TRANSCRIPT: Moyers hosts RON PAUL (R, Tx) on PBS's "NOW"

"NOW" (PBS) ^ | 10/04/02 | Ron Paul | Bill Moyers

[Askel5]

Paul is not a Conservative

I fail to see what is not conservative in any of the positions he's taken here.

Our anxiousness to "nation-build" in Iraq and "liberate" the Iraqis smacks of the Clintonqesque "MORAL WAR" we waged in Serbia.

This is not too surprising, given the fact that great thinkers and strategists such as Brzezinski were absolute in their assertion that "in a microcosm [Kosovo] is a real test case of what the world is about to be"

Perhaps it is unfortunate that we allowed the Mad Bomber of Sudan to set the standard for a policy of "preemptive" strikes based on whatever feeling struck the Executive branch (which branch, by the way, is now possessed of the ability to summarily execute anyone -- at home or abroad -- it "feels" is a terrorist).

Perhaps we should have paid closer attention to the likes of Keyes who hearkened to the Founders and their own example of a just, properly declared and morally founded statement of one's intent to incur bloodshed:

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In the great documents that our Founders used to justify their willingness even to go to war in order to assert their independence. I think we ought to take that very seriously because – at least in those days, I don't know about now, I think we're kind of … we've gotten really careless about wars these days, as some events, I think, even in recent times have proven.

And we go to war maybe without understanding what we ought to understand. Every time you go to war, you know -- a people like ourselves -- even if that war is conducted by others, even when it's conducted by a means where you're flying high up in the air and dropping bombs on people you don't even see and folks die as a result …

I hope we still understand that each and every one of us who has an opportunity to participate as part of the sovereign body of the people in this country: we are responsible for every life that is taken by America in war.

And we had better be awfully sure that what we're doing has a solid moral ground or we will stand before God bearing the stain and weight of every life taken in injustice that we did not oppose.

And I think that it's why our founders, being that they were – many of them, most of them, almost all of them, in fact – people of conscience and faith, felt that before you risked war, you better justify what you're doing in moral terms. You've got to state the moral premises and the moral principles that inform your heart.

And that's what they did in our Declaration of Independence. It's a statement of the moral justification of that assertion of independence at the risk of war. And, in doing what they did, they set forth the basic moral principles that then informed the later deliberations that led to our Constitution and are the practical foundation of our liberty.

And so those words in the Declaration of Independence – "All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" -- are the basic premise of everything that, as a people, we claim to hold dear. Self-government and rights and due process and liberty and all these other unique hallmarks of the American way of life, they rest on that premise and that premise alone.

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Alan Keyes

[Askel5]

Paul would call for an end to all U.S. funding of Israel, I believe, along with an end to U.S. funding of Egypt and the PLO via the U.N. Israel might collapse without U.S. welfare, and then pose no counter to Saddam.

I'm certainly a big fan of Paul's perpetual excoriation of our entangling alliances with the UN.

Can you source his stand on the funding of Israel?

[logician2u]

. . he avoids completely the dangers of WMD and terrorism.

Just as you avoid the danger of initiating a war against another sovereign nation. No matter how much we have been trained to hate Saddam Hussein, does he even compare to Hitler? To Mao? To Samoza, fer crysakes?

This war is all about geography, not human rights or democracy or terrorism or any other excuse that might be thrown up. Just as the last (unfinished) war was not all about jobs, jobs, jobs.

It's about oil.

[Askel5]

Paul liked when Israel used a "pre-emptive" strike.

He may even have approved of Reagan's strike against Moamar Ghadafi, for all I know.

The fact remains that Israel had the "DEFENSIVE" posture necessary to wage a Just War and obligated itself to exactly that offense necessary to remove the threat and "win" the objective it set out to meet.

We are not meeting that model.

[Fred Mertz]

This is good, an excellent post.

I only caught bits and pieces of Ron Paul this evening, but his words and principles are spot on.

[Askel5]

I know you don't want to embarrass yourself by holding up our pummeling of a third-world nation as exemplary use of ordnance.

They are giving aid and comfort to our enemies.

Good point. In the current issue of Arab-Asian Affairs (edited by Christopher Story, publisher of "Perestroika Deception", "New Lies For Old", "Red Cocaine" and "The European Collective"), he addresses just this prong of the new 33-page policy statement on "preemptive strikes" penned by Ms. Rice:

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[the policy states] that "we will not hesitate to act along, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively."

Terrorism would be fought by "convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities."

