[Q]"The president now plans to hector and badger foreign leaders on the progress each is making toward attaining U.S. standards of democracy. ... This is a formula for `Bring-it-on!' collisions with every autocratic regime on earth, including virtually every African and Arab ruler, all the `outposts of tyranny' named by Secretary [of State] Rice, most of the nations of Central Asia, China and Russia. This is a prescription for endless war."
Do you agree? [/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: Certainly it is. Look, the United States of America--I dissent strongly from my friend. The United States of America has always been free and always been secure. There have been despotisms from time in memorial. There are 22 Arab states, not one of which is democratic, and the United States has not been threatened by any of them since the Barbary pirates.
In my judgment, what happened on 9/11 was a result of interventionism. Interventionism is the cause of terror. It is not a cure for terror. The idea that the president of the United States, as he said in his inaugural, is going to help democratic institutions in every region in every nation on earth is a formula for permanent war, Tim. And look, the president of the United States has no constitutional authority to do this. Where in the Constitution do we get the right to intervene in the internal affairs of countries that do not threaten us and do not attack us? If they don't, their internal politics are their own business. As Quincy Adams says, "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the champion of freedom everywhere, but the vindicator only of her own."
[/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: The president of the United States was profoundly mistaken. He has misdiagnosed the malady. He has misdiagnosed the reason for the attack, Tim. The United States was not attacked because we are free. Bin Laden was not attacking the Bill of Rights. We were attacked because the United--over here because the United States' military and political presence is massive over there. Bin Laden in his fatwah, his statement of declaration of war on the United States, said the infidels were standing on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia. They want us out of the Middle East. They don't care whether we have a separation of church and state.
[/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: We brought down the shah and we got the ayatollah. You bring down that Saudi monarchy, you destabilize that regime and Howard Dean, an Arab Howard Dean, is not going to rise out of the wreckage. That country is a nation whose people now admire and respect bin Laden, not George Bush. We cannot make the enemy the best of the good. Tim, look, we have had occasions, the last great crusade for democracy was Woodrow Wilson going across the sea with an army to make the world safer. We brought down all the monarchs and we got instead Lenin and Stalin and Mussolini and Hitler.
[/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: Perhaps we agree because my argument is we do not go around the world militarily intervening in countries to change their internal policies the way we did, or claim to have done, in Iraq.
[/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: If you believe in democracy...
MR. SHARANSKY: Yeah.
MR. BUCHANAN: ...that much, would you allow the fate of the settlers in Gaza...
MR. SHARANSKY: Yeah.
MR. BUCHANAN: ...to be decided by all the people of Gaza? Let them vote on whether the settlers should stay or go. You think they should stay. I want to make one more point. The Israelis, when they invaded Lebanon to chase out the PLO, there was no Shia uprising against them. They called into existence that invasion and occupation did, Hezbollah, which eventually drove the Israelis out of Lebanon. Interventionism is not the cure for terror. It is the cause of terror.
[/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: ...defending the frontier of Gaza. The question is: What are 8,000 Israeli settlers doing on that Palestinian land? They are the cause why Hamas won a 70 percent vote. You have got to stop occupying countries. That is the cause of terrorism. [/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: Imperial interventionism. You want to end terror...
MR. SHARANSKY: Right.
MR. BUCHANAN: ...stop it the way the British stopped it in Palestine. They got out. The French got out of Algiers. It ended. The Russians got out of Afghanistan. It ended. They got out of Lebanon. That ended it.
[/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: Look, every American supports the right of Israel to exist and...
MR. SHARANSKY: Yeah.
MR. BUCHANAN: ...almost every American supports American weapons to Israel to defend its national security and national existence...
MR. SHARANSKY: Yeah.
MR. BUCHANAN: ...however, we do believe that Israel has got to give up the occupied territories in Gaza and the West Bank because this problem in the Middle East, which is caused there, is causing acts of terror, not only against you, but against us. It is making us hated in a part of the world where the United States was never before hated, was admired, if you will.
