Monday, January 2, 2012

Surprising turn around in New York Post

The New York Post usually seems to be anti-Paul, but an article by Jacob Sullum on 24th December is 100% in support, and rebuts the obnoxious critics. In its entirety, here it is below:

"Ron Paul vs. Empire" 
Reporters routinely describe Ron Paul's foreign policy views as "isolationist" because he opposes the promiscuous use of military force. This is like calling him a recluse because he tries to avoid fistfights.
The assumption that violence is the only way to interact with the world reflects how oddly circumscribed foreign-policy debates are in mainstream US politics and why Paul's perspective is desperately needed in the GOP.
As the Texas congressman has explained many times, he supports international trade, travel, migration, diplomacy and cultural exchange. He supports military action when it's necessary for national defense - in response to the 9/11 attacks, for example.
The innaccurate "isolationist" label marks Paul as a fringe character whose views can be ignored. Given the dire consequences of reckless interventionism, that clearly isn't the case.
This week, America officially ended its Iraq war, nearly nine years after launching it based on the false claim that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to us because he had weapons of mass destruction.
The war, which replaced a brutal dictator with a corrupt government that may not be able to maintain peace, cost us $800 billion and nearly 4,500 American lives. More than 100,000 civilians were killed.
The regime American installed in Afghanistan is even weaker and more corrupt than the one in Iraq. Ten years later, we still have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. So far, the war has cost about $500 bilion, 1,800 American lives and thousands of civilain casualties.
The United States would've avoided both of these costly nation-building projects if Congress had listened to Paul - or even to George W. Bush circa 2000, who (as Paul frequently notes) ran on a premise of a "humble" foreign policy that would not aim to solve all the world's problems. Now that the same people who supported the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are portraying Iran as an intolerable threat, some Paulian skepticism surely is appropriate.
That's especially true when the federal government borrows 36 cents of every dollar it spends, racking up a debt as big as the entire US economy. At the Nov. 22 debate, Paul corrected Mitt Romney, who complained that the Obama adminstration is "cutting a trillion dollars out of the defense budget." Actually, Paul said, "they're not cutting anything"; rather, "they're nibbling away at baseline budgeting and its automatic increases."
America has its military personnel in 150 countries, has nearly doubled its defense budget in the last decade and accounts for more than two-fifths of the world's military spending.
Paul challenges this mindless militarism. "We have an empire," he bluntly noted at the same debate. "We can't afford it."
For 35 years Paul has spoken truths that foreing policy mavens pf both parties prefer to ignore: that the Constitution give Congress alone the power to declare war, that unjustified interventions breed resentment that undermines our security, that there is a difference between military spending and defense spending, that foreign aid rewards autocrats and their cronies and that economic sanctions are an "act of war" that hurts people in the name of punishing the governments that oppress them.
If there's really no room for these arguments in the GOP, that it the party's fault, not Paul's.

1 comment:

  1. The media do not report on his strong support from the military. One former serviceman stood outside the NYT building to protest and all they did was call security. Could be NYT hates America.

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