However, the document had nothing at all to say about the consistency of this freewheeling policy. What about Cuba, on the territory of which the KGB first began training international terrorists outside Europe in 1966? What about Ireland, which has callously harboured the IRA and its controlled splinter groups of terror-revolutionaries for three decades, knowingly allowing the Soviet GRU controllers of the IRA to use Shannon airport as their uninspected drop shipment center for weaponry and personnel?

And what about exerting pressure on Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, himself, given his Government's "politically correct" and laid-back attitude towards the intolerable presence of Islamic centers where terrorism is glorified and revolutionaries are trained? The new "line" is riddled with inconsistencies and hypocrisy (of which Mr. Blair does not have a complete monopoly in this context).

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I think those are excellent "for starters" questions. The true measure of any man's integrity is his ability to CONSISTENTLY defend and act in comport with his convictions.

Are we to apply this new policy consistently? Will respect the rights of other nations to adopt our "moral" stand?

[FreeReign]

. . he avoids completely the dangers of WMD and terrorism.

Just as you avoid the danger of initiating a war against another sovereign nation.

Going to war is dangerous -- I never said otherwise.

Anyway we agree that Paul does indeed avoid completely the dangers of WMD and terrorism in his answer to Moyers question.

Let's go to the instant replay.

MOYERS: Have you seen or heard anything from the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department or the White House to suggest that Saddam Hussein is planning an attack on the United States?

PAUL: No, I see nothing imminent. He doesn't have an air force. He doesn't have a navy. He can't even shoot down … he didn't shoot one of our airplanes down in twelve years … and his army is 1/3 of what it was twelve years ago. So, you know, this fictions that he's Hitler and that he's about to take over the Middle East … I think it's a stretch.

[MissAmericanPie]

I object, I don't believe you are thinking this thru. Saddam got his rear handed to him in 1991, he knows better than to invest in troops and equipment again, they got creamed. And we have spy satellites and he knows we can watch a military build up. So the fact that his army and military equipment is kaput has no bearing on anything. His entire thrust will be towards weapons of mass destruction now.

He will want a small mobile army that can deliver the goods, scuds, surface to air missiles, etc. It's what you would do if you were in his position and had not given up your ambitions. He learned from his mistakes, now he's taking another route. Or do you want to gamble that all those "palaces" hold is grandma's quilting b's?

[austinTparty]

Actually, his stand on foreign aid to Israel is based on the libertarian/classical liberal (i.e. pro-free market) view against ALL "foreign aid" (or as Lord Peter Bauer put it: "government-to-government transfer"). This in no way implies a lack of moral support for Israel, nor a denial of the right of any private organizations, individuals or groups to fund Israel. Government-to-government transfers are nowhere near as effective as direct funding. In the case of Israel, their economy (market liberal to some degree) is far more robust than any of their neighbors. Rest assured that Israel would not collapse without U.S. welfare. In so many ways, they would be better off without US aid and all the strings attached to it.

[Askel5]

How disappointing I thought Ron Paul had more sense than this.

More sense than what?

• Standing by his principles (all of which appear here to be articulately defended and securely grounded)?

• Considering the ramifications of this policy if adopted as the "moral standard" of all nations?

• Representing the will of his CONSTITUENTS and abiding not only by his promises to them but his own moral convictions on the face of which convictions his constituents have re-elected him time and time again?

It's more than we appear to get from most these days. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who suckered me with a bait and switch ... promising one thing and delivering quite another based on some "pragmatic" consideration or "compelling" crisis or need to "play politics".

[Askel5]

Paul thinks that the Iraqi air force, navy and army are the biggest Iraqi dangers to the U.S.

Perhaps I'll wait to respond to you again until you've read the piece more closely.

Paul is making the point that there is NO Iraqi navy or air force to speak of, they have not shot down a single plane in the 12 years since we lost the Persian Gulf War and the army is a 1/3 the size it was when we fought them last.

[MissAmericanPie]

See #28

[Askel5]

It's about oil.

I would not be so hasty in this assumption, actually.

Oil may be the draw for many "on both sides of the aisle" as Paul so rightly points out but I don't believe it's the ultimate objective of the Russians whose "former satellites" like Bulgaria are only greasing the wheels for our intervention in Iraq.

I believe -- as with Serbia -- we are being used to effect the collectivization of the Middle East's "arc of radical Islam" just as NATO's transformation and inclusion of even Russia subsequent to abandoning its charter or its defensive nature, ended up collectivizing the security system of Europe as a matched set to the Euro economic collective already in place.

[Askel5]

Thanks for the great post on Paul's stand re: Israel.

Makes sense to me.

