Posted by
Charles Lewis on Friday, July 20, 2007 8:18:43 PM
by Charles R Lewis
We've heard it from Ron Paul in the second GOP prez debate, and now from Pat Buchanan. It's a simple syllogism:
- Osama said he blew up the trade centers and killed all the other Americans he's murdered because of certain of our policies in the middle east;
- Osama blowing up the trade centers and killing all those other Americans was a not so nice thing:
- Therefore, our middle east policies should be jettisoned as having caused Osama to commit all that naughty mischief.
Let's apply this reasoning to the actions of another recent crazed mass murderer, albeit on a practically infinitely smaller scale, that being the little matter of the deaths of 32 innocents at the hands of Mr. Cho Ceung Hui, late of the former Virginia Polytechnical Institute. You'll recall that Mr. Cho, not unlike Mr. Bin Laden, spelled out America's actions that provoked his little tantrum, this in an elaborate multimedia presentation mailed to that bastion of tabloid journalism known as NBC News, in between gun rampages at that most renowned of all gun-free zones.
You'll recall that Cho - like Bin Laden - emphasized that the decision to take such a drastic approach was not made arbitrarily, but rather because of the behavior of us ugly Americans. Specifically, it had to do with our nasty penchant for capitalism, consumerism, the middle class lifestyle...all the disgusting little idiosyncrasies that millions of illegals each year are willing to overlook when they nonetheless grace us with their presence.
If we are to take the word of the butcher of 3000 Americans as to why he acted naughtily (as the Buchanans and Pauls - not to mention Ward Churchills - of this world would have us do), certainly we have no reason not to trust the word of a guy who slaughtered a mere 32. So there's really only one answer, at least according to reasoning analogous to that of what David Horowitz overly generously describes as the "America Hating Right":
We need to withdraw from the shopping malls immediately. From them and from the affluent suburbs, the privately owned factories, the businesses, and the Mom and Pop stores in which we have no right to do, brazenly, our ugly American thing, and which so violently inflame the anti-social passions of the likes of the Korean Kamikaze.
If the Saudi Slimeball says that our imposition of sanctions on innocent Iraq (conveniently skirted via the UN's thoroughly corrupt Oil for Food scam), our notion that Israel has any right whatsoever to exist (albeit with 99% of the Holy Land and loads of strategic highground ceded - at our insistence - to the likes of Osama himself), or the presence of an American soldier anywhere within 1000 kilometers of an Arab "homeland" (even if we do force our WACs to wear burkas and don't let our troops have Bibles) is the root cause of his acting out, well, that's good enough for Pat and Ron. We've simply got to give up those evil ways.
By the same token, we need to heed the posthumous pronouncements of the VaTech Varmint and drastically alter our lifestyles. At least if we are to expect rational consistency - and not wanton hypocrisy - from Buchanan and Paul.
Ron Paul has succeeded in finishing the job George W Bush began when he so systematically shut off the faucet on anything - WMD discovery reporting, Salman Pak emphasis, the truth about Iraqi execution of the Oklahoma city attack - that could have justified the invasion in the public's mind. To wit, he (Paul) has divided the conservative electorate down the middle. (Not to mention causing me to do something I still can't believe I could have been moved to do, namely, applaud Rudy G.)
Where Tom Tancredo had the potential to unite the disparate conservative elements, all Paul can do is keep Tom from getting any traction, by siphoning support. (Neither he nor Duncan Hunter could be doing a better job of that if they were in the race specifically for that purpose, which I'll refuse to postulate here.) That conservative electorate, so fed up with being betrayed at every turn by Bush and company in any event, is easy prey for snake oil salesmen (I use that term advisedly, as I understand that snake oil was one of the first very beneficial remedies slandered out of existence by Big Pharma) on the order of a Ron Paul (iRONically, until recently, I'll admit, one of my political heroes).
I've yet to see anyone else harp on Paul's second-debate praise of our "investment[s]" in Vietnam, by the way. Last time I checked, that communist country was still persecuting Christians and enslaving them and everybody else but its red elite. Yet another "progressive" position from this self-proclaimed Reagan conservative, I suppose.
And his sympathy for the commies reared its head through another, more subtle comment - the assertion that we would certainly object if China started putting bases in the Caribbean. Uh, excuse me, Mr. Paul, but don't the Chicoms control both ends of what used to be - and still should be - American territory, that is to say the Panama Canal? And isn't Cuba (which, unlike American oil companies in this day of gas price crisis, is drilling in the Caribbean) itself a virtual Chinese base? I guess we're about to go postal in Peking...
But, back on topic: for 1400 years, Islamists have been indiscriminately massacring Christians and anybody else who refused to convert to this religion of peace. I guess America has been poking her nose where she had no business for about 1200 more years than she's existed. What do you say to that, René Descartes? I meddle and thereby provoke mass mayhem, ergo I ain't?