Attack Politics From the Right

In a recent Republican Presidential debate, Rep Ron Paul (R-TX), who is ostensibly running for the Republican presidential nomination made the point that America's foreign policy is behind this country being attacked on 9/11 and numerous other attacks around the world by Islamic terrorists.

With the debates in South Carolina, Rep Paul was the subject of cat calls from the audience and was all but booed. The other candidates took it upon themselves to distance themselves from the statement, including Rudy Guliani, who went so far as to call the explanation one of the most bizarre he had ever heard. Really, Rudy?

Moral support swarmed the President and the nation following the attacks of September 11, as well it should. It also should have, however, prompted a debate about why this group of individuals attacked us and had been attacking us for nearly 20 years.

When people tried to proffer this question, they were beaten down by people who thought they were trying to sympathize with the terrorists. This, however, is not about sympathizing with the terrorists, but rather a "lessons learned." And I am sure we did do it, after all former CIA analysts released books detailing this kind of thinking. But as a general public, we didn't learn any lessons, did we?

Of course, Rep Paul was correct. Our foreign policy decisions led to this attack. Did we deserve it? Of course not, but our decisions led directly to this outcome. What decisions are these? How about providing the country of Egypt with billions of dollars in military aid (fighter jets, tanks, guns, etc.) while Egypt tortures and oppresses its people. How about billions in military and foreign aid to Saudi Arabia, who does the same and is incidentally the largest supplier of oil to the world. How about funding both sides of the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980's? What about the 10 years of enforcing UN sanctions against Iraq through flying thousands of sorties in the north and south of the country? Or, the real bugaboo in the eyes of the Arabs: what about the tens of billions of dollars in military and economic aid to Israel, which has forced the Palestinians into refugee camps and attacked its neighbors such as Lebanon and Syria.

Of course, there is no mention of the reasons for any of these decisions or the alternatives, but that doesn't negate the fact that these are actual policy decisions which the United States has made in the Middle East. In fact, the West at large has played a significant role in the Middle East for decades, with many more examples of similar actions.

The real debate then is not why does the Middle East hate Britnet Spears or freedom or apple pie, but do these foreign policy decisions we make, predominantly for stability in the largest oil producing region in the world make sense? This is what Rep Paul was arguing, not did we deserve this.