Watch libertarian congressman Ron Paul’s much-discussed foreign policy critique at last night’s Republican debate in South Carolina here.
Paul’s proposals w/r/t Iraq aside, what he’s essentially saying is that there are specific American policies in the Middle East that contributed to resentment and eventually to the events of 9/11. This is a narrative which is pretty difficult to substantially disagree with — it’s what Al Qaeda members say in their media, it’s what pretty much anyone who studies the Middle East says. (Although his reference to the Iranian hostage crisis did sort of throw me.) So take a look at how Giuliani responds (from the NYT writeup):
“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.
What Giuliani’s referring to with the “attacking Iraq bit,” by the way, is Paul’s citation of the Clinton administration’s enforcement of the no-fly zones, sanctions, and bombings throughout the 1990s.
I don’t know whether Giuliani actually misunderstood Paul’s point or simply seized the opportunity to do a little grandstanding, perhaps reminding the audience that he was mayor on 9/11, because they’d had a whole three minutes to forget. But seriously, American policies causing the 9/11 attacks does not mean that Paul thinks that Americans are responsible, that we “invited” the attacks. It means that we should just, y’know, take some time to think about how other people are going to view and respond to our actions.
Of course, the truly frightening aspect of this exchange was the massive audience response to Giuliani. It felt like the crowd couldn’t believe their ears while Paul was speaking and urgently needed someone to respond to such heresies. It was like Giuliani became the spokesman for a vast group of people who feel that there is such a group as “Blame America First’ers” and that America’s virtue needs to be trumpeted at all times.
Further, the whole audience was wholly on board the current Republican truthiness train, if referring to “truthiness” isn’t a little 2006 at this point. It didn’t matter that Giuliani was blatantly misrepresenting what Paul said – and that no one really bothered to reply to Paul – what mattered was that he was responding to Paul in a way that felt right, the indignant America’s Mayor standing up for freedom – and for the terrorists hating our freedom.
