The Deaf And Dumb Blunder On

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas uttered the unspeakable.

Asked in the Republican primary debate if 9/11 changed anything, he said, "Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attacked us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East."

Rudy Giuliani, the man who would be war president, attacked, "That's really an extraordinary statement."

For oratorical effect and to rouse from their slumber the armchair warriors, Giuliani repeated, "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."

He demanded a retraction and got much applause.

Never heard that before? Are the candidate and his cheerleaders deaf and dumb?

In writings and in videos the masterminds of those attacks gave their reasons, chiefly three: We stationed troops in Saudi Arabia, we imposed sanctions against Iraq, including retaliatory bombing, and we funded Israeli territorial expansion.

Oft repeated in our own reports, those reasons may offend us, but we cannot deny we heard them.

But Giuliani claims just that. That alone qualifies him as commander in chief. An itchy trigger finger, ignorance of the enemy and an inability to defeat him are prerequisites.

Giuliani can stay the course in Iraq, bleeding the finest military in the world and looting the public treasury.

Paul's remarks implied that we brought it on ourselves, that the assassins were somehow justified.

On Sept. 11 your average American was watering her tulips when out of the blue a few squads of bearded sons of Satan, Muslim religious fanatics, burned alive several thousand of our people.

Far away from the Humvees, tanks, ships and jets with which our fellow Americans stalked Muslim lands, occasionally firing off a few rounds when the heathen got excited, we could not fathom why our flower garden got bombed.

The idea that Muslims sought revenge was unacceptable, especially when we ourselves sought revenge.

When going to war, we can have no sympathy for the devil.

After Paul's remarks, other candidates piled on. Media microphone warriors joined the fray. A Republican Party chairman called for Paul to be banned from the debates, lest something so "off the wall and out of whack" actually be debated.

The Muslims have their delusional sensitivities, and we have ours.

It behooves us to understand that we have our guns aimed at a lot of the world, especially the Middle East, where our interests concern oil and the U.S. dollar, a subject for another day.

To protect our interests, which are corporate and banking interests, we have crawled into bed with Israel and Saudi Arabia, a monarchy of the kind we fought for independence.

After Sept. 11, we attacked Afghanistan for revenge and because the opportunity presented itself.

We attacked Iraq for the Israelis and Saudis. Iraq threatened Israel. The invasion of Iraq positioned us between Syria, another threat to Israel, and Iran, a threat to Saudi Arabia. It had nothing to do with freedom, ours or anybody else's.

Individual freedom is alien to Islam. The concept evolved in the West over two bloody millennia.

If we expect to survive a hostile world, we cannot tiptoe through the tulips of a fantasyland in which we refuse to consider every motive of our enemies, in which we shout down any suggestion that our actions might have consequences.

We cannot applaud would-be commanders in chief who claim to have not even heard them.

We can ill afford another such blunder.

Phil Lucas is executive editor of The News Herald in Panama City, Fla. Contact him at plucas@pcnh.com. To find out more about Lucas and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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