Pat Buchanan on Ron Paul

You could fill volumes of things I disagree with Pat Buchanan about, but when it comes to foreign policy I tend to agree with him. In general Pat thinks it is not our job to police the world. Not only will that policy not work but will be very expensive. The fiasco seems to support this theory, because we are stuck in somebody else's civil war that is costing a fortune.

But Who Was Right Rudy or Ron

Today Pat wrote about the dust up between Rudy Guiliani and Ron Paul over the cause of 9-11. The general talking point especially from the right is that Ron Paul says that we brought 9-11 on ourselves. That we did nothing wrong and the evil terrorists attacked because they hate freedom and want to destroy our way of life. I got to give Pat credit he slices through this talking point like a hot knife through butter.

"When Ron Paul said the 9-11 killers were "over here because we are over there," he was not excusing the mass murderers of 3,000 Americans. He was explaining the roots of hatred out of which the suicide-killers came.
Lest we forget, Osama bin Laden was among the mujahideen whom we, in the Reagan decade, were aiding when they were fighting to expel the Red Army from Afghanistan. We sent them Stinger missiles, Spanish mortars, sniper rifles. And they helped drive the Russians out.
What Ron Paul was addressing was the question of what turned the allies we aided into haters of the United States. Was it the fact that they discovered we have freedom of speech or separation of church and state? Do they hate us because of who we are? Or do they hate us because of what we do?
Osama bin Laden in his declaration of war in the 1990s said it was U.S. troops on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia, U.S. bombing and sanctions of a crushed Iraqi people, and U.S. support of Israel's persecution of the Palestinians that were the reasons he and his mujahideen were declaring war on us."

In other words Ron Paul said that our foreign policy was a factor 9-11 because Osama bin Laden said it was. This does not seem all the complicated. We don't like to think that America can screw things up, but even when out intentions are good it is possible that our country can get things wrong. This makes a lot more sense than the oversimplified talking point of they hate us for our freedom.