In ’98, Ron Paul warned U.S. policy was leading to terrorist attacks

By David McElroy · September 30, 2011

We’ve been told over and over that nobody could have reasonably predicted the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. The people who say this believe the terrorists “hate us for our freedom.” If it was so hard to predict that we were going to be attacked, why did Ron Paul warn the nation about it almost three years before it happened?

I remember Dec. 16, 1998 very well. President Bill Clinton was in the middle of impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives. For the crime of lying under oath about a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, congressional Republicans were trying to throw him out of office. Clinton’s actions were slimy, unprincipled and illegal, but hardly qualifying of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Clinton was the ultimate political animal, so he did what politicians like to do when they’re in trouble. He wrapped himself in the flag and took invented an excuse to attack a country.

Although most people saw through the political motivations for the air attacks on Iraq which killed hundreds of innocent Iraqis, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul stood virtually alone in opposing the attack for the right reasons. At a news conference at the House, Paul laid out his arguments very clearly. He seemed quite angry. Take the four minutes or so to watch this video clip from that news conference. Right around the three-minute mark, you’ll hear Paul explaining that U.S. policy was not only killing innocent people, but it was also making it more likely that U.S. military personnel were going to be killed and that the United States would be attacked by terrorists.

Today, the convenient fiction is that terrorists randomly attack the United States (and the West in general) because of the freedoms we enjoy. While it’s true that many Muslims (especially the more conservative among them) don’t like our culture, it’s very, very clear that we were attacked because we had U.S. troops in their holy lands and the U.S. government had been attacking and killing people in that part of the world for years — in our names. Ron Paul understood this. The other politicians didn’t understand it. Who was right?

Today, Paul again explains what causes terror attacks. He explains what happens as a result of arrogant interventionist policies from Washington. He also warns us what is coming economically as the clowns in charge keep pursuing the same policies have haven’t worked so far.

As he runs for office and tells the truth about these issues, we’re surrounded by people who dismiss him as crazy or extremist or weird. They don’t understand him. They don’t understand his reasoning. They don’t understand the things that most of us believe.

What I’d like to ask those people is very simple. When Ron Paul warned in 1998 what was coming, you didn’t believe him then. He’s still warning you that trouble is coming, economically and internationally. Why do you choose to believe the same sorts of people who were wrong then — instead of the man who was right?

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When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

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