Ron Paul: Honest or Nuts?

[Kobal2]

@BobLibDem

The notion that “they hate us for our freedoms” begs the question of why would only one Western nation be singled out for that reason?

Well, isn’t it obvious ? Because America is the most free of all, while Canada and Yurop and Australia and stuff are mired in a morass of permissiveness socialism that might let them think they enjoy more freedom on account of being allowed to do the same (or more) things, but it’s really all propaganda. Let the eaaaaagle sooaaaaar !

[FinnAgain]

1. As others have noted, Paul is both honest and nuts. We might even call him honestly nuts.

@Whack-a-Mole

boilerplate filler

Saying that AQ hates us for our freedoms is a dramatic oversimplification. But it’s not totally off the mark. Bin Ladin, in particular was an intellectual disciple of Qutb.
[

Before Sayyid Qutb became a leading theorist of violent jihad, he was a little-known Egyptian writer sojourning in the United States, where he attended a small teachers college on the Great Plains. Greeley, Colorado, circa 1950 was the last place one might think to look for signs of American decadence. Its wide streets were dotted with churches, and there wasn’t a bar in the whole temperate town. But the courtly Qutb (COO-tub) saw things that others did not. He seethed at the brutishness of the people around him: the way they salted their watermelon and drank their tea unsweetened and watered their lawns. He found the muscular football players appalling and despaired of finding a barber who could give a proper haircut. As for the music: “The American’s enjoyment of jazz does not fully begin until he couples it with singing like crude screaming,” Qutb wrote when he returned to Egypt. “It is this music that the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires.”

Such grumbling by an unhappy crank would be almost comical but for one fact: a direct line of influence runs from Sayyid Qutb to Osama bin Laden, and to bin Laden’s Egyptian partner in terror, Ayman al-Zawahiri. From them, the line continues to another quietly seething Egyptian sojourning in the United States—the 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. Qutb’s gripes about America require serious attention because they cast light on a question that has been nagging since the fall of the World Trade Center: Why do they hate us?

[…]

Still, Qutb’s contempt for America was not as simple as some people might now imagine. He did not recoil from political freedom and democracy, as, say, President Bush might expect from a jihadi theorist, nor did he complain about shades of imperial ambition in American foreign policy, as writers on the left might suppose. Regarding the excesses of American culture—vulgarity, materialism and promiscuity—Qutb expressed shock, but it rang a bit hollow. “The American girl is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity,” he wrote. “She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs and she shows all this and does not hide it.” These curvy jezebels pursued boys with “wide, strapping chest[s]” and “ox muscles,” Qutb added with disgust. Yet no matter how lascivious his adjectives, the fastidious, unmarried Egyptian could not convincingly portray the church dances and Look magazines he encountered in sleepy Greeley as constituting a genuine sexual “jungle.”

[…]

Sayyid Qutb cut short his stay in America and returned to Egypt in 1951 after the assassination of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the nationalist, religious and militant movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood. Over the next decade and a half, often writing from prison, Qutb refined a violent political theology from the raw anti-modernism of his American interlude. Virtually the entire modern world, Qutb theorized, is jahiliyya, that barbarous state that existed before Muhammad. Only the strict, unchanging law of the prophet can redeem this uncivilized condition. Nearly a millennium of history became, to the radicalized Qutb, an offense wrought by the violence of jahili “Crusaders” and the supposed perfidy of the Jews. And Muslim leaders allied with the West were no better than the Crusaders themselves. Therefore, Qutb called all true Muslims to jihad, or Holy War, against jahiliyya—which is to say, against modernity, which America so powerfully represents.

This philosophy led to Qutb’s execution in 1966. Proud to the end, he refused to accept the secular Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser’s offer of mercy in exchange for Qutb’s repudiation of his jihad. Nasser may have silenced a critic, but the martyrdom of Sayyid Qutb accelerated his movement. The same year the philosopher was hanged, according to journalist Lawrence Wright, the teenage al-Zawahiri formed his first violent cell, dedicated to the overthrow of the Egyptian government and the creation of an Islamist state. Meanwhile, Qutb’s brother Muhammad went into exile in Saudi Arabia, where he taught at King Abdul Aziz University. One of his students, an heir to the country’s largest construction fortune, was Osama bin Laden.

](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/presence-feb06.html)

[Whack-a-Mole]

@FinnAgain

Saying that AQ hates us for our freedoms is a dramatic oversimplification. But it’s not totally off the mark. Bin Ladin, in particular was an intellectual disciple of Qutb.

Honestly, for no good reason (it is not that close) my first read of that plugged in Cthulu in place of Qutb in my head.

[marshmallow]

@Dissonance

If the US was a theocratic Islamic state, he wouldn’t have any reason to disapprove of the presence of bases.

So if the U.S. changed religions they wouldn’t mind if we propped up our brutal dictators, built military bases in their countries, and bombed them from time to time? Sounds like a bulletproof plan.

[Marley23]

@marshmallow

So if the U.S. changed religions they wouldn’t mind if we propped up our brutal dictators, built military bases in their countries, and bombed them from time to time? Sounds like a bulletproof plan.

Exactly. If the U.S. were a Muslim country like Pakistan, Al Qaeda would never attack.

