"During his speech, Scarborough took on neo-conservatives, Obama's foreign policy record since taking office, and why the United States is still at war.
'In 2010, there's not much difference between the Republicans' view on foreign policy and the Democrats' view of foreign policy," said Scarborough. "President Obama... this anti-war president, has doubled the number of troops to Afghanistan to nearly 100,000... and he's continued the transformation of the Afghanistan effort from a counterterrorism mission to a nation-building mission."
Says Scarborough:
"those who are still arguing in 2010 that we can somehow export democracy across the globe or rebuild other countries on the other side of the world in our image, these are the people that we have to call out today, tomorrow and everyday as the dangerous radicals that they are, history has proven them and their worldview to be dangerous and radical."
I agree with the first three comments. He's saying the right words, but it doesn't ring true. He prolly sees that this movement is candidateless for 2012. Sorry, but he's not the guy.
John Hostettler, leading candidate for US Senate in Indiana, voted against the Iraq invasion authorization. What does he think about the Afghani-scam mission?
It would be great to have an undeniably credible anti-war constitutionalist in the US Senate, in addition to the few left in the House.
Folks, Joe is being genuine here and he's been saying similar things for several years now. Read his books. And when did he ever dismiss Dr. Paul? Joe was one of the few in the MSM who had Ron on his show during the campaign. I know Joe, and he's a genuine fan of Dr. Paul (and yes, so is his son, Joey). And he's sincere about his disdain for our current Wilsonian foreign policy.
I would like to call attention to two articles currently featured at The American Conservative concerning antiwar Republicans.
There are many different political types who make up Campaign for Liberty, YAL and the Liberty movement at-large--traditional conservatives, libertarians, independents--and Justin Raimondo's take (Raimondo is a libertarian) on Russell Kirk's take (Kirk was a traditional conservative) on Sen. Robert A. Taft (an Old Right standard bearer adored by libertarians and conservatives alike) is a good example of this much-welcomed, ideological intermingling (yes, I know Kirk rejected 'ideology,' but let's not split hairs here). This is also good history lesson for conservatives or libertarians of all stripes. Writes Raimondo:
For