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.

Republican Presidential Candidates

Pres. Obama has already lost the next presidential election as far as thinking people right and left are judging. It does not mean that Republicans will win. The GOP has to run with an electable candidate.

The field of Republican presidential candidates is becoming more readable, I think. Here is my summary.

Herman Cain is very likable and he speaks clearly about his genuinely conservative program. Besides, he looks like a president and women will love his manly manners. That’s not enough to get him elected or to make him electable. Americans will not vote to make president anyone who was not previously elected to something. No amount of good business experience will make up for this. (And Cain, has plenty of that.)

Newt Gingrich is a completely clear conservative. No one explains better than he does the main practical points of a conservative programs for 2012. Unfortunately, no one likes him, I think. There are good reasons to, including his unprincipled flirtations with government support for ethanol.

Gov. Perry lost it all in the last presidential debate. There is no way he can make up for it. He was facing the test of his life with Gov. Romney and he came to the test without having studied. He was not prepared. It’s not a default of knowledge as some pretend, it’s a character fault.

Romney is equal to himself. He is reasonably likable in a sort of metrosexual way. He carries a lot of baggage, including his Mass. health program he has never either really defended nor apologized for. That’s a lot of baggage, especially in 2012 because Obamacare, cousin to the Mass. plan, will be a number one reason to reject Pres. Obama. No one knows for sure whether Gov. Romney is a conservative by today’s standard.

Note: If I turn out to be wrong, it’s going to be about Gov. Romney. He may just be the half-way candidate where the Republican Party voters meet. I sure hope not.

Congresswoman Bachman is another Great Woman’s Hope in the ring. She is clearly a conservative and she is likable in a weird sort of way. (Rearing all those foster children surely was not pretend work.) Politically, though, she is not serious. She said something big-time wrong on the occasion of the second debate, about vaccinations. She will never recover. Here is a the rule of thumb: You may stumble when someone else hands you a question, especially when it’s an enemy handing you a trap question. (I am reminded of Gov. Palin being asked perversely what she thought of the “Bush Doctrine.” I would have flunked too.) You may not, however, tell falsehoods on a topic you, yourself chose. It matters little whether you are lying or merely ignorant. I am not even sure which one I prefer.

Ron Paul sounds like he whines. It may not be his fault. I could be like Pres. Bush’s alleged smirk, just a physical thing with no intention behind it. Paul will always get some support because there are significant numbers of loyal Libertarians who wish to work within the Republican Party. He will never get much more support because they, the Libertarians, don’t dupe anyone. Their isolationism in foreign policy is perceived as a lack of patriotism. (Full disclosure: I am a libertarian – small “l” – who is a registered Republican. I am struggling with the inherent contradiction between libertarianism and the necessary American armed stance. See my recent essays on the topic: “Libertarian Military Isolationism: Forward All with Eyes Tightly Shut,” “The Libertarian Project and American Military Power. “ )

Congressman Paul declared in the second debate that the armed forces spend 20 billion dollars (US D 20,000,000,000) annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan. See the rule of thumb above. Like many ideological purists, he will come to believe just about anything that seems to support his ideology.

Then, there is what’s his name who stated categorically in a debate that, “ 97 % of climate scientists” believe in man-made global warming. You can’t say that. It’s  dogmatically stupid. If it were true, we would not know it and therefore, no one can affirm it. The man sounds a little stupid, perhaps because he answers before he thinks. Bad trait for a president. Forget him.

And then, there is the other what’s his name whose sole contribution thus far is a good wisecrack about dogs and shovel-ready jobs.

Gov. Christie of New Jersey keeps insisting he is not running. He is not the mincing type. I think he is telling the truth.

It all does not ad up to much, so far. Time to get excited.

The War Obligation: Afghanistan

As the nation’s attention is passionately riveted to the death rattles of Pelobama Care, some of America’s main business goes unattended.

