Blowback

Actions have consequences. This concept is so obvious even the CIA understands it. In fact, it's so obvious even the Republican candidates for president understand it, though Rudy Giuliani appeared not to in last night's second snoozer of a 'debate.' The brief contretemps between Ron Paul and Giuliani, one of the few lively moments of the evening (Jim Gilmore naming names among his less than conservative colleagues being another), arose after Paul made the perfectly reasonable observation that 9/11 was precipitated by America's foreign policy, an observation Giuliani used as a springboard to attack Paul and implicitly wave the bloody red flag of his mayoral rise to national fame because of 9/11. Here's the exchange:

MR. GOLER: Congressman Paul, I believe you are the only man on the stage who opposes the war in Iraq, who would bring the troops home as quickly as -- almost immediately, sir. Are you out of step with your party? Is your party out of step with the rest of the world? If either of those is the case, why are you seeking its nomination?

REP. PAUL: Well, I think the party has lost its way, because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a noninterventionist foreign policy.

Senator Robert Taft didn't even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy -- no nation-building, no policing of the world. Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There's a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican party. It is the constitutional position. It is the advice of the Founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them.

Just think of the tremendous improvement -- relationships with Vietnam. We lost 60,000 men. We came home in defeat. Now we go over there and invest in Vietnam. So there's a lot of merit to the advice of the Founders and following the Constitution.

And my argument is that we shouldn't go to war so carelessly. (Bell rings.) When we do, the wars don't end.

MR. GOLER: Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?

REP. PAUL: What changed?

MR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.

REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.

We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- (bell rings) -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 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 September 11th.(Applause, cheers.)

And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Congressman?

REP. PAUL: 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. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we 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 and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

For those who missed it, National Review Online has posted the video of the exchange here.

Of course, Paul said no such thing as that the U.S. "invited" the 9/11 attack, but I'll be glad to say so. Not intentionally, of course, but in the same sense that actions routinely invite unintended consequences. U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East since World War II has had three or four objectives. First and foremost, securing the supply of oil; second, Israel; third and fourth, trying to move the rest of the Middle East into the Western sphere of alliances.

Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, these latter objectives were at least as much political as commercial, but they were political in the overriding context of the Cold War. The cultural, religious and other differences between us and the Middle East were given short shrift except as factors in that U.S. vs. USSR scenario. Nor has the U.S. in particular or the West in general been all that concerned historically about the grotesque human rights violations of the various regimes we have supported (Iran under the Shah, then Iraq under Hussein against Iran) or continue to support (Saudi Arabia) either to thwart the Soviets or to keep the oil flowing.

Are the Middle East's own politics, as Paul contended, irrational? If your definition of rationality is a sort of cold-blooded utilitarianism devoid of any emotional investment in religious beliefs or ethnic and cultural differences, I suppose so. After all, all the U.S. really wants from the Middle East is (1) oil and (2) Israel. Sure, it would be nice if they all embraced free market economies and representative democracies, too, but our continued alliance with the Saudis pretty much demonstrates how much the U.S. really cares about that. So the question occurs, how rational have our politics in the Middle East been?

Let's put on our cold-blooded utilitarian hats, then, for a moment and ask the following. If the U.S. is incapable of forgoing Middle Eastern oil (as indeed it is) and unwilling to forgo Israel (as indeed it should be unwilling to do) and its continued pursuit of those two objectives alone would continue to incur the unintended consequences of terrorist attacks, is that a reasonable price to pay? Moreover, if such attacks continue to be as expensive as they have been, either in terms of the deaths, injuries and property damage of 9/11 or the deaths, injuries and expense of military forces in Iraq and elsewhere as well as the liberty we have lost in pursuit of greater security, is that a reasonable price to pay?

Those are by no means the only foreign policy questions that should be answered by both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, but they'd be an excellent place to start.