Archive for the 'Foreign Policy' Category

Ron Paul is a Non-Interventionist, NOT an Isolationist

Published by
MichaelC
at December 6, 2007 in Foreign Policy. 0 Comments

I watched the CNN/Youtube debate on November 28th with a handful of fellow members of the Boston Ron Paul Meetup Group. I was intrigued by the new format that asked questions to the candidates in a Youtube-styled format. The videos were at times as interesting to watch as the candidates answers. The videos tackled political issues in creative ways that brought an element of light-heartedness to the typical partisan contest. I can remember a few moments that stood out in my mind during this new-style political forum. One of them was when John McCain referred to Paul as an “isolationist” for not wanting to continue the Iraq War.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRQ41bKLyzU

I just want to also say that Congressman Paul, I’ve heard him now in many debates talk about bringing our troops home, and about the war in Iraq and how it’s failed. And I want to tell you that that kind of isolationism, sir, is what caused World War II. We allowed Hitler to come to power with that kind of attitude of isolationism and appeasement. And I want to tell you something, sir. I just finished having Thanksgiving with the troops, and their message to you is — the message of these brave men and women who are serving over there is, “Let us win. Let us win”

Isolationism is very different from non-interventionism. Isolationism involves both non-interventionism and protectionism. One can be a protectionist interventionist or a pro-free trade non-interventionist. Ron Paul advocates “peace and commerce with all, entangling alliances with none,” the same view as the Founding Fathers. Under a Ron Paul presidency the US economy would be anything but isolated under REAL free trade, not managed trade (a topic worthy of its own separate article.)

At a recent event a former congressman and friend of Ron Paul shared a quote of Dr. Paul’s with us: “As a libertarian I can see that there are some times when it is justifiable to go to war. But shouldn’t it be rare?” Indeed, since the Second World War, War has been anything but rare. Before then, we did not intervene abroad as often. Since then we have intervened in Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Cuba, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Somalia (twice), Haiti, Angola, Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq (three times.) What John McCain said is much more deep and dangerous than that single debate. Since non-interventionism had been given scapegoat status for “causing World War II,” that has been used as a tool to justify ANY opportunity for foreign intervention. “You better not oppose this or else you’ll cause World War II!” These interventions for a New Age Imperialist foreign policy have cost America a lot: money to fund these interventions, lives of brave men and women and reputation. This last element, as Ron Paul and the CIA call “blowback” is key. Blowback describes the “unintended consequences” of past operations. When people are attacked or feel threatened/occupied they might strike back at some time. The CIA is required to learn about blowback. If only we had a similar standard for presidential candidates.

Ron Paul’s foreign policy, the same as that of the Founding Fathers, would be “peace and commerce with all, entangling alliances with none,” and we can expect a dramatic decline in direct attacks upon the US because of the disintegrating influence of the blowback effect. Peace prosperity and freedom…quite different from a World War, wouldn’t you say?

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FreeRepublic.com Doesn’t Dig Free Speech

Published by
peter
at October 28, 2007 in Republicans and Foreign Policy. 1 Comment

This morning I commented on a rather illogical anti-Paul post by ‘connell’ on the Free Republic website. My two comments, #59 and #60, posted under my username ‘rudynoir,’ were removed within 30 minutes. I am unsure what to make of this, since I felt that my comments were rather mild compared to some others. They did happen to represent an opposing viewpoint, though. Could it be that the “conservatives” on this site can’t tolerate an opposing viewpoint? Judge for yourself:

Deleted Comment #59 (in response to Comment #17)

To: MNJohnnie

MNJohnnie,

The world situation certainly has changed since 9/11, thanks to us. Iran supported us after the attacks, and we turned our backs on them. Now instead of having a treaty with Iran, we will be invading them. Good call, Cheney. Glad to know that my kids will be inheriting never-ending war and unchecked executive powers.

Oh and Iraq? Everyone knew there were no WMD. Well, everyone except for people who listen to fearmongers. Too bad that was almost everyone, including the likes of Hillary Clinton. Now those same people are “warning” us about so-called Islamofascism. Americans are not going to keep buying this, guys. Contrary to what Norman Podhoretz might have you believe, Iranians don’t actually want to chew on our eyeballs so they can suck out our souls.

