Posted on 09/27/2009 7:14:55 PM PDT by yongin
As contemptible as this is, I’ve got two good reasons to spare you a harangue about it. One: I’ve already written that harangue, and after the summer coup in Tehran and another year of cheat-and-retreat on their nuclear program, it’s truer now than it was then. And two: Thankfully, this old crank’s isolationist denialism is so fringe on the right that not even mainstreamers who are sympathetic to his broader agenda, like Glenn Beck, will go near it. It’s almost not worth bothering about. But suffice it to say, in the unlikely event that the three-percent rEVOLution ever commands the foreign-policy agenda of the GOP, I’ll run — not walk — into the Blue Dogs’ arms. As Paul spoke passionately about ending all military operations and keeping government out of people’s “lifestyles,” a lone heckler began to shout, “Tell her!” Bachmann remained serene, hands folded in her lap, facing Paul. Bringing up Obama’s announcement that Iran had secret underground nuclear facilities, Paul announced that he had had enough of “fear-mongering” for the sake of the “military-industrial complex.” Bachmann, who once advocated nuking Iran, kept her eyes trained on Paul as her heckler repeated, “Tell her! Tell Michele! Tell her!” A few more choice quotes from Think Progress: We should never go to war if they’re telling us a lie about what’s happening. … We took the position, over my strong objection, we took the position that we had to have regime change in Iraq. What they’re getting ready to do is put very, very strong sanctions on Iran. … But sanctions, and blockades, and prevention like this is an act of war. I’m not sure what “lie” it is we’re being told about Iran, but then this is a guy so eager to see American “lies” at work vis-a-vis enemy powers that he’s been known to accuse the feds preemptively of telling them. Anyway, the point to take away about his Iran shtick is that it’s not an argument about strategy, i.e. “They’re a threat but non-intervention is the best way to stop them.” It’s an argument about facts, i.e. “There is no threat,” which it has to be because once he admits that Iran is dangerous his isolationist “solution” becomes impossible to sell. In that sense he reminds me of opponents of waterboarding, forced to insist that coercive interrogation never ever works because once they admit that it does, their absolutist opposition is politically dead on arrival. Conservatives complain frequently about Paul’s penchant for blaming America — and here, too, in the blockquote above, he’s already laying the groundwork to say “we started it” if and when Iran tries something — but his foreign policy, such as it is, leaves him with no other choice. The only way isolationism works is if literally any form of intervention against an enemy is morally wrong and just cause for disproportionate reprisal. Which is another way of saying it doesn’t work. Happy viewing.
I lived in those duck and cover days.
Living in San Diego with the largest concentration of military you have a better understanding what is going on
including having several relatives in the military currently.
When the Koreans can’t even get a functional Dong? C’mon. Fearmongering only works when it’s based in SOME reality.
On October 6th, 1961, just months after Ike’s speech in January, JFK advised the “prudent” American family to build a bomb shelter.
You are a Newbee in more ways than one.
You need to read Ahmadinejad’s speeches.
You need to watch the video of the planes going into the towers in NYC and the people jumping from 80 stories up.
I grew up around dozens of people with numbers on their arm
just a few years out of the concentration camps.
They were there because of peope with your mentality.
If not us, who?
If not now,when??
and during those days I remember the TV stations
here breaking in telling crews of various ships, report back to your ship.
“If not us, who?
If not now,when??”
Israel.
ASAP.
I wish he never gave the speech.
There are dozens if not hundreds of countries that would love to attack us. But they, like Iran, don’t have the means to do it. We shouldn’t always be saddled with defending another country (let alone paying them in foreign aid). The Israelis and the Saudis are directly threatened by Iran with or without a nuke, and they need to step up and eliminate that threat instead of waiting for Big Brother to do it.
BTW, don’t play that holocaust card on me. I’m not advocating turning a blind eye to Iran, I’m advocating the Israelis back up their favorite saying with action: “Never again.”
I remember those days all too well. I grew up in South Florida and recall Castro’s revolution and the Cuban missle crisis.
It wasn’t a calm and peaceful time.
You don’t think the arms industry has a MASSIVE hand in our foreign (if not domestic) policy?
That’s where we step in and put the speech back in to context.
The left only lifts selected sentences out, ignoring teh gist of his words.
Still, I can’t totally disagree about his not having given the speech.
You have worked out your own little scenario to feel nice and safe.
I will listen to many relatives in the military who have done many tours and those who are there right now.
K-12 education costs almost as much as the military. Add in social security, medicare, medicaid,welfare, Pell Grants,student loans, food stamps and other social spending and its the union/educrat/social spending complex which runs American, not the military industrial complex.
Eisenhower warned that if we didn't watch it, military spending could eat out economy alive. It never did. The New Deal and Great Society social engineering has. Ironically, while the KGB and Democrats were distorting Ike's speech, the Soviet economy was being eaten alive by a military/industrial complex.
At the beginning of the presidential campaign some Ron Paul supporters called to give me a code number and instructions about participating in a conference call with Dr. Paul. I am in agreement with many of the positions Ron Paul has advocated over the years. The exception was his insistence that the only reason America is hated in the Middle-East is because we are in their countries trying to take their oil and bombing their citizens. The last time I looked we were trying to buy oil in the Middle-East and kissing Muslim butt in the process.
I followed the instructions and was involved in the call. There was to be a half hour conversation and Ron Paul gave his stump speech for 17 minutes. Finally I spoke with Ron Paul and asked whether he was overlooking the Wahhabie Muslims who are raised to believe it their religious duty to kill all infidels. His response was that there was a recent study that showed that jihadists were having a much harder time recruiting suicide/homicide bombers.
The answer was non-responsive to my question. At that moment I knew that no matter how much I agreed with Ron Paul on most of his issues I did not want to see him become POTUS. Personally, I think he is just a little nutty. I also discovered over time that most of the people who I know to be Paul supporters are also a little nuts.
That presents a problem that I don’t have an answer to. Barack Obama is president. There is no question that his agenda is to reduce the influence and prosperity of America. Would a slightly crazy Ron Paul be less a threat to America than the third world Marxist who is now president?
Expedite Iran’s nuke program—send them some warheads lickety-split. Say, in 28 minutes?
It’s a good speech. It’s the left that perpetuates misinformation about it. Imperative need balanced by recognition of grave implications. Makes sense to me.
“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. “
I agree with you that our domestic policy is just as insane, but does a big government domestic policy excuse a big government foreign policy, especially when many who are in charge of such policies have direct connections to the arms industry which stands to make a bundle on these interventions?
Explain how an Iran with nuclear know-how is not a threat to us.
His son is running for the senate in KY (I think it’s KY) is he as kooky as his father?
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