This is totally disgusting, Ron Paul's ignorance is monumental.
In fact, Ron Paul comes across as an idiot. He doesn't know
what the hell he is talking about.
Listen to the whole interview if you want.
BR
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_Ron Paul: Goal Of Protesting NYC Mosque Is To Blame Islam For 9/11_
(http://www.ronpaul.com/2010-08-23/ron-paul-on-cnn-anderson-cooper-360°/)
( partial ) Transcript
August 23, 2010
Sanjay Gupta: Those are the facts, as we can tell. But there are some who
say it simply isn’t for any of us to pass judgment on who should build a
mosque, and where they should build it, as long as it’s on private property
and no laws are broken. New York Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, he believes that
and, apparently, so does Republican Congressman and former presidential
candidate, _Ron Paul_ (http://www.ronpaulnews.com/) . And he joins us now from
Clute, Texas. Thanks for joining us, Congressman.
Ron Paul: Thank you, good to be with you.
Sanjay Gupta: Now, I read your article and you say this whole issue is
really an issue of property rights and everything else is “really about hate
and Islamaphobia”. But, you know, I want to start by asking: is what
happened on September 11, 9 years ago, different; the worst terrorist attack
on
U.S. soil? Are there certain lines to be drawn even when it comes to this
property rights issue?
Ron Paul: No, you should draw lines. But I think the lines are being drawn
improperly. Al-Qaida was responsible, several hundred Al-Qaida existed at
that time. And maybe there are still several hundred more. But that doesn’t
mean the whole Muslim religion should be indicted: that is my complaint. I
mean, McVeigh probably was a Christian and he bombed the Oklahoma Federal
building, but does that mean that a Christian church can’t be built near
there and Christianity is blamed? No, I don’t like that broad brush. So yes,
the violence was committed by Al-Qaida and they’re bad people and we should
do what we can to destroy them. But that doesn’t mean that we should
destroy the whole concept of the Muslim religion. And if they can bring this
out, whether the mosque is stopped or not, the implication here is that Islam
caused 9/11, not a narrow branch of the Al-Qaida. To me, that is crucial
because it deals with our foreign policy, it deals with … you know, even in
that clip earlier on Madeleine Albright admitted. She said, “Well, if 500,000
people are killed, so be it if that’s what it takes”. So the Muslims have
justification for their worries and concerns.
Sanjay Gupta: There is a lot of pain and anguish, I think, from people who
are worried about this Islamic center being built. Do you see that point
of view at all?
Ron Paul: To worry about it? Well, I worry about it because I’m afraid it
stirs up hatred and that’s why I worry about it. And I think they’re off
on a tangent. I think the purpose was, too often, to just blame Islam. But
there is another Mosque in that area, this is not right where the towers
were, this is not too far down the street. But, what about the strip joints?
Are these people who are “holier than thou” condemning the strip joints
nearby because it defames Ground Zero? So I don’t think that’s any
consistency. I think this goal was to blame Islam for 9/11 and I think that is
wrong.
I don’t think that was the cause. Al-Qaida did it.
Sanjay Gupta: And you talk about the fact that there is a lot of
Islamaphobia. I mean, your son, _Rand Paul_ (http://www.randpaul.com/) , who’s
running for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky, is opposed to this facility being
built. Is he Islamaphobic?
Ron Paul: Well, I don’t know what his position is, but he’s certainly not
islamaphoic.
Ron Paul: Well no, I don’t put everybody who is a candidate in that same
category that might have a reason. You have to ask him for his reason. But
no, everybody who’s opposing it doesn’t even understand the foreign policy
or why we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan. They don’t have this understanding,
they don’t want to see the connection. My goal is to make the connection
for people to understand what’s going on and why Al-Qaida has become so
militant and hateful toward us and why painting Islam with a broad brush makes
our problems worse because we’re not narrowing down on the real cause and
those who perpetuated 9/11. And if we don’t get to that, we can’t solve this
problem
Sanjay Gupta: Do you think it should be built?
Ron Paul: I don’t care whether it’s built or not built. Everybody says it’
s private property and they should be able to do what they want to do.
Once again, the point I’m making is not to blame Islam for 9/11, you have to
blame only Al-Qaida. That is a completely different story than all these
innuendoes that you’re bringing up, I don’t think that’s part of the
question. You have to narrow it in because it has to do with our foreign policy
and
that’s what I’m dealing with; the foreign policy. The foreign policy is
crucial because that’s why we have perpetual war. And I think this is all
connected, not in a way that is conspiratorial, but in a way that it is almost
like people slip into this. It’s really easy for people to get to hating
Islam.
To me, that’s equivalent to hating Christians because Timothy McVeigh was
a Christian, and that I don’t like, nobody should like it, nobody should
like this being painted with a broad brush. It was done to the Jews before
and I don’t like it. I like to stick to the facts, I like to talk about the
foreign policy and how it’s related.
The sideshow which is what I call this, is just there to stir things up
and prevent us from dealing with the real problems, and that is our
interventionist foreign policy that gets us too much involved overseas, too
many
people die on both side and we’re totally bankrupt and we have to address that.
We have to get away from: “Are we going to support the building of the
mosque?” and that was sort of the innuendos when you bring up with the
question about my son. I mean, you’re missing the whole point when you think
that
is the crucial question. The crucial question is our foreign policy. That’s
what I want the people to think about.
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