Libertarian Hero Ron Paul Blames US for 9/11

[Oliver]

Nonsense, Saddam came to power without any help at all from the US. In fact, his primary arms suppliers and influence was to USSR, Stalin was a hero to him. please retract this claim.

Original Source:
NEW YORK TIMES (purchasable):
A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making

Alternative, free Source:
http://www.phoenixprojectpac.us/user/A Tyrant 40 Years.pdf

False.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A13558-2003Dec18&notFound=true

Publicly, the United States maintained neutrality during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, which began in 1980.
Privately, however, the administrations of Reagan and George H.W. Bush sold military goods to Iraq, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological agents, worked to stop the flow of weapons to Iran, and undertook discreet diplomatic initiatives, such as the two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, to improve relations with Hussein.

Wait a minute, is this the infamous episode where after the bombing someone spray-painted (in English) "Baby Milk Factory" on the chemical arms facility?

That must have been FOX news - or the always censoring Pentagon.
Here's the uncensored story with sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_pharmaceutical_factory

I won't apologize for getting in the way of Israel's genocidal neighbors goals.

You don't have to. All I want you to do is to understand that this is part of the problem.

False, the US armed and trained indigenous Afghani warlords. OBL and the Arab fighters were supplied and funded through other Arab states and individuals. And if your accusation was trrue that would hardly be a reason for 9/11, would it?

It would in terms of military training. That's always good training for terror-attacks, isn't it?
And concerning support for the Mujahedeen from the US:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahedeen

The mujahideen were significantly financed, armed, and trained by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Carter and Reagan administrations, Saudi Arabia, the People's Republic of China, several European countries, Iran, and Pakistan (during the Zia-ul-Haq military regime). The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was the interagent used in the majority of these activities to disguise the sources of support for the resistance.

Put in place to compel Saddam to comply with the peace treaty.

I know. But explain it to the Arabs and you can grasp the anger from the Arabs point of view.

It's not a lie if you believe it, and virtually every country (including Germany btw) believed it through their own intelligence sources.

So, why did Germany oppose the war? There were no hard facts and the yellow cake BS was made up. You remember what caused the Plame scandal, don't you?

If you have any that actually hold water post them, otherwise research the actual history of the situation.

That's my advice to you, too.

 

[UserGoogol]

So we should blame society every time a killer murders someone?

That depends on what the definition of "blame" is. It's totally society's fault, in that human beings are products of their environment and society is a major contributor to one's environment, and it's even something that society "could have known better," since the relationship between society and murderers is better understood than the relationship between "the guy who swerved his car when he could have run over a young Hitler" and the Holocaust. But to penalize "society" for the crimes of murderers is not necessarily going to amount to much of anything, since the problems which cause people to decide to go off and kill people are so complex that just hitting people and saying "stop producing murders, you damned society!" is not a very viable strategy.

The problem is that people seem to think there is an exclusivity to blame: that to the degree something is one person's fault means it is not another person's fault. This is a convenient legal fiction, but it's based on a gross oversimplification of causality. When a person commits a crime, is it their fault? Of course it is. Entirely completely their fault. They made the decision and it happened, and if they hadn't made the decision, it wouldn't have happened. (Assuming that the success of their crime wasn't just dumb luck.) But human beings are simply bags of meat which operate according to their biological composition and their experiences. Thus, those people (or non-people like trees, even) who helped influence a person to commit a crime are "to blame" for the crime too, although whether they are actually culpable depends on a lot of other things.

I don't agree with Ron Paul on quite a number of things, (and even on this issue I disagree with him in some ways) but his argument seems more or less valid. He didn't quite say "Our foreign policy caused September 11th so we deserve this, ha ha ha," he merely said "Our foreign policy caused September 11th, so to take that foreign policy even further in response to September 11th is stupid, and so people should elect me and make America all non-interventionist and stuff."

 

[Pardalis]

He didn't quite say "Our foreign policy caused September 11th so we deserve this, ha ha ha," he merely said "Our foreign policy caused September 11th, so to take that foreign policy even further in response to September 11th is stupid, and so people should elect me and make America all non-interventionist and stuff."

The problem with 9/11 is that it was committed by fanatical true believers. No matter what the US did in the Middle East, these 19 men and their sponsors have no basis in reality. They brainwashed themselves into believing what they did and 9/11 was the ultimate result of that brainwash.