This is why Ron Paul raised $5m last quarter and will outraise Romney in Q4. Americans want integrity and trust back in government. They also want their Constitutional rights back.

You’ve been warned.

Peter | RonPaulNewEngland.com


Posted on 10/28/2007 12:20:52 AM PDT by rudynoir

Deleted Comment #60 (in response to Comment #51)

To: Dead Corpse

Dead Corpse,

So you’re saying that covert US intervention like our overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953 had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks we’ve seen over the last 40-50 years?

Interesting theory. But how is it based in reality?

Peter | RonPaulNewEngland.com


Posted on 10/28/2007 12:26:40 AM PDT by rudynoir

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A Vote For Hillary Is A Vote For War

Published by
peter
at October 10, 2007 in Military-Industrial Complex, Democrats, War and Foreign Policy. 6 Comments

Two weeks ago, Hillary Clinton voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment in support of military actions against Iran. Democratic rival Mike Gravel immediately called her out on it in a nationally televised Presidential debate. Her response? Laughter (cackling, actually).

Frankly, I am baffled. Why aren’t Democrats outraged by this? Hillary has said that she wouldn’t have voted for the Iraq War if she knew then what she knows now. Yet here she is, voting for war again. Are the Democrats’ attention spans really that short? I took her Iraq vote to mean that she didn’t have the balls to stand up to the President, but she just proved me wrong by virtually coming out of the closet as a Neocon.

And where are the anti-war Democrats? Ron Paul raised over $5 million in Q3, why can’t Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich or Chris Dodd do the same? Why are Democrats blindly goose-stepping behind their war-mongering front-runner, even after she revealed who she really was? I can’t believe for a second that Democrats are suddenly pro-war. So what gives?

Ron Paul got it right in last night’s MSNBC debates when he said that a nuclear Iran does not pose a threat to us. Think about it, China has nuclear plants and nukes. What makes Iran, a much smaller and weaker country than communist China (which happens to own us, by the way), more dangerous? Furthermore, what gives the US, “the greatest violator of the non-proliferation treaty,” (thank you Mike Gravel) the right to tell Iran what it can and can’t do? They have not declared war on us, nor have they threatened to.

There is only one possible way for the “same people who told us Iraq would be a cakewalk” (thank you Ron Paul) to sell their next war to us, and that’s to convince us that they are evil and dangerous “Islamofascists.” But what if they’re right? Can we risk another 9/11?

Lucky for us, they couldn’t be more wrong. Iran is simply pissed off, and with good reason.

First we overthrew the democratically-elected administration of Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953 because he wasn’t friendly to our oil companies. Then, thrity years later, we gave our buddy Saddam next door hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military equipment and billions of dollars in economic aid to support him during the Iran-Iraq war, conveniently looking the other way when he used chemical weapons against Iranian civilians and even his own people. Now we are harassing Iran about wanting to build nuclear reactors that they are legally allowed to build. Wouldn’t you be pissed off too?

Guess what? They also hate us for everything we have done in the rest of the Middle East, not the least of which are the Clinton-era sanctions and bombings which killed 500,000 Iraqi children (Madeleine Albright even went as far as to say in a 1996 CBS interview that it was worth it; how does that make us look?).

This is not just about the Bush Administration. Our foreign policy has been corrupt for longer than you can imagine. I am currently reading Blowback by Chalmers Johnson, about the history of our Imperialistic foreign policy. In the first chapter he asks why we still operate cold-war era military bases in places like Italy. Does anyone stop to think why we are behaving less and less like a Beacon of Liberty and more and more like an Empire?

So here’s the other thing about Hillary. She’s being advised by Richard Holbrooke, a slightly toned-down version of Norman Podhoretz, Giuliani’s neocon foreign policy advisor (the same guy who goes around ranting about how the Islamofacists are out to kill us). Is this who the Democrats want deciding their foreign policy?