[Whack-a-Mole]

@marshmallow

So if the U.S. changed religions they wouldn’t mind if we propped up our brutal dictators, built military bases in their countries, and bombed them from time to time? Sounds like a bulletproof plan.

As with most of his ilk he’d find an enemy if one was not readily available. He’d manufacture one if need be.

I really think if supremacists (of any stripe) actually, magically got their way it would not take long till someone latched onto an even more minor difference as a means to further their ends (e.g. you have blue eyes…can’t trust those shifty blue-eyed motherfuckers can you?).

Sound crazy? It should but why is it different that picking out a person’s skin color? Why should it matter if I believe in the Spaghetti Monster and you believe in magical sky fairies?

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Honest and nuts.

[Buck_Godot]

@Whack-a-Mole

There are far too many issues to convey to voters. More, it is political suicide to put anything like specifics into your campaign. The more vague the better. If you are specific on a given policy you absolutely will piss someone off and they will scream and yell about why you are a horrible choice.

Also there are a number of truths that the voters just don’t want to hear. Such as “Americans are not inherently better than everyone else in the world”, or “the economy sucks and is going to continue to suck for the foreseeable future regardless of what government policies are put in place” . In spite of what people say, a truly honest politician is about as welcome to voters as a husband is to his wife when he answers truthfully about whether she looks fat in this dress.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

“You’re sleeping on the couch tonight, Mr. President!”

[gurujulp]

@Marley23

Exactly. If the U.S. were a Muslim country like Pakistan, Al Qaeda would never attack.

Is this an actual response, or an example of what’s-his-name’s law about smiley faces?

[Marley23]

@gurujulp

Is this an actual response, or an example of what’s-his-name’s law about smiley faces?

I was making a sarcastic comment about Pakistan’s long-running problems with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But in the interest of fairness FinnAgain is right that Qutb was disgusted with American culture and he’s one of the forefathers of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

[gurujulp]

@Marley23

I was making a sarcastic comment about Pakistan’s long-running problems with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But in the interest of fairness FinnAgain is right that Qutb was disgusted with American culture and he’s one of the forefathers of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

Thank you!

I thought so, but wasn’t sure…

[ModernPrimate]

OP, I think you are highly misinformed.

9/11 happened because the US have been killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Arab civilians for decades.

Now, before you come along with: “woah, slow down there you conspiracy theorist nut” THIS IS WHAT IS ACCEPTED in ALL proper/intelligent discussion on the subject, republican and democrat alike. You would have to be extremely naive (and born in the last 20 years or so) to believe that 9/11 happened simply due to Islam not liking the US way of life.

The republicans who say that do not really believe it fully themselves, that is just their “story”. It is of course an unethical story to have, it’s a bit like denying the holocaust. But you are incredibly ill-informed that you really believe it fully.

Because they don’t like American freedom? Really? The only more preposterous story you could come up with would be “because the Arabs are bad men”. No it is not because they are bad men, it’s because of what the US has done in the past.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

One would certainly have to be extremely naive to believe that anti-US sentiment in the Islamic world is solely the result of US foreign policy. Think of all the other people our foreign policy has fucked and then consider why they aren’t blowing up American civilians.

[griffin1977]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

The truth is Osama Bin Laden attacked us for both American policies in the Middle East and our culture-the US is the very antithesis of Islamism. We believe in women’s rights, religious tolerance, free market capitalism, and so on all of which are abominable to the Islamists.

Cite ? Have you seen or heard a single mention of these things by OBL or his buddies ?

[PigArcher]

@ModernPrimate

Because they don’t like American freedom? Really? The only more preposterous story you could come up with would be “because the Arabs are bad men”. No it is not because they are bad men, it’s because of what the US has done in the past.

What about “Islam is an inherently violent religion”? I suppose that’s slightly less preposterous than “Arabs are bad” because there’s at least an implication that someone could convert and therefore become less bad.

[griffin1977]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

One would certainly have to be extremely naive to believe that anti-US sentiment in the Islamic world is solely the result of US foreign policy. Think of all the other people our foreign policy has fucked and then consider why they aren’t blowing up American civilians.

To say the Al Qiadas actions are the result of US foreign policy is NOT the same thing as saying they are fair and rational reaction to US foreign policy. They clearly a bunch of extremist dickwads. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons for their actions than are explainable.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@griffin1977

They clearly a bunch of extremist dickwads. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons for their actions than are explainable.

Sure. But ModernPrimate excludes all other causes. His post is just as silly as one which posits that it’s all because “they hate our freedoms”.

@ModernPrimate

OP, I think you are highly misinformed.

9/11 happened because the US have been killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Arab civilians for decades.

[PigArcher]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

One would certainly have to be extremely naive to believe that anti-US sentiment in the Islamic world is solely the result of US foreign policy. Think of all the other people our foreign policy has fucked and then consider why they aren’t blowing up American civilians.

They’re not too happy with us in many parts of Latin America, though the violence tends to get directed towards the repressive dictators the US has propped up over the years rather than the US itself. Also they might be worried that we’re close enough that we’ll just move in and take over if they piss us off to much.

[Miller]

@griffin1977

Cite ? Have you seen or heard a single mention of these things by OBL or his buddies ?

If he read the first page of this thread, he sure did. In post 34, I quoted from a statement bin Laden released the specifically decries each of those things in American culture.