Well, whether you agree or disagree with what Ron Paul said, your discussion and others about it shows that it wasn’t some crazy nut-job thing to say, that we could use a debate about wrong ideas, and that Rudy went for the easy point, without showing any real understanding of the complexities that face the next president trying to navigate the middle east.
Rudy’s philosophy would bomb Pakistan the moment they do something to bother us. Since every nation will do something to bother us, we won’t have any allies. Some like that idea, but an entire middle east with most of the world’s oil all united in a common hatred for our country — that’s not a good thing.
That’s Jimmy Carter thinking, that led to Iran being our blood-enemy.
No our policy before Carter led to that. Carter just happened to be POTUS when it came back to bite us. And no I'm not a Carter supporter. Ford Policy had more to do with it actually. He is the one who said in effect to heads of M.E. states go ahead and Support terrorism we won't kill you for it.
Jimmy Carter didn't bomb Iran. Or help the Shah bomb the Ayatola Kohmeine's followers (Soviet fellow travellers).
It was NOT bombing that let an already sworn blood-enemy take over control of Iran.