Ron Paul’s Credibility: A Wrap-Up

In December 2011 or a little earlier, on the occasion of the Republican presidential primary debates, I began monitoring seriously Congressman Ron Paul’s statements. I did it because I am small-government Republican, someone who could be a libertarian, (but not easily.) For those who follow us from a foreign country: Mr Paul is a long-time Representative from Texas. He is running to be the Republican presidential candidate.He is favored by libertarian elements within the Republican Party and by many members of the Libertarian Party. The Libertarian Party does not seem to have a candidate of its own in this round of presidential election.

BY THE WAY, IF A DEMAND WERE EXPRESSED FOR EXPLANATIONS OF AMERICAN POLITICS, OR OF AMERICAN LIFE IN GENERAL BY NON-AMERICAN READERS LIVING ELSEWHERE THAN THE US, I WOULD BE GLAD TO RESPOND TO IT ONCE IN A WHILE. JUST SPEAK UP.

Following Paul’severy word, I soon discovered that there was almost (see below) no debate when Mr Paul didn’t make some strangely false declaration. I am not referring here to the usual politicians’ exaggerations or to spontaneous ridiculous answers to unexpected gotcha questions. I mean false information volunteered by Mr Paul that happened to support his quite consistent line of reasoning, his doctrine, in other words. I have reported periodically on some of Mr Paul’s misstatements. Paul followers have responded. My comments and the responses, all unedited, of course, are available on this blog, arranged by date. If you want to look for yourself you might also conduct a search of my postings using the key words “Ron Paul.” The comments are appended to each relevant essay. Below I review the Paul statements to which I took exceptions and I summarize what I think are the replies or explanations by Paul followers. Some responders/commentators will complain that I betray their thought. It’s all there for anyone to judge.

Here is a little political introduction: I generally agree with the congressman’s ideas regarding domestic policies. However, I think Dr Paul would be a foreign policy disaster on the scale of an President Obama or worse, if he ever became president. His isolationist ideas on foreign policy, I think, are based on false perceptions and tightly chained to adherence to a libertarian doctrine hardly troubled by simple facts. Incidentally, I know well that Dr Paul and mainstream libertarians object to being described as “isolationists.” I don’t mind that they mind. Let me admit, also incidentally, that I do not dispute the general libertarian analysis on the disastrous consequences that war has for the autonomy of civil society, for individual freedom from state oppression. However, this recognition does not require that I close my eyes and shut my ears to the nature of the world I which I live. Neither does this consciousness command suicide.

In brief, as I have said repeatedly, I believe Mr Paul listens to a different drummer. Or rather, he hears a whole bunch of drummers in his mind that no one else can hear. The mainstream press ignores his many failed grapplings with reality because it thinks (correctly) that Mr Paul will not be president, no matter what. Mr Paul’s followers don’t mind his missteps either. Some are too busy or too ill-informed to notice. Many, I suspect, don’t want to notice because the Paul group is largely (not completely) a cult. Some of his embarrassed rational followers cite his age (my age, as it happens) as an excuse for his missteps. That is, they argue implicitly that a man too old to avoid talking nonsense at debates is young enough to have his hand on the button. Congressman’s Paul’s followers are simply not inclined to look too closely into his pronouncements; I mean, the way I look into every single presidential candidates’ statements, for example, and no mercy given. After all, if I have my way, one of them will have his index finger on the same red button. Better I give each of them the middle finger first.

Dec 31st 2011

Below is a paraphrase, not an exact quote from Mr Paul. The number though is exact.

The Iraq war and the Afghanistan war are not only very wasteful, they are stupidly wasteful. So, for example, the US armed forces spend 20 billion dollars each year in those war theaters on air-conditioning alone.

The number if absurd on its face. One frequent critic of mine affirms that he proved right the figure or the statement in which it was embedded. I have no idea what he means. Someone else referenced a general that may well have been Paul’s source, if he had a source. Read the general and decide what he, the general, is up to. Ask yourself if you have ever heard of anyone doing cost accounting the way the general does.

January 8, 2012

Paul said that (American) minorities suffered more in war than whites. That’s not true. In current wars, since Vietnam, they die less, and they get wounded less often. Whatever else could “suffering” mean, lower pay raises?

In connection with Pres. Obama’s then-recent speech on cutting the US military budget, Paul also said clearly that those are cuts in increases to military expenditures, not absolute cuts. As one who has been reading the Wall Street Journal for the past thirty years and also for the past thirty days, I tell you that this is not true. I think it sounded good at the time so, the Congressman just said it, irresponsibly.

