Author Topic: Ron Paul for president  (Read 23869 times)

TexasAggie01

  • Active Forum Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 56
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Ron Paul for president
« Reply #40 on: November 01, 2007, 01:03:07 PM »
True enough. But, what happens when nation-building and self-defense converge?

Boulderlaw

  • Active Forum Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 59
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Ron Paul for president
« Reply #41 on: November 01, 2007, 02:18:49 PM »
But, what happens when nation-building and self-defense converge?

Example?

"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." - Thomas Jefferson

An alliance can be one of mutual support, or it can be one of dependency. Nation building falls in the latter category. It seems to me that history has shown that imperialism does not create allies, but rather resentment. True stability in any region comes from within.

Consider the self-defense analogy in more detail: Do you pull a gun on an attacker and then proceed to give him a lesson in morality and personal finance? Or do you neutralize the threat and move on? A violent situation is not the context to do good.

phijord

  • Forum Member
  • **
  • Posts: 2
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Ron Paul for president
« Reply #42 on: November 01, 2007, 03:43:53 PM »
Whether the decision to take Saddam out was right or wrong, one thing needs to be said.  This battle in Iraq must be won.  The reason is this: if we pull out without leaving a stable government in Iraq, it will become another Afghanistan.  I.E.: Terrorists will have complete immunity to train in that state.  Why would Jefferson state "Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none"?  Maybe because that when Jefferson was alive, America was not a superpower.  Remember, America needed the help of France to defeat the English.  It wouldn't take very much to entangle the US military back then.  Second, we are not nation building in Iraq.  The Iraqis are building their own nation, we're just giving them a safer arena in which to do it.  Don't forget, we did the same with Germany and Japan after the second World War.  Anyone want to guess how long that took?  I'm also sick of people comparing the battle in Iraq to World War II.  They say we won WWII in less than five years.  We should have been able to win this one by now, so we must be defeated.  This has got to be one of the weakest arguments I have ever heard.    What they conveniently forget is that we did not handcuff the military back then.  The military didn't worry about what the compassionate back in the US thought, the just did what they had to.  Remember the Japanese-American and German-American concentration camps?  Firebombing? If someone was pointing a gun your way, whether they were wearing a uniform or not, you shot them.  You didn't have to wait until they actually shot at you.  If they were bird-dogging for the enemy, you shot them.  Period.  The anti-war folks also like to emphasize the casualty count in Iraq.  Okay, so we've lost over 3000 of best and brightest since this began.   I agree that every life is valuable, but don't compare wars if you're not gonna compare everything.  We lost more in one day in WWII than in YEARS of fighting in Iraq AND Afghanistan.  We lost about 500,000 soldiers, airmen and sailors in WWII.  We fought for about four years or so.  That works out to about 125,000 deaths a year.   That's over 340 deaths per DAY.(http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/statistics.htm)   Don't try to compare time lines from WWII to Iraq.  Vietnam? We WON Vietnam.  What happened was that after we won, we pulled out, leaving an extremely weak government that fell to the NVA and the VC very quickly.  Why in the hell should we follow the same plan in Iraq?  If we had stayed in Vietnam, there would still be a South Vietnam.  I like the quote "If you forget the past, you are doomed to repeat it."  I would change it a little though.   I'd say if you forget the past, you will CHOOSE to repeat it.  One last thing.  The Islamic Radicals do not hate us for bombing them, for fighting in Iraq or stationing troops in Saudi Arabia.  Those are just excuses like everything else they claim.  They hate us because of who we are.  They hate us because we are not like them and we don't agree with their world view.   It's amazing when you meet someone who comes from other countries, especially middle eastern, because they are amazed that what they have been taught about Americans is mostly false.  They think everyone is like the degenerates in Hollywood.  They see that coming from the US and think that everyone here agrees with that.  Part of the reason is that they live in a society where everyone does agree with what the media in their country says, or you die.  Now, there are a few exceptions, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule.  To conclude, if we pull out of Iraq, we lose.  If we pull out of Iraq, the Iraqis lose.  If we pull out of Iraq, the extremists will still try to kill us.  If we pull out of Iraq, we show that a few criminals can dictate policy to the US government.  We MUST stay until the Iraqi government can run itself, whether the decision to begin was a mistake or not.

Statistic sources.

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq11-1.htm#anchor2118718

http://www.teacheroz.com/wwii.htm

http://www.teacheroz.com/Japanese_Internment.htm

http://www.hitler.org/ww2-deaths.html

Cogz

  • Forum Member
  • **
  • Posts: 37
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Ron Paul for president
« Reply #43 on: November 01, 2007, 03:59:40 PM »
In your opinion, if we stay in Iraq - how do we know when we have "won?"


