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The
Foreign Policy of Ron Paul
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
LewRockwell.com
May 21, 2007
Foreword to Ron Paul’s new book: A Foreign Policy of Freedom: ‘Peace,
Commerce, Honest Friendship’
(Excerpt)
Ron
Paul has always believed that foreign and domestic policy should be conducted
according to the same principles. Government should be restrained
from intervening at home or abroad because its actions fail to achieve
their stated aims, create more harm than good, shrink the liberty of the
people, and violate rights.
Does
that proposition seem radical? Outlandish or far-flung? Once you hear it
stated, it makes perfect sense that there is no sharp
distinction between the principles of domestic and foreign policy. They
are part of the same analytical fabric. What would be inconsistent would
be to favor activist government at home but restraint abroad, or the
reverse: restraint at home and activism abroad. Government unleashed
behaves in its own interests, and will not restrict itself in any area of
life. It must be curbed in all areas of life lest freedom suffer.
If
you recognize the line of thinking in this set of beliefs, it might be
because you have read the Federalist Papers, the writings of
Thomas Jefferson or George Washington or James Madison, or examined the
philosophical origins of the American Revolution. Or you might have
followed the debates that took place in the presidential election of
1800, in which this view emerged triumphant. Or perhaps you read the
writings of the free traders prior to the Civil War, or the opponents of
the War on Spain, or those who warned of entering World War I. Or perhaps
you have read the speeches and books against FDR's New Deal: the same
group warned of the devastating consequences of World War II. Or maybe, in more recent
history, you understood the animating principles behind the Republican
takeover of Congress in 1994: a generation had turned away from all forms
of foreign and domestic "nation building."
(More…)
But
Who Was Right -- Rudy or Ron?
By Patrick Buchanan
May 18, 2007
(Excerpt)
A fair
question and a crucial question.
When Ron
Paul said the 9-11 killers were "over here because we are
over there," he was not excusing the mass murderers of 3,000
Americans. He was explaining the roots of hatred out of which the
suicide-killers came.
Lest we
forget, Osama bin Laden was among the mujahideen whom we, in the Reagan decade,
were aiding when they were fighting to expel the Red Army from
Afghanistan. We sent them Stinger missiles, Spanish mortars, sniper
rifles. And they helped drive the Russians out.
What Ron Paul was
addressing was the question of what turned the allies we aided into
haters of the United States. Was it the fact that they discovered we
have freedom of speech or separation of church and state? Do they hate us
because of who we are? Or do they hate us because of what we do?
Osama bin Laden in his
declaration of war in the 1990s said it was U.S. troops on the sacred
soil of Saudi Arabia, U.S. bombing and sanctions of a crushed Iraqi
people, and U.S. support of Israel's persecution of the Palestinians that were the reasons he
and his mujahideen were declaring war on us.
Elsewhere,
he has mentioned Sykes-Picot, the secret British-French deal that double-crossed
the Arabs who had fought for their freedom alongside Lawrence of Arabia
and were rewarded with a quarter century of British-French imperial
domination and humiliation. Almost all agree that, horrible as 9-11 was,
it was not anarchic terror. It was political terror, done with a
political motive and a political objective.
What does
Rudy Giuliani think the political motive was for 9-11?
Was it
because we are good and they are evil? Is it because they hate our
freedom? Is it that simple?
Ron Paul
says Osama bin Laden is delighted we invaded Iraq.
Does the
man not have a point? The United States is now tied down in a bloody
guerrilla war in the Middle East and increasingly hated in Arab and
Islamic countries where we were once hugely admired as the first and
greatest of the anti-colonial nations. Does anyone think that Osama is
unhappy with what is happening to us in Iraq?
Of the 10 candidates on stage
in South Carolina, Dr. Paul alone opposed the war. He alone voted against
the war. Have not the last five years vindicated him, when two-thirds of
the nation now agrees with him that the war was a mistake, and
journalists and politicians left and right are babbling in confession,
"If I had only known then what I know now ..."
Rudy
implied that Ron Paul was unpatriotic to suggest the violence against us
out of the Middle East may be in reaction to U.S. policy in the Middle
East. Was President Hoover unpatriotic when, the day after Pearl Harbor,
he wrote to friends, "You and I know that this continuous putting
pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country bitten."
Pearl
Harbor came out of the blue, but it also came out of the troubled history
of U.S.-Japanese relations going back 40 years. Hitler's attack on Poland
was naked aggression. But to understand it, we must understand what was
done at Versailles — after the
Germans laid down their arms based on Wilson's 14 Points. We do not
excuse — but we must understand.
Ron Paul is
no TV debater. But up on that stage in Columbia, he was speaking
intolerable truths. Understandably, Republicans do not want him
back, telling the country how the party blundered into this misbegotten
war.
By all means, throw out
of the debate the only man who was right from the beginning on Iraq.
(More…)
Giuliani
a Fake
By Charley Reese
LewRockwell.com
May 21, 2007
(Excerpt)
Rep.
Ron Paul of Texas, the only intellectually honest candidate in the bunch,
correctly pointed out that it was our policy of inter-ventionism that
caused the attack on 9/11.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, intensely
uncomfortable at having been forced to talk about his liberal positions
on abortion, gun control and gay rights, leaped at the opportunity to
reprimand Paul for suggesting that we had invited the attack. "I've
never heard that," Giuliani snapped, showing that he is ignorant
even on matters of security, and demanded that Paul retract it. He
didn't, of course. But Giuliani got a big round of applause, as if he had
come to the defense of America rather than just cleverly change the
subject.