In rare form that day, Paul also said in New Hampshire that if the Straight of Hormuz were closed (by the Iranians or, presumably, by anyone), Eastern Europe would be “de-stabilized.” Makes no sense at all. Why Eastern Europe? He gives the impression that he knows something we don’t. Not in this case, for sure.

January 17^th 2012

In the Republican presidential debate that took place January 17^th or 16th in South Carolina, Ron Paul said, “We are still in Iraq.” Don’t bother to check, he said it, with exactly those words. Only one problem: “We” are not there unless you decide that contractors are “us.” Most people would think he meant “our military is still in Iraq.” It, the military, was already not in Iraq at the time the statement was made. This is at least a grossly misleading statement. misleading in a direction that happens to promote his isolationism.

January 2th^d 2012

Ron Paul did it again at the Tampa debate on Monday night 1/23/12 or 1/22/12. I mean he spread some information that only he, Congressman Paul, is privy to. Mr Paul declared clearly, under his own power, with no prompting whatsoever, that this country, the United States of America, is presently conducting a blockade against Iran. He used the word four times at least, both as a noun and as a verb. And, no, he was not speaking prospectively ( “If we conduct a blockade, in the future ….”) but declaratively and in the present tense. There was no blockade, there is no blockade, except in Mr Paul’s mind.

On February 07 2012, I challenged the Ron Paul website by email to give the source of declaration of Dr Paul’s about the Mossad, the Israeli CIA. Dr Paul had stated that the head of the Mossad had declared that an Iranian nuclear bomb would pose no “existential threat” to Israel. I received no answer from his campaign. Instead, a reader guided me to an interview by the same head of Mossad.

The head of the Mossad did say what Congressman Paul had reported he said. I was wrong to doubt it. I WAS WRONG. It was all my fault. I did not think long enough about the word: existential threat. See my mea culpa and explanation following on Feb 14th.

February 16th, 2012

A quaint statement issued by the candidate himself that he, Ron Paul, received more money contributions from the military than other Rep. candidates lead to a striking demonstration of the absurdity of the figures on which the claim is based. It highlighted the shocking lack of criticality of his shock troops. No one is watching; the candidate is allowed to run wild, quite wild if in his quiet way.

February 22^nd 2012

Dr Paul pointed out that Iran was “surrounded” by “forty-five bases.” I assume he meant American military bases. This “surrounding,” I understood the Congressman to argue, would justify Iran’s nervousness and therefore its apparent bellicosity. I protested that the encirclement statement was pure invention.

In response, Paul supporters produced, first and second, a map showing patently false information. Of course, this fact in itself, re-enforces my impression that Paul supporters are not serious about facts. It’s not difficult to eye-check a map, after all. Following this false start, there was much back and forth. And then, I agreed that the Paul statement was not false and not an invention if you only stretched the meaning of the word “base,” of the word “military, “and, especially, of the word “surrounded.” (There was no need to stretch the meaning of the word “American,” fortunately.)

Looking back on the exchange, I am inclined to take back my admission. There is a kind of Bermuda triangle logical problem involved: How far does the alleged triangle extend? How far can you go and still declare that a base contributes to “surrounding” Iran? One Paul supporter included Djibouti. Why not the much more significant military bases in Germany, I ask? And how about military installations in New Jersey?

I will agree though that the Paul “surrounded” statement is probably more true than I thought it was at first. This discovery makes me more optimistic about the future, from a military standpoint, than I used to be.

On Feb 29^th 2012 in the Michigan primary. Paul said two memorable things :

1 The wars we have had for ten years, he said (I assume he means Iraq and Afghanistan), have added four trillion dollars to the US national debt ($4,000,000,000,000). The statement surprised me only moderately. (It amounts to about $13,000 per American. )My problem is that again, I have no idea where the information comes from. I even doubt the contribution of the wars to the national debt can be calculated. Yet, I would be happy if this figure were merely a pretty good approximation. I would say it’s fine even if the order of magnitude were right. How demanding is this? At any rate, I sure hope this large amount included the 20 billion dollars per year just air-conditioning American forces in the two relevant countries Paul said it cost. (See above!)

2 The congressman announced that there was a “transfer of wealth from the middle class” to the rich. That’s not a surprising statement since it’s also the basis of the Obama class war. What is surprising is the way this transfer takes place, according to the congressman. It is through the erosion of the currency, the US dollar’s value, says Dr Paul. I don’t know how this could be. I have no quarrel with the idea that the US dollar has lost much value in say, 20 years, relative to something, to gold in particular. What I don’t know is how what is lost by the “middle-class” through loss of value of the currency (whatever that is) comes to accrue to the benefit of “the rich.” Here again, I am open-minded. Please, help.

