Ron Paul Was Right
Written by Sam on May 16th, 2007
Rudy Giuliani made clear in Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate that he is not ready to let the facts get in the way of his approach to foreign policy.
The most heated moment in the debate, which aired live on the conservative Fox News network, came when the former New York mayor and current GOP front-runner angrily refused to entertain a serious discussion about the role that actions taken by the United States prior to the September 11, 2OO1, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon may have played in inspiring or encouraging those attacks.
Giuliani led the crowd of contenders on attacking Texas Congressman Ron Paul after the anti-war Republican restated facts that are outlined in the report of the The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
There is only one thing I don’t completely agree with Paul on regarding last night’s comments. Even if the U.S. hadn’t had a sustained presence in the Middle East over the last twenty something years, I am not certain that we still wouldn’t be feeling some of their aggression. Islamic fundamentalism plays a large part in the role on exercising terror across the globe.
Aside from that, Ron Paul was right. When we stake out a position to be the World’s police force, we are going to incur resentment. I have always been against the idea that it is our job to police the world. The Monroe Doctrine be damned.
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PM
Radical Islam has a large presence in South America, mostly Argentina and Brazil. Yet even though “women can drive” in these countries we never see attacks down there. Why not? Because Latin America has zero political bearing on the future of the Middle East.
Is the US right to engage the Middle East to ensure our economic prosperity and that radical muslims do not control the region? Yes, certainly. Is this why the region seethes with hate against us? Yes, certainly.
I am not an isolationist, but rather a nationalist. That would seem to be the middle ground between Paul and the Neocons.
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Sam, if you can’t name a specific foreign country that we shouldn’t be in right now, then you really have no business second-guessing the decisions of previous White House administrations on this issue.
It is very easy for a bitter minority to point at the state of the world today and say “we it shouldn’t be this way” without taking consideration of the circumstances that made us position ourselves as such.
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“Sam, if you can’t name a specific foreign country that we shouldn’t be in right now, then you really have no business second-guessing the decisions of previous White House administrations on this issue.”
I’ll play: Kosovo, Bosnia (which Bush promised he would pull us out of in 2000), Haiti, and South Korea all have significant American troops in them right now. Why?
BTW Joe, I have every business second-guessing the decisions of this administration or any other, it is my duty as a citizen. If more people took their obligations to question the government more seriously we wouldn’t be in half the messes we are now.
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Mike, well said. I’m going to go further, though, and say not only is it our duty as Americans to second-guess the decisions of our government, but it is our legacy. Not doing so would cause our nation to diminish.
“Government for the people, by the people,” right?
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This notion that we should follow these interventionist policies blindly is tantamount to killing people to goto heaven.
Yes, our foreign policies since World War II have consequences. Britain’s foreign policy was their downfall; as was the Roman Empire’s.
The biggest problem with our actions in Iraq is that we are trying to build a country and create stability when that is not the role of a military. Militarizes are good at killing people and breaking things. That needs to be the focus of our military, not nation building.
Our National Guard should not be guarding another nation, or building that nation. They should be here, protection OUR nation.
The military should be scouring the planet and destroying the terrorists as they pop up. We have an enemy that is taking potshots at our National Guard because they are being used as bait “to fight them over there.”
We should be fighting them everywhere and opposing anyone who gets in our way. We don’t need to occupy every country in the world to do that.
Ron Paul is right and wrong at the same time. But so is Bush and the rest of the establishment big-government/interventionist Republicans.
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“Ron Paul is right and wrong at the same time. But so is Bush and the rest of the establishment big-government/interventionist Republicans.”
Well said, if only the wisdom of the citizenry could penetrate our broken political process.
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“BTW Joe, I have every business second-guessing the decisions of this administration or any other, it is my duty as a citizen.”
Rhetorical nonsense. It is not a citizen’s duty to be a cynic.
Also, the states you mentioned have a situation where a minority in a state or the actual state may be incapable of defending itself from aggression. And in the case of North Korea, the United States has a clear interest in seeing that South Korea remains at peace with itself, businesslike, and free.
And the question of whether the National Guard ought to be “guarding another nation” is irrelevant, they are a necessity to our ground strength in Iraq at this moment in time and we cannot operate without them. The solution is to fund and field a substantially larger standing army than the one we have today.
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The Muslim world would still resent us even if we did not exercise our influence in the Middle East. Radical Islam seeks a return to the glory days of the Muslim world more than a 1000 years ago when they had the greatest influence in the world.
