Dear Mr. Giuliani,
During the South Carolina Republican Debate on May 15, 2007, you expressed shock and outrage at Congressman Ron Paul’s suggestion that the motivation for the 9-11 attack and other acts of terror by radical Muslims can be traced back to America’s history of aggressive foreign policy and interventionist actions in the Middle East. He didn’t say that Americans were to blame for the attacks or that the terrorists’ actions were justified. He said in essence that our long history of military action in the Middle East and our history of meddling in those people’s political affairs can incite hatred and have adverse consequences. You responded with the following rhetorical flourish: “I don't think I've ever heard that before and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11.”
Haven’t heard that before? Pardon me for saying so, but this is a rather curious thing for someone with Presidential ambitions to declare. Normally a candidate endeavors to assure us that it is he, more than all other comers, who possesses the perception and discernment necessary to grasp the complex dynamics of foreign affairs. Candidates, even when momentarily detached from their handlers and seized by the irresistible impulse to do a touchdown dance, don’t typically blurt out admissions of ignorance about theories pertaining to what stirs our opponents. And yet you profess never to have countenanced an absurdity of such unseemly proportions as the concept that this nation has become a target for retaliation. Come now, Mr. Giuliani…tell us you don’t really mean that.
Would you believe the 9-11 Commission Report has something to say on the subject?
The history, culture, and body of beliefs from which Bin Ladin has shaped and spread his message are largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols of Islam's past greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who consider themselves the victims of successive foreign masters. He uses cultural and religious allusions to the holy Qur'an and some of its interpreters. He appeals to people disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and globalization. His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources—Islam, history, and the region's political and economic malaise. He also stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam's holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, and he protested U.S. support of Israel. …Many Americans have wondered, "Why do 'they' hate us?" Some also ask, "What can we do to stop these attacks?" Bin Ladin and al Qaeda have given answers to both these questions. To the first, they say that America had attacked Islam; America is responsible for all conflicts involving Muslims. Thus Americans are blamed when Israelis fight with Palestinians, when Russians fight with Chechens, when Indians fight with Kashmiri Muslims, and when the Philippine government fights ethnic Muslims in its southern islands. America is also held responsible for the governments of Muslim countries, derided by al Qaeda as "your agents." Bin Ladin has stated flatly, "Our fight against these governments is not separate from our fight against you." These charges found a ready audience among millions of Arabs and Muslims angry at the United States because of issues ranging from Iraq to Palestine to America's support for their countries' repressive rulers.
It would seem safely within the boundaries of rational expectation—even given decades of experience to the contrary—to assume that an applicant for the job of ordering about our military machine and rallying all the forces of goodness and light for our national defense would certainly have read the Report and digested its findings. An optimist might even assume that you were sufficiently interested in world affairs to have acquainted yourself with some of the previous statements made by the leading spokesman for radical Islamic Jihad. See for instance Bin Laden’s comments to reporter Peter Arnett in a 1997 CNN interview:
BIN LADIN: We declared jihad against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation of the Prophet's Night Travel Land (Palestine). And we believe the US is directly responsible for those who were killed in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. The mention of the US reminds us before everything else of those innocent children who were dismembered, their heads and arms cut off in the recent explosion that took place in Qana (in Lebanon). This US government abandoned even humanitarian feelings by these hideous crimes. It transgressed all bounds and behaved in a way not witnessed before by any power or any imperialist power in the world … A reaction might take place [against American citizens] as a result of US government's hitting Muslim civilians and executing more than 600 thousand Muslim children in Iraq by preventing food and medicine from reaching them. So, the US is responsible for any reaction, because it extended its war against troops to civilians.
…
REPORTER: Mr. Bin Ladin, will the end of the United States' presence in Saudi Arabia, their withdrawal, will that end your call for jihad against the United States and against the US?
BIN LADIN: The cause of the reaction must be sought and the act that has triggered this reaction must be eliminated. The reaction came as a result of the US aggressive policy towards the entire Muslim world and not just towards the Arabian Peninsula. So if the cause that has called for this act comes to an end, this act, in turn, will come to an end.
…
The US today as a result of the arrogant atmosphere has set a double standard, calling whoever goes against its injustice a terrorist. It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose on us agents to rule us based not on what God has revealed and wants us to agree on all these. If we refuse to do so, it will say you are terrorists. With a simple look at the US behaviors, we find that it judges the behavior of the poor Palestinian children whose country was occupied: if they throw stones against the Israeli occupation, it says they are terrorists whereas when the Israeli pilots bombed the United Nations building in Qana, Lebanon while was full of children and women, the US stopped any plan to condemn Israel. At the time that they condemn any Muslim who calls for his right, they receive the highest top official of the Irish Republican Army (Gerry Adams) at the White House as a political leader, while woe, all woe is the Muslims if they cry out for their rights … The US does not consider it terrorism when hundreds of thousands of our sons and brothers in Iraq died for lack of food or medicine.