Several months after being informed of General McChrystal requirements, two months after the general went public to force a response (thereby risking his career), the President has not said if he had made up his mind about what to do in Afghanistan. The argument that he was awaiting the results of the Afghan elections does not hold water anymore. No, Afghanistan is not Switzerland. Yes, it’s a pity there was so much cheating. But, there is no doubt that the winner was really the winner. The runner up Abdallah Abdallah never said otherwise, I think. In the UK, or in Germany, or in Italy, the winner would have gone on to form a government, even without 50% plus one votes.

In the current issue of the Weekly Standard (Nov. 9 2009), Donnelly and Sullivan opine that the President is going to announce an option McChrystal “lite,” 20,000 additional troops instead of the 40,000 requested. That falls short of everyone’s wish. There is mounting pressure from a segment of what is usually defined as the conservative side to leave Afghanistan altogether. Not all of the pressure proceeds from childish petulant desire to do to Obama what the Left did to Bush. Opposition emanating from my Libertarians friends, led by the Independent Institute, is principled, coherent, based on moral convictions, and thoroughly blind, in my opinion. Fortunately, most libertarians (like me) are not Libertarians. Here is a summary of what’s at stake.

The people threatening to take over the Afghanistan are the same people who sheltered the 9/11 assassins. I am not making this up. They are not hiding it. They are the same Taliban movement that was reduced to next to nothing by the flash-quick combined NATO, Northern Alliance victory in 2001. That was the price they paid for refusing to turn over for trial the Al Quaida Arabs responsible for 9/11. By the way, the invasion of Taliban Afghanistan was authorized by the UN and still is. (I don’t care much myself about this fact. I mention this for those of you who are concerned about the fiction of international law.)

There are four additive reasons for Americans to want the Taliban defeated. They are separate and perhaps of unequal importance but they point toward the same US policy. First, there is no reason to believe the Taliban leadership has learned any lesson from its removal from power. It sheltered the criminals who killed 3,000 American civilians even after they had no excuse to not know what happened. They hate kuffar, infidels, and they care nothing about international principles of justice or of peace. There is no reason why they would stop any future attempt to plan one, two, three, four, five, six, or more 9/11, on us, or on our partners. The potential victims are not all in the West. Note that predominantly Muslim countries struggling to become or to remain democratic such as Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, and Turkey make especially attractive targets.

I am not just imagining things. 9/11 was superbly planned, superbly executed and must have cost little more then $500,00. There are more 9//11 where it came from, given a place where the plotting can be relatively well sheltered from intrusion. Afghanistan remains a prime location for such activities because of its geographic inaccessibility and because of its very backwardness.

Let the Taliban take over again and hunch your shoulders! I am not referring only to unacceptable loss of life but to the economic devastation that would follow multiple attacks of the same type as 9/11.

The second reason Americans should want to defeat the Taliban is that newly democratic Pakistan has finally shaken itself out of its impotent torpor. Finally, it’s going with some vigor after its own home-grown violent jihadists, including some who call themselves “Taliban.” Nevertheless, there is little reason to doubt that the average Pakistani sees the military action as more of America’s fight than his own. It does not matter how deluded a view that is. It would not be the first time that the most likely victims of a crime are the most blind to it. After all, most German Jews seem to have made no attempt to flee Nazi Germany, even after seeing SA lowlife marched past them singing something like” “I smile when I see Jewish blood.”

It cannot be said enough that Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons. Even barring a full violent jihadist take-over, there is grave danger in any sort of political accommodation with jihadists, even of their physical proximity to the weapons. After all, how difficult would it be for a powerful Islamist politician to get two of his grand-nephews on the female side hired as night janitors in a nuclear arsenal? Hint: Pakistan is part of the Indian sub- continent where family pull matters. (Why the female line? Think it through.)

If the US is seen as faltering in Afghanistan, a large segment of Pakistani political opinion will ask itself why Pakistan should do what the vastly richer and more populous US is unwilling to commit to. A coalition government with Taliban or some other Islamist elements will be next. The dream of every two-bit violent jihadist, including American ones, to get his hands on dirty bomb material will come very close to being realized. A single dirty bomb exploding in a major American city would have the capacity to set back the world economy by many years through a chain reaction. The Islamist terrorists know this. They are insane, not stupid.