You may be wondering why I would want to bring up Hillary on a Ron Paul blog three months before the primaries. Two reasons: first, I think that many open-minded, rational people who voted Democratic in the past (like me) would in fact support Ron Paul if they took an honest look at him and forgot for a second that he is (gasp!) a Republican. Maybe they’ll finally notice that Hillary is a neocon (quietly being advised by Bush) and realize that maybe, just maybe, a non-interventionist Republican is preferable to a war-mongering Democrat. Second, Google Trends tell us that we are in for a Hillary-Paul Face Off. We need to prepare for the bizarre but increasingly likely possibility of an anti-war Republican underdog taking on a pro-war, insider Democrat.

The Bush Administration still hasn’t told us the real reason we went to war. Was it really about oil or national security? Perhaps it was about spreading democracy at the barrel of a gun? Or maybe it was to stop Islamofascim from destroying America?

Don’t believe any of this for a second. These are are rationalizations at best, lies & propaganda at worst. The truth is that this war and the next one are about empire building. Hillary Clinton is part of that empire, whether she knows it or not. I hope Democrats realize this before it’s too late.

I leave you with this quote from Hermann Göring, a leading member of the Nazi Party, second in command of the Third Reich, and commander of the Luftwaffe:

Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. …Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Sound familiar?

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Congress, Just War and a Young Man’s Choice

Published by
SueM
at September 23, 2007 in Federal Government, Non-Interventionism, Iraq War, Foreign Policy and Ron Paul Awareness. 2 Comments

I have a friend whose son is grappling with the issue of our involvement in Iraq. In his late teens, he knows kids who have either signed up or are thinking about it and right now he supports the war. My friend recently wondered out loud what to say to her son in hopes of broadening his view. With the somewhat obsessive and very fruitful habit I’ve developed over the last several months, I volunteered to look into it. Here’s what I found:

First, a quote from from a speech given by the Hon. Ron Paul of Texas before the U.S. House of Representatives, September 7, 2006 entitled “Big Government Solutions Don’t Work/ The Law of Opposites”

With no consistent moral defense of true liberty, the continued erosion of personal and property rights is inevitable. This careless disregard for liberty, our traditions, and the Constitution have brought us disaster, with a foreign policy of military interventionism supported by the leadership of both parties. Hopefully, some day this will be radically changed.

Unfortunately it seems to be no longer common knowledge that “a foreign policy of military interventionism” is not allowed under the US Constitution. Of the young man or woman volunteering to serve in the US Armed Forces today, I would ask:

Going to war is serious business. Are you willing to do so for a war that has not been authorized by the People through their Representatives in Congress, whose members have taken a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution?

Ron Paul often frames the argument in terms of the just war theory. In his article Onward Christian Soldiers? Christian Perspectives on War, Timothy J. Demy, Th.D. Commander, Chaplain Corps, U.S. Navy lists seven principles or criteria for just war, five for the nation “on the way to war” (jus ad bellum):

Just cause
Just intention
Last resort
Formal declaration
Limited objectives

and two for the military forces “in the midst of war” (jus in bello):

Proportionate means
Noncombatant immunity

Commander Demy then continues:

The just war theory has three important functions. First, it seeks to limit the devastation and outbreak of war. Second, the just war theory offers a common moral framework and language with which to discuss issues of war in the public arena. As Christians and as citizens it gives us a starting point for discussion and cultural engagement. Third, just war theory gives moral guidance to individuals in developing their conscience, responsibilities, and response. When the war drums sound, they are often loud and there is frequently confusion, competition, and chaos rather than clear thinking about the moral and biblical consequences of what is occurring. Just war theory is a tool for responsible Christian living and citizenship

It is reasonable to suppose that when when our founders decided Congress shall have the Power to provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States, and with this the Power to declare War (Art I Sec 8), they had in mind the just war tradition developed over hundreds of years under the influence of not only Christianity but Roman law and Greek philosophy as well.

In these times we have plenty of destructive means at hand with which to wage war. Now more than ever we need the moral compass that limits their use, made plain by the just war tradition handed down through the ages for the good of all mankind.