Osama bin Laden, the author of those attacks, has said quite
plainly, publicly and explicitly that the attack was prompted by our
intervention in the Muslim world. It is outrageous that Giuliani
claims not to know that, given that his whole campaign is based on his
claim of being the best-qualified leader in matters of security and the
so-called war on terror.
Actually, Giuliani isn't an expert on security.
He's a lawyer and a political hack. The
attack on 9/11 was a political gift of the gods to him. He walked up and
down the street in front of the television cameras, gave speeches and
went to funerals, and for that he received the accolades of the press.
Giuliani is not a leader. He is a cynical exploiter. He exploited the
attack the day it happened, and he's exploited it since to make a fortune
posing as an expert security consultant. Now he hopes to exploit the
tragedy, which, like the president, he had done nothing to prevent, to
get the Republican nomination for the presidency.
By demonstrating his ignorance of the cause of the
attack, he has disqualified himself from consideration.
(More…)
Despite
Unprecedented Media Manipulation And Disinformation Americans Are
Beginning To Understand That Washington’s Disastrous ‘Foreign Policy’ Has
Brought Terror And Disgrace To Our Homeland
CNN Poll
Gasoline hits record high
for 2nd week
Energy Information Administration says average
price jumped 11.5 cents to $3.22 a gallon.
CNNMoney.com
May
21, 2007
Oil prices surge on Nigeria
unrest, US refinery woes
Forbes, NY
May 21, 2007
(Excerpt)
NEW
YORK (XFN-ASIA) - World oil prices rose on Monday as the market saw no
end to concerns over tight supplies caused by unrest in key crude
producer ... in key crude producer Nigeria and output disruptions at US
refineries, traders said.
New York's main oil futures contract, light sweet
crude for delivery in June, gained 1.33 usd to close at 66.27 usd a
barrel.
(More…)
China begins to shift massive foreign reserves (U.S.
Dollars) into private investments...
Kuwait
abandons currency peg to dollar, neighbouring Gulf states may follow
Forbes
May 21, 2007
(Excerpt)
The
Kuwaiti central bank said it was worried
about the decline of the US dollar, which by dragging the
dinar lower had contributed to higher inflation in Kuwait, and that the
move was intended to stave off inflation.
(More…)
Why
The U.S. Government Is Now Hated All Over The World
“Americans
really are good folk. The government isn’t. It’s the gravest problem we
face, both internationally and domestically.”
By Fred Reed
LewRockwell.com
May 21, 2007
(More…)
America: A Lost
Mythic Authority
No one is paying much
attention to it, but the United States remains the World’s top merchant
of militariasm and death.
By Frida Berrigan
Los Angeles Times
May 21, 2007
(Excerpt)
THEY DON'T
CALL US the sole superpower for nothing. Paul Wolfowitz might be looking
for a new job right now, but the term he used to describe the
pervasiveness of U.S. power back when he was a mere deputy secretary of
Defense — hyperpower — still fits the bill. Consider some of the areas in
which the United States is still No. 1:
• First in weapons sales: Since 2001,
U.S. global military sales have totaled $10 billion to $13 billion.
That's a lot of weapons, but in fiscal 2006, the Pentagon broke its own
recent record, inking arms sales agreements worth $21 billion.
• First in sales of surface-to-air missiles:
From 2001 to 2005, the U.S. delivered 2,099 surface-to-air missiles like
the Sparrow and AMRAAM to nations in the developing world, 20% more than
Russia, the next largest supplier.
• First in sales of military ships: During that
same period, the U.S. sent 10 "major surface combatants," such
as aircraft carriers and destroyers, to developing nations. Collectively,
the four major European weapons producers shipped 13.
• First in military training: A thoughtful
empire knows that it's not enough to send weapons; you have to teach
people how to use them. The Pentagon plans on training the militaries of
138 nations in 2008 at a cost of nearly $90 million. No other nation
comes close.
Rest assured, governments around the
world, often at each others' throats, will want U.S. weapons long after
their people have turned up their noses at a range of once dominant
American consumer goods. The "trade"
publication Defense News, for instance, recently reported that Turkey and
the U.S. signed a $1.78-billion deal for Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter
planes. As it happens, these planes are already ubiquitous — Israel flies
them; so does the United Arab Emirates, Poland, South Korea, Venezuela,
Oman and Portugal, among others. Buying our weaponry is one of the
few ways you can actually join the American imperial project!
In order to remain on top in the competitive jet field, Lockheed Martin,
for example, does far more than just sell airplanes. TAI — Turkey's
aerospace corporation — will receive a boost with this sale because
Lockheed Martin is handing over responsibility for portions of
production, assembly and testing to Turkish workers.
The Turkish air force already has 215 F-16 fighter planes and plans
to buy 100 of Lockheed Martin's new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as well, in
a deal estimated at $10.7 billion over the next 15 years. That's
$10.7 billion on fighter planes for a country that ranks 94th on the United
Nations' human development index, below Lebanon, Colombia and Grenada and
far below all the European nations that Ankara is courting as it seeks to
join the European Union. Now that's a real American sales job for you!
HERE'S THE strange thing, though: This genuine, gold-medal
manufacturing-and-sales job on weapons simply never gets the attention it
deserves. As a result, most Americans have no idea how proud they should
be of our weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon — essentially our global
sales force. They make sure our weapons travel the planet and regularly
demonstrate their value in small wars from Latin America to Central Asia.
(More…)
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