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Ron Paul: "Lessons From Paris"
Submitted by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute of Peace & Prosperity,
After the tragic shooting at a provocative magazine in Paris last week, I pointed out that given the foreign policy positions of France we must consider blowback as a factor. Those who do not understand blowback made the ridiculous claim that I was excusing the attack or even blaming the victims. Not at all, as I abhor the initiation of force. The police blaming victims when they search for the motive of a criminal.
The mainstream media immediately decided that the shooting was an attack on free speech. Many in the US preferred this version of “they hate us because we are free,” which is the claim that President Bush made after 9/11. They expressed solidarity with the French and vowed to fight for free speech. But have these people not noticed that the First Amendment is routinely violated by the US government? President Obama has used the Espionage Act more than all previous administrations combined to silence and imprison whistleblowers. Where are the protests? Where are protesters demanding the release of John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on the CIA use of waterboarding and other torture? The whistleblower went to prison while the torturers will not be prosecuted. No protests.
If Islamic extremism is on the rise, the US and French governments are at least partly to blame. The two Paris shooters had reportedly spent the summer in Syria fighting with the rebels seeking to overthrow Syrian President Assad. They were also said to have recruited young French Muslims to go to Syria and fight Assad. But France and the United States have spent nearly four years training and equipping foreign fighters to infiltrate Syria and overthrow Assad! In other words, when it comes to Syria, the two Paris killers were on “our” side. They may have even used French or US weapons while fighting in Syria.
Beginning with Afghanistan in the 1980s, the US and its allies have deliberately radicalized Muslim fighters in the hopes they would strictly fight those they are told to fight. We learned on 9/11 that sometimes they come back to fight us. The French learned the same thing last week. Will they make better decisions knowing the blowback from such risky foreign policy? It is unlikely because they refuse to consider blowback. They prefer to believe the fantasy that they attack us because they hate our freedoms, or that they cannot stand our free speech.
Perhaps one way to make us all more safe is for the US and its allies to stop supporting these extremists.
Another lesson from the attack is that the surveillance state that has arisen since 9/11 is very good at following, listening to, and harassing the rest of us but is not very good at stopping terrorists. We have learned that the two suspected attackers had long been under the watch of US and French intelligence services. They had reportedly been placed on the US no-fly list and at least one of them had actually been convicted in 2008 of trying to travel to Iraq to fight against the US occupation. According to CNN, the two suspects traveled to Yemen in 2011 to train with al-Qaeda. So they were individuals known to have direct terrorist associations. How many red flags is it necessary to set off before action is taken? How long did US and French intelligence know about them and do nothing, and why?
Foreign policy actions have consequences. The aggressive foreign policies of the United States and its allies in the Middle East have radicalized thousands and have made us less safe. Blowback is real whether some want to recognize it or not. There are no guarantees of security, but only a policy of non-intervention can reduce the risk of another attack.
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So Paul believes if the West ignores the problem it will go away. He's off his meds again and living in the 50's age of Ozzie & Harriet.
jimin, your a little behind the times..my Guess you want to think that he is that shallow and holds that idea..he is an MD and was trained to see what is not obvious to most..you hold an infantile view, but perhaps you can learn..I suggest you read : War is a Racket by GEN S BUTLER, medal of honor winner multiple times. grow up.
In order for Mr. Paul's dream to realize, Israel's thousand year-old feud with its Arab/Muslim neighbors must first end. It won't. And since Israel is the puppeteer of US foreign policy in that region of the world, revenge attacks will continue ad infinitum. Most unfortunately, the United States homeland, as a result of its acquiescence to Israeli interests, will soon be the epicenter of the Israeli vs. Arab conflict. The Arabs are fast learning that they must attack and kill American people to gain any substantive leverage in forcing favorable (their view) change (killing French/Europeans has little leverage value). Historians will note that Israel successfully foisted its Arab feud onto the North American continent and it was there that the issue was settled.
felix, true dat..but at it's center is, the elite nwo types, who attack nation states, break borders, intervene, try to guide hate and radicals to do what they want.to further the needed concentration of power, in of course ,their hands. terror is a tool to make us give up our freedoms willingly, and sadly it has worked. we be the chumps
Historians will not only note, they will marvel that Israel successfully foisted its Arab feud onto the North American continent and it was there that the issue was settled... bloodily.
Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East. — Fr. John Sheehan, S.J.
War on Iraq: Not oil but Israel
A closer look: The Israeli origins of Bush II's war.
It is interesting, but not surprising, to note that in all the words written and uttered about the Kennedy assassination, Israel’s intelligence service agency, the Mossad, has never been mentioned. And yet a Mossad motive is obvious. On this question, as on almost all others, American reporters cannot bring themselves to cast Israel in an unfavorable light -despite the fact that Mossad complicity is as plausible as any of the other theories.
— Republican Congressman Paul Findley, March 1992
You seem to forget that 2 brigades of muslims fought with Hitler against the allies in WWII. Are you a Christian, Buddhist or Atheist? Then the fundamentist muslims have been killing you and yours for centuries and they want to kill you now. Wake up... Israel is not the big threat. Your government AND the muslim barbarians are the two biggest threats we face today.
Right again Mr. Paul. Right again. When will they (we) ever learn?
Ugh. Mr. Paul, you are so right on so many things, but for the love of God these terrorists committed this act because THEIR MOSQUES & CLERICS TOLD THEM TO! The US has made mistakes and has imperial tendencies (more now than ever), but carries NONE of the blame for the Paris massacre, or 9/11, or any of these terrorist acts.
Bombing and killing more of "them" isn't going to solve or help anything.
This was an op. Who benefits? Duh. All lies
I respect Ron Paul, but he doesn't get it. Non-intervention in the contexts of Islam is meaningless. He and those who agree with him have failed to understand that, under islamic law, they are "infidels" and they must either convert, pay a tax or die. Until they and others who don't know either history or the Koran begin to understand that it is more an imperialist political ideology than a religion, they will continue to suffer the same delusion and will never address the real issue.
On a spiritual level, they need to also learn that the god of the crescent, allah the moon god (also known as "Bel" and other names), is NOT the same as the God of the Christians and the Jews. As long as people continue to swallow the "religion of peace" propaganda (when all history and evidence from the Koran shows otherwise) and the "We all worship the same God" bullshit, the muslims who believe what is written by their "prophet" and the "inspired commentators" and imams will continue to help our governments to take away our freedoms. Ultimately, the west will be at war with islam. It's inevitable because islam's goal is to replace western culture and legals systems with shariah law and the caliphate. They say so every day. it's time to start believing them and understand that "isolationism" won't protect us.
Anybody notice how MSM keeps saying "how did this happen? these guys were on watch lists"...
Here in the land of the free (USA! USA! USA!), where roughly 1 out of 3 people are on one form of government watch list or another as potential "terrorists", there is NO WAY the government can really track those who actually ARE potentially dangerous.
Maybe we need to work on getting that list of potential terrorists whittled down from 1 out of 3 americans to, say, 1 out of 1000 (10,000? 100,000?)...
We could just narrow it down to members of Congress, Senate and the White House Administration.....
Tack on SCOTUS, and most all the other judges and you might have 1 in every 100,000.
Ron Paul must be tired of being right all the time.
The lesson is crazy religion does not belong in goverment. Ron Paul is another republican that wants a theocracy. The christian taliban is just as bad as islam.
Maybe Ron Paul can explain how Boko Haram's murder of innocent people in Africa is our fault too.
I keep trying to get pissed off that Obama didn't go to France.
...and stay there.