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Why “Ron Paul Can’t Win” Won’t Last

Published by
peter
at September 11, 2007 in Gen Y, Iraq War, Primaries, Foreign Policy and Political Issues. 13 Comments

A few months ago I reconnected with an old friend with whom I haven’t spoken in close to 12 years. He happens to be my former boss and a Reagan Republican. In the spring of 1995 he offered me my first sales job while I was abroad, during a year off I took between high school and college. At the time, he was the publisher of several English language business papers in central and eastern Europe.

I was pleased to find out that while we had been out of touch he had become a publisher of a prominent conservative publication in Washington. Since then he has left the publishing business and is once again abroad. He sounded disgusted with the current state of the Republican party.

A few days ago I asked him what his conservative friends in the US think of Ron Paul. His response was “they think he is simply unelectable due to lack of mass name recognition.”

This, of course, did not surprise me.

As a Ron Paul supporter I am used to hearing the “Ron Paul can’t win” objection. Despite the fact that he is finally getting decent coverage in the mainstream press, even positive pieces about him throw in a caveat; they usually say something along the lines of “he is an interesting, nice guy with some great ideas BUT….” Usually this “but” is followed by a phrase along the lines of “he doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.”

This widespread dismissal has been driving many Ron Paul supporters nuts because it creates a self-fulling prophecy. If everyone thinks that everyone else thinks that he can’t win, well then he won’t. And no one wants to throw their vote away, right?

Some of us suspect a conspiracy by the media and the corporatocracy that controls it. I don’t fall into that camp–in my view everyone in the media who dismisses him simply doesn’t believe he can win because nobody else seems to–just like everyone else. This feeds on itself because no one is willing to go out on a limb and possibly risk their career to say “wait a minute, I think that Ron Paul doesn’t just have some good ideas, I think he has a chance.” It always takes a leap of faith to change the status quo.

But there is good news. Lately I’ve come to realize that this objection won’t be valid much longer as more and more people realize that he does in fact have a chance. “Ron Paul is unelectable” was a valid concern several months ago when he was completely on the margins, but since then his campaign has raised a healthy sum of money and is winning more straw polls than any candidate except Romney. Things are changing–perhaps slowly for now, but Ron Paul’s campaign will reach a Tipping Point soon. This “tip” will occur in the next few months and when it does it will catch nearly everyone by surprise.

There are three factors which will enable this to happen:

1. The Gen Y vote

A full half of Generation Y (born 1980-2000) will be of voting age by next year and no one really knows what impact they will have on the 2008 elections. A few months ago, Fortune ran a cover story about how different twentysomethings behave in the workplace, but the political aspect of this story has not been covered to any significant degree. One thing is certain–in 2004 the Gen Yers who were of voting age showed up to the polls in droves. And now that their numbers have doubled and they are a little older and wiser, they are poised to shake things up.

Contrast this with the the fact that my own generation (Gen X) has a well-deserved reputation for being politically apathetic, and this will only make this next generation’s impact even greater and more surprising. They are very different from the rest of us and will wield close 40 million potential votes in 2008. Given how connected they are to each other online (specifically Facebook), they are more than capable of politically mobilizing themselves in unprecedented ways. Combine that with the fact that they don’t like the way we’ve run things and we might be looking at nothing less than a revolution.

2. Campaign Fundraising

Dollars speak louder than words, and the Ron Paul Campaign raised 5 million of them in Q3! He has the cash to be in this for the long haul and is likely to “tip” very soon.

3. Iraq

There is not a single other Republican Presidential candidate, and only two other Democratic ones (Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich), who are talking about an immediate exit strategy from Iraq. Ron Paul is correct about his party; Republicans have lost heir way. These former non-interventionists are ready to return to their roots. If Dr. Paul can leverage this argument to win over enough of them who are tired of where the current administration has led them, he will take the primaries.

As far as the general elections go, nearly half of Americans think we should get out altogether. If Ron Paul is lucky enough to run against Hillary Clinton, it’ll be a landslide.

So why aren’t the other candidates listening to the people? The Iraq “war” was an unconstitutional and illegal invasion and we accomplished our stated objective years ago. Why are we still there? Why have we allowed thousands of our troops to pay for our honor (thanks Mike Huckabee) with their blood? Is that what they mean by supporting the troops? I’d rather support them by getting them home.

