Ron Paul and other paleocons such as the pro-jihad American Conservative are fanatically attached to the idea that Islamic jihad is all a reaction to the West’s foreign policy — so much so that they have frequently turned a blind eye to the jihadis’ stated agenda, and see the depredations of Western foreign policy where it actually played no part. The Charlie Hebdo jihad massacre was not about French foreign policy; according to one of the jihadists, it was about avenging Muhammad — avenging him, that is, for the insult of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. The West’s foreign policy regarding the Islamic world and the jihad threat is cartoonish, but that doesn’t make the Charlie Hebdo massacre about the West’s foreign policy.
“Ron Paul On Paris Attack: Bad Foreign Policy ‘Invites Retaliation,’” by Andrew Kaczynski, Buzzfeed, January 7, 2015:
Former Republican presidential candidate and congressman Ron Paul says bad foreign policy is to blame for the Paris terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left at least 12 dead and 11 wounded.
“Well, you know, partially what the Secretary of State said is true — this is pretty obscene, when it comes to violence, and libertarians are pretty annoyed by anybody who initiates violence,” said Paul on NewsMaxTV’s Steve Malzberg Show Wednesday. “This is pretty bad.”
Paul said the context for the attack, however, was France’s involvement in the Middle East.
“But in the context of things, France has been a target for many, many years, because they’ve been involved in foreign affairs in Libya, and they really prodded us along in — recently in Libya, but they’ve been involved in Algeria, so they’ve had attacks like this, you know, not infrequently. So, it does involve, you know, their foreign policy as well. When people do this, you know, the rejection of the violence has to be made, and with that I agree.”
“I put blame on bad policy that we don’t fully understand, and we don’t understand what they’re doing because the people who are objecting to the foreign policy that we pursue, they do it from a different perspective,” Paul added. “They see us as attacking them, and killing innocent people, so yes, they, they have — this doesn’t justify, so don’t put those words in my mouth — it doesn’t justify, but it explains it.”
Paul said it was the West’s overall foreign policy which “invites retaliation.”
“And this is why we say if we had somebody do to us what we have done to so many countries in the Middle East, and how many people we’ve killed, and sending over drones, and bombing, being involved in all these wars, and supporting dictators one week, and taking away the support — and the stupidity of us sending all those weapons into Syria, ending up in the hands of ISIS — and right now we’re even sending more weapons! You know, because ISIS took all the American weapons. It’s that overall policy which invites retaliation, and they see us as intruders. But it’s a little bit more complex, you know, when they hit us, either here at home, and hit civilians, and what’s happening in France. But I don’t think you can divorce these instances from the overall foreign policy.”…