Luke Parker Ⓥ

In a Republican primary debate in May of 2007, @RonPaul said what couldn’t be said about 9/11: He told the American people that 9/11 was “blowback” for the wars in the Middle East. People could entertain conspiracy theories, but you simply could not say this, and especially not if you wanted to win a Republican primary. So Giuliani tried to use the moment as a “gotcha” by asking if Ron Paul blamed America for the 9/11 attacks. Ron Paul doubled down: He explained that the CIA talks about “blowback” or the second- and third-order consequences of our policies. The word first appeared in the CIA’s 1954 internal history of Operation Ajax, the 1953 coup in Iran that overthrew Mossadegh and installed the Shah. Paul pointed to that intervention and the hostage crisis that followed. The crowd applauded Giuliani. But Ron Paul went on to out-fundraise every other Republican in the fourth quarter of 2007. For most Americans watching, this was the first time someone gave a serious answer other than “they attacked us for our freedoms.” He said they attack us because we are over there. That exchange, now dubbed “the Giuliani moment,” sparked the “Ron Paul Revolution.” More importantly, though, he sparked a revolution of thought on the American right, calling for a return to its Old Right, America First, and non-interventionist roots. He laid the groundwork for someone like Donald Trump to tell Jeb Bush, on the debate stage, that his brother lied us into Iraq. When Trump was similarly booed, he turned it back on them and told the American people how the system really works: that everyone in attendance were donors of the other candidates. But here we are again, in another entanglement in the Middle East. Involved with the same country the CIA helped overthrow a government in ’53. The same operation that put “blowback” into the CIA’s own vocabulary. The America First movement is now greater than Donald Trump, and Ron Paul’s message resonates more and more, especially with young Americans. But we’re getting the same policies. The Reagan line from the Giuliani moment is extremely relevant today. At the beginning of this war, Lindsey Graham said Donald Trump was a better president than Ronald Reagan, because Trump was actually committed to this war. Repeatedly, we hear claims about Iranians killing our men in the barracks bombing under Reagan, and how we have been at war with them for 47 years. What they don’t tell you is that Reagan was dragged into that conflict under similar circumstances, and he later wrote in his memoirs about the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. In his memoirs, he said that he called the Prime Minister of Israel, threatened the entire U.S.–Israel relationship if Israel continued the war in Lebanon, and used the word “holocaust” deliberately. Ronald Reagan got out. We should get out now and listen to Ron Paul: we just marched in, we can just march out. This clip of Ron Paul should be played in every history class. It’s important for so many reasons. And on this 9/11, I hope we reflect on the second- and third-order consequences of our disastrous policies in the Middle East.