Ron Paul on Pakistan
One of our commentators (Jon) asked about a Ron Paul foreign policy in dealing with Pakistan. The same day Jon was asking, Paul was answering (unbeknownst to me). At 2:50 in this clip.
Sheppard Smith: “What would your message to President Musharaff be?”
Ron Paul: “No more money pal we’ve given you 10 billion and you’re flunking the course.”
Rojas might also like this clip for this bit:
Sheppard Smith: “But are you a Republican or a libertarian?”.
Ron Paul: “Why can’t you be both?
Right answer.
I’m not sure
A) Why Musharraf is ‘flunking the course’.
B) If Paul, or any of us, want a repeat of the Iran/Shah/Khomeini debacle.
Whether or not Paul thinks that we shouldn’t have gotten into bed with Musharraf in the first place, I don’t think that cutting the strings now is the right course.
Comment by Adam — 11/12/2007 @ 7:54 pm
Just a thought, Pakistan stability and the such should be a much more pressing issue for Europe, Iran, India, and Israel. Why the hell are we over there sponsoring Musharraf to the tune of 10 billion dollars?
If it was 10 million or so for good governance, I can understand. But 10 billion dollars? A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon it adds up to real money. It seems like US just encourages corruption and dictatorships around the world.
Comment by TanGeng — 11/12/2007 @ 9:18 pm
Oh, Adam. What do you mean by that comment about the Iran/Shah/Khomeini?
Do you mean we should avoid propping up a dictator like the Shah? Or are you objecting to his eventual overthrow resulting in Ayatollah Khomeini going on a tirade on the evils of America, but never laying a finger on America. Or are you objecting to America resorting to support Saddaam in Iraq as a counterforce to the Ayatollah and thus ushering a new generation of dictatorship?
Or are you objecting to the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddaam and the mess that’s currently in Iraq?
Comment by TanGeng — 11/12/2007 @ 9:23 pm
The commentator lied when he said Ron Paul’s daily haul wasn’t the most ever raised in one day by a Republican. Mitt Romney only raised a little over 3 million in one day (the rest of his claimed 6.2 or so million was pledges). The only candidate ever to raise more in one day was John Kerry, on the day he accepted the Democratic nomination. Fact.
Comment by weltschmerz — 11/12/2007 @ 10:00 pm
TanGeng: I mean that cutting the Shah’s strings was a bad idea. Sure, propping him up in the first place was a bad idea, but string-cutting wasn’t the solution, whatever the solution actually was (finding that would, of course, be highly non-trivial in itself).
The idea that Khomeini’s Iran was harmless only works, so far as I can see, if you belive that the USA should have been completely isolationist (ie, not in Lebanon or supporting Israel, to pick two examples involving the Iranian clients Hizbollah). I don’t believe that, myself, so clearly I’m not going to agree with you.
I don’t, by any means, get in a tizzy about Iran like many others do (North Korea bothers me significantly more) — I particularly find annoying the way that Ahmadinejad is now superimportant because he’s sooooo evil, where his more moderate predecessor was irrelevant because the Supreme Leader was the guy with the power (the latter situation being much closer to the truth) — as does Russia.
I suspect that, if you are a libertarian or an isolationist, we will have relatively little in common on foreign policy. Sure, we’ll both agree that, for example, Iraq has been a horrible farrago borne in large part of a hubristic failure to analyse both the case and the likely outcomes, but when it comes down to general opinions, we’ll be miles apart. You shouldn’t, however, think that I find the foreign policy of this administration any less frustrating than do you.
Comment by Adam — 11/12/2007 @ 10:38 pm
TanGeng: I mean that cutting the Shah’s strings was a bad idea. Sure, propping him up in the first place was a bad idea, but string-cutting wasn’t the solution, whatever the solution actually was (finding that would, of course, be highly non-trivial in itself).
Well, the question is do we keep propelling and piling on to our initial mistake, which may well be a mistake of premise or conceptualization, or do we begin moving to a new set of premises and new conceptualizations?
Ron Paul’s responses and policies, I agree, don’t work if limits of what we consider is what might have the least bad effect in the most short term. But, if, say, on some level insulating countries and regimes from problems of their own making creates problems, sure the solution might be to just try to further insulate them from said problems, or it might be to begin a shift, and to begin thinking of things in a new way.
I don’t think it would be a good idea to initiate the totality of Ron’s ideas in the extremely short term either. But I do think that maybe we ought to take seriously that our whole framework might need rethinking. Sure, Y might not be a solution in some sense of it, but then again X, which is not the problem, was once the solution itself. So maybe part of the trick is to not let our solutions constantly be the engine of our problems.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but the opposite also holds true.
Comment by Brad — 11/12/2007 @ 11:18 pm
I don’t think that worrying about solutions bring problems is worthwhile, per se. Given that attempts to find solutions contribute to whatever comes after, and given that there will always be problems, attempted solutions will always, to some degree, bring problems. The estimation of how bad certain problems really are, how risky certain solutions are, how big the potentials gains and losses are? Well, sure, that needs rethinking.
Personally, I don’t share Bush’s (apparently childlike) enthusiasm for spreading democracy and, thus, don’t have a big headache over Musharraf (who’s effectively been a dictator since he took power). I think that Musharraf is better than what their former democracy had brought them and, more importantly, us, and I don’t think that the return of a former leader, Bhutto, is liable to improve things. Now Musharraf could go bad or not, but I don’t think that he has at the moment and I don’t see that pulling the rug from under him achieves much good (particularly when he’s been pretty fair to us in exchange for our support).
I understand that many libertarians would have the US military out of Afghanistan, but that’s not as popular with the US population as is getting out of Iraq and with someone else in charge of Pakistan, life could potentially get even harder for the international mission in Afghanistan.
Yeah, hopefully in the end Pakistan will end up with a fabulous democracy that shines a beacon of freedom across the world. In the meantime, I wouldn’t be tossing out what we have, and know how to work with, in favour of tossing the dice and hoping.
Comment by Adam — 11/12/2007 @ 11:28 pm
Great service. :) Thanks Brad.
Comment by Jon — 11/13/2007 @ 12:46 am