The third reason to beat the Taliban is they they are a morally obscene group. When they were in power, they executed “adulterous” women during soccer game intermissions. Guess what “adulterous” means under sharia ? They denied male-administered medical care to women in a country with no female doctors and they kept little girls from school. In the middle-run, the product would have been this demented thing: self-genocide through the dying off of many women. Today, in parts of the country they rule, they throw acid in little girls’ faces to discourage them from going to school. Perhaps worse of all, the Taliban outlawed music. (That’s a good enough reason to kill them, in my book.) I am well aware of the serious arguments against the US acting as the world’s sheriff. (I don’t buy them but that’s another story.) Yet, once in a while, a country’s self-interest and common decency happen to coincide. This is one such opportunity. We should not waste it.

The fourth reason is that the many potential and actual enemies of Americans are watching our every move. Every time President Obama demonstrates weakness, they take a step forward. The enemies include several terrorist groups, of course, Iran, North Korea, and Russia and China if they get a chance. Russia is just a hoodlum country that will grab what it can. The Chinese leadership probably does not want our destruction but it’s ill-informed and prone to miscalculation. If we falter on Afghanistan, they will reach out for a piece of us. Most of our vacillating NATO allies are the way they have been for a long time, as they were under the Soviet threat. They have no stomach for a fight unless we push and pull and, above all, set an example of bravery.

(Note: I know I have not dealt with our casualties or with civilian casualties resulting from our actions. Both matter, obviously.)

In the meantime, my Libertarians friends develop principled arguments against continued US and NATO military action to repel the Taliban that are all about propriety, and also about property. I have no doubt that war increases the importance of government, its dominion over civil society. As a libertarian (with a small “l), I hate it, of course. But a broad terrorist attack would increase the influence of government even faster, more deeply, and more irreversibly. I am not about to join the Libertarian Party because of its blindness regarding defense. The Libertarian arguments, I would buy if I were reasonably sure my house is not about to be set on fire. Moral principles are here to help people live good lives, in every sense of the word. They do not exist to excuse passivity. Passivity in the face of evil is the greatest evil of all.

PS An Army psychiatrist, a major, murdered 12 people at Fort Hood, Texas, today. It seems he was having career trouble. All the same, I wish he did not have an Arab, Muslim name. It makes keeping things in perspective difficult.

CORRECTION: I WROTE IN A PREVIOUS COLUMN ( “THE A.A. PRESIDENT,” POSTED 10/07/09 ) THAT I DOUBTED PRESIDENT OBAMA HAD EVER PASSED THE BAR EXAM ANYWHERE ANY TIME. A FRIEND OF MINE, A GOOD LAWYER I HAVE KNOWN FOR A LONG TIME AND WHOSE UTTERANCES I TRUST SAID OTHERWISE. MY ATTORNEY FRIEND TOLD ME THAT THE FACT THAT BARACK OBAMA HAD BEEN ADMITTED TO PRACTICE BEFORE THE ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT PROVED THAT HE HAD PASSED THE BAR. THAT HE WAS SO ADMITTED CAN BE FOUND ON THE SITE OF THE ILLINOIS BAR ASSOCIATION. I ACCEPT MY FRIEND’S JUDGMENT IN THIS RESPECT. I AM STILL PUZZLED ABOUT WHY THE REAL ACHIEVEMENT OF PASSING THE BAR EXAM – WHICH CAN PRESUMABLY NOT BE EASED BY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CONSIDERATIONS – IS NOT MENTIONED ON THE PRESIDENT’S WIKIPEDIA ENTRY. MR OBAMA ‘S LIST OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS IS SHORT AND THIN; THE BAR EXAM SHOULD BE THERE TO THICKEN IT. PERHAPS ONE OF THE PRESIDENT’S SUPPORTERS WILL DO THE JOB. I AM WATCHING.