It's like Jonestown. Is the US responsible for the massacre because Jim Jones said so?

ETA: and again, OBL doesn't speak for the entire Middle East, he has no authority in these matters, morally, politically or otherwise. Islamic fundamentalists are, thank god, a minority in the ME.

 

[Oliver]

That depends on what the definition of "blame" is. It's totally society's fault, in that human beings are products of their environment and society is a major contributor to one's environment, and it's even something that society "could have known better," since the relationship between society and murderers is better understood than the relationship between "the guy who swerved his car when he could have run over a young Hitler" and the Holocaust. But to penalize "society" for the crimes of murderers is not necessarily going to amount to much of anything, since the problems which cause people to decide to go off and kill people are so complex that just hitting people and saying "stop producing murders, you damned society!" is not a very viable strategy.

The problem is that people seem to think there is an exclusivity to blame: that to the degree something is one person's fault means it is not another person's fault. This is a convenient legal fiction, but it's based on a gross oversimplification of causality. When a person commits a crime, is it their fault? Of course it is. Entirely completely their fault. They made the decision and it happened, and if they hadn't made the decision, it wouldn't have happened. (Assuming that the success of their crime wasn't just dumb luck.) But human beings are simply bags of meat which operate according to their biological composition and their experiences. Thus, those people (or non-people like trees, even) who helped influence a person to commit a crime are "to blame" for the crime too, although whether they are actually culpable depends on a lot of other things.

I don't agree with Ron Paul on quite a number of things, (and even on this issue I disagree with him in some ways) but his argument seems more or less valid. He didn't quite say "Our foreign policy caused September 11th so we deserve this, ha ha ha," he merely said "Our foreign policy caused September 11th, so to take that foreign policy even further in response to September 11th is stupid, and so people should elect me and make America all non-interventionist and stuff."

I agree with you, you "USA-Basher"!

 

[Oliver]

The problem with 9/11 is that it was committed by fanatical true believers. No matter what the US did in the Middle East, these 19 men and their sponsors have no basis in reality. They brainwashed themselves into believing what they did and 9/11 was the ultimate result of that brainwash.

It's like Jonestown. Is the US responsible for the massacre because Jim Jones said so?

ETA: and again, OBL doesn't speak for the entire Middle East, he has no authority in these matters.

Off course OBL is a religious fanatic - like nearly everyone in the Middle East. There all dumb for their Gods, no matter if Arabs or Jews, instead growing up in terms of "Responsibility".

Everyone is blaming everyone. And every aggressive intervention makes it worse. It's just as simple as that.

 

[WildCat]

Original Source:
NEW YORK TIMES (purchasable):
A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making

Alternative, free Source:
http://www.phoenixprojectpac.us/user/A Tyrant 40 Years.pdf

Your source is an op-ed article? Do you know what an op-ed article is Oliver?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A13558-2003Dec18&notFound=true

Publicly, the United States maintained neutrality during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, which began in 1980.
Privately, however, the administrations of Reagan and George H.W. Bush sold military goods to Iraq, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological agents, worked to stop the flow of weapons to Iran, and undertook discreet diplomatic initiatives, such as the two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, to improve relations with Hussein.

The chemicals were dual-use. They were not for chemical weapons - but you can make chemical weapons from many things, it's not hard. It's quite a stretch to say the US allowed companies to sell those for chemical weapons.

That must have been FOX news - or the always censoring Pentagon.
Here's the uncensored story with sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_pharmaceutical_factory

Oh, that one. I thought your point was about Iraq? Do you not understand this was a mistake, or do you really think Clinton wanted to bomb an aspirin factory?

It would in terms of military training. That's always good training for terror-attacks, isn't it?

No, it wouldn't. Afghani terrorists did not attack the US on 9/11. They were all Arabs.

And concerning support for the Mujahedeen from the US:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahedeen

There were many factions of mujahedeen Oliver. Many warred against each other as well as the Soviets. There is no evidence the US funded, suppolied, or trained Arab mujahedeen.

I know. But explain it to the Arabs and you can grasp the anger from the Arabs point of view.

Not the fault of the US that many Arab countries deliberately keep their populaces ignorant by censoring media and educating them to hate from day 1.

So, why did Germany oppose the war? There were no hard facts and the yellow cake BS was made up. You remember what caused the Plame scandal, don't you?

