I’m tired of the Rick Perry firestorm. Time for a Ron Paul firestorm. Another Clueless Presidential Candidate Alert: “Ron Paul says U.S. intervention motivated 9/11 attacks,” by Josh Hafner for the Des Moines Register, August 27:
WINTERSET, Ia. — Two weeks away from the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, presidential candidate and Texas Rep. Ron Paul says that U.S. intervention in the Middle East is a main motivation behind terrorist hostilities toward America, and that Islam is not a threat to the nation.
At a campaign stop on Saturday in Winterset, one man asked Paul how terrorist groups would react if the U.S. removed its military presence in Middle Eastern nations, a move the candidate advocates.
“Which enemy are you worried that will attack our national security?” Paul asked.
“If you”re looking for specifics, I”m talking about Islam. Radical Islam,” the man answered.
“I don’t see Islam as our enemy,” Paul said. “I see that motivation is occupation and those who hate us and would like to kill us, they are motivated by our invasion of their land, the support of their dictators that they hate.”
Yes. When Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, “Have no doubt… Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world,” he was just upset about the U.S. invasion of Iran. When CAIR cofounder and longtime Board chairman Omar Ahmad said in southern California that “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth” (he now denies saying this, but the original reporter sticks by her story), he was just angry about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. When the prominent American Muslim leader Siraj Wahhaj said, “if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate,” he was upset about the U.S. invasion of Dearborn, Michigan. When the most influential Islamic cleric in the world today, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, said that “Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor, after being expelled from it twice,” he was upset about the U.S. invasion of Malmö, Sweden.
Regarding 9/11, Paul said that attacks against the U.S. from Middle Eastern groups at home and abroad can be traced to the foreign presence of U.S. troops, as well as America’s relationships with dictator regimes.
Paul referred to a military base in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, as a key motivator in the Sept. 11th attacks. Osama bin Laden viewed it as an American desecration of holy land.
“After 9/11, (people said) “˜Oh yeah, it’s those very bad people who hate us,” but 15 of (the hijackers) came from Saudi Arabia,” said Paul. “One of the reasons they attacked us, is we propped up this Sharia government and the fundamentalists hated us for it.”
Paul is totally clueless. They attacked us because we were propping up a “Sharia government” and “the fundamentalists hated us for it”? Since when do Islamic “fundamentalists” disapprove of Sharia governments? They attacked us, according to Osama bin Laden, because, among other reasons, we were in his view “prevent[ing] our people from establishing the Islamic Shariah,” not propping up a Sharia state.
The congressman particularly decried U.S.-led bombings in foreign nations, saying that “almost always those individuals that they are trying to kill did not have any direct relationship” with threats to the U.S.
Accordingly, his expectations for the rebels in Libya, who were assisted by American-led bombing efforts, aren’t very bright.
“Remember “˜Mission Accomplished”? That’s probably about where we are right now,” Paul told The Des Moines Register, “and (the U.S.) better be very cautious about bragging about anything.”
The crumbling of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s regime wouldn’t amount to a significant victory because al-Qaeda forces would arise there soon, Paul said.
He is certainly right about that.
“As bad as Gadaffi was, he didn’t like the al-Qaeda,” Paul said. “He kicked those people out.”
Paul cited a University of Chicago professor, Robert Pape, whose research argues that most of the suicide terrorism in the past 30 years was caused by military occupation. Pape’s research, funded by the Defense Department, shows that suicide bombings in Afghanistan went up one third after the Obama administration surged 30,000 troops into the country.
Not only is Pape wrong; he’s on the dole of Hamas-linked CAIR.
“(9/11) was one of the main motivations for getting your attention on why they hate us and want to kill us,” he said. “You could send 20 million people over there and all it would do is make our problems worse.”
That last part, about sending 20 million people over there and all it would do would be to make our problems worse, is certainly true.