Oh, I’ve dared. On more than one occasion.

Ron Paul won’t be misleading this country from the Oval Office.

Truth hurts, I know. Hope you didn’t throw too much of your money overboard, during the Boston Tea Party ripp-off-enactment.

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If you want your taxes to go to Pakistan, why don’t you just send it directly. Better yet, why don’t you go to Iraq and trade places with my brother. It looks like we’ll be invading there right after Iran. You may hate Ron Paul for his views, but the truth hurts. Don’t take my word for it, compare his record, views on issues, and answers against the other candidates if you dare.

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Harvester, quoting from Parade:

She would tell him, she replies, that propping up Musharraf’s government, which is infested with radical Islamists, is only hastening disaster. “I would say, ‘Your policy of supporting dictatorship is breaking up my country.’ I now think al-Qaeda can be marching on Islamabad in two to four years.”

Yes, we are supporting a dictator who bowed to global pressure and relinquished his leadership hold on the military. Some dictator, huh?

bbartlog wrote:

…Should we not have attempted to work with Musharraf against al Qaeda, Patriot Paul?

Did it work? It would be one thing if our policies were successful; then we would just have to look at the costs. Here you have someone mocking Paul for opposing an unsuccessful policy, as if it were somehow obvious that all our cooperation with and payments to Musharraf had achieved something useful.

Musharraf has been as much an ally on the war against Islamic terror as he has been a hindrance. It’s a mixed, complicated bag.

Among the successes, we have the widely-covered capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Pakistan, along with other militant suspects earlier, who led the Pakistani authority to the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Zayn al-Abidn Muhammed Hasayn Abu Zubaydah, a high ranking al-Qaeda official in charge of training camps, was taken out. Ramzi Binalshibh, financier of al-Qaeda and a roommate of Mohammed Atta in Germany, was arrested in Pakistan.

So it is dishonest to suggest the Musharraf government hasn’t “achieved something useful”. He’s escaped…what? 9 Assassination attempts?

Would we wish he would do more on our behalf? Sure. But caving into all demands that Washington makes of him would all but guarantee him the moniker of being our U.S. “puppet”.

As Ashley Tellis writes, “Making U.S. aid conditional on Pakistan’s performance in the war on terror would only inflame Pakistani public opinion and embarrass moderate Pakistanis who cooperated with the United States”.

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bartblog – “Strawman? Paul doesn’t blame our government for Darfur or Zimbabwe. Whatever, we’ll call it hyperbole…”

He doesn’t? Well maybe your right, but he damn sure doesn’t want to do ANYHING, much less declare what’s going on as genocide:

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this incredibly dangerous legislation. I hope my colleagues are not fooled by the title of this bill, “Declaring genocide in Darfur, Sudan.” This resolution is no statement of humanitarian concern for what may be happening in a country thousands of miles from the United States. Rather, it could well lead to war against the African country of Sudan. The resolution “urges the Bush Administration to seriously consider multilateral or even unilateral intervention to prevent genocide should the United Nations Security Council fail to act.” We must realize the implications of urging the President to commit the United States to intervene in an ongoing civil war in a foreign land thousands of miles away.

Move along, nothing to see, no mounds of dead and mutilated bodies to be seen.

At least not by Paul and most probably his PaulBot minions.

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Holy crap, you mean a politician told the people they were wrong to support her opponent?

Will wonders never cease.

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Harvester, I see your point. However, what if she is wrong? And, even if she is right, how does that directly mean Ron Paul is right? Can’t she be right, and Ron Paul wrong simultaneously? I don’t think that it’s impossible for that to happen. Also, how deep is a deep understanding of foreign policy when you’re a politician? You know, when your insight into international politics is obscured and misconstrued by the blood thirsty and malapropos desire to score political one-upsmanship against your opponents and to secure your career’s future?

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Well, you obviously haven’t heard that Benazir Bhutto herself recently laid blame for interventionist U.S. foreign policy for Pakistan’s terrorist problems.

Here are the last two paragraphs of an interview which will be published in Parade magazine on January 6:

***
Despite the corrosion of her reputation by corruption and compromise, Bhutto appears to be America’s strongest anchor in the effort to turn back the extremist Islamic tide threatening to engulf Pakistan. What would you like to tell President Bush? I ask this riddle of a woman.

She would tell him, she replies, that propping up Musharraf’s government, which is infested with radical Islamists, is only hastening disaster. “I would say, ‘Your policy of supporting dictatorship is breaking up my country.’ I now think al-Qaeda can be marching on Islamabad in two to four years.”
***

The interview can be found here:
http://www.parade.com/benazir_bhutto_interview.html

Now, one would rightly assume that Benazir Bhutto would obviously be knowledgeable about the situation in Pakistan. So, when she makes a statement like that, does it make her right or wrong? If it makes her right, how then does it make Ron Paul wrong?

It just demonstrates to me that Ron Paul has a deeper understanding of foreign policy than most.

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So much to respond to! To begin with, America the country and its government are two separate things. I don’t ‘blame America’ for creating a welfare state that shattered the moral fiber of the poorest segments of society; I blame the government and the misguided liberals who promoted the policies. Similarly, it’s possible to blame the government for poor foreign policy without ‘blaming America’. And Paul does draw the distinction.

Now as for Bryan:
…all problems are the result of the US taking action. Any action. Anywhere. Against anyone, doing anything.

Strawman? Paul doesn’t blame our government for Darfur or Zimbabwe. Whatever, we’ll call it hyperbole…

In the case of Pakistan, he says we should cut off aid to our “puppet” in Pakistan and make sure not to march in there with troops. There is, of course, at most a neglible possibility that we’ll send troops into Pakistan to do anything beyond taking on al Qaeda or securing the nukes.

We already have troops in Pakistan providing training. But aside from that, what’s the objection here? Some people (Obama?) have talked about sending troops into Pakistan; if Paul says it’s a bad idea and Bryan agrees, what were we talking about again?

…Should we not have attempted to work with Musharraf against al Qaeda, Patriot Paul?

Did it work? It would be one thing if our policies were successful; then we would just have to look at the costs. Here you have someone mocking Paul for opposing an unsuccessful policy, as if it were somehow obvious that all our cooperation with and payments to Musharraf had achieved something useful.

Paul also tosses out the canard that we supported Osama bin Laden. Someone really needs to disabuse him of that notion one of these days. Someone should bone him up on the history of al Qaeda as well.

True that. His lack of real interest in the details of foreign affairs sometimes shows. Better that and a willingness to leave well enough alone than zeal and ignorance together (paging Mike Huckabee…).

It didn’t form because we support Musharraf, as Paul seems to think.

Strawman, again. Paul claims our support for Musharraf drives recruits to AQ, but nowhere said that AQ formed because of it.

And then there’s Steyn. I actually liked his obituary (probably because it was lacking in any policy proposals), but when I see someone say
“Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything,” I wrote last month. “It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate.”
…I think: not everyone claims to be an expert. Paul has the ‘certain humility’ that Steyn is advocating, even if Steyn would never admit it.

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Richardson has done a complete 180 from his formerly very centrist rational foreign policy self, which I knew personally—we did a fund-raiser for him in DC & he put my articles in the Congressional Record on several occasions.

But Bill has been co-opted by the ultra-lefties & Kossack Corps whose views on illegal immigration & foreign policy he parrots nowadays.

The danger of being a Dem candidate is losing your soul.

On the other side, Ron Paul is evidently losing his mind, and Huckabye Baby never had a mind on foreign policy to begin with.

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True nuff but the bait worked

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