It’s hard for me to understand why it isn’t obvious to everyone that Iraq really is the key issue for 2008. Why don’t the other candidates get this yet? Before I get too worked up about this I must remind myself that this is actually good for Ron Paul. Tom Eddlem, a fellow Boston MeetUp member, summed it up to me this way:

The war in Iraq is already unpopular, as evidenced by the mid-term elections last year. It’s going to sink the Republican Party by November of next year, unless the Republicans nominate Ron Paul. Ron Paul is the only Republican who was right on Iraq from the beginning. Recent polling numbers indicate that even a majority of Republicans recognize that the United States needs to leave Iraq within six months, and no other Republican candidate is for a pull-out.

So let’s not worry too much about this “Ron Paul Can’t Win” thing. The question that people will soon be asking is not “why should I vote for Ron Paul if he doesn’t stand a chance of winning?” but rather “why would I want to waste my vote on those other Republicans who are guaranteed to lose in November?”

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A Soldier’s Neo-Con Free Perspective on Iraq

Published by
CorieW
at September 9, 2007 in Iraq War, Primaries, Foreign Policy, Political Issues and Ron Paul Awareness. 6 Comments

An old friend of mine who is currently stationed in Iraq sent me an instant message tonight to catch up and chat. I was quite surprised, pleasantly so, of course, because I haven’t spoken to him in ages. We talked about this that and the other thing, and not knowing at all where he would stand on the issue, I asked him how he thought things were going over there. I was honestly entirely unsure of what his response would be, because I primarily remember his “let’s get ‘em!” attitude prior to basic training back in high school. What he did end up saying though, was both justifying to me but rather upsetting at the same time - the prototypical catch-22.

To start, he laughed, then cursed the place out. His next statement reminded me of something that Rudy Giuliani, who has never been to Iraq, would call “extraordinary” or “unbelievable”: “The only reason why things seem to be going well is because we pay the bad guys not to fight us anymore”. I responded with a sarcastic comment about how bribery is always fantastic and he added to his initial comment by saying, “The same guys that were attacking us and blowing us up everyday work for us now as ‘Iraqi Police’ - which is fine to me, as long as it lasts until after October when I come home, haha.” I in response of course commented on the whole scenario as being a bad idea in the long-term. He then explained the situation further in saying, “These people are horrible. We shouldn’t be here, cause we’re fighting Al Qaeda and this other terrorist group. Then the two groups started fighting, and then once the other started winning we ‘allied’ with them …. ”

 ….. Then came the statement that was extremely upsetting to me: “It’s real nice working with people who you know have killed your friends and blown you up and shot at you. I hate them all. I just want to go home.” As I manifested feelings of sympathy, sadness, then anger, remembering how passionate this friend of mine was about fighting for his country, honor and all those ideals entailed before being sent to Iraq, I realized then and there how infinitely and personally offended I was by comments made by the neo-conservatives in the September 5th debate. I became especially aware of my disgust in relation to Mike Huckabee’s statements about honor in his exchange with Ron Paul.

Huckabee, as well as the other neo-conservatives, are presidential candidates running on OTHER people’s sacrificed honor, not on the symbolic honor of the Republican party, and certainly not on an honor they personally possess. The neo-conservative candidates are basing their platforms on their individual egos and an inability to admit that they were, first off, acting illegally, and secondly were wrong. These men say that it’s about “finishing what we started” and about “honor”, but I invite someone to please explain to me where the honor lies in forcing American troops to fight side by side with terrorists disguised as mercenaries further disguised as allies who have killed the dearest friends of our brave soldiers?

Another interesting point my friend made was about the differences between Iraq and Afghanistan. We were discussing another friend of ours who was recently sent to Afghanistan. I said that I assumed based on what I know that it must not be as bad there as it is in Iraq. He responded by saying that Afghanistan is supposed to be a lot better. “The people hate us here (in Iraq) but are semi-indifferent over there.” Interesting point - perhaps because the presence of troops in Afghanistan actually relate to September 11th whereas in Iraq, nothing positive is being achieved.

