What 'Extraordinary' Statement?

by Angelo Mike 

Exclusive to STR

May 17, 2007

I normally never watch political debates, the reasons for which being obvious for anyone who is familiar with my views on politics. I simply don’t have the patience to watch liars and thieves try to enhance their own prestige and overrate their powers of compulsion and coercion.  

The other night’s Republican presidential debate was no exception save for the anomaly of Ron Paul. I didn’t see it for a combination of the usual reasons, forgetfulness, and fatigue from a day working on my feet, but the wonderful Ron Paul’s participation in the night’s events has sparked an internet frenzy over not only his overall performance (beating each of the other candidates in an ABC online poll by about 20,000 votes each as of now) but his feuding with Rudolph Giuliani. Rather, Giuliani’s feuding with Paul.  

Paul was asked by the moderator about his stance of non-interventionism and whether such a stance is responsible after September 11^th. Paul maintained his position, saying that it was interventions such as “bombing Iraq for 10 years” that inspired such hatred from potential terrorists. The “American way” is very different for someone who’s seen family members blown to pieces by US bombs rather than for someone who’s grown up in one of its public schools and gives the Pledge of Allegiance every morning to its flag.  

Rudolph Giuliani was unable to contain himself. He spoke out of turn and said, “That's really an extraordinary statement. That's really 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 have ever heard that before and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11. I would ask the congressman withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that.”  

The audience was practically in a roar in cheering him on. Paul accepted the chance to respond but did not waver. In a strange turn of events in Washington politics, Paul did not bend to Giuliani or the audience, saying,  

“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. And the reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And we if 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 here to attack us because we’re over there. I mean, what would we think if other foreign countries did that to us?”  

Giuliani immediately chimed in, asking for a 30 second response, which he was refused.  

Giuliani’s comments, as sincere as they were, were pandering. They weren’t proofs of his beliefs, something that Paul supplied for his own. They were hollow rhetoric full of malice for anyone who thinks that the American way is not an authority to be projected from the top down. Giuliani not-so-astonishingly didn’t substantiate a single thing he said.  

There is a lot of substance to what he said, in a perverse way. So let’s analyze Giuliani’s statement for all its implications.  

Allow me to quote Giuliani again except for the last sentence calling for Paul to respond, since this is the substance of what he said:  

“That's really an extraordinary statement. That's really 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 have ever heard that before and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.”  

Were Paul’s statements so “extraordinary” because we weren’t bombing Iraq for 10 years? Was Paul lying through teeth about Iraq bombings? No, so that couldn’t have been it.  

Has Giuliani lived in such a bubble since Sept. 11 that he never heard such explanations of the attacks before? If so, then why did it not strike him as disturbingly accurate that bombing nations for years without interruption would make those with close ties and sympathies to victims of such bombings hate America and its government? If he has heard such charges before, then he was lying when he said, “I don’t think I have ever heard that before,” just so he could posture himself as stunned at the allegation and respond as if he won’t have a chance to offer a coherent, thoughtful response to Paul at some future date, either on TV, radio, or in print. Surely, someone running for president ought to be capable of that.  

What was so extraordinary about this? Was it that Giuliani is an American, and by virtue of his status as such and living within its borders, the American government’s foreign policy is incapable of rendering foreigners angry at us? Why? Does bombing in the name of American interests, strength, democracy, or whatever the current slogan is, render foreigners immune from hating America ?  

If so, Giuliani’s angry response is perfectly understandable, and Paul is mistaken. America can have a policy of “bombs away” so long as this is the case. Then again, if things ever got to this point, we could assume away all the sad facts such as laws of economics and ethics which restrict what we’re capable of bringing about through means such as bombing and putting up navies to keep food and medicine out of Iraq , killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. As it is, nothing but death and destruction are possible.  

Giuliani felt it necessary to bring up that he “lived through the attack of Sept. 11” to show what a scandal Paul’s comments were. Now, what does having lived in New York on Sept. 11 have to do with American foreign policy? Did his existence in New York , along with many other New Yorkers who died, received wounds, and mourned, make it impossible for those attacks to have been carried out as part of an ideological movement against American foreign policy?  

By that measure, does it not mean that the victims of American bombings in Iraq , by virtue of their very existence as dead, wounded, and grieved, too, mean that it is illogical to assume that such bombings were the result of nothing but unprovoked hatred? Should the only conclusion Iraqis have come to was that American military men and women merely hated them for their status in the world, and that a total war against America was justified in response? If not, why? Because a qualified “yes” or “no”, with no gradations in between, is all that is necessary to answer the question of whether people experienced an attack or not.  

Was it by virtue of their status as Iraqis and Giuliani’s as an American? And is this to say that America can only maintain its well being at the expense of thousands, if not millions, of dead and wounded?  

America is a far weaker country than I thought if that is the case. Unlike most of this article, I am not being facetious to make a point with that line. It is a truly sad fact, yet it’s never stopped the American government before. I don’t believe it to truly be the case, otherwise I would favor Giuliani’s position. Rather, Americans act as if it’s the case. Although most Americans probably have thought it out as poorly as Giuliani displayed on stage, this is still a popularly favored idea.  

What we are experiencing with candidates such as Giuliani and the other war hawks is nothing new. The historical setting of such warfare is by no means limited to America nor to the Bush administration. The slaughter of Iraq during the 1990s and early 2000s was intensified with the current war. Preceded in part by the invasion of Afghanistan , and now will be followed by the attack on Iran.  

Anything I can say to describe the immorality and destruction to follow would be nothing that could not also describe our two previous invasions. I can’t think of anything new to add. The last two were, and the next invasion will be the moral equivalent of Hitler’s invasion of Poland , with terrible consequences to follow. Invading Iran certainly won’t be sufficient in actually protecting America , but it will unify even more people against us. It’s not the strength of their or our own weapons, but that of prevailing ideas in favor of such war which will make it endless.  

People’s ideas are demonstrated through their actions. Having personally seen the destruction of World War I and as a refugee from Europe of World War II, Mises says:  

Modern war is merciless, it does not spare pregnant women or infants; it is indiscriminate killing and destroying. It does not respect the rights of neutrals. Millions are killed, enslaved, or expelled from the dwelling places in which their ancestors lived for centuries. Nobody can foretell what will happen in the next chapter of this endless struggle. This has little to do with the atomic bomb. The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest. It is probable that scientists will discover some methods of defense against the atomic bomb. But this will not alter things, it will merely prolong for a short time the process of the complete destruction of civilization.  

As of today’s date, nothing has changed.