On foreign policy, I am somewhere between Ronald Reagan and Ron Paul. But what lots of people don’t understand is that Reagan is closer to Paul than to Bush and McCain.
Do read this fine article by Nikolas Gvosdev: “Gipper Anxiety -The Struggle Over What Would Reagan Do.”
My brother, serving in the Air Force over in Afghanistan, just sent me an article from Newsweek and asked for my opinion. Overall, Fareed Zakaria’s “True Or False: We Need A Wartime President” is a very good article. Though I have a few quibbles. Here is my not-so-detailed but pointed response:
I agree with much of this editorial. Al Qaeda and “terrorism” never posed an existential threat to us, even at the height of its powers. We are “at war” — illegitimately and unconstitutionally so — b/c the President has put us to war, over Congress’s unjust acquiescence. Bush sees himself as a “war time President” b/c he sees the terrorist threat as existential, as does McCain, even though they are wrong. Who knows the long-term consequences of their actions — the “blowback” that will result to our country? What everyone agrees Bush should have done and did do — the shutting off of terrorist financial sources, limited counter-terrorist strikes, some appropriate defensive precautions, etc. — have been effective and were needed. But where the Administration has greatly exceeded its mandate and arrogated to itself unconstitutional powers — overthrowing foreign sovereigns w/o legal justification (i.e. congressional Declarations of War), thus creating power voids in an unstable region that we are even now trying to atone for like the boy with not enough fingers to put in the dike, greatly subverting the privacy rights of American citizens, denying habeas corpus to people, citizens and foreigners alike accused of terrorist connections w/o proving the assertion in court, thus making folks disappear for years with no connection to the outside world, including their own legal counsel, etc. – these things will have dire long-term consequences on our nation and its moral standing in the world, imo.
The “War on Terror” is hopelessly vague, with no end in sight and no defined enemy, except for those who the powers-that-be want to define as such. Terrorism is clearly a threat, but not an existential one, and not one that should normally require military action. It is rather one that requires defensive police and intelligence actions, w/ occasional offensive strikes on hard, well defined targets. The wide broom approach is unjust, immoral, repulsive to any lover of liberty and human decency, and will ultimately be counterproductive, imo.
Oh, and Kennedy deserves much blame for Vietnam, even if LBJ is the ass who escalated that other wrong-headed war. Kennedy put us there in the first place. Everything else followed.
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For more on where I am coming from, see the following:
From Ron Paul’s weekly “Texas Straight Talk” column:
Iraq or the Economy?
What is the importance of the war in Iraq relative to other current issues? This is a question I am often asked, especially as Americans continue to become increasingly aware that something is very wrong with the economy. The difficulty with the way the question is often asked relates to the perception that we are somehow able to divide such issues, or to isolate the cost of war into arbitrarily defined areas such as national security or international relations. War is an all-encompassing governmental activity. The impact of war on our ability to defend ourselves from future attack, and upon America ’s standing in the world, is only a mere fraction of the total overall effect that war has on our nation and the policies of its government.
The cost of this particular war is enormous, and therefore its of great importance. There is no single issue that is more important at this particular time. The war has, of course, made us less safe as a nation and damaged our credibility with allies and hostile nations alike. Moreover, years of growing deficits have been spurred on by the high price tag of war, and the decision to pay that price primarily by supplemental spending rather than traditional “on-budget” accounting.
War takes what would otherwise be productive economic capacity and transfers both that capacity, and the wealth it would generate in normal, peaceful, times into far less economically viable activities. It also impacts budget priorities in ways that are detrimental to our nation. I have often pointed to the fact that we are building bridges in Iraq while they are collapsing in the United States .
