9/11 Conspiracies, Ron Paul, and Saudi Arabian Rape Victim Convictions: What Do They All Have in Common?

I bet when you hear a woman was raped, the last thing that comes to mind is that she needs to serve jail time, receive lashes from a whip, or worse, even endure capital punishment, but believe it or not, this type of victim conviction occurs on a nearly daily basis in the Islamic world, especially in strictly fundamentalist Saudi Arabia. Just recently, a woman was sentenced to 200 lashes for being the victim of a brutal gang rape. This is actually somewhat lenient, as the Islamic Republic of Iran has shown, as most fundamentalists pretty strictly adhere to the policy set forth by Muhammad: if a woman claims to be raped, she needs to have her story collaborated by 5 males witnesses or she gets stoned for adultery.

But then, maybe we can just dig into Ron Paul's bag of terms and call this "blowback" - if she hadn't gotten herself into a situation that could have resulted in such dire consequences, if she had not gotten into any of the cars to begin with, she wouldn't have become a rape victim. Therefore the answer is to not punish the rapists, but to simply stay out of their cars, wherever they may be.

It may seem like an extreme example, but then, I thought that basically saying we had 9/11 coming was pretty extreme too. Ron Paul, for those who haven't been bombarded by his rather belligerent fan base yet, is a candidate that appears to be running in the wrong primary. Running on a strict isolationist policy, feeding into the hands of 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists by always beating around the ever dangerous bush of suggesting more investigations into 9/11, toeing the line of damning his chance for the White House (as if his fringe and bizarre beliefs weren't enough) by fully trying to suggest Bush himself was behind them.

Fortunately for Ron Paul, he has a better way around this, he appeals to pseudo-intellectuals, conspiracy theorists, and people who like to think they're engaging in a "higher order of thinking". This is no better demonstrated anywhere else than in an editorial by C. Garling who says, "...While Paul's arguments tend to be rooted in history, government reports, and logic..." and there is the absolute crux of the issue. Garling, like other Ron Paul supporters, gets excited because he uses language that sounds like they're involved in some sort of spy novel. Blowback, Paul exclaims, that's why we got attacked on 9/11, and the only answer is a complete withdrawal from the Middle East and absolute isolationism.

Blowback, of course, is generally a term used by the Central Intelligence Agency to describe the unintended consequence of an operation, such as arming guerrillas against Communists who then overthrow the government and attack the United States. Before you start hopping on the "You mean like with Osama bin-Laden?" band wagon, I recommend reading up a little on that, and realize Osama bin-Laden was never armed, funded, or trained by the Americans.

The problem with Ron Paul's wide sweeping use of this term, is that it's incorrectly applied. The idea of blowback actually comes from weapons - you unintentionally harm yourself in the midst of firing a weapon, like putting your hand behind a bazooka/RPG and getting it burned off, or Wiley Coyote's catapult flipping over on itself. In the Intelligence Community, it's a term used specifically for covert operations that yield unintended, negative consequences. President Reagan was heavily criticized because of his vast networks of covert operations and guerrilla arming programs that people feared would result in blowback.

Now while the term can theoretically evolve, if used correctly, such as referring to "political blowback", the term itself is little more than a buzz word, a key word that is used entirely out of context by Ron Paul, which rings true with the entire quantity of people that see him as their chance to live out their fantasies, whatever they may be. Unfortunately, among the fantasies of those that want to pretend they're being historical intellectuals, declaring that our entanglements in the Middle East is the only reason they want to destroy us, there are also those who are also gluttons for punishment, or so it seems.

The 9/11 issue is perhaps the keenest example of this - rather than pursue the annihilation of an organization that believes passenger planes can be used as human torpedoes to influence foreign policy, a group of pipe smoking pseudo-intellectuals can sit around a table and discuss how the pieces fall into history, how it's really our fault, and we really had it coming to us. And rather than convict Lady Liberty's rapists, we want to lash Lady Liberty and deny her the ability to defend herself.

Perhaps just as dangerous is the extension with which Ron Paul wants to carry on this misapplied blowback" - in addition to his isolationist policy, he rings a true chord in Islamic radial sympathetics who nod their heads and think they don't want to bring down a secular America and replace it with an Islamic caliphate, they just want us off of their land. I'm sure, of course, Ron Paul can just explain that to As-Sabiquin, an organization founded on the promise of Islamicizing the United States, along with the thousands of other organizations that promise a global Caliphate.

They'll just stay there and leave us alone - they just want us silly infidels off their sacred soil, right Ron Paul?

Tell that to the murdered Jews who had nothing to do with the Middle East.

It's really amusing of course that Ron Paul insists that no one wants to Islamicize the United States - especially since he's taken on the Islamic fundamentalist opinion that it's the victim that should be punished, not the culprit.