Posted on 03/05/2014 9:06:45 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Being an early frontrunner for a presidential nomination is not always a good thing and Sen. Rand Paul acknowledged as much the other night on Greta Van Susteren’s show. He must have channeled his inner Nostradamus because not more than a day later a man named Putin made his move on Ukraine. He could end up Paul’s worst nightmare.
Now, many of us have been very attracted to Paul. His libertarian message seems, and indeed is, tailor-made for this era when the monumentally incompetent Barack Obama has exposed the farcical nature of big government almost as no one before him. Obamacare is a gift from God to the libertarian movement. It helped me — and I admit I was already primed — to take another step in that direction. That government is best, as the man said, that governs least.
And yet, if there is one caveat regarding libertarianism, it is that it must end at the water’s edge. The idea that the likes of Ayatollah Khamenei or his bearded “moderate” cohort Rohani, Dr. Ayman al-Zawhiri, Bashar al-Assad, Hassan Nasrallah, North Korea’s Kim Jung-un, China’s Xi Jiping or, yes, Vladimir Putin give a rat’s patootie whether the USA is libertarian, a “liberal” welfare state, or something in between is so absurd it doesn’t merit a microsecond of serious discussion. They only care how quickly they can destroy us or, at the very least, render us impotent and take over as much of the world as they possibly can, rendering America “a pitiful, helpless giant,” as we used to say in the sixties.
Bad guys are bad guys — and that’s about it.
The problem for Rand Paul is that his father Ron Paul didn’t quite grasp this message, simple as it is. In the World According to Ron Paul all would be well on the foreign front if we here in America would just mend our evil imperialistic ways. It’s as if a perfectly libertarian USA would somehow, magically, render the rest of the vicious thugs referenced above (not to mention all the other thugs we don’t know yet, planning their little adventures in every corner of the globe, including, quite possibly, your neighborhood shopping mall) quiescent.
Put briefly: that’s insane. In fact, it would more than likely be the reverse. A disarmed, or relatively disarmed, America would only encourage these lunatics, as it has with Putin. To al-Qaeda and company it would be an obvious show of weakness. Allahu Akbar and away we go.
Rand Paul is obviously a very bright guy and understands he might have a weakness in this area. He was quick out of the block to publish a statement when the Ukrainian crisis broke.
But unfortunately for him, he will have to do considerably more than that. As the son and heir of Ron Paul, he has more to prove than the rest of us. We live in a tiny world, which is only shrinking by the second. Years ago, Kipling wrote “the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Kathmandu.” Now everybody’s dreams and everybody’s facts are all jumbled up. We can’t be isolationists anymore, even if everybody in the country voted that way, closed the international airports and mothballed all the 747s. Isolationism isn’t happening. It’s naive nonsense.
So Rand Paul has a task before him that none of us could envy. We live in a crazy world. Putin is just the start. Anything can happen and probably will, several times over before the election. So Paul has to do what none of us would want to do. He can do it lovingly. He can do it with respect. But — if he wants to be president of the United States — he has to seriously separate himself from his father.
Forget partial term Senators for POTUS whose only experience is giving a speech on the Senate floor before losing the vote on the same issue.
The GOP equivalent of Obama,
I don’t think Rand would go around the world and make baseless threats and lines and not backing them up with ANYTHING making him like “Barry the president boy who is constantly crying wolf...”
He comes from the private sector lets give him a bit of a break. Obama was manufactured his whole life for this job.
"... But she [the United States of America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
He wouldn’t do anything until the war came to our shores and it was too late.
Just my opinion but Putin illustrates the shortcomings of Ron Paul’s foreign policy. Reagan’s approach gives longer term stability though it it’s far more costly.
That’s why we have a navy and air force. It keeps war from our shores. Continuing to search for overseas conflicts depletes the human and financial strength of our land and endangers the true defense of our nation.
This is the 21st century not the 18th. Try to keep up.
It’s a tough line to walk. Globalization has really been a curse on humanity, complicating the very familiar nature of conflict and cooperation.
Rand Paul will have to answer a lot on the issue of foreign policy, but I don’t think the issue is as daunting as this commentator makes out. Not only do most people now agree with Rand Paul’s non-interventionist philosophy, but none of the situations outlined are as clear cut as something like WWII.
Reagan’s policy was correct for the short-term special case of the Cold War. As a permanent policy, it will destroy us as Eisenhower warned.
I stand with Putin as he seeks to defend the people of Crimea from the anarchy taking place in the Ukraine. A referendum will be held and Crimea will be back where it belongs - as part of Russia.
The correct question is what will putin do when a real man and a real American named Cruz is elected president.
I find Rand’s statement to be too aggressive toward Russia.
Yes, there are new weapons of offense now, but we also have weapons of defense not available in the old days. I value Washington and his generation more than today’s apostles of fear. We need to think like Americans, not terrified schoolgirls. As long as we take due care to our naval and strategic defenses, they’re not all coming to get us.
I don’t believe that Putin’s foray into the Crimea is something we need to respond to. They essentially walked in without a shot and remain there without firing a shot.
This speaks volumes about the geographic and demographic and political facts on the ground. Launching into mainland Ukraine would no doubt have a different result because the facts are not the same.
Still, for the most part the article is spot on. Ron Paul believes all of our wars are optional or caused by us. The fact is that not all wars are optional. You don’t always get to decide if you are at war; if the other party is at war with you, you’re at war like it or don’t. If your allies are attacked you’re at war or you are soon without allies.
Its not always an easy calculation. But if they are at war with you, you’re at war. If you see your security as requiring alliances, then you sooner or later will have to make good on your promises or see your alliances melt away like butter under a hot light.
He could say, "I have been against using the United States military as the world's police force. I am against preemptive war. I am against endless engagements costing billions of dollars and thousands of lives. Unfortunately, war is an inevitability and must be used but it should only be used in the most dire circumstance. That is why I will move away from the doctrines of the past which advocated tactical military strikes, swift limited engagements and nuanced and complex foreign diplomacy and say that the policy of the US military will be total annihilation of any enemy we deem to be a sufficient enough threat that war is necessary. We will increase military spending to achieve an overwhelming force capable of taking on any and all foes. If I ask congress for authority to wage war and congress authorizes military engagement with another country, it will be the mission of the US military to see that the country should cease to exist."
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