"In March 2002 , August Hanning, the head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Services (FIS), told the New Yorker magazine: "It is our estimate that Iraq will have an atomic bomb within three years." - Source.

 

[Pardalis]

Off course OBL is a religious fanatic - like nearly everyone in the Middle East. There all dumb for their Gods, no matter if Arabs or Jews, instead growing up in terms of "Responsibility".

That's a broad statement that is obviously not true, but I understand and share the feeling behind it.

It is a feeling of helplessness, in face of fundamentalism. It's always the fanatics who act, decide the course of history and make the news. this gives us the false impression that they are everywhere in the Middle East when in fact most of the people there really just want to go about their business and live peacefully.

These few fanatics are the ones responsible for 9/11.

Everyone is blaming everyone. And every aggressive intervention makes it worse. It's just as simple as that.

Agreed.

 

[UserGoogol]

The problem with 9/11 is that it was committed by fanatical true believers. No matter what the US did in the Middle East, these 19 men and their sponsors have no basis in reality. They brainwashed themselves into believing what they did and 9/11 was the ultimate result of that brainwash.

It's like Jonestown. Is the US responsible for the massacre because Jim Jones said so?

No, but at the same time, people do join cults for reasons. People don't just suddenly say, "I wanna drink poison kool-aid. I've gotta find myself a club where I can get my hands on that." Similarly, people join terrorist organizations for reasons. Some of it is simply pure irrationality, little memetic hiccups as the random idea of some one-off nutcase manages to inexplicably gain popularity. But I don't think Al-Qaeda is purely that. There is a reason why Al-Qaeda decided to focus so much attention on America instead of Switzerland or Tuvalu.

I'll admit that Ron Paul's analysis is oversimplistic. (As, of course, is true of everything anyone ever says at presidential debates.) Some people hate America simply because it's a very large and powerful country, and therefore an obvious target. Other people hate America because it's so damned representative of modernity, with all the ills that people sometimes ascribe to that. And some people really do just hate our freedoms. But I do think that aggressive foreign policies can make enemies in the world, and that when Al-Qaeda says as much, they're not just pulling stuff out of their ass so as to cover their real motives.

 

[varwoche]

According to Michael Scheuer, the preeminent expert on bin Laden (formatting added)...

And the genius that lies behind it, because he's not a man who rants against our freedoms, our liberties, our voting, our — the fact that our women go to school. He's not the Ayatollah Khomeini; he really doesn't care about all those things. To think that he's trying to rob us of our liberties and freedom is, I think, a gross mistake. What he has done, his genius, is identify particular American foreign policies that are offensive to Muslims whether they support these martial actions or not — our support for Israel, our presence on the Arabian Peninsula, our activities in Afghanistan and Iraq, our support for governments that Muslims believe oppress Muslims, be it India, China, Russia, Uzbekistan. Bin Laden has focused the Muslim world on specific, tangible, visual American policies.

 

[MaGZ]

You still refuse to understand. US foreign policy lead to 9/11 - no matter if directly or indirectly. And while were at the 19 Hijackers and OBL:

Why IRAQ and not Pakistan and Saudi-Arabia or just OBL himself - you know, the guys who actually WHERE involved in 9/11?

The whole Iraq war leads to more terrorism - that was exactly what Ron Paul meant and this is what this thread is about, isn't it?

Do you agree the US support of Israel is part of that foreign policy that lead to 9/11?

 

[Oliver]

Your source is an op-ed article? Do you know what an op-ed article is Oliver?

You know who the author is, don't you?

"[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Roger Morris [send him mail], who served on the Senior Staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, is an award-winning historian and author of several books on American politics and foreign policy, including Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America. His latest book, Shadows of the Eagle, a history of US covert intervention and policy in the Middle East and South Asia, will be published by Alfred Knopf in 2007.[/FONT]"

The chemicals were dual-use. They were not for chemical weapons - but you can make chemical weapons from many things, it's not hard. It's quite a stretch to say the US allowed companies to sell those for chemical weapons.

They KNEW!!! that Saddam is using chemical weapons against the Kurds but they gave him the ingredients to make these weapons nevertheless. Do you even understand the scandal and double moral standards I'm getting at?

Oh, that one. I thought your point was about Iraq? Do you not understand this was a mistake, or do you really think Clinton wanted to bomb an aspirin factory?

