Dismissing Ron Paul - AlJazeera.com
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=94737
Dismissing Ron Paul
In his usual frank manner, Paul bluntly admits that the United States has failed in Iraq.
“Big media” have never deemed Paul a “major candidate,” as their paltry coverage of him shows.
By Ivan Eland
As the nation’s major media outlets crown John McCain (George W. Bush on steroids) as the Republican nominee for president, their nearly criminal neglect of Ron Paul’s candidacy in the 2008 presidential campaign is nearly complete.
“Big media” have never deemed Paul a “major candidate,” as their paltry coverage of him shows.
In fact, the media often brand the ardent groundswell of popular support for Ron Paul as an odd curiosity. The problem is that if Ron Paul is a kook—as they imply—then so are the nation’s founders.
His policy prescriptions of more limited government at home and military restraint abroad put him far closer to the spectrum of opinion at the founding than any other candidate in the 2008 race.
The media barons would never dream of implying that the founders were loony tunes. But the country’s current massive government, with its intrusive activism at home and abroad, is so far removed from the founding vision that the modern-day manifestation of such values appears downright weird to today’s press corps.
Most appalling is the media’s emphasis on criticizing Paul’s foreign policy views. The Washington Post, in an op-ed dedicated entirely to undermining Paul’s candidacy, argued that Paul is an “isolationist” who would withdraw from Iraq immediately, wouldn’t defend South Korea if it were attacked by the North, and has attempted to understand why Osama bin Laden attacks the United States.
Yet the nation’s founders were not isolationists, and neither is Paul.
Like the founders, he wants to avoid unneeded and unconscionable military attacks on other countries that pervert the republic at home.
In his usual frank manner, Paul bluntly admits that the United States has failed in Iraq. Alone among all of the Democratic and Republican candidates who ran or are still running in 2008, Paul understands the oft-neglected domestic ill effects of a quixotic and overly broad “war on terror,” including the war in Iraq.
He grasps that the erosion of the Constitution and civil liberties, which make the United States unique among nations, may be the war’s most important negative consequence.
Paul is also unique among the candidates in pointing out that now, rich U.S. allies, such as South Korea, are capable of defending themselves against far poorer foes. South Korea’s economy is about 30 times that of the North and no longer needs a U.S. security guarantee.
With the Soviet Union long relegated to the trash bin of history, no longer must the United States subsidize European defense through retaining the outdated NATO alliance and stationing of U.S. forces in Europe.
Paul is a rare politician who actually acknowledges expert opinion on al Qaeda. That opinion has concluded that bin Laden attacks the United States because of its foreign policy toward the Middle East—that is, the invasion and occupation of Muslim lands, and support for Israel and corrupt, autocratic Arab dictatorships.
Yet contrary to empirical evidence and polls in the Arab/Islamic world, other politicians in both major parties—to buttress their interventionist foreign policy prescriptions—either conveniently ignore al Qaeda’s motives or disingenuously attribute bin Laden’s hostility to his distaste for American culture or political and economic freedom.
In sum, Paul has astutely realized that the republic’s founding principles have never been more relevant to today’s world.
No matter what the outcome of the 2008 election, Paul’s participation in the campaign and its debates has been a huge plus in highlighting the long-forgotten founders’ policies of limited government and military restraint and in advocating their relevancy and renewal in today’s world.
That is why I was proud to accept an invitation to serve as a foreign policy advisor to Paul’s campaign. Like being a Maytag repairman, however, it is a lonely job, because the already savvy Paul doesn’t need much advice.
-- Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. His books include The Empire Has No Clothes: US Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into US Defense Policy.
ConsortiumNews
Source: Middle East Online
Don't give Al JaZeera the Credit
Al JaZeera just picked up the article from Consortium News. Here's the original article: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/022708b.html
I read the piece when it first came out, and it is a great article. Many of Paul's views go along with the AJ line, of course, which is why they reprint articles such as this one. But what can we say? We Americans tend to have a negative view of AJ, but the fact is, sometimes they have a point.
Great Stuff!
Qatar's Al Jazeera and Iran's PressTV coverage have been MOST favorable to Ron Paul. As RP's foreign policy will truly make the Middle East free and sovereign, from America and AIPAC's influence for the first time in almost a century, since the original Versailles Treaty crafted by the Anglo-American hegemon and BP-Standard Oil, in which they drew up the artificial boundaries of Iraq, and many others.
Ivan Eland is foreign policy consultant to RonPaul2008 campaign. http://www.ronpaul2008.com/press-releases/239/suicide-terror...
And ConsortiumNews.com is a GREAT, genuine investigative news outlet, perhaps one of the few left outside of Sy Hersch, and to a certain extent Greg Palast.
ConsortiumNews.com was essentially the murdered journalist, Gary Webb's site. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb The Pulitzer Award winning journalist whose last job was with the San Jose Mercury News, a typically a liberal outlet, themselves wrote damaging OpEd AGAINST Webb, prior to his murder, on Webb's expose of the CIA-narco network.
