Posted on 04/07/2013 8:15:53 AM PDT by JohnPDuncan
Appearing on the Christian Broadcasting Network this week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said something that is likely to continue the distancing of himself from the staunch neoconservative types like Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer who have actively blasted the senator for civil libertarian views. Speaking with CBN’s David Brody, Paul said that Republicans and evangelical Christians too often seem eager to go to war.
“Part of Republicans’ problems and, frankly, to tell you the truth, some in the evangelical Christian movement, I think have appeared too eager for war,” Paul said.
“When people come to me and they’re lobbying for ratcheting up some bellicose policy –- even if it’s a bad country — I tell them: When I read the New Testament, and when I read about Jesus, he wasn’t really involved in the war of his days,” the senator continued. “In fact, people rebuked him for not being the king they wanted; they wanted somebody to stand up to the Romans.”
Comments like these are likely to further irritate the war-hawkish elements of the Republican Party, such as Weekly Standard founder Kristol who called the senator a “dangerous” “neo-isolationist,” and Fox commentator Krauthammer who dismissed Paul’s civil liberties concerns as “absurd” and ridiculous.”
In what seems like a direct criticism of some of the practices contained within American foreign policy, the senator then said that “[Jesus] didn’t organize coalitions and guerrilla bands and arm them.”
He concluded: “Blessed are the peacemakers, not blessed are the warmakers.”
(Excerpt) Read more at mediaite.com ...
It would have been great to see republicans go to war against liberals over the past three decades instead of attempting to emulate them into submission.
Rand Paul is a baptized member of the Episcopal Church.
I don’t think it is stupid at all, and I think he was probably refering to John McCain. That old fart has never seen a conflict he wasn’t willing to sacrifice your son in.
That and the fact that they love nation building at the expense of lives and money.
To him ‘eagar’ is prudent to the rest of us. When someone breaks into your house, you don’t wait to see what they feel about you or if you accidentally kicked their kitten a decade before.
Yeah, I had no use for the fawning over McCain that went on over his demand for answers to the Benghazi question.
The dumb ass was leading the cheerleader charge to get involved in the Libyan mess to begin with when we all knew better. He doesn’t get to turn around and be on the other side.
And now the Al Qeada flag flies proudly over Benghazi and did so on that fateful night.
They want to do the same thing in Syria. Yes, Assad’s bad but destroying the country and replacing him with Al Qeada?
This is absolutely indefensible. I would say it’s treasonous. We need to get these nutjobs out of the party.
Don't you find it odd that the so-called Republicans who ran our nation's government for the better part of nearly a decade were hell-bent on pissing away hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of U.S. lives in military conflicts halfway around the world ... while at the same time pushing to eliminate anything remotely resembling a national border right here at home?
Evangelicals? Eager for war? Not any that I know of.
Paul could point out the McCain/Graham crowd. Call them out. By name. They’re nuts. They want to get mired in every hellhole that pops up. But this broad brush Paul is using makes him sound like a crackpot.
C’mon folks another war to benefit some other country will probably be the end of us. We are now teetering on the brink of economic collapse. Look at England, after centuries of war they are a basket case.
We spent the first half of the last century fighting in Europe, the second half fighting in Asia. This century has started with the ME and Africa and our minds are being turned to South America. War hawks want us to save women, oil, Israel, South Korea, Formosa, you name it.
No war without a formal declaration of war from Congress and then add in the taxes to pay for it and a draft to fight it.
Alas, true to their communist roots, the neocons infiltrated the foundations, magazines, Fox News and talk radio. And that's where a lot of FReepers still get their “conservative” info.
Just as most union members aren't lefties, most Republicans aren't war mongers. But, if anyone crosses the party line, they will be destroyed.
It's actually George Washington's concept non-intervenionism. Trade, travel, and discourse with all nations, but not mistaking their fights for your fights.
Isolationism is better described by someone like Pat Buchanan's desire for higher trade barriers and national autarky.
It’s not just the war.
It’s fighting while sending our manufacturing to China.
China grows stronger every day. China now exports more than America.
We import untold trillions of dollars from China.
Yet we do nothing to demand they return the favor.
We need a new approach.
Bring back US industry now.
I don’t think it smacks of anything “nutball.”
We committed miltary force to Afghanistan, ostensibly, to 1) catch Osama bin Laden and 2) remove the Taliban from the seat of the Afghan government for aiding him.
bin Laden is dead and Hamid Karzai became the Afghani president in 2001.
Where are the troops? Oh, that’s right. Still in Afghanistan. What role did the U.S. play in removing Qaddafi from power in Libya only to have al Qaeda operate without fear there (without Congressional approval and with the US operating under NATO command)?
There are other examples, of course. Paul may confuse the terms “war” with “military action” but he is essentially correct.
His bashing the GOP for its war-love is directed, I believe, at McCain and Graham, two GOPe politicians if ever there were any, who never saw a problem that couldn’t be solved without U.S. military intervention as a first resort.
His association of evangelicals with the war first crowd is a bit of a stretch IMO but is no doubt his own early strategic positioning for a presidential run. Reagan spoke of a big tent Republican Party and Paul is simply stretching the fabric to make potential, non-GOPe supporters take early notice (namely, libertarians and the more secular-minded conservative voters).
I see it as Paul executing a plan to make a run for the White House, walking a tightrope of accumulating non-traditional or potential GOP/conservative voters in larger numbers than the traditional GOPe and evangelical supporters he can afford to lose.
It is a bold plan. Fortune favors the bold.
Then they rioted and killed the US Ambassador and 4 others.
A) That assault wasn't part of a riot, that was the administration's initial excuse for what was going on.
B) Just like in the U.S., the people in Libya are not homogenous in their political views. It's like someone in another country thinking that ELF is indicative of the entire US population when they burn down a building.
An unnecessary and I think pointless attack on Christians. If he wants a more isolationist foreign policy, fine. A lot of people will agree with him in theory (though a lot of theories die in the first week you are in the White House). But the attack on Christians has an odd ring to it.
“This really smacks of his nutball father’s concept of American Isolationism.”
Juan McCain, is that you?
If you want to bring democracy to the muslim world go recruit your own army. Your BS wars are the reason we have Obama now.
Iraq is a greater threat now than it was before. They are now actively cooperating with Iran. So what did you get for those trillion of dollars and thousands of lives? Nada. And yet you still want to do it again.
Riot, planned attack, whatever it was it would never have happened with the strongman Gadaffi in charge.
Now AQ runs the show there, especially in Benghazi. Complete disaster and the whole thing was supported by the Federal gov, the CIA and the US military either directly or indirectly and these assholes have got the same plan to destroy Syria.
Paul is finding a way to get a Republican nomination and sell himself as electable (drawing in left wing voters) on the basis of being anti-war.
Krauthammer and Kristol are the modern embodiment of the Nixon-Kissinger crowd that oversaw no-win conflicts like Vietnam and cut deals with China and the Soviets in the 1970’s.
I’m not a left-wing anti-war guy, I want to win wars.
We need to find the enemy in Pakistan and take them out.
Krauthammers and Kristols like the Kissingers before them don’t.
Obama wants to be a wartime President just like Bush, McCain and Romney. ME wars will be a cakewalk and oil will pay for them, or so they said.
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