No, I'm still talking about Middle-East foreign policy. But just let's say that some family-members from the casualties where so upset that they wanted to kill Americans and probably joined or supported Al Qaida financially.

No, it wouldn't. Afghani terrorists did not attack the US on 9/11. They were all Arabs.

Yep, mostly from Saudi Arabia. "Let's go and get the responsible people. Oh wait, we need the Saudi-Money-Friendship."

There were many factions of mujahedeen Oliver. Many warred against each other as well as the Soviets. There is no evidence the US funded, suppolied, or trained Arab mujahedeen.

So Al Qaida never got their Hands on the US-provided Weapons or Skills? I really doubt it - even without the missing evidence.

Not the fault of the US that many Arab countries deliberately keep their populaces ignorant by censoring media and educating them to hate from day 1.

Oh wonder - similar things happen in the US concerning censorship like covering the saudi/pakistani connections within the U.S. Congressional Inquiry and the 9/11 Commission Report. Or "the bad, evil Communists" "education". Don't think the US media is uncensored. You may not see this if you don't compare the news to international news sources.

"In March 2002 , August Hanning, the head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Services (FIS), told the New Yorker magazine: "It is our estimate that Iraq will have an atomic bomb within three years." - Source.

I don't understand your point here. Are you saying the alluminium Tubes fairytale and the made up yellow cake wasn't fabricated? You may miss the point that Germany opposed the war - no matter what the Intelligence said.
Probably because they knew how poor the evidence is.

But even if I thank you for this little debate, I have to continue after some sleep.

Cheers,
Oliver

 

[Oliver]

Do you agree the US support of Israel is part of that foreign policy that lead to 9/11?

Well, if this Quote from OBL was serious, yes:

"The International Islamic Front for Jihad against the U.S. and Israel has issued a crystal-clear fatwa calling on the Islamic nation to carry on jihad aimed at liberating holy sites. The nation of Muhammad has responded to this appeal. If the instigation for jihad against the Jews and the Americans in order to liberate Al-Aksa Mosque and the Holy Ka'aba Islamic shrines in the Middle East is considered a crime, then let history be a witness that I am a criminal."[60]

Did someone say something different?

 

[Pardalis]

No, but at the same time, people do join cults for reasons. People don't just suddenly say, "I wanna drink poison kool-aid. I've gotta find myself a club where I can get my hands on that." Similarly, people join terrorist organizations for reasons.

I somewhat agree. Even though some of the people who join terrorist groups really want to drink the kool aid (in their case "kill Americans"), alot of them join for multiple reasons which have rather broad implications (poverty, war, etc, in which the US play some part).

But the actions of these groups (be it The People's Temple or Al Qaeda) are the result of irrational thinking: they didn't think things through rationally and have decided to pin the reason for their problems on one single "malevolent" entity: the US. Therefore, in my opinion, one can not attribute the blame for these events on the US, but on the irrationality of the culprits.

 

[Pardalis]

Well, if this Quote from OBL was serious, yes:

Did someone say something different?

All is lost when normal people quote irrational people and agree with them.

 

[pgwenthold]

Is it true that Ron Paul was the winner of the "text your vote for the winner of the debate" survey that Fox did? That's what Rachel Maddow said tonight.

 

[Admiral]

Libertarians tend to have an Isolationist strain running through their political rhetoric.

Not exactly- "isolationist" includes being against free trade. Isolationists would support protectionist tarriffs, which almost no libertarians support.

The right term is "non-interventionist," which is against both military involvement and foreign aid, but not necessarily free trade.

 

[corplinx]

Ron Paul stated that Reagan's pullout from Beiruit should be an example to us (Of changing our minds on interventionism). I find this funny since the US pullout from Beirut made the US look like an easy target according to OBL.

 

[corplinx]

Is it true that Ron Paul was the winner of the "text your vote for the winner of the debate" survey that Fox did? That's what Rachel Maddow said tonight.

10 candidates, 1 is pro-immediate-pullout (a la the democrats). Not surprisingly Ron Paul got something like 30 percent or more while the other candidates split the GOP voters. In other words, he got the democrat vote.

However, no Democrat would actually vote for Ron Paul.

 

[pgwenthold]

Were there really that many democrats watching a republican debate on Fox News?

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Ron Paul seems to be the only partial rational republican running so far, alas he has no chance to win...