All war, but most particularly war funded by monetary inflation, bleeds a country in multiple ways. Obviously, many of the young people who are in the military literally give their blood, and sometimes their lives, fighting in wars of this type. Meanwhile, those who do not fight the war, but fund it, are forced to pay both the immediate costs, as well as seeing their long term purchasing power erode, as the twin pillars of debt and inflation are foisted upon the backs of current taxpayers and future generations. Neither conspiracy nor coincidence explains steep increases in the price of gas as the war drags on. No, this is simply a reality of the inflationary policies that, among other things, make this war possible.
As people are continually asked to choose whether our nation’s teetering economy or the failed foreign policy of the past several decades is most important as we look forward, it is well for those of us who understand that these two issues are closely linked, to continue to explain this fact to our fellow citizens. To fix the problem requires a proper diagnosis.
UPDATE: Check out this nine-minute interview that aired last night on ABC News just before Ron Paul’s speech.
From Ron Paul:
Friday, June 13, 2008
Over the past 17 months you and I delivered a message of freedom, the likes of which American politics has not seen in decades. With the primary season now over, the presidential campaign has come to an end. But the Revolution has only begun.
Today I am happy to announce the official launch of the Ron Paul Campaign for Liberty. Please visit our new website and join us: http://www.campaignforliberty.com
Over the next few months I will be developing a program, assembling a team, and announcing new and exciting projects. We will have a permanent presence on the American political landscape. That I promise you.
Right now, I need your patience and support. I want the Campaign for Liberty to be a grassroots campaign; so your energy, your creativity, your feedback, and your participation are essential.
Together, we will educate our fellow Americans in freedom, sound money, non-interventionism, and free markets. We will write commentaries and broadcast videos on the news of the day. And I’ll work with friends whom I respect to design materials for homeschoolers.
Politically, we will expand the great work of our precinct leader program. We will make our presence felt at every level of government. We will keep an eye on Congress, and lobby against legislation that threatens us. And we will identify and support candidates who champion our great ideas.
“In the final analysis,” I wrote in my new book The Revolution: A Manifesto, “the last line of defense in support of freedom and the Constitution consists of the people themselves. If the people want to be free, if they want to lift themselves out from underneath a state apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders their resources on needless wars, destroys the value of their dollar, and spews forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would all be without it, there is no force that can stop them.”
Our time has come to act on these words.May future generations look back on our work and say that these were men and women who, in a moment of great crisis, stood up to their politicians, the opinion-makers, and the establishment, and saved their country.
For liberty,
RON PAUL
P.S. Please join me. Go to our website, www.campaignforliberty.com, and become a member of the Campaign for Liberty. Our goal is 100,000 members by September. Can we reach it?
Exxon made $10.9 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2008. Sounds like a lot, but context is everything.
This graphic at The Oath provides that context:
As The Oath sums it up, that’s nearly $3 paid in taxes for every dollar of profit. Do read the rest his analysis here. It is well worth it.
In my previous post, I shared the news that I have been included in a list of principled conservatives who have publicly registered strong criticisms or even outright opposition to the Iraq War. In these series of post at the Flynn Files blog, Dan Flynn has included quotes with links to the articles from which they came.
Accordingly, I thought it worthwhile to list some more things I have said on the subject here below (the first was selected for citation at Flynn Files):
What do various conservative thinkers such Milton Friedman, William F. Buckley, General Norman Schwarzkopf, Tom Clancy, former Majority Leader Dick Armey, Rep. Ron Paul, George Will, Jack Kemp, Joe Sobran, and yours truly all have in common?
The answer: We have all voiced strongly principled criticisms — and often even outright opposition – to the present Iraq War.
And further, we are all the subject of a series of posts at the Flynn Files blog, featuring quotes from now 50 — with more to come — conservative critics of the Iraq War. Read the first 25 quotes here, and the second here.
Dan Flynn tells me he ultimately plans to post quotes from 100 such critics — one batch of 25 quotes per week. I am cited in the second batch.
I am truly humbled to be listed in such esteemed company, and am grateful to Dan for honoring me in this way.
The real “Dream Ticket” – and more plausible than you might think.
