The Post and Ron Paul
Nick Gillespie | January 11, 2008, 3:29pm
In an unsigned editorial, The Wash Post "assess[es] a grass-roots phenomenon, and the strange ideology behind it" and concludes that Ron Paul is more Pat Buchanan than anything. They kick him around for some good reasons--the race-baiting newsletters, fear of a NAFTA superhighway, and more--and then lay into his stance toward Iraq 2.0:
Mr. Paul goes so far as to express understanding of Osama bin Laden's antipathy toward U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia, which, Mr. Paul says, created the "incentive" for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "It's sort of like if you step in a snake pit and you get bit," he told Mr. Russert. "Who caused the trouble?" During the Cold War, the late Jeane Kirkpatrick chided Democrats for "blaming America first" in foreign policy. That may or may not have been apt. But in 2008, there is one candidate to whom her words definitely apply: Republican Ron Paul.
Whole thing here.
To which H&R regular and blogger Alan Vanneman responds:
After having established the fact that Mr. Paul believes in a lot of nonsense, much of it dangerous, the Post goes on to reveal the worst: "Mr. Paul goes so far as to express understanding of Osama bin Laden's antipathy toward U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia, which, Mr. Paul says, created the "incentive" for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."
The only problem is, it's a well-known fact that U.S troop presence in Iraq was the catalyst for Bin Laden's terrorist assaults on U.S. interests, both here and in the Middle East. As author Christian Alfonsi notes in his excellent book, Circle in the Sand, U.S. policy makers received frequent warnings that presence of a substantial number of U.S. troops could lead to disaster. During the leadup to the first Iraqi War, the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles Freeman, warned the administration that "It remains our judgment that Saudi and Arab political realities preclude a U.S. military presence in the Islamic holy land which appears to be open-ended or semi-permanent." During the war itself, a report issued by a committee headed by Richard Clarke stated that "A permanent U.S. presence will provide a rationale for, and could become a target for, the terrorist threat that will outlive the war." Of course, the U.S. received frequent complaints from the Saudis themselves.
Why does the Post attack Ron Paul most aggressively on the one thing he gets right? Because the Post doesn't want its readers to know the truth. It's a strange way for a "great newspaper" to act.
More here.
More on Ron Paul and the newsletters forthcoming.
Fluffy | January 11, 2008, 4:56pm | #
Hmmm, how exactly is having a bunch of American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia even remotely construed as part of an "aggressive foreign policy"?
Well, let's see.
The Saudi government is a puppet of the United States.
The Kuwaiti government is a puppet of the United States.
The Iraqi government is a puppet of the United States.
The Afghani government is a puppet of the United States.
At one time, Saddam Hussein was a puppet of the United States.
At one time, the Shah of Iran was a puppet of the United States.
The Egyptian government is a client of the United States.
The Pakistani government is a client of the United States.
The Kazakh government is a client of the United States.
The Uzbek government is a client of the United States.
The Israeli government is a close ally of the United States.
If you add up the sheer number of electric shocks to testicles or assassinations of activists or abuses inflicted on ethnic minorities or whatever measure of authoritarian abuse you want to use that have been committed by these puppets, clients and allies of the United States, it adds up to a lot.
At some point along the line, somebody was bound to get pissed off and try to hurt Americans. Up until 2001, it usually only happened to military personnel, embassy personnel, or Americans overseas. The logic of escalation for those events made an attack on domestic US interests inevitable.
If you think you have critical reasons for maintaining puppet and client regimes around the globe, and for maintaining an alliance with a regime that is hated all over the world, then being the target of terror attacks is part of your cost of doing business. When the Soviet Union was around, you could convince me that a certain amount of imperial realpolitik was necessary. But the Soviet Union is no longer around and as far as I am concerned we should just
cut these motherfuckers loose.Warmongering Lunatic | January 11, 2008, 7:23pm | #
The problem here is that Ron Paul takes the right first step, and then doesn't bother to consider the rest.
Okay, the reason for 9/11 was the U.S. troop presence in Saudi Arabia. Now, class, what was the reason for the U.S. troop presence in Saudi Arabia?
Oh, yeah, to keep Saddam Hussein guy, an odious civilian-gassing nuke-seeking dictator, from gaining the geopolitical power that would have come from controlling both Saudi oil and Mecca.
So, what were our alternatives when 9/11 happened?
1) Keep U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, further enraging Osama Bin Laden.
2) Withdraw U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia, and watch Saddam Hussein's still-big-enough-to-beat-the-Saudis army seize control of both Saudi oil and Mecca.