There was no response to my second question, the question regarding the transfer of wealth. Another Paul dream, I guess, a nightmare, in this case.

Libertarian economist Fred Folvary of NotesOnLiberty suggested an interesting answer to my question regarding the origin of the Paul figure about the cost of the wars. He referred me to Paul Stiglitz, Nobel winner and idol to the American Left. I have not read the Stiglitz book of reference and Prof. Stiglitz’s status with leftists does not make his calculations wrong. (I did read another one of his books which convinced me  never to read another one because it contained so much intellectual dishonesty. But that’s a subjective personal response, of course.) Why am not surprised that Mr Paul gets some of his information from left-wing sources? (Does not make the info false, again.)

I am fair: On January 27^th 2012, I stated:

I am glad to report that during the second Florida Republican presidential debate, I did not hear Ron Paul make a single patently false, invented statement.

Maybe, by that time, I had got to him after all!

Now, of course, there remains the really important issue of whether Congressman Paul ever accused the Bush administration or parts thereof of being complicit in 9/11. I keep dismissing this allegation in my mind and forgetting it but it keeps coming up and don’t mean coming up through liberals or “progressives.” A couple of weeks ago, a local talk-show host in my area of Santa Cruz, California ,brought it up again. I have listened at least to 500 hours of this man’s show and I have never found him in significant error about anything important. He is a small-government conservative I know to be scrupulous with facts.

The apparent origin of this suspicion is that one of Congressman’s Paul’s former staffers accused him squarely of having been a “truther.” Dr Paul denied the whole things just as squarely:

“That’s complete nonsense … I never bought into that stuff and I never talked about it,” Paul said of the accusation made by former staffer Eric Dondero, who wrote in a blog post last week that Paul “engaged in conspiracy theories” surrounding the 9/11 attacks.

From Post Politics retrieved 03/29/12, here is part of the post:

“Ron Paul was opposed to the War in Afghanistan, and to any military reaction to the attacks of 9/11.

He did not want to vote for the resolution. He immediately stated to us staffers, me in particular, that Bush/Cheney were going to use the attacks as a precursor for “invading” Iraq. He engaged in conspiracy theories including perhaps the attacks were coordinated with the CIA, and that the Bush administration might have known about the attacks ahead of time. He expressed no sympathies whatsoever for those who died on 9/11, and pretty much forbade us staffers from engaging in any sort of memorial expressions, or openly asserting pro-military statements in support of the Bush administration.”

Paul also denied the same assertion unambiguously in Wikipedia.

Real Clear Politics of December 27^th 2011 describes how incomplete and unsatisfactory the Paul denials are on this matter.

Me, I understand the idea of a “disgruntled employee” trying to do harm and it’s not absurd, not by a long shot. But an evil little voice keeps whispering in a corner of my suspicious mind: Why did the disgruntled employee attack Paul on this issue rather than on the many others probably available to him as a former aide?

Why is my mind “suspicious” about this almost certainly good man? Several reasons. Here is one, a concrete and tangible reason. It’s something undebatably authored by Congressman Paul, not a rumor, not an indirect report, not spur-of- the- moment fallible ejaculation.

Shortly after 9/11, Congressman Paul introduced a piece of legislation he called: the “Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001.” Look it up; read a few lines of it. Reflect on the concept of a “letter of marque” applied to 21^st century conditions. You are not going to believe what you read. Then, wonder why Paul’s followers did not call him on it. As I said, no one is watching the Paul farm. And why would that be?

And, if you believe the “Act” is a serious defense proposal, please write me a note. I am willing to learn but it’s not going to be easy.

Ron Paul’s 20 Billion On Military A.C. – N. S.!

In an attempt to achieve holy humility, I am dealing with objections against the several times I accused Ron Paul of being insouciant about facts. The first time I questioned on his blog Ron Paul’s veracity with respect to the alleged facts he throws out freely, I expressed disbelief at his assertion that the US spent 20 billion (B) a year on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan (“ Ron Paul Won’t Get My Vote” posted December 3st 2011.) I declared, of course, that I did not believe that number for a minute. I also speculated in that posting on the possible sources of such silliness.

In reaction, frequent critic of this blog and fervent Paulista Crackpot sent me a flurry of links to press items supposedly supporting Paul’s statement. The 20 billion figure was so absurd on its face that I did not, at the time, make enough of an effort to activate the links. He sent me again recently, in a more user-friendly form, linkages to three press items purporting to prove to me that this country really spent 20 billion dollars annually on air conditioning warring in Afghanistan and in Iraq (Obviously, for Iraq, the figure has to be applied retrospectively. Not a problem.)

