To go to an analogy, from the Lord of the Rings: Ron Paul wants to be the Shire–fat and happy and unconcerned about anything outside it’s borders.

But who’s going to be our Rivendell, our Gondor, our Rangers to keep us safe? Sorry, bub–WE are Gondor. It’s our duty as the leader of the free world to actually lead.

Vanceone on December 28, 2007 at 1:12 PM

lol I like it. WE ARE GONDOR!
(finally, a ron paul thread gets fun)

Did you seriously just quote Lord of the Rings in a serious dicussion? Are you kidding me? I’m amazed you didnt go into the complexity of trade relations by comparing Harry Potter and Dumbledorf.-

You don’t have to take the situation to Z in order to prove a point. IF countries requested our help when under attack, and IF we voted on it and declared war, THEN maybe it would be justified. We dont exist to make the world utopia. Other countries can handle their own business.

Don’t blame America, blame Bhutto’s freaking moon roof.

We all know, I hope, how well Fortress Europe defended the third Reich.

Hitler was kidding himself if he thought he ever had a European fortress. By the time the US began pouring in resources to the offensive against Germany Rommel had been bogged down at El Alamein with his supply routes severely compromised, the Brits had gained the ability to break Enigma, the Luftwaffe had lost the Battle of Britain, and Hitler was embarking on what would be a disaster in Stalingrad.

From that position Hitler was to face the United States, Britain and the Soviets. For Hitler, in the summer of 1942, the notion of a fortress without air or sea superiority wasn’t much comfort.

If the US were to face Islamic military powers equal to what Germany faced and if we lost air and sea superiority to those Islamic powers, yeah that would be a problem. Right now our problem is stopping terrorists who operate on $50,000 budgets and a copy of Popular Mechanics.

We all know, I hope, how well Fortress Europe defended the third Reich.

I don’t care how good our military is…. you get the hordes of Islamic types on Canadian soil, or Mexico, and we cannot stop them. Not without turning everything around us to glass. And if Ron Paul supporters are arguing that we should wait until we glass the planet, then I say–they are responsible for not trying other things first.

And for the billions of deaths that would result from the Ron Paul policy.

why wouldn’t we fall then, too

10,000 nuclear weapons and a military that could probably beat the rest of the world combined.

We have exports to those countries; we import their goods. They rely on us to defend them against the big bullies of the world.

You are right about the importance of protecting trade routes and trading partners. Historically, world powers have routinely done this, as has the United States.

we had 23 different reasons for War against him, not just WMD as most think of it.

It sounds like we agree that the “smoking gun as mushroom cloud” phrase was more of a marketing effort than quality analysis. I’ll agree that we had 23 reasons to fear Saddam and to kill him. My point is I’d probably rather have those 23 problems than the 5+ years of occupation and the prospect of long-term Sadrist power in Iraq.

Has our invasion killed some Al Queda figures like Zarqawi? Sure. Has it been a recruiting tool for other disaffected Sunni’s who have been dislocated and had family killed? Sure. Even Don Rumsfeld wondered in one of his “snowflakes” whether we were killing them faster than we were creating them.

States like Romania can’t beat Russia if they were invaded. They don’t have the manpower, money, or size of military to do so. The only reason Taiwan might be able to fend off China is because there’s an ocean strait… and China is busy building a massive navy to overcome that.

Do you seriously believe that what happens in other countries, even as close as CANADA doesn’t matter? We have exports to those countries; we import their goods. They rely on us to defend them against the big bullies of the world. Not many states can defend themselves against the big countries, despite your apparent belief that Costa Rica has the military power to fend off Venezuela.

If you honestly don’t see that the US has interests in other countries remaining free…. then your head is in the sand. When Europe falls, and South America falls, and the Asian countries fall, and Oceania, and Canada falls…. why wouldn’t we fall then, too?

To go to an analogy, from the Lord of the Rings: Ron Paul wants to be the Shire–fat and happy and unconcerned about anything outside it’s borders.

But who’s going to be our Rivendell, our Gondor, our Rangers to keep us safe? Sorry, bub–WE are Gondor. It’s our duty as the leader of the free world to actually lead.

Washington admitted he was overthrowing the government

Washington might have made himself king. It was his good judgment and our good fortune that our revolutionary fathers were wise enough to set up a system of government that provided for a balance of power and constitutional rights rather than their own enrichment.

When you have an “illegal” revolution sometimes you get a Washington. Other times you get a Lenin, Castro or Mao.

With the no-fly zones, Saddam was a corrupt and murderous dictator who had been reduced to little more than mayor of Baghdad from a geopolitical standpoint.

dedalus on December 28, 2007 at 12:40 PM

he was funding and supporting Terrorist, paying out 20k bonuses to Hamas suicide bombers, offering Bin Laden assylum in 1999….like Hanson notes, we had 23 different reasons for War against him, not just WMD as most think of it.

http://husseinandterror.com

and Terror as an existential threat is the key reason why.

and since Al-Qaeda has been crippled in many ways and a recent theologian announced how Jihad had been a huge disaster for them, and the fact we haven’t had anymore attacks…its hard to say something is going right.