[/Q]
These are the words of a man who many of you probably disagree with on a daily basis. Is he speaking the truth on meet the press? Any thoughts?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6954712/
Do you agree? [/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: Certainly it is. Look, the United States of America--I dissent strongly from my friend. The United States of America has always been free and always been secure. There have been despotisms from time in memorial. There are 22 Arab states, not one of which is democratic, and the United States has not been threatened by any of them since the Barbary pirates.
In my judgment, what happened on 9/11 was a result of interventionism. Interventionism is the cause of terror. It is not a cure for terror. The idea that the president of the United States, as he said in his inaugural, is going to help democratic institutions in every region in every nation on earth is a formula for permanent war, Tim. And look, the president of the United States has no constitutional authority to do this. Where in the Constitution do we get the right to intervene in the internal affairs of countries that do not threaten us and do not attack us? If they don't, their internal politics are their own business. As Quincy Adams says, "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the champion of freedom everywhere, but the vindicator only of her own."
[/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: The president of the United States was profoundly mistaken. He has misdiagnosed the malady. He has misdiagnosed the reason for the attack, Tim. The United States was not attacked because we are free. Bin Laden was not attacking the Bill of Rights. We were attacked because the United--over here because the United States' military and political presence is massive over there. Bin Laden in his fatwah, his statement of declaration of war on the United States, said the infidels were standing on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia. They want us out of the Middle East. They don't care whether we have a separation of church and state.
[/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: We brought down the shah and we got the ayatollah. You bring down that Saudi monarchy, you destabilize that regime and Howard Dean, an Arab Howard Dean, is not going to rise out of the wreckage. That country is a nation whose people now admire and respect bin Laden, not George Bush. We cannot make the enemy the best of the good. Tim, look, we have had occasions, the last great crusade for democracy was Woodrow Wilson going across the sea with an army to make the world safer. We brought down all the monarchs and we got instead Lenin and Stalin and Mussolini and Hitler.
[/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: Perhaps we agree because my argument is we do not go around the world militarily intervening in countries to change their internal policies the way we did, or claim to have done, in Iraq.
[/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: If you believe in democracy...
MR. SHARANSKY: Yeah.
MR. BUCHANAN: ...that much, would you allow the fate of the settlers in Gaza...
MR. SHARANSKY: Yeah.
MR. BUCHANAN: ...to be decided by all the people of Gaza? Let them vote on whether the settlers should stay or go. You think they should stay. I want to make one more point. The Israelis, when they invaded Lebanon to chase out the PLO, there was no Shia uprising against them. They called into existence that invasion and occupation did, Hezbollah, which eventually drove the Israelis out of Lebanon. Interventionism is not the cure for terror. It is the cause of terror.
[/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: ...defending the frontier of Gaza. The question is: What are 8,000 Israeli settlers doing on that Palestinian land? They are the cause why Hamas won a 70 percent vote. You have got to stop occupying countries. That is the cause of terrorism. [/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: Imperial interventionism. You want to end terror...
MR. SHARANSKY: Right.
MR. BUCHANAN: ...stop it the way the British stopped it in Palestine. They got out. The French got out of Algiers. It ended. The Russians got out of Afghanistan. It ended. They got out of Lebanon. That ended it.
[/Q]
[Q]MR. BUCHANAN: Look, every American supports the right of Israel to exist and...
MR. SHARANSKY: Yeah.
MR. BUCHANAN: ...almost every American supports American weapons to Israel to defend its national security and national existence...
MR. SHARANSKY: Yeah.
MR. BUCHANAN: ...however, we do believe that Israel has got to give up the occupied territories in Gaza and the West Bank because this problem in the Middle East, which is caused there, is causing acts of terror, not only against you, but against us. It is making us hated in a part of the world where the United States was never before hated, was admired, if you will.
[/Q]
These are the words of a man who many of you probably disagree with on a daily basis. Is he speaking the truth on meet the press? Any thoughts?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6954712/