Pat Buchanan redux

Bob just sent me a Pat Buchanan link that I'd like to share. Thanks very much, Bob.

From an article written May 29, 2002:

The dynamiting of the King David Hotel convinced the British to accelerate their departure from Palestine. Zionist terror ended. Mau Mau terror ended when the Brits left Kenya. When De Gaulle cut Algeria loose, FLN terror ended. When Reagan withdrew his Marines from Beirut, anti-American terror ended in Lebanon.

Lesson? The price of empire is terror. The price of occupation is terror. The price of interventionism is terror. As Barry Goldwater used to say, it is as simple as that. When Israel departed Lebanon, Hezbollah's attacks fell off almost to nothing. But as long as Israelis occupy the West Bank, which Prime Minister Barak conceded belongs at least 95 percent to the Palestinians, Israel will be hit by terror attacks.

Either Israel gets out, or it pays the price of staying in: terrorism.

But this column is not about Israel -- it is about us. It is about why we are being told by our leaders, in tones of resignation and fatalism, that it is not a question of whether, but of when, the next act of cataclysmic terror occurs here, and why we must accept the possibility that a nuclear weapon will be exploded here.

But when Americans ask, "Why do they hate us?" and "Why do these Islamic radicals on the other side of the earth want to come over here and commit hara-kiri killing us?" we get responses that ought not to satisfy a second-grader. They hate us, we are told, because we are democratic and free and good, and we have low tax rates.

Well that is no longer enough. Before, not after, the next terror attack on this country, America's leaders should start telling the truth: Evil though they may be, Islamic killers are over here because we are over there. They are not trying to kill us because they dislike our domestic politics, but because they detest our foreign policy.

May I say, right on, Pat.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. They did not fly into those twin towers to protest universal suffrage or to advance self-determination for the Palestinian people. As Osama bin Laden said, they want us to stop propping up the Saudi regime they hate, and to get off the sacred Saudi soil on which sit the holiest shrines of Islam. They want our troops out of Saudi Arabia – and if we don't get out, they are coming over here to kill us any way they can.

And may I say, it worked, too. We pulled our troops out of Saudi Arabia. The Iraq business was never about 9/11, and it was never about terrorism. That's just how it was sold to an ignorant and angry public. (And Congress.)

Is the empire worth it? French, Brits, even Soviets said no. They went home. And nothing over there – not oil, not bases in Saudi Arabia, not global hegemony – is worth risking nuclear terror over here. I may be the only right-winger in America who loves D.C., but then I grew up here. Washington is my hometown. It comes first, and empire isn't even a close second.

Maybe you conservatives would have done better to vote for Pat. (And as Bob pointed out in his e-mail, at least Pat admitted he didn't think he got those Palm Beach County votes Jeb said he did.)

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.