In a country where the police are simply a terrorist group themselves, and we have been reduced to aiding them as our only legitimate course of action so that things “look good”, we have no business there. It seems to me that everything occuring in Iraq is merely a temporary “fix” to an endless problem. It’s just the U.S. government supporting another terrorist group disguised as an ally. What will be next? There is no long-term solution that the U.S. can possibly provide. Whenever our government provides a political group or country with weapons (Iran-Contra Affair), or aids them in the overthrow of elected leaders (1953 Coup D’Etat in Iran), nothing good comes of it. The only result is what the CIA calls BLOWBACK - a concept apparently foreign to the neo-conservatives although the term simply means that there are consequences to our actions; consequences ranging from deep-seated hatred of the United States of America by countries we intervened in to actual aggression from groups using such actions as components of the reason they attacked.

I know that I can keep dreaming, but I’d like to see even the smallest bit of accountability on the part of the neo-conservatives who pretend so fervently that they are Republicans. As Ron Paul points out quite often, Reagan, a man the party idolizes, was smart enough to recognize the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics, and pulled out of Lebanon. No incoherent, backward ramblings where a perverse version of honor is used to justify an obvious mistake - he just did what needed to be done. The neo-conservatives could learn from their supposed idol. They’d also probably better themselves if they took a couple of history classes; especially on foreign policy.

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Have We Lost Our Minds?

Published by
peter
at September 6, 2007 in Primaries, Foreign Policy and Ron Paul Awareness. 4 Comments

Did anyone notice Rudy Giuliani smirking during last night’s debate? The first time I noticed it was when Ron Paul responded to Chris Wallace’s patronizing question about whether we should be taking our marching orders from Al Qaeda. Ron Paul’s response:

We should take our marching orders from our Constitution…we should not go to war without a declaration, we should not go to war when it’s an aggressive war. This is an aggressive invasion, we’ve committed the invasion of this war, and it’s illegal under international law.

In my experience, smirking is something people do when they feel threatened (when reason fails, try condescension!). So is chuckling in this case, and Giuliani wasn’t the only one chuckling while Chris Wallace asked his question. It sounded like some of the other moderators were too.

It astounds me that someone running for the highest office in the land would chuckle and smirk while debating such a serious issue. Ron Paul’s response, despite it’s perhaps overzealous delivery, was constructed with reason. His argument during the famous blowback exchange with Giuliani was also constructed with reason. Giuliani’s response then?

That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11th, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq.

Wait, that’s extraordinary? Either this man does not believe that our actions have consequences or he is purposely deceiving us. I am not sure which is worse, but it doesn’t really matter.

The problem with this exchange is that Giuliani’s argument is predicated on a fallacious belief about human nature. Psychology tells us that terrorists act out of reasons that seem rational to them, not out of evil (whatever that is). Blaming the 9/11 attacks on sociopaths or radical Islam or people who “hate our freedoms” goes against everything we know about human nature.

In general, people want peace. But when they grow up in an environment without hope, surrounded by poverty, when they witness extreme violence as children, and when they are recruited for a terrorist cause before they are emotionally developed enough to know any better, they feel justified in their actions when they pursue terrorist tactics. Can you really know what you would do in their shoes, in the complete absence of hope and in an atmosphere of continual injustice and powerlessness? Can you say with 100% certainty that you wouldn’t be mad as hell and want to do something about it? And could you blame the slightly more reasonable people around you who tolerate or even encourage your behavior because there are no other options?

I highly recommend this quick read about The Psychology of Terrorism.

We should not need psychology to tell us these things. I think most reasonable, emotionally mature people could empathize with the desperation these people feel if they opened themselves up to the experience. How could you not feel sad for a 10 year old boy who is forced to watch his mother get raped before being brutally murdered? And when he grows up to passionately hate whoever he blames for this injustice, even if this hatred is misdirected, can you really call him evil?

But let’s get back to the real issue at hand. What Ron Paul is saying is that our foreign policy was responsible for the conditions which breed terrorism. In this case it’s because we had troops stationed in Islam’s holiest land while we bombed Iraq between the Gulf Wars, killing innocent civilians in the process. In fact, since WWII we have toppled countless democratically elected governments just when their countries needed them most and usually replaced them with bloodthirsty despots who promised to be friendly to our business interests (at the expense of the people). Saddam Hussein comes to mind–it’s ironic that we invaded Iraq to liberate the very people we once enabled him to oppress.