3) Withdraw U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia, while overthrowing Saddam Hussein to ensure he didn't wind up controlling Saudi oil and Mecca.
Now, you can argue that we shouldn't have been in that position in the first place. That's nice, but come September 11th, 2001, it was too late for George W. Bush to undo what Clinton and his father had already done. We don't have time machines.
The Ron Paul answer is, as best I can tell, that Saddam Hussein should currently be dictator of not just Iraq, but of the Arabian Peninsula as well, in an economic and political position to make economic sanctions impossible, and fully free to pursue the nuclear ambitions that he pursued before the Gulf War, wehile harboring resentment of the United States over Desert Storm and Desert Fox. Because at least that way we wouldn't have gotten our hands dirty in the Iraq War.
That's insane, and it's equally insane of anyone who agrees with Paul. When "moral principle" amounts to a Kantian categorical imperative that you let a proven murderer aim a gun at your children, it ceases to be moral or principled.
Rick Barton | January 12, 2008, 3:11am | #
A Rebuttal of the Washington Post Editorial
The New Republic recently reviewed back issues of newsletters published under Mr. Paul's name during the 1980s and '90s; it discovered crude attacks on gays, blacks and Jews
Is there any example of an attack on Jews in the cited newsletters? Criticism of the Israeli government and its supporters is obviously not an attack on Jews in general. To construe it as if it is unfairly conflates Jews in general with the many sins of the Israeli government and its supporters.
...including the observation that the 1992 Los Angeles riot ended because "it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks."
Although it has little relevance since Dr Paul didn't actually pen these words, this seems a tenable speculation with the racism confined to the "the blacks" bit since it must have been time for everyone to pick up welfare checks. ( BTW, is this is the most anti-Black passage in all the newsletters? I'm thinking that it might be.)
Mr. Paul has said that the newsletters do not represent his beliefs, because they were ghost-written products he "did not edit."
Follow his writings and pronouncements over the years and it's clear that Dr Paul is an anti-racist.
Though his campaign may owe its energy to 21st-century technology, Ron Paul is no innovator.
Was that ever contrived! This whole editorial seems prety pedestrian and unsophisticated. The piece from the New Republic was pretty slow too but that guy was hobbled by an anti-intellectual left-wing bias.
To all the difficult questions of a complicated, interdependent world, he offers pretty much the same prescription that such right-wing American isolationists as Patrick J. Buchanan have offered in the past: The nation must disengage from international affairs so as to concentrate on the real enemies at home.
What Dr Paul wants is for the freedom of capitalism to allow us, our products, and our ideas to be spread all over the world. And just what "real enemies" at home does Ron Paul, or Pat Buchanan for that matter, want to go after?
To be sure, Mr. Paul, who would end the war on drugs, does not seem to want a Buchanan-style culture war. His demonology, inspired by idiosyncratic economic theories, centers on the Federal Reserve Board,
The "idiosyncratic economic theory" that Dr Paul favors is capitalism and consistent with that, he would like the monopoly status the government grants the Fed taken away. If we keep the Fed, Ron Paul would like to have it audited and also to he would like the currency to be backed by gold to stop the government from inflating the currency and reducing its value.
Mr. Paul proposes a "golden rule" for foreign policy -- treat other countries as we would have them treat us....his bromide offers no help in such real-world scenarios as a North Korean invasion of South Korea
South Korea is an affluent nation that has te resources to defend itself. Ron Paul would tell them that they need to start preparing to do so.
Mr. Paul goes so far as to express understanding of Osama bin Laden's antipathy toward U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia, which, Mr. Paul says, created the "incentive" for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
That was indeed one of the motivations for the attack, as Alan Vanneman points out. Note as weel that the findings of the 9/11 commission reveal:
"Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man who conceived and directed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was motivated by his strong disagreement with American support for Israel, said the final report of the Sept. 11 commission."
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/news/nation/9222612.htm
Kick Out Lew Rockwell! | January 13, 2008, 11:23am | #
Dear Lew,
You have now had three opportunities –1996, 2001, and 2008 — to prove that you are a friend of Ron Paul and freedom, and you have failed to do so each time.
This week, for the third time, the puerile, racist, and completely un-Pauline comments that all informed people say you have caused to appear in Ron’s newsletters over the course of several years have become an issue in his campaign. This time the stakes are even higher than before. He is seeking nationwide office, the Republican nomination for President, and his campaign is attracting millions of supporters, not tens of thousands.
