War 06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future 06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record 06.14 Fear Rules Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America 06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control 06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney International
07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean 06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New 06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise' 06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil 06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?” 06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran 06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections 06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters 06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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COMMENTARY:Thank You, Ron PaulDuring the recent Republican debate, Congressman Ron Paul spoke the truth about U.S. Middle East policies and faced down attacks by hostile fellow presidential candidates.
Ron Paul, a Republican congressman running for president, is saying what needs to be said about the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq war. Clearly, his rivals and the news media can't handle the truth.At the most recent Republican debate, Paul not only repeated his opposition to the illegal and unconstitutional war, but he also identified 50 years of U.S. intervention in the Middle East as "a major contributing factor" in al-Qaeda's attacks in 2001.
Paul thus becomes the first person in mainstream politics--he's been in Congress many years--to acknowledge that U.S. foreign policy has had bad consequences not only for people in the Middle East but for Americans at home as well. A government cannot take sides in so many deep-seated conflicts for as long as the U.S. government has without acquiring enemies and provoking retaliation. It doesn't take much knowledge of history and human nature--not to mention the official 9/11 Commission report--to see this. It's about time it was said in such a prominent forum. Of course, the reaction was stunningly absurd.
FOX News questioner Wendell Goler asked Paul a stunningly absurd and disingenuous follow-up question.
FOX News questioner Wendell Goler said in follow-up, "Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?"Let's examine the question. To invite something is to desire the thing invited. Paul suggested no such thing. And who is "we"? Goler's question implies that Paul was saying the American people or "America" invited the attacks. But Paul was talking about American policymakers, not the American people. So the question was way off the mark and may have been an attempt to bait Paul. He wouldn't take the bait. "I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it," he said. In other words, the people who masterminded the attack did not say they did it because we Americans are rich or free or non-Muslim. Their grievances relate to systematic U.S. intervention in the region: in particular, the presence of troops near holy sites in Saudi Arabia; a 10-year bombing campaign and killer embargo on Iraq (beginning in 1991), which cost hundreds of thousands of lives; and support for Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Rudolph Giuliani, also running for the nomination, responded demagogically, "That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq.... I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that."
"If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred," said Congressman Paul, "then we have a problem."
Of course, Paul never said "we invited the attack." And he didn't back down under Giuliani's grandstanding: "I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about 'blowback.' When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem."In saying "blowback," Paul was using the CIA's term for the unintended bad consequences of a government operation. He specifically mentioned Iran in 1953, when the Eisenhower administration sent the CIA to help drive an elected secular prime minister from office and return the despotic shah to power. The result was the 1979 Islamic revolution, the seizure of the American embassy, complete with hostages, and close to 30 years of hostility, with war perhaps to come. U.S. imperialist polices in the Middle East have been good for special interests and power-loving politicians, but bad for the American people. Someone in government has finally had the courage to say so. Thank you, Ron Paul. Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation and editor of The Freeman magazine.
Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on May 18, 2007. |
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