Skeptical? Our own government has admitted to it in some cases, such as the coup d’état we staged in Iran in 1953 to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh after he tried to nationalize the oil industry. We did the same thing the following year in Guatemala when we overthrew democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. We continued these type of policies into the 1960s, the 70s, the 80s and 90s (and this list omits our involvement in Africa plus a few assassinations that the CIA was most likely involved in). There was blowback then (1979 hostage crisis) and there is blowback now (9/11). We reap what we sow, and blowback is a bitch.

Jon Stewart recently summed up our foreign policy record in the Middle East in what was supposed to be a defense of Barack Obama’s lack of experience, but which sounded more like an endorsement of Ron Paul. This is a must see (and quite funny too).

Bottom line: we can’t allow Giuliani-style thinking to win. Our foreign policy is broken, it’s usually unconstitutional, and if we don’t change it soon we’re going to be in big trouble. Don’t listen to the fear-mongering politicians who needlessly put our troops in harm’s way while quietly taking away your liberties. Don’t let them tell you that the situation is more complicated than you realize and that thinking you can just pull out of Iraq is naive. It’s not. Sure, getting out of Iraq will be messy, but it’s better than the alternative and in the long run our grand-children will thank us.

I hope you’ll forgive me for the cliché, but we owe it to them.

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A Perversion of Patriotism

Published by
CorieW
at September 1, 2007 in Foreign Policy, Political Issues and Ron Paul Awareness. 6 Comments

I recently read an article about the Ron Paul Revolution that was printed in the Boston Globe. As a Ron Paul supporter, I’d say that overall it’s not particularly bad (any exposure raises awareness), but of course feel it doesn’t do him justice. My obvious bias aside, I find it interesting that the article states, in reference to the June 5th GOP debate, that Giuliani won “patriotic points” by telling Ron Paul (and in effect the CIA as well as the 9/11 Commission Report) he was wrong. Though I am not doubting Giuliani’s good intentions in the general (and apparently uneducated) sense, I believe that Cathy Young (writer of the referenced article) and the average American have a perverted idea of what patriotism in fact is because of how it has been branded (take for example, none other but the infamous Patriot Act). As Ron Paul so eloquently puts it, “The original American patriots were those individuals brave enough to resist with force the oppressive power of King George. I accept the definition of patriotism as that effort to resist oppressive state power.”

Although this article portrays Dr. Paul in a generally favorable light, it gets me down a bit - starts making me feel like I’m somewhat of a dreamer, lost in the legacy of the founding fathers and out of touch with the reality of, as Ms. Young puts it, the “age of bipartisan Nanny Statisim.” But I refuse to believe that a principled, pro-liberty message of small government and Constitutional ideals is outdated. It is timeless, and furthermore, it is correct. Myself, like so many other Ron Paul supporters I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with, cannot identify as a either a neo-conservative Republican or seemingly socialist Democrat, because both parties seem, as a whole, so painfully out of touch with what they are supposed to be upholding as American political entities: liberty, the rule of law under our Constitution, and TRUE American ideals of freedom, not government control as a means to acquire and “spread democracy.” If we are not bestowed with the miracle of Ron Paul becoming our next President, I truly worry about the path this country is headed down. The optimist in me does have faith in the character of the American people, and sometimes I think, maybe, just maybe when it gets really bad, the majority of us will wake up. But my fear is that it is going to have to get that bad for a wake up call to arm the American people against tyranny (metaphorically of course, as the Second Amendment will likely have been repealed by then *knock on wood*). George Washington warned us to “guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” I hope that as a people, we have the ability to do that. It may take longer than an impatient young optimist like myself can even conceive of, but I do have faith in what our Founding Fathers gave us. Individuals like Ron Paul help to justify that said faith. The reality of his grassroots support is highly motivating as well. Even if Ron Paul doesn’t win in 2008, at least I know that there are thousands, if not millions of Americans who refuse to go down without a fight. And this is not by any means the last battle.

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