I understand Paul’s argument and concede to the resentment angle. But this is nothing more than a Western Culture guilt complex. Paul and defeatist like him feel guilty that America is the strongest most powerful nation on earth.
I am proud to be an American. I am proud of our free society. I am proud that we are the most charitable nation on earth. Yes Muslims resent our charity as much as our military. I am tired of our leaders apologizing for being Americans. I want a leader who instills hope in the American people and not make you feel guilty because you own a gun, or drive an SUV. This country is on a down swing emotionally and needs to be lifted back up. Unfortunately I see only Presidential candidates that want to tear us down.
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Wow…I cannot believe that there could be people in the GOP that would actually adhere to this line of thought…this is the exact kind of isolationism thinking that led to Hitler and Stalin and Mao. Nothing Ron Paul said was correct. Islamic fundamentalism is an ideology that preaches the re-establishment of a Caliphate that stretches from India, through the Middle East and Northern Africa, through Turkey and the Balkans and into Spain. It is an ideology that preaches the destruction of Israel and the killing of anyone that does not agree. To mistakenly think that we have ANY part in controlling their actions by sitting on the sidelines or ignoring them is Democratic foolishness.
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One more comment…someone mentioned South America….and there not being violence despite Muslim presence….how soon we forget recent history….it was only a few years ago that Muslims blew up a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires killing 100+ Jews.
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That makes no sense.
Isolationism didn’t create Hitler - mistreatment of the German people by the European powers, followed by the appeasement by the European powers created Hitler.
Isolationism didn’t create Mao - fear of Russian domination after the Japanese invasion decimated China led to Mao.
Please, before comparing thing to historical references, read some history.
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Isolationism absolutely did play a major role in the rise of all three.
The reactionary fervor in the United States following World War I led to the US staying completely out of European affairs. As a result, you had the hapless Chamberlain of England and Dadalier of France giving away the farm so to speak to Germany. The Germans repeatedly violated the Versailles Treaty and only once (when the French briefly occupied the Saar) was anything done. Americans were no where on the stage. If we were, I severely doubt Hitler would have been able to get away with as much as he got away with with the Europeans.
Mao was a clear result of Truman’s desire not to involve the United States in the Chinese civil war that followed the end of WW II. The Japanese invasion did NOT create Mao. The Communists and Nationalists were fighting each other previous to the Japanese invasion and put their civil war on hold until WW II was over. After the war their civil war resumed and Chiang Kai-Chek (sp.) and the Kuomingtao (Nationalists) were defeated because they were not given any support from their previous allies (the US and Great Britain).
Stalin is the direct result of the failure of the US and the allies to fully commit themselves to the Whites in the Russian Civil War that followed the October Revolution in 1917. Woodrow Wilson refused to expand on the small American force at Archangel and instead withdrew our forces…the result was a Leninist/Bolshevik win that ultimately led to Stalin.
So yes, I’ve read my history…and yes isolationism and non-interventionism is historically dangerous.
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Maybe — but more likely involvement in World War I (that is, interventionism) led to the various socialist/communist terrors in Europe. What part of pre World War I Germany was worse (and worthy to be attacked) than the post World War I Germany? This actually illustrates the idea of “blowback” fairly well.
Republicans opposed that war — in this century we were the anti-war, anti-imperialism party.
Do you think a pre-World War I German state would have allowed the Bolshevik revolution? I don’t know either.
We should just mind our own business, and, certianly not blow anyone or anything up if it is at all avoidable.
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i guess none of you know history and how the world has worked. Lately the hip thing to do is blame radical islam and the neo-cons claiming their goal is to “control” the world. now can i remind you of the holy roman empire, the christians did the same damn thing, but instead of killing infidels they killed heretics…which means the exact same thing. why not let the relegious right know that their own churches were just as evil and wicked as the radical muslims of today. as for ron paul, he is dead on correct, if thomas jefferson or president washington were alive today they would back ron paul 110%. please people understand, the federal government has only a few duties, protect the nation, coin the nations money, and obey the constitution. thats it. the only departments that should exist in the federal government are defense and treasury. no more. yet there are dozens on top of dozens of departments that are in direct violation of the constitution. our republic is not supposed to be ruled by government, governments only duty is to obey the constitution, the constitution rules this republic where liberity is king. democracy is not liberity, learn the difference