Thursday, May 17, 2007

Kudos to Ron Paul

The truth can hurt

There’s a bit of noise about the GOP debate of May 15, specifically re Giuliani’s outrage towards Ron Paul…. Paul had the guts to say that it is the USA’s interventionalist foreign policy that has created a target for terrorism. Why should this truism be such a shock to the front-runner Guiliani ? Does being a mayor of the World’s number one city create such a vacuum of reality that the laws of physics don’t register? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you have troops where they are not wanted (Saudi Arabia) and support regimes counter to their neighbors wishes (Israel over Palestine) then of course this will create a reaction.

The truth can hurt but it is still the truth. If we (the USA who gets my albeit meager tax money) meddle about overseas picking some regimes over others well then of course those not getting our support will react. This is just simple logic. To prevent attacks at home the solution is to not intervene overseas. As long as we do, well, we are a target. Kudos to Ron Paul for pointing out the obvious. It is not that surprising. What is surprising is that our politics has sunk so low that logic is outrageous.

Note: However Ron Paul is no Saint (as a friend of mine once said, “beware of idealizations”). Dr. Paul has good, albeit not very liberal, ideas on tightening up illegal immigration but does not offer positive solutions to increase legal immigration, increasingly needed in this increasingly global world not least of which is the need for highly-trained software engineers and the like. Good people will go where they are wanted.