Soil from Stone

Judy Woodruff interviewed Ron Paul a couple of weeks ago. He handled himself very well. I think he is partly wrong about Israel and the Middle East, but his overall solution is correct.

…I’m talking about a noninterventionist foreign policy. The founding fathers taught us about it, no entangling alliance. Don’t get involved in the internal affairs. If you eventually did that in the Middle East, yes, we would be less vulnerable.

But just to back away a little bit and still have our puppet governments in Saudi Arabia, support Israel against the Palestinians, and be in Afghanistan, no, it’s not going to change anything. As long as we have this mercantilistic idea that it’s our oil, we have to be over there, we have to have cheap oil, we’re going to be resented.

But you have to — as long as we keep doing what we’re doing, it’s going to get worse. If we start backing away, they might reassess things. But we’re doomed to failure. And the Republican Party has already suffered the consequences, because they, you know, did so badly last year. And it’s going to get worse if we don’t change our policies.

I don’t think the radical Islamists will reassess things in our favor no matter what we do. They haven’t been rational for 1500 years, so they’re not going to start thinking straight now. Especially not people like those Palestinians who danced in the streets when the world trade center towers fell. However, we still need to get out of Iraq and the Middle East in general. The idea that we’re somehow buying some security by waging war over there is absurd. Attacking al Qaeda makes some sense, but we never really did that with more than half a heart. As a people, Americans don’t seem to have the werewithall to wage real war, and if we’re not going to do it right, why are we doing it at all? It only seems to be about money and power for a few here in America, and that does not make a just war.

I’m a strong supporter of Israel and a strong detractor of the Palestinians, but Paul is right on that score too. The Palestinians don’t deserve their own country, and I wouldn’t shed a single tear if Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza Strip and deported (or shot) every last person who had anything to do with the PLO, Hamas, or Fatah. In fact, all Arabs would probably be better off if they invited Israel to take over all their governments. They would have more peace, more prosperity, and more freedom than they have now. But what does that have to do with the United States government? Individual Americans should be free to support whatever side they want in strictly foreign disagreements. They should be free to send money and cookies to Israeli soldiers or Hamas thugs (I’m not revealing any bias there am I?), whichever they prefer. But they should never be allowed to take money from me against my will and give it to either side. I don’t care which side is right or wrong, stealing is still stealing.

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