My friend Jon asks two important questions of Ron Paul (whom, you all know, I support - there are bumper stickers on my car, and I even donated money to his campaign). I think these are an important questions, and they open up an potentially crucial discussion:
- Alternate Universe - Ron Paul is president 9/11/2001. How does he react differently than Bush?
- If Paul were elected in ‘08 and we overnight become non-interventio
nist, does the Islamist threat vanish?
Here’s how I’m guessing Ron Paul would answer if posed #1 in an interview: He’d say that we have to realize that it’s our foreign policy over the last 100 years that caused the conditions for a 9/11 attack in the first place. I’d agree with him there, but I’d want him to be pushed further on the matter. Here’s the follow-up question I’d want to ask: “I agree, Dr. Paul, but as president, you’re not inheriting the country you think it should be, but the country we currently have. What do you do on 9/11? Do you hit Afghanistan?”
Question #2 I think would be answered this way: No, the terrorist threat doesn’t vanish, but we’re not going to make it go away with un-American foreign policy, preemptive strikes, and continuing to take the country in a direction the founders never advised. Paul would say, “If I made the wrong diagnoses, I would not continue the same treatment.” Instead, if we brought all our troops home, stopped spending insane amounts of money we don’t have, and invested in secure borders and defending the homeland, no one would dare attack us. We’re weak and vulnerable to attack at home because we’re occupying and policing the world. Bringing the troops home would do two things: (1) Make us stronger at home and therefore less vulnerable to attack here; (2) Begin to put into effect the remedy for the volatile world situation we ourselves had a hand in creating. The second part would take a very, very long time; the first would be almost immediate.
I might also want to add that if Ron Paul were elected president, it’s not as though all his ideas would immediately be implemented, as my friend and RR reader Sean reminds me. If you think Paul is a bit too extreme on his non-interventionism, remember that he’ll have the entirety of Congress pulling in another direction - which means Paul’s election might add just the right amount of balance to American foreign policy.
Thoughts? These are issues I’m still wrestling with, even as I’m finishing up my third or fourth pint of Ron Paul Kool-Aid.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Jon // Dec 10, 2007 at 10:03 am
I’m just not sure that Paul’s hypothetical - and probable - response to question #2 works.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that our foreign policy has been to swing a stick at a hornet’s nest, and that Paul’s reaction is to go back indoors (aka non-interventionism). If I have Paul’s role in the analogy wrong, I apologize.
The place I’m concerned this falls apart is: these hornets are probably smart enough to get indoors! I think Paul’s approach is to go back indoors and hope that we can keep the hornets out long enough so that they forget about trying to get inside simply because we’ve stopped swinging the stick.
Unfortunately, I don’t think foreign-policy is the only way we disturb the nest.
Important question: are Islamists upset with only (or even mostly) our foreign-policy? Or will they still want to attack us because of the influence of our movies, music and the rest of our secular-culture?
2 bke274 // Dec 10, 2007 at 12:11 pm
The late Harry Browne (1996 and 2000 Libertarian Presidential Candidate) was once asked question #1 on his radio program. I’ll paraphrase his response.
“For me to have been president on 9/11 I would have had to have been elected in November of 2000 and sworn in on Jan. 20, 2001. If that had happened I would have brought all American military forces stationed overseas home immediately and I would have ended U.S. foreign aid as well. I would have immediately quit meddling in other nations’ affairs. If that had happened then 9/11 probably would just have been a normal day with no terrorist attacks. But let’s say that the attacks of 9/11 had happened anyway. I would have made the effort then to actually find the people who were responsible for it and bring them to justice and not have bombed the daylights out of an entire country killings thousands of people who were not responsible for it at all. Now my critics will say that this is treating the attacks of 9/11 as a criminal act and not an act of war and that it wouldn’t actually bring Osama Bin Laden to justice. Well, we don’t know whether or not it would have worked because it wasn’t tried. But we do know that was has been done for the past 3 years (he said this in 2004 if I recall correctly) hasn’t brought Bin Laden to justice either.”
Harry Browne is no longer with us, but his wisdom lives on. Of course now we can ammend his statement from 3 years to 6 years.
3 Travis Prinzi // Dec 10, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Jon, good questions, and I’m certainly not an expert on this. My gut-response is, yes, they hate us primarily because we’re over there. I have a hard time believing they’d have orchestrated 9/11 because we have half-naked women on our TVs all the time. But then, I’m not them. But you’re right to say that there are more reasons for their hatred than our interventionist foreign policy. I just don’t know if they’re enough to cause 9/11.
4 Jon // Dec 11, 2007 at 8:16 am
Be careful, I think you’re giving a society that wants to kill a teacher for naming a teddy-bear Muhammad the benefit of the doubt …
5 Travis Prinzi // Dec 11, 2007 at 9:43 am
Ha. Good point. Still, I have to wonder whether that sort of thing would inspire a 9/11. If I went into their country and started advocating for sexual immorality all over their TV networks, they’d certainly kill me right there. But I’m not sure they’d be as prepared to orchestrate 9/11-type attacks if we hadn’t established a military presence and threat in their countries (after supporting some of their countries and organizations, Al Qaeda included).
Just for clarification: I don’t doubt they’re bad, awful, evil guys. I’m not advocating for a liberal, “If we’d only talk to them, they’d be nice to us because they’re really sweet people” sort of thing.
6 restless reformer » Blogging Ron Paul All Week // Dec 12, 2007 at 1:07 am
[…] Reformed friends a nice break from my bashing of our theology). I’ve already started with a couple questions about Ron Paul and 9/11, and a list of Festivus grievances against evangelical Huckabee […]
7 restless reformer » Ron Paul Documentary on PBS: Friday, December 14! // Dec 13, 2007 at 12:59 am
[…] In the meantime, check out these interview clips. Great stuff! In fact, he answers question #1 from this post. […]
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