Three times you have failed to come forward and admit responsibility for and complicity in the scandals. You have allowed Ron to twist slowly in the wind. Because of your silence, Ron has been forced to issue repeated statements of denial, to answer repeated questions in multiple interviews, and to be embarrassed on national television. Your callous disregard for both Ron and his millions of supporters is unconscionable.
If you were Dr. Paul’s friend, or a friend of freedom, as you pretend to be, by now you would have stepped forward, assumed responsibility for those asinine and harmful comments, resigned from any connection to Ron or his campaign, and relieved Ron of the burden of having to repeatedly deny the charges of racism. But you have not done so, and so the scandal continues to detract from Ron’s message.
You know as well as I do that Ron does not have a racist bone in his body, yet those racist remarks went out under his name, not yours. Pretty clever. But now it’s time to man up, Lew. Admit your role, and exonerate Ron. You should have done it years ago.
John Robbins, Ph.D.
Chief of Staff
Dr. Ron Paul, 1981-1985
http://godshammer.wordpress.com/2008/01/12/open-letter-to-lew-rockwell/
formerbeltwaywonk | January 14, 2008, 6:48pm | #
Political correctness is a very strong signal of statism. In the mind of a statist, something is either required or banned. Either homosexual behavior is banned or it is required that everybody respect homosexual behavior. Either races or discriminated against by law or it is required that everybody treat races as equal in associational decisions. Statism, exemplified by its ideology of political correctness, recognizes no middle ground where all preferences and tastes can be respected by law. In the world of the statist, racial equality under law cannot occur without expunging private racial discrimination by screaming taboo and force of law, nor can homosexuals "be equal" unless everybody is forced to recognize homosexual marriages.
In a world of liberty homosexual freedom and "homophobia" would coexist. Racial equality under law and racial discrimination in personal decisions by those who prefer such discrimination would coexist. Neither side would need to feel politically threatened by the other. All persons could satisfy their preferences, whether "vices" or "bigotry" or otherwise, as long as they are not initiating force. But this is not the wolrd the "cosmopolitan libertarians" want. They demand not just eradicating legal restrictions on their own vices, an opinion on which all libertarians agree, but they demand that we in the suburbs and the rural areas and anybody else who does not share their tastes recognize what many of us choose to believe are vices, for example homosexual "marriages", adultery, and use of addictive drugs, as virtues. If we do not, they will lash out at us with the most viscious kind of hate as if we were trying to ban their vices. This is "very small tent" libertarianism since, as Ron Paul is demonstrating, the vast majority of libertarians are of the rural and suburban type, not of the urban "cosmopolitan" type.
By eagerly participating in the politically correct smear campaign against Ron Paul on the very day of the traditionally most crucial primary, New Hampshire, many of the beltway "libertarian" / "cosmopolitan libertarian" has crowd have revealed their true anti-libertarian, pro-government colors. Some of these are just what Tom Paine called "sunshine patriots and summer soldiers", Benedict Arnolds who switch sides at the first signs of trouble. But most have just lived around D.C. so long that they have become statists in their hearts. By getting so worked up about about somebody else's personal preferences and opinions about race and homosexuality -- which they choose to view as vices, as is their right -- during the middle of the election campaign, they have demonstrated a preposterously strong streak of political correctness and thereby revealed a strong statist instinct.
Only a statist believes that the middle of an election campaign, much less the very day of the traditionally most important primary, is the best time to publically air the possible personal vices of libertarian candidates, in order to distract attention away from that candidate's political views and smear him. Indeed, this has always been the statist's favorite tactic for smearing anti-government types in older organizations like the John Birch Society. Now we all except the "bigotry" of the JBS as historical gospel -- the legacy of liberal and National Review-type MSM statists who then controlled the memetic agenda. The beltway "libertarian" smear campaign against Ron Paul is repeating almost exactly the tactics that statists like Bill Buckley pulled against the small-government JBS and the anti-interventionist Taft wing of the Republican party a generation ago.
In the statist world of the "cosmopolitan libertarians," only cosmopolitans get to satisfy their preferences and tastes (or as some others choose and should be free to choose to view them, vices) in the marketplace. Statists in their guts, the "cosmopolitan libertarians" view any differences in values as political threats. Suburban and rural preferences and tastes, whether vices (like racism and homophobia) or otherwise must therefore be shouted down and banned, and even the most ardent libertarian like Ron Paul for whom it is suggested might hold any such values they view as a political threat. That is why so much effort has been put in by, not just the straightforward enemies of liberty in the pro-war crowd, but even by some anti-war DC "cosmopolitan libertarians", to sabotage Ron Paul's campaign.
