Ron Paul and Republican Platitudes

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.

Scarves

Here’s a fascinating article from the Financial Times about the Turkish crisis:

Turkey is on the verge of a grave crisis. The country’s governing party, which has roots in political Islam, and its secular-minded military are at odds.

The issues at stake are momentous – the presidency of the republic and the future direction of the country itself. But the story of the past few weeks is a tale of misunderstandings, sexism, snobbery, bruised egos and mutinous soldiers, from which nobody emerges with much credit.

One aside that I thought was really fascinating was the discussion of the candidacy of Nimet Cubukcu, one of two candidates considered by President Erdogan for the succession who met with approval from the military brass:

…The other was Nimet Cubukcu, who had the inestimable advantage of being a woman.

General Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the general staff, had already made clear the military’s views: the new president had to be secular “not just in words, but in essence”, the general said on April 12. But by April 20, he and his fellow generals appear to have indicated that they were happy with both possible candidates.

Though she is a member of the AKP, Ms Cubukcu does not wear the Muslim headscarf. Neither does Mr Gonul’s wife. That was a significant factor in securing the military’s blessing.

Not being entirely up on Turkish politics, I can’t say if the headscarf is a “wedge issue” in Turkey, their abortion or whatever, although the depiction of the conflict between (military) secularists and (moderate) Islamists would make it unsurprising.  What to me is so compelling about this anecdote is the idea of the headscarf as a tangible visual symbol of what side you’re on–not just an “I Like Ike,” but an icon or absence thereof which is such a potent symbol because it is itself what is being debated.  Half of the population has to make what is in some sense a political choice every morning.  And because of this, the prospect of someone in power–someone who will become a visual presence–who embodies this choice truly does have an interesting appeal.

So anyway, interesting situation in Turkey that doesn’t have all that much to do with that.  We’ll see what happens.

Pithy, Pithy

John Edwards joins Zbigniew Brzezinski and assorted other luminaries in criticizing the phrase “War on Terror.”

“This political language has created a frame that is not accurate and that Bush and his gang have used to justify anything they want to do,” Edwards said in a phone interview from Everett, Wash. “It’s been used to justify a whole series of things that are not justifiable, ranging from the war in Iraq, to torture, to violation of the civil liberties of Americans, to illegal spying on Americans. Anyone who speaks out against these things is treated as unpatriotic. I also think it suggests that there’s a fixed enemy that we can defeat with just a military campaign. I just don’t think that’s true.”

Pretty hard to really disagree with that assessment.  “War on terror” implies one enemy, portrays the struggle as against an abstraction, and suggests that the conflict we’re engaged in is best resolved through hard power, all of which are highly problematic assumptions at best.

Like it or not, people want some sort of convenient shorthand for the interrelated network of foreign policy endeavors we’re going to be concentrating on for awhile.  Bush and various Democrats have tried substitutes for “war on terror”–remember the halcyon days of “Islamofascism?”–which haven’t stuck, and I have a feeling that Giuliani’s bold strategy of replacing a stupid term with something far, far dumber won’t quite stick:

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tells TIME that the phrase “served its purpose for awhile” but should now be superseded. “I have been referring to it for quite some time as ‘the terrorist war against us’ – not just America, but people who think like we do, basically the ideas of modern democracy,” Giuliani said. “In order to deal with the terrorists’ global war on us, we have to be on offense.”

Yeah, pretty insightful, and also a little frightening, if you think about what ‘being on offense’ is likely to mean in a hopefully-hypothetical Giuliani administration.

Anyway, even if, as the author of the TIME article says, we’re going to have to live with the term ‘war on terror’ for awhile no matter what Edwards or anyone says or does, I do like this move from Edwards quite a bit.  It’s meant to sum up a real break from Bush, not the meaningful and substantive policy differences that all Democrats and some Republicans have, but a really nice bit of political shorthand which says effectively, “I reject all of the assumptions that have gone into our failed policies of the past administration.”  Moving on from Iraq and trying to restore America’s place in the world are of course great and necessary things, but the real problem’s the mindset–the war-on-terror-ism, if you will.

He just better get some better foreign policy advisors.