>>rand Paul’s comments regarding the US and war are equally absurd.
Name three specific examples.
His recent foreign policy speech before the Heritage Foundation (certainly a conservative group) on the topic of Islamic Containment had more sense than the last 200 things I have heard from politicians of any party on the general topic of how we interact with the Muslim world. I welcome a politician willing to openly recognize that radical Islam is a mainstream force in control of powerful countries. Name three other Congressmen who have done this. The only one I can think off offhand is Alan West, and he is now out of Congress.
In general, I get the sense that the anti-Rand Paul posters here think there are no differences between the father and the son. That is far from the case.
Rand Paul:
“In the 1980s, the war caucus in Congress armed bin Laden and the mujaheddin in their fight with the Soviet Union. In fact, it was the official position of the State Department to support radical jihad against the Soviets. We all know how well that worked out.”
1. Calling Reagan and Congress a “war Caucus” is ignorant of the realities of the cold war and insinuated that the US was “war crazy”, as have other comments from Paul.
2. It is urban myth that we armed OBL...totally false and shows ignorance on the topic.
3. Arming the Afghan resistance had nothing to do with jihad.
Paul’s general comment’s that the US and Republicans needs to be less aggressive, implies US fault...and this in conjunction with his comments regarding backing off of social issues, lead me to believe he has a good bit of his father in him.
Indeed.
I found his speech to be the most substantive speech on foreign policy uttered by a Republican since 9/11. No one in the Bush administration was as clear-headed a thinker on the issue, especially not Condi once she was captured by the Foggy Bottom intellectuals.
It’s high time that the GOP rid itself of the people who are leading us down the road to financial ruin, and these wars that have no end goal in sight (eg, trying to build Afghanistan into what it never has been and never will be - a civil society of sane people) have to grow up and realize what Islam is and isn’t. It isn’t a religion in the sense that it isn’t at all like other religions to which we show tolerance. It’s an expansionist military doctrine posing as a religion - and in that matter, Rand Paul’s idea of containment is a sound one. Without deciding that we will simply kill on massive scales, we have to fence this ideology inside their own borders, then starve them into defeat, much as we did with communism.
Many of the anti-paul people are anti-libertarian, because they’re moral whinges who want a government that sticks it’s nose into people’s nether regions. I’ve had my fill of such people, both from the left and the right. I want to be able to drink whisky and own guns, and I won’t take kindly to sermonizing from a bunch of sanctimonious pecksniffs of any stripe about why I’m evil and wrong to do these things.