The first item, from the British Telegraph, usually a good source, does not endorse the claim but clearly attributes it. It turns out that the claim was made by a retired general named Steve Anderson. I think no one at all seconded him. It turns out from the Telegraph piece and, more clearly, from the third source, NPR (of all things) that the retired general had an ax to grind. He had been struggling in vain to make the higher brass accept the idea of insulating military tents with foam. It appears from the NPR report that the general had “green”concerns among other concerns of a more directly military nature. (This is not statement on whether the general was right about the foam.)

The Telegraph story gives figures that put the total annual cost of the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq in past years at 171 billion,or possibly at 180 billion. ( I am correcting a little upward for a given Iraq estimate based on 2011, a low year). Thus according to the same report in the Telegraph, air conditioning would account for something like 1/9^th of American military expenditures for the two theaters of war together. Assuming a run-of-the mill underestimate of the total costs of war, air-conditioning would still eat up around 1/10^th (ten per cent) of the whole.

That’s ridiculous, of course, but it may make sense sense if you keep in mind that the general was trying to prove a point. His accounting involves imputing to air conditioning some unknown fraction of the very high expenses naturally incurred when moving large amounts of freight over physically difficult, undeveloped terrain and under the constant threat of military attack.

Again, it’s no clear what formula you would use to attribute a fraction of the total transport expenditure to air conditioning. I note with interest though that if there were zero air conditioning in both countries, the transportation costs of everything else (ammunition, aviation fuel, trucks, parts, food) would probably amount to pretty much the same total. This is all a little fishy.

Yet, the idea of distributing the cost of an infrastructure across all users makes sense; it’s even quite intelligent, in fact. Perhaps, it’s a practice that should be adopted whenever market forces are lacking to tell us the true price of things. But at this point, it’s a highly unusual way of presenting information. It leads to false comparisons. (See above.) And, think of an apple grown in Washington state and transported to New York City to be sold there. If there were no market to tell me the true price of this apple, I am pretty sure that, with General Anderson’s accounting method, I could probably present the New York cost of that single apple as a cool $10 or more.

Note again that no one with credentials equal to those of General Anderson seems to have confirmed his A.C estimate. The Pentagon gave some alternative figures that NPR (of all sources) faithfully reproduces. There is every reason to believe that the Pentagon, a government agency, has to rely on conventional accounting methods. The Pentagon made these two relevant statements:

1     It spends annually for energy $15 billion for all its military operations around the world. “Energy” involves much more than air conditioning, obviously. The whole wold is a lot more than Iraq and Afghanistan.

2   It gives recent figures for fuel costs for Afghanistan alone equivalent to about $2.4 billion annually. It’s difficult to imagine that fuel for air conditioning specifically constitutes more than a fraction of all the fuel used in that theater of war including for trucks, cars, and especially, for airplanes. It seems reasonable to think that the air conditioning expense for Afghanistan is a small fraction of 1/10^th of the amount advanced by General Anderson.

Now, if you think the Pentagon is lying here although it is one of most watched organizations in the world, you must either admit that there is no way to obtain this kind of information or, alternatively, you have better sources. If you do, please share them, don’t hog them, please!

I think that what happened with the bombastic allegation by Congressman Ron Paul is that the information came from some people on his overenthusiastic staff. As is often the case with enthusiasts, they didn’t take the time to study the very documents they use to shore up their pre-conceived notions. I persist in thinking that Mr Paul himself does not crack the whip on helpers with respects to such peccadilloes as saying “10” for “much less than 1.” Congressman Paul and his staff are, at minimum, unusually credulous. I am not sure I would not prefer that they lied like many other politicians and their organizations.

If you insist in spite of everything on believing the absurd 20 billion figure, you might at least console yourself with the thought that the estimated cost of the recent US military intervention in Libya was only 1/20^th as much as the cost of air conditioning the war in Afghanistan and Iraq in a hot year, with full personnel. The liberation of Libya was a steal, I would say!

(This last info is from The Week, the third source Crackpot provided in a futile attempt to overcome implausibility.)

I am not sure whether you will be able to activate the links below that Crackpot sent me. If you can’t, perhaps Crackpot will oblige again.

The UK’s Telegraph on $20 billion a year for air conditioning (which we’ve already gone over a number of times):http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8601975/US-spends-12.5-billion-a-year-on-air-con-in-Iraq-and-Afghanistan.html

The Week on $20 billion a year:http://theweek.com/article/index/216786/the-militarys-20-billion-air-conditioning-bill-by-the-numbers

And, last but not least, NPR drops the $20 billion bomb:http://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning