Writes Philip Weiss: “I admit that I’ve ignored the Ron Paul campaign. I love the fact that he talks about Israel and Palestine, but his economic libertarianism makes this big-government type leery. Then today I learned that Paul has hired as his foreign policy advisor Robert Pape, the realist author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, which is one of the most important books I’ve read in the last five years. Dying to Win shows that suicide terrorists are empowered by their communities when there’s an occupier with a religious difference in their land. It’s not religious craziness, it’s the occupation, stupid. I have urged Pape to revise his theory somewhat in light of the burgeoning new sample of suicide terrorists across the arc of Islam, but his book’s rich database on the motivation of suicide bombers is the necessary logical antidote to the hysteria of the neolibs and neocons over ‘Islamofascism.’
“The press release says that Paul has also hired Leon Hadar, the scholar who pointed out 15 years ago that when the Cold War fizzled out and it was no longer our base in Arabia against the Soviet Union, Israel had to come up with a new modus-dependi for the United States. Radical Islam! The idea of the usefulness of Radical Islam has been echoed in the last year by Mearsheimer and Walt and Trita Parsi.
“Both Hadar and Pape are brilliant men who are coming up with new ideas for how the United States is to engage in the Middle East. They’re what this blog is all about; and Ron Paul should be celebrated for his foresight, and Hadar and Pape for extending themselves. I can’t wait till their ideas are reflected in his speeches; and I hope his campaign is around for the rest of the year in one form or another, if only to keep these ideas percolating up into the American mainstream…”
7:31 pm on February 8, 2008
