Iraq, 9/11, and the Second Republican Debate
By Chad A. B. Wilson
Published May 16, 2007, 4:17 pm in News, Rhetoric.
The Republican debate of May 15, 2007 featured some great stuff. Some memorable lines, some provocative hypothetical situations, and some prying on the part of the Fox News moderators. In light of the death of Jerry Falwell, the debate focused on the defense of conservatism. In other words, each participant spent the entire time attacking others as liberals or defending his own conservative beliefs. Each one brought up Ronald Reagan, and he was the measure of all things conservative; each candidate tried to say that he would be the most like Reagan.
Here, I will go into the specifics of the debate and discuss how the news stories on the debate don't present the entire picture. But first, let's talk about the idea of conservatism. Let's face it: Jerry Falwell is dead, and the Moral Majority died in 1989. Sure, there's the Christian Coalition (run by Reed), but this organization seems to have outlived its usefulness, too. The 2006 midterm election signaled a change, just as the Gingrich midterm election in 1994 signaled the opposite change. The country is not becoming more liberal, no, but the definition of conservatism as epitomized by Bush has definitely changed. Perhaps these candidates don't need to defend their conservatism; perhaps the represent a new kind of conservatism. So maybe Romney and Giuliani don't need to defend their stances on abortion. Maybe McCain doesn't need to apologize for legislation with Democrats on immigration and campaign finance reform. Maybe those are signals that the party's platform should change, too.
But that's beside the point. Let's get to the real stuff--the debate itself.
If you read the New York Times article covering the debate, you will come across this:
"Mr. Giuliani, trying to move his campaign past a week in which he has tried to convince conservatives that his positions on social issues should not disqualify him from winning the Republican nomination, repeatedly described the election as a referendum on Republican policies against terrorism, as he reminded an audience of what he had done in New York after Sept. 11. At one point, one of Mr. Giuliani’s lesser-known opponents, Representative Ron Paul of Texas, gave what turned out to be a big platform to Mr. Giuliani when he appeared to suggest that the United States invited the attacks of Sept. 11 by having originally invaded Iraq.
'May I comment on that?' Mr. Giuliani said, looking grim. 'That’s really an extraordinary statement. That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.'
Mr. Giuliani was interrupted by cheers and applause. 'And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that,' he said."
I read this and paused: "The United States invited the attacks of Sept. 11 by having originally invaded Iraq"? But the timetable doesn't make sense here, for we didn't invade Iraq until two and a half years after 9/11. Crazy. Perhaps my homestate representative doesn't know what he's talking about. Perhaps he was talking about the first Iraq war, though. So I went to the transcript, and I was pleasantly surprised. Guiliani was wrong.
Representative Paul was much more nuanced than the New York Times leads us to believe. He was discussing the merits of non-intervention and how the Constitution suggests that the U.S. should take care of itself. He says that Bush campaigned in 2000 on a platform of humble, non-interventionist foreign policy. They should continue that, according to Paul.
So the moderator pushed him and asked, "Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?"
Paul's response:
"No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.
"We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us.
"Moderator: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?
"REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, 'I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.' They have already now since that time -- (bell rings) -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary."
That's when Giuliani interrupted and said that it was a preposterous explanation. Why did he do this? Possibly because he wanted to say yet again that he was there during the 9/11 attacks (it's not the only time during the debate that he brings this up).
So Paul responds:
"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.
"They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?"
We get an indication of what this means from Representative Tancredo: "And although my dear friend Ron here -- I dearly love and really respect, but I'll tell you, I just have to disagree with you, Ron, about the issue of whether or not that -- whether Israel existed or didn't, whether or not we were in the Iraq war or not, they would be trying to kill us because it's a dictate of their religion, at least a part of it, and we have to defend ourselves."
There are a lot of problems here. Tancredo says that "they" would always be trying to kill "us" because it's a "dictate of their religion." Who is "they"? Does he mean Muslims? Or just Islamists or Jihadists? If it is a dictate of "their" religion, wouldn't that mean that all Muslims are trying to kills us? When they talk about a war against Jihadists, are they really saying that this should be a war against Islam? If so, there are a billion people to fight. See my post on Militant Mouse from yesterday for more on this. Is that really right? Is that why they attacked us on 9/11? Because it's a dictate of their religion?
I don't think so. Me, I'm with Paul, and bin Laden agrees: the reason why they attacked us is because we're meddling in their affairs. It's because we're basically running Saudi Arabia. It's because we're not keeping to our non-interventionist policies. Now, should we have invaded Iraq in 1989? Possibly. I really don't have a strong opinion on that because it seems that we were right to defend Kuwait, yet perhaps we had not exhausted our diplomatic options. Is Paul right when he says that bin Laden attacked America because we had been bombing Iraq for 10 years? No, not quite. It about a policy of intervention and meddilng.
But how can we stop that? We have to protect our interests, right? We have to defend our economic systems, and sometimes that means doing things in other countries, like making sure that Saudi Arabia continues to funnel its oil into America. What's the solution? Maybe I will get to that next time. For now, let's just say that the debates were fun, and I wish the news bites weren't quite so misleading.
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