The American Revolution
The American Civil War

My two favorite Presidents led these wars and broke many laws along the way. Washington admitted he was overthrowing the government, while Lincoln bypassed Congress and used an Executive order, the Emancipation Proclamation to declare an end to slavery.

What does this have to do with Ron Paul? Nothing.

Give me a General who goes to war knowing he will have a complete and total victory and I will demote him immediately to prove that nothing is promised in this world.

Give me a Congress who will fight to the death and I will suspect their identities as Congressmen

jp on December 28, 2007 at 12:02 PM

Our intelligence inside Iraq was poor. Most agree on that.

Leading up to the invasion many in the military felt that containment was effective and that there were other priorities for resources in the GWOT. Embarking on nation building on-the-cheap and then getting bogged down for 5 years was the wrong choice in battling a terrorist network that can move among dozens of countries.

With the no-fly zones, Saddam was a corrupt and murderous dictator who had been reduced to little more than mayor of Baghdad from a geopolitical standpoint.

A lot of Americans understand the first Gulf War, but can’t really figure out reason for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

As far as going to Baghdad Dick Cheney was against it before he was for it. In 1992 he made the following observation: “Once we had rounded [Saddam] up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq.”

In the same talk, Cheney also said: “And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right”

dedalus on December 28, 2007 at 1:22 AM

some key events and time passed in between that and 2003, that really changed things.

Victor Davis Hanson, has a great column on How we got into Iraq: The Long War in a Nutshell

But after September 11, and the realization that state-sponsored terrorists from the Middle East had the desire to destroy the United States and the capability to do it great harm, the decade-long containment of Saddam Hussein, in light also of his serial violations of both armistice and U.N. accords, was considered inadequate. Few disagreed.

So both houses of Congress, backed by an overwhelming majority of the American people, authorized the use of military force to remove Saddam Hussein, at the vigorous request of the President.

The WMD Debacle
Though the Congress in October 2002 formulated 23 different reasons why Saddam posed a threat to our security, the administration — in easy hindsight, quite wrongly — mostly privileged and exaggerated just one writ: Saddam’s arsenals of weapons of mass destruction might enhance Middle East terrorist operations enough to trump even what we had witnessed on 9/11.

Supporters of a narrow war to remove WMDs relied on a past, though false consensus of such an existential threat; it was one, however, that had nevertheless prompted embargoes, sanctions, no-fly zones, and periodic bombing. Perhaps they were sure of such a WMD danger because it had been formulated at home in the 1990s and echoed abroad by both European and Middle Eastern agencies — and alone would galvanize the public in a way the other sanctioned casus belli might not.

Can you explain to me why its America’s job to defend all those countries? Why are we in charge of defending Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Australia, easter europe, central america, canada, israel, half of the middle east, etc??

Why can’t these countries which can FULLY defend themselves, rely on their OWN armies or navies? Why do we have to defend the world?

This post will likely guarantee I’ll have a wave of Ron Paul Truthers descend on my site, but whatever. Paul is infamous for saying, among other stupid things, that it’s America’s fault 9-11 happened. He said that during the second …

The top story on Memeorandum this morning is a piece from Little Green Footballs entitled “Ron Paul Blames US Policy for Bhutto Killing.” The author links a CNN video in which Paul says that our support for the Musharraf government “…

Vanceone on December 28, 2007 at 2:57 AM

Ron Paul stated that our involvement in the Korean war was, “totally unjustified.”

Does Ron Paul think we should withdraw from NATO, from defending Japan, Israel, Australia?

They can fend for themselves? Who will defend the Eastern European countries against Putin? Think the French would, even with a strong military? Should we encourage a new German military machine?

The US is the only world superpower. Ron Paul would have us abdicate that power. And what then, Ronulans? Would you accept responsibility for the ensuing world chaos? The bloody age that would come as people and nations go back to the old ways of military domination, because they have nothing to fear from the US?

Who is there to restrain the Chinese from advancing on Taiwan? The US Seventh Fleet–but Ron Paul want’s it drydocked in San Diego. Our allies in South Korea? Let’s feed the millions there to the maniacal plans of the Kims. Israel? Well, we all know Ron Paul probably wants all the Jews killed anyway… or at least a large chunk of his supporters do.

Who’s going to protect Lithuania from Putin? Poland? Romania? Don’t those countries deserve a chance at liberty? Ron Paul says no, he’d not lift a finger to stop the enemies of freedom from advancing. Only if they managed to attack US soil would he even notice. And then, it’s only if he had a Congress that would think that fighting communism or Jihadism was a good thing.

And with the current Dem’s in congress, that’s no sure thing.

What happens to the Monroe doctrine? What if Venezuala attacked the Panama canal? That’s not US soil… so Ron Paul puts up a “Chavez welcome here” sign.

Does the US stand for something or doesn’t it? Do we have principles? Or not?