Gary was murdered for exposing the same Iran-Contra narcotics network, which many of the core players honed their skills during VietnamWar's Phoenix and AirAmerica narco-assassination program ran by CIA and mercs. He had documented evidence that showed that CIA was bringing in crack cocaine to South Central LA in the late 1970's and 1980's and distributing it amongst the Crips and the Bloods, by the truckloads. This same network involves the Bush crime familia and the Clintons, during their days in the Arkansas Governorship. Google Mena, Arkansas, Ted Gunderson (fmr.FBI head of LosAngeles), Celerino "Cele" Castillo (fmr. DEA agent assigned head Latin American operations), and Michael Ruppert (fmr. LA detective, narc unit, FromTheWilderness.com)
Yes folks, the rumors are true. Criminal elements within your government run drugs, distribute drugs, and sell drugs. By Michael Ruppert and Catherine Austin Fitts, the fmr. Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), under George H.W.Bush, Sr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Austin_Fitts (Solari.com)'s account, up to 1-2 Trillion dollars of our GDP may be in laundered drug money. She come to find out about CIA' shenanigans, when the urban slumlords wer using govt grants and unoccupied homes to launder drug money.
Poppy seeds in Afghanistan, billions of missing dollars in $100,000 bricks of cash weighing TONNES in Iraq, Turkey the number one exporter of Afghani heroin, knocking out oil-rich Kurds in Northern Iraq, on behalf of US govt, any questions? Hell, the former head of the NASDAQ, Rick Grasso flew down and personally met with FARC's Reyes, who was recently assassinated by the Colombian Army with the aid of DEA and US military, to ASK him to invest his narco dollars in the NASDAQ, or else. Well, he got "or else."
The only time when a "cartel" like Pablo Escobar is taken out, by the US Army's elite SOCOM Detachment Delta, AKA Delta Force, no less, is when they pose threat to our "officially" sanctioned turfs. Ask yourselves why a counter terrorist unit like the Delta Force will fly over to Colombia to take out a Drug kingpin? If the cartels were deemed a genuine terrorist threat, why do you not see the Sicilian mob, the SouthEast Asian, and East Indian druglords and the Mexican cartels get taken out in one gigantic international military sweep? The cartels have fixed known residences, unlike the Alqaeda. So why do we not? Simple, it's TOO damn profitable. Gotta sell arms. And you can't sell them, if there's no rationale, like rising crimerate, murder, etc, etc.
Gary was shot in the back of his head, TWICE, from the same weapon, to which the coroner decided was a "suicide."
We need Ron Paul to END our foreign intervention, as well as the Drug War at home. Hell, in Netherlands, their cops are forced by DEA to meet an annual drug arrest quota to maintain "favored trading partner" status with the United States. This lunacy needs to end. And the counterfeiting Federal Reserve and the money laundering Wall St. is a BIG part of the Military Industrial Complex. We cannot let the American sheeple be fooled into believing in pro-statist candidates like McNutHitleryObomba. I feared after such blatant buffoonery of GWB, they'd take anyone better. With Dem majority in Congress, you all have seen the anti-war LEFT's reluctance and complacency in criticize their own.
In some disgusting manner, GWB's sheer idiocy has exposed America to the world for what it is. In a sick irony, the simian has done more to expose the reality behind the American Empire. Slick Willy was too smart, too smooth an operator. He killed millions in Balkans, not to mention half a million Iraqi civilians from our sanctions; while publicly condemning Saddam in the 1990's and posing economic sanctions across the board including Iraq's rich petroleum reserves, we still bought Saddam's oil through the Russian oil companies. But I fear with the Cult of O-bomb-a, the vast majority will love the feeling of ignorance as bliss, as long as people don't die on tv, it doesn't happen, complacency. We NEED RP badly to expose this statist fraud.
I AM RON PAUL, WE ARE ALL RON PAUL!!!!
PRESIDENT RON PAUL: Jan 20, 2009 - Jan 20, 2017
I STILL B E L I E V E !!!!!!!
Cool
Really cool that this was on AlJazeera, they've been pretty much pro-Obama. Getting more pro-Paul coverage internationally can only help.
This is by an American author
Apparently
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot." -Mark Twain
Aljazeera english
Is dominated by british, american, swedish, ... authors, they have an english TV channel, worth taking a look at what they are reporting about!
it took me going to Iraq to
it took me going to Iraq to come to grips with the fact Arabs are not our enemy. our enemy wears suits, they work in Washington DC and they tax us until we can't afford the basic necessities in life.
for those of us old enough to remember the USSR. ask yourself this question. how many Russians ever came to your home and did anything to you? probably not many. so why was it they were our enemy? was it because these same suit wearing people i spoke of above couldn't get along with other suit wearing a**holes in Moscow? so they decided "well i don't want to die over this bulls*it. so we'll wave the flag around and tell the citizens of our countries that they have to do something about it."
for now on i say if they have a problem with another country then they go take care of it themselves. otherwise start playing nice and shut up. because i'm done believing anything the US government says.
No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in - Bill Hicks
Celebrity Death Match ..
It realy would be the best way ..
Say that 2 world "leaders" come to the realization that the world just isnt big enough for the both of them. For the sake of illustration lets give them names like McSame and Amadinjad .. Well, while some might call for a bloody protracted and expensive war ... imagine instead, a celebrity caged death match. Rather than being a destructive thing, this personal animosity could be aired on pay per view with the proceeds going to pay down national debt or some other useful purposes.
I say bring back the duel .. just modernize it :)
That's great!
Get the "suits" to fight to the death!!
I doubt there would be any more wars.