Talk to me guys. I’m cable deprived and want to know the real story.
See post 29.
He said we are doing the wrong job in Afghanistan and in Iraq and tried to divert attention to Pakistani and Saudi military abilities when asked about Iran. He has some points about total freedom (not brought up tonite), but no grasp of the Islamic threat. Buh Bye.
Unfortunately, I'm in the same spot. I'll be depending on Youtube.
Paul’s position is that basically is that we’ve been over in the middle east for the past 50 years, picking sides, supporting dictators, spending billions, and even committing US troops. He argues that government is no more competent in foreign affairs than domestic ones and that all this meddling has screwed things up and actually made us worse off than if we had done nothing. He cited our governments attempt to ‘promote democracy’ and current CIA activities in Iran as making it harder for those inside to resist the regime, because now they are lumped as being US doops, and foreign threats unite local people. He believes Israel can defend itself without us, that Iran is years away from acquiring a nuke, and if it does, how is any different than pakistan, which has many, or the soviet union, which had 40k of them pointed at us? He states that all our meddling and picking various sides in these conflicts has generated hate and ill will by various groups that led to 9/11, saying ‘they hate us for our freedom’ is a fallacy. He thinks Iran is acting logically and like we would if a country from halfway around the world invaded mexico, in their attempts to influence Iraq. He supported the invasion of Afghanistan, but regrets the nation building that is now going on there. I think he believes we would have been better off issuing letters of marqi and having private companies and corporations do the dirty work and keeping the operation limited in scope.
So, all and all I thought he did a pretty good job, and raised some interesting ideas, but the format didn’t allow clear articulation of most of this. In other words, sometimes you would have had to have an idea what he’s said in the past and what his positions were to figure out where he was going and what he meant. I think he is giving a major foreign policy speech at John Hopkins sometime today or maybe tommorow which should give a better understanding of his foreign policy views.