If this information comes as a surprise to you Mr. Giuliani, by all means take a moment. Like you’ve said: “You have got to face reality. If you can't face reality, you can't lead.” Poignant words, those. Reality doesn’t always go down smoothly, particularly if it doesn’t mesh with your notions about where our enemy’s hatred comes from. In your post-debate remarks to Hannity and Colmes you opined: “Look, it's real simple what happened. These people came here and killed us because of our freedom of religion, because of our freedom for women, because they hate us.”
Did Al Jazeera pick up Baywatch when no one was looking? Is that what put them out? Would you contend that they declared jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan because they despised the habit of tolerance and freedom flaunted in Moscow? Have you seen post-attack declarations from Al Qaeda that scream, “This is for being free!”? I do hope you are looking into this issue and that you will give me some indication that you recognize the importance of truly understanding what these people are about.
To this end, I invite you to join me in consulting the conclusions of unabashedly hawkish CIA veteran and author Michael Scheuer, who was station chief of the Osama Bin Laden task force:
From [Bin Laden’s] perspective it's very much a war against someone who is oppressing or killing Muslims … he's not a man who rants against our freedoms, our liberties, our voting, the fact that our women go to school. He's not the Ayatollah Khomeini; he really doesn't care about all those things. To think that he's trying to rob us of our liberties and freedom is, I think, a gross mistake. What he has done … is identify particular American foreign policies that are offensive to Muslims … our support for Israel, our presence on the Arabian Peninsula, our activities in Afghanistan and Iraq, our support for governments that Muslims believe oppress Muslims, be it India, China, Russia, Uzbekistan. Bin Laden has focused the Muslim world on specific, tangible, visual American policies. … It's not a hatred of us as a society, it's a hatred of our policies.
This from a fellow with all the credibility of a man invited to share a studio stage with Tim Russert. But let’s not be too hasty in our conclusions lest we stake our insights on too controversial a source and suddenly find ourselves prostrate before impetuous chants of “moonbat” or some such thing. You of all people must know the disadvantages of sallying forth incautiously, loins left ungirded. We mustn’t forget that stoking the patriotic ego to the brink of teeth-gnashing bloodlust is a venerable old politician’s gambit that had whiskers when Methuselah was a boy; and then of course there are those like Sean Hannity, who profitably pen books with bluntish titles like “Deliver Us from Evil”. I think you’ll agree that we ought to do ourselves the service of looking to an august journal like Foreign Policy:
The war on terror is premised on a key question: Why do they hate us? The common answer from Washington is that Muslim radicals hate our way of life, our freedom, and our democracy. Not so. Both moderates and radicals in the Muslim world admire the West, in particular its technology, democratic system, and freedom of speech. What, then, separates a Muslim moderate from a Muslim radical? Although almost all Muslims believe the West should show more respect for Islam, radicals are more likely to feel that the West threatens and attempts to control their way of life.
Here’s an excerpt from a report presented to the Pentagon in 2004 by the Defense Science Board:
American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.
• Muslims do not “hate our freedom,” but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.
• Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that “freedom is the future of the Middle East” is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.
• Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination.
• Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack — to broad public support.
In a 2003 interview then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz acknowledged the rancor stirred up by having American forces in Saudi Arabia:
Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It's been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina.
And let’s examine one more source for good measure. Richard Betts, a leading authority on national security and member of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs:
In the post-Cold War world, rampant U.S. military intervention overseas is no longer needed. A rival superpower no longer exists to threaten vital U.S. interests by taking advantage of "instability" in the world. The overwhelming majority of the conflicts in the post-Cold War world--95 of 101 from 1989 to 1996--involved disputes between parties within states, the outcomes of which are far less likely to be dangerous to U.S. security than are crossborder wars between states. Yet it is those intrastate wars, many of which are volatile ethnic or religious conflicts, that could spawn the terrorist groups that might attack the United States with weapons of mass destruction. Intervention in such conflicts does little to enhance U.S. security, but it may have the opposite, catastrophic, effect.
…
If steps to deal with the problem in terms of capabilities are limited, can anything be done to address intentions--the incentives of any foreign power or group to lash out at the United States? There are few answers to this question that do not compromise the fundamental strategic activism and internationalist thrust of U.S. foreign policy over the past half-century. That is because the best way to keep people from believing that the United States is responsible for their problems is to avoid involvement in their conflicts.
So it would seem there is plenty of information and authoritative opinion in support of Congressman Paul’s argument, if you care to look. I’m even willing to bet that those quoted here barely scratch the surface.
In light of the above, Mr. Giuliani, may I ask if there are any comments you'd like to withdraw?
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