Too late to change our foreign policy?

[pauliticalfan]

Am reading Liberty Defined at the moment, and while I agree that our foreign policy needs to move in a different direction, I'm wrestling with the concept of how much we can afford to change.

Ron argues that countries like Sweden and Switzerland are both free and safe because they don't engage in foreign wars, therefore viewed as nonaggressive and not a target for terrorism. He argues that if we end our occupation of foreign countries and draw down intelligence agencies like the CIA, then we will all of a sudden be viewed as nonaggressive and will no longer be targeted by terrorists.

My question is: isn't it already too late? Has our reckless, invasive foreign policy of the last half century not done so much damage that it can never be forgiven? Sure, if Paul becomes POTUS and ends all military operations, we'll stop making enemies, but whose to say the enemies we've already made will stop trying to attack us to seek revenge for past wars?

I agree that bringing all the troops home is a crucial first step in making America safer. It's the whole scaling down our intelligence capabilities that leaves me worried. Assuming a change in foreign policy doesn't stop a terror plot from forming, how will it then be stopped? I'm unclear if Ron's plan is to reform intelligence agencies to weed out corruption and abuse, or abolish them completely leaving nothing in their place. Talk me down.

[asurfaholic]

I don't think anyone can see into the future, but one thing is for sure - every time we drop a bomb and kill an innocent person, or cause fear, or cause destruction, we generate more hate towards us.

While some people may hate the US with a passion already, the smartest move we can make is to get out of their land and stop bombing their children. Much like quitting smoking, even after years of harming your lungs, things heal in time, and I believe we would be better off in the long run.

In reality though, how many terrorist attacks have we suffered?

1. 9/11

People might hate us, but it takes alot of coordination to pull a fast one here in the US, so if we leave, what motivation is there to keep planning an attack on us? I think if we left, they would be very wary about attacking us again for fear of bringing us back. All they want is for us to leave their lands.

[dean.engelhardt]

Too late to change foreign policy?

NO

Has our reckless, invasive foreign policy of the last half century not done so much damage that it can never be forgiven?

Not never, but one or two generations.

As long as we murder parents, trying to protect themselves in front of their children, we'll have at least one generation of terrorist to deal with. The sooner we stop interfering with the government of other countries the sooner the clock to peace starts.

[acptulsa]

Let me ask you this, politicalfan. Is it ever too late to stop hitting yourself on the head with a hammer? I mean, yeah, you've lost half of your brain cells. But does that mean you don't need the other half?

[Revolution9]

Let me ask you this, politicalfan. Is it ever too late to stop hitting yourself on the head with a hammer?

Love a good metaphor!

Rev9

[pcosmar]

Ron's plan is to reform intelligence agencies to weed out corruption and abuse, or abolish them completely leaving nothing in their place. Talk me down.

From my understanding, and from listening to Ron. He plans to abolish the CIA.
The CIA has little to do with intelligence gathering. There are several other Intelligence Services, and he would likely work on reforms in them.

Intelligence Gathering is not the problem.
Meddling is. The CIA has been involved in illegal activities since it's creation.
The secret programs, subversion, assassinations are not Intelligence Gathering.

The CIA has got to go.

[libertyjam]

Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at the N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people that I never met and that I never had no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Send in the marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a $#@!. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number was called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. They're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and $#@!in' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's walking to the $#@!in' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the schrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorroids. And meanwhile he's starvin' 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure, $#@! it, while I'm at it, why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.
-Good Will Hunting

[osan]

Am reading Liberty Defined at the moment, and while I agree that our foreign policy needs to move in a different direction, I'm wrestling with the concept of how much we can afford to change.

Ron argues that countries like Sweden and Switzerland are both free and safe because they don't engage in foreign wars, therefore viewed as nonaggressive and not a target for terrorism. He argues that if we end our occupation of foreign countries and draw down intelligence agencies like the CIA, then we will all of a sudden be viewed as nonaggressive and will no longer be targeted by terrorists.

My question is: isn't it already too late? Has our reckless, invasive foreign policy of the last half century not done so much damage that it can never be forgiven? Sure, if Paul becomes POTUS and ends all military operations, we'll stop making enemies, but whose to say the enemies we've already made will stop trying to attack us to seek revenge for past wars?

The situation is far and away worse than that. Were the superficial appearances of our current reality all that there were, we could recede from our current path and, given a generation or so, return to a situation where our neighbors once again would regard us as innocuous at worst. Unfortunately, things are not nearly as simple as that. I firmly suspect that we have bitter enemies disguised as allies. The British, for example, I do not trust to the door. They have sucked us into two world wars - wars we had no business entering and to which we should have left them to be consumed by Germany. There is Israel who, though I hold no personal grievances against them, have not served well as allies. It is arguable that the bulk of our foreign policy woes turn upon our ill conceived alliance with that nation. This speaks not to anything normative, but simply to what is functionally true. Were we to abandon this slavish allegiance (and I mean slavish most literally) to that nation, in conjunction with a large scale withdrawal from the various other entanglements in which we find ourselves, there is a good chance that many of the troubles that beset us would abate into the ether.

Or would they? Were we to abandon Israel and forsake our morbid relationship with that most evil of nations, Great Britain, would our problems come to an end? Methinks there is a good chance that they would not. First of all, Britain and Israel remain powerful and would engage in raging campaigns of oblique, long term, low intensity warfare wherein our people would be killed, our culture further demoralized, and our economy rotted from within. Such nations, much like other sorts of parasitic entity, do not take kindly to rejection by the host. I believe they would sooner see the USA utterly destroyed, including materially, than relinquish their respective holds on the great cash cow.

On top of all of that is the rising sun of China, a nation that for thousands of years has cultivated the mentality and craft of empire. They are expanding both economically and militarily.

The war against us is not against the USA per se, but against the idea of the USA. Those in the serious seats of power want it all and are well within striking range of having it. I hold little reservation for the notion that they would stop at nearly nothing to achieve their goals and will see the United States, as such, buried in a deep grave.

One of the great problems and nigh impossible challenges here is presented in the endless layers and entangled tentacles that have become part and parcel of this modern world. The enemies of liberty are everywhere. I know that sounds like the ranting of a paranoid Soviet dictator, but nevertheless I believe it to be the case. The stage has been so cluttered with noise of so many forms it has become virtually impossible to ID real enemies. On top of that, there are many enemies of liberty who have become such with no intention whatsoever. The simple fact that so many of our neighbors have come to believe the anti-liberty drivel that the collectivist/socialist scum have sold them in our schools, our radios, and television screens places us at grave odds with any prospect of surviving past this next coming generation. We are in serious trouble and at this point I hold very little optimism for the future of human freedom.

So the real answer to your question is "probably not". We are probably doomed to a future of forced, authoritarian administered collectivism wherein one-size-fits-all is the keystone of all human reality and where Big Brother's posterity inherit the reigns of absolute and unquestioned power.

Every day more and more of the world not only comes to accept its shackles, but comes to love them and eventually demand they be tightened in ever greater stricture against the individual in self-betraying testament to the utter repudiation of their individuality and the concomitant responsibility for self in favor of compliance to the dictates of the "state", thereby absolving each man of all accountability for their actions and the obligation to think for himself. This is what humanity is fain to become and what it most likely shall become in the very near future. Keep fighting, but hold out no large hope that the free man, the man willing to remain an individual and accepting of the responsibilities that such status presses upon him shall remain anything more than a vague and reviled memory in the minds of the dull, inarticulate, and wholly undifferentiated mob.

I agree that bringing all the troops home is a crucial first step in making America safer. It's the whole scaling down our intelligence capabilities that leaves me worried. Assuming a change in foreign policy doesn't stop a terror plot from forming, how will it then be stopped? I'm unclear if Ron's plan is to reform intelligence agencies to weed out corruption and abuse, or abolish them completely leaving nothing in their place. Talk me down.

Your concerns are not without basis and strong merit. As for Ron, he will likely accomplish nothing. If he makes it to office and fails to toe the line, he will be removed by whatever means are necessary. The stakes here are world dominion. Those gambling are not likely to simply throw up their hands and give up when Superman arrives on scene. They will simply lace his water with kryptonite and that will be the end of it, if push comes to shove. It is my strong suspicion that most people, even those here, have no real idea just how extensively played this game is and how serious the gamers are. If the people of the USA come to their senses and said "no" to all of this, I hold precious small doubt that if needed, physical warfare would be waged against us in order to break our will to recover our liberties. That prospect is, however, so remote as not to rate so much as a fart in a hurricane on the radar screens of those in power.

The $#@! is coming down upon us in torrents as we continue to discuss all this and still we do nothing. I strongly suspect it shall be this way unto our doom. The few that fight will be swept away as so much flotsam and jetsam in the great tempests to come. Fight in any event, those of you who would be of such a mind for IMO it is better to die on one's feet than to live on all fours, licking the boots of the master in exchange for his deign of another moment's existence.

Damnation upon all tyrants and cowards.

[osan]

I don't think anyone can see into the future, but one thing is for sure - every time we drop a bomb and kill an innocent person, or cause fear, or cause destruction, we generate more hate towards us.

While some people may hate the US with a passion already, the smartest move we can make is to get out of their land and stop bombing their children. Much like quitting smoking, even after years of harming your lungs, things heal in time, and I believe we would be better off in the long run.

In reality though, how many terrorist attacks have we suffered?

1. 9/11

People might hate us, but it takes alot of coordination to pull a fast one here in the US, so if we leave, what motivation is there to keep planning an attack on us? I think if we left, they would be very wary about attacking us again for fear of bringing us back. All they want is for us to leave their lands.

Well stated. I would take some exception, though, to the bit about pulling fast ones. They are pulled all the time, yesterday a large one coming off with the debt ceiling vote. The limits are being redefined almost literally every day and while we complain a lot, we do nothing substantive to stop the mob. This bodes poorly for our future.

[Pericles]

"In the terrorist attack at Luxor on Monday, Swiss citizens bore the brunt. That fact seemed so much at odds with the Swiss habit of seeing their distinctive red passport not as a mere travel document, but rather as a badge of their land's neutrality and a sign that they held no malice toward host nations often suspicious of other Western countries.
Yet when the shooting started and the grisly counting followed, 35 of the 58 foreign tourists killed at the Temple of Hatshepsut, across the broad reach of the Nile from Luxor, were Swiss, a tally that, as the banner headline of the mass-circulation newspaper Blick put it today, was ''beyond comprehension.''


http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/20/wo...rom-luxor.html

Sometimes it does not matter who you are - it matters where you are. As one of my Swiss co-workers told me after this -

"One thing I have to say for the USA is, if an American gets killed anywhere in the world, somebody gets bombed. And if you are lucky, you even get the guys who did it. Here we have everybody saying that if the terrorists knew the tourists were Swiss, they would not have been attacked."

[osan]

From my understanding, and from listening to Ron. He plans to abolish the CIA.
The CIA has little to do with intelligence gathering. There are several other Intelligence Services, and he would likely work on reforms in them.

Intelligence Gathering is not the problem.
Meddling is. The CIA has been involved in illegal activities since it's creation.
The secret programs, subversion, assassinations are not Intelligence Gathering.

The CIA has got to go.

If Ron attempts this, his brains will be spread all over a sidewalk. This has less than a zero chance of happening without very broad support at the highest echelons of power.

[Acala]

Putting an end to the US world empire is not JUST about our own security, although I am fully convinced that when you stop kicking hornet nests as a hobby you will be stung less often. You may still get stung, but less often.

It is also about fiscal responsibility. We simply cannot afford to continue our current foreign policy. It is really that simple.

It is also about morality. "Yes, I now know that it is wrong to get drunk and beat my wife and children, but if I stop they might not do what I want them to do." We need to stop killing innocent people and violating their property rights and sovereignty even if it means things get worse for us.

It is also a matter of Constitutional government. Our government has no authority to operate a world empire.

Etc.

[pcosmar]

If Ron attempts this, his brains will be spread all over a sidewalk. This has less than a zero chance of happening without very broad support at the highest echelons of power.

Hence,,my utmost respect for the man.

And the reason he is so resisted.

[pauliticalfan]

I guess for me, it still comes back to the fact that animosity towards the US will not go away overnight. We should, without question, bring all the troops home as quickly and carelessly as they were sent there in the first place. This will go a long way in reducing tensions overseas and will remove motivation for people wishing to do us harm. The next step, naturally, is to end intelligence operations. But it's my belief that if we are to abolish intelligence gathering (which is not necessarily synonymous with us having troops there), then it will have to be done so gradually over the course of several years in correlation with the decrease in animosity towards the US. The ultimate goal should be for us to have no need for intelligence agencies like the CIA, but the ugly truth is that our foreign policy of the last several decades has created a vicious cycle. The removal of such agencies overnight will leave us unable to intercept acts of terrorism which have been launched now that we are seen as "weak". That is not to say intelligence agencies should not be abolished eventually, gradually and in correlation with decreasing animosity towards the US, but when it comes to something as important as our national defense, we have to be smart about the moves we make. I honestly believe that there is a responsible way to go about restoring a Constitutional government, and it's our obligation to follow that.

Thanks for the thoughtful discussion so far. It's given me a lot to ponder.

[osan]

Hence,,my utmost respect for the man.

And the reason he is so resisted.

I doubt he is so foolish as to get himself promoted to ghost for the sake of engaging in a futile gesture.

Principle is important, but must always be balanced with the practical considerations, all pursuant to achieving the strategic goals. Acting in slavish adherence to a principle in such a way as to have no hope of success may indeed be noble. The samurai were quite good at it at times, as have been others. But if your goal is important to you, some pragmatism is often called for.

It is a delicate balance between the two and the right balance is a matter of perspective, but if we all agree here that the restoration of liberty is the ultimate goal in the context of our discussions here and all the political activity to which we all refer and relate, then I personally see no virtue in President Paul committing suicide, unless he believes that martyring himself would rouse the rest of the nation to effective and substantive action.

The vermin who enslave us are not moved by nobility. In fact, it is my strong suspicion they despise it and hold nothing but scorn for those who display it. All that matters to them, all that they respect, are those who achieve their stated outcomes by whatever means necessary.

I find it difficult to believe that a man of Dr. Paul's intelligence and political worldliness would be so foolish as to even remotely consider such an unsoundly precipitous act as this. I am not saying it cannot be done, but that it could not be done in his lifetime. Such a thing would likely take decades, all else equal.

[Zippyjuan]

We don't really have "a" foreign policy. We have many. It varies from situation to situation and country to country.

[Acala]

We don't really have "a" foreign policy. We have many. It varies from situation to situation and country to country.

Not really. Our foreign policy is to take money from the American people (through taxation and confiscatory monetary policy) and give it to banks, military contractors, and corrupt foreign politicians. Only the puppet show changes.

[pauliticalfan]

^Agreed. Our foreign policy revolves around a single mindset. Call it the Bush-Obama doctrine if you want to. We don't hesitate to invade countries and topple regimes if we think it will benefit and protect us, even though it has the opposite effect.

[heavenlyboy34]

^Agreed. Our foreign policy revolves around a single mindset. Call it the Bush-Obama doctrine if you want to. We don't hesitate to invade countries and topple regimes if we think it will benefit and protect us, even though it has the opposite effect.

I am always dismayed to see the word "we" used when describing the actions, mindset, etc. of the regime and/or its various appendages. People around here should know better than this.

[LiBeRtY4Eva]

Whether it's too late or not too late , it must be done . And when I say 'it must be done' , I mean ASAP . This country hasn't seen one thing that was actually law obiding for a hundred years .

" Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government. " -- James Monroe

It's funny , cause when they speak of , 'a spending cut' , nobody really looks at the real spending this government does . None of us know what's really being talked about behind those closed doors . I laugh at politics nowadays . I honestly believe that everythings a written a script .

[osan]

" Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government. " -- James Monroe

It's funny , cause when they speak of , 'a spending cut' , nobody really looks at the real spending this government does . None of us know what's really being talked about behind those closed doors . I laugh at politics nowadays . I honestly believe that everythings a written a script .

This.