You agree too, Miss Pie?

[FreeReign]

So the fact that his army and military equipment is kaput has no bearing on anything.

Yes Paul gave us a non sequitor when asked a very important question.

[Askel5]

I've got to go finish the dishes I was doing when I caught the show (this is what I get for being good ...) keep an eye on the thread for me, if you don't mind. I'll be back.

Regards.

[Askel5]

While it's in my clipboard ...

Politics are meant to open the door to what theology and philosophy decide upon as a code of right behaviour. "This is the good life," says the thinker; "it leads to happiness and to God." "Very well," says the politician, "we must adopt it and extend it for the benefit of all." The assumption here is that the thinker is a Christian moralist, and the politician is an honest man. It is a bold assumption.

That politics have gone off the Christian standard is all too evident. In fact, having slid away from the ethics of the Gospel, politics now excuse themselves from observing any sort of ethics at all. At one time morality was not a private duty as it is now: it was a public standard. Public and private affairs were integrated; there was a unity. Today there is no such reflex check-up: whatever people do in their own houses as regards social relations is their affair; politics, whether national or international, are run on a basis of expediency.

Religion, for example, may not enter into the questions of public policy.

"It isn't the slightest use applying evangelical principles in our dealings with those who are opposed to us," says the politician, "we wouldn't be understood."

And the awful part of it is that this is true.

Once one side refuses to play, all the others begin to cheat. What used to be at least a recognition of the spiritual realities has been replaced by exclusively material considerations. The only things which count for anything in international relations are power and threat and bribe. The idea of trust between nations is laughable.

Children growing up in the modern world may be excused if they imagine that patriotism's finest expression is the savage bravery of the hater.

For them diplomacy is nothing more than the ability to outwit an opposite number by underhand means. Eventually it must come to this, that a nation's well-being is assessed by the degree to which it has been able to eliminate its rivals, whether in trade or in the field. It is the ugly story of the master race, the Herrenvolk.

The State and the Soul

[MissAmericanPie]

I agree that this is Ron Pauls stance on Israel. I don't know enough about private donations covering Israel's needs.
But private donations sans government strings and government taxing everyone blind in one eye would be a good thing for Israel and us.

Unfortunately, this is not the world we live in at this moment. So until it changes, we have to go with what we got.

[FreeReign]

Perhaps I'll wait to respond to you again until you've read the piece more closely.

Paul is making the point that there is NO Iraqi navy or air force to speak of, they have not shot down a single plane in the 12 years since we lost the Persian Gulf War and the army is a 1/3 the size it was when we fought them last.

Oh yes he is making that point, but he making that point when Moyers asks about the dangers of Sadaam attacking the U.S.

Perhaps we need to replay the exchange in slooow motion for you to read the piece more closely.

MOYERS: Have you seen or heard anything from the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department or the White House to suggest that Saddam Hussein is planning an attack on the United States?

PAUL: No, I see nothing imminent. He doesn't have an air force. He doesn't have a navy. He can't even shoot down … he didn't shoot one of our airplanes down in twelve years … and his army is 1/3 of what it was twelve years ago. So, you know, this fictions that he's Hitler and that he's about to take over the Middle East … I think it's a stretch.

[logician2u]

It is very hard for any of us to imagine being in the position of Saddam Hussein, or any other head of state on either side.

But consider this.

What does Saddam Hussein, or for that matter the Saudis or the Kuwaitis or the other Emirates along the Persian Gulf covet that we have? Our freedom of worship? Our pool of skilled labor? Our weapons of mass destruction, possibly, but not much else.

Just out dollars, so they can continue to live the good life until the wells run dry.

Now, what do Americans covet in that region of the Middle East? Their crime-free cities (made that way by strict enforcement of Islamic Law, outside Iraq)? Their government-provided health-care? Their cuisine?

None of the above -- it's their oil. For all most of us care, the whole Arab population could go poof! and as long as the oil kept flowing everything is A-OK.

Is it in Saddam Hussein's best interest to damage the United States, a major source of his oil revenue as well as, once the embargo is lifted, food and medicine for his population? Of course not. He's a materialist through and through, not a religious extremist like members of Al Qaeda. He likes palaces, pretty girls, western booze and all that too much to go out in a blaze of radiation, which he knows would be the outcome if the scenario you and others imagine were to ever unfold.

There have been plenty of other bad guys since the end of WWII who have been dealt with, usually being deposed by their own people.

Hussein is just not the threat to our country he's made out to be. We have many other potential enemies with not only the will, but the means, that deserve more attention.