Addendum:
Also, while you are correct that Iraq is "building its own nation" - we ARE involved with a new kind of nation building as defined by Wikipedia:    "More recently, nation-building has come to be used in a completely different context, with reference to what has been succinctly described by its proponents as "the use of armed force in the aftermath of a conflict to underpin an enduring transition to democracy." In this sense nation-building describes deliberate efforts by a foreign power to construct or install the institutions of a national government, according to a model that may be more familiar to the foreign power but is often considered foreign and even destabilising. Nation-building is typically characterised by massive investment, military occupation, transitional government, and the use of propaganda to communicate governmental policy."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation-building

If you notice, we fit the bill for the entire description.

In regards to your fear of "another Afghanistan" - I imagine you are referring to the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.  Really the only thing they did to deserve our wrath was tolerate the presence of terrorists.  Everything else (the way the treated women, the Islamic rule of law etc) is none of our business and best handled through good example.

TexasAggie01

  • Active Forum Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 56
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Ron Paul for president
« Reply #44 on: November 01, 2007, 06:19:28 PM »
Example?

Japan and Germany as phijord related.

An alliance can be one of mutual support, or it can be one of dependency. Nation building falls in the latter category. It seems to me that history has shown that imperialism does not create allies, but rather resentment.

The former British colonies are as a whole much better off than any other country's former colonies I can recall. (See Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order by Niall Ferguson ) Imperialism creates resentment due mostly to a bunch of scholars who like to bash Europe, and the media who promote them. For example, how many Austrailians, New Zealanders, Canadians, and Americans truly resent Britain and the civil society of law and custom it brought with it throughout the globe? Or, like my ancestors, scratching out a living in the Highlands?How many South Americans would truly rather be living in the jungles?  What Indian truly wants to return to a divided India, constantly squabbling with itself? And so on. Imperialism is bashed now with little concious thought as to who brings the supposed grievance, and what benefits the "aggrieved" has taken advantage of.

True stability in any region comes from within.

Conversely, instability can and does come from abroad. Vietnam's instability was instigated and sustained by the Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh (Vietnamese Communist/nationalist) party at first, and after their split, by the North Vietnamese and their communist allies.

Consider the self-defense analogy in more detail: Do you pull a gun on an attacker and then proceed to give him a lesson in morality and personal finance? Or do you neutralize the threat and move on? A violent situation is not the context to do good.

True. But, you want to give the lesson to everyone else around, not the thug. You show others that self defense is good thing, and how to do it. After you stop the bad guy.

In your opinion, if we stay in Iraq - how do we know when we have "won?"

Yes, this wan't a question for me. But, my thought is that's when the Iraqis ask us to leave. The polls of Iraqis I've seen show that they don't want us there much, but realize they need external help to stabilize. They realize that we knocked out their former dictator, and then the thugs without the courage to fight him and his forces came in to make their own little caliphate and we've stayed to help them get rid of that vermin too.  We would not like someone helping us to stabilize the US, but we would be foolish to turn down help we desperately needed.  Kinda like the French help we accepted late in the Revolutionary War. Very late in the war, I might add.

This again shows my disagreement with Paul's (in my view) Pollyanna and contrarian approach to foreign affairs. We should "secure America and bring the troops home." When the people you need to secure from are in another country, you kinda have to go where they are. It seems as if he's saying "We should bring our troops home from around the world, but be ready to send them back to the same place." You are either ready to fight where needed to protect you country's interests, or you are not. You can't have it both ways. But, like I've said before, I tend to agree with Paul, even though I think he toned down his libertarianism to run as a Republican

Sponsor

  • Guest
Re: Ron Paul for president
« Reply #45 on: Today at 06:52:33 AM »

phijord

  • Forum Member
  • **
  • Posts: 2
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Ron Paul for president
« Reply #45 on: November 06, 2007, 12:03:08 PM »
In reference to the Afghanistan, yes Cogz, I did mean the Taliban controlled Afghanistan where terrorists were permitted to train with impunity.  I also agree that to change somebody's religious beliefs (i.e. treatment of women, etc.) persuasion is the only way it can happen.  We must be a good example and use reason.  It is unfortunate that reason cannot resolve all of the worlds problems, but the world is imperfect.  In an imperfect world, sometimes violence must be used, but it should never be savored or lusted for.  That is the big difference between the terrorists and our soldiers, sailors and airmen.  The best the military has never lusts for combat.  Watch the terrorists videos, and it is clear that they do.

Boulderlaw

  • Active Forum Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 59
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Ron Paul for president
« Reply #46 on: November 07, 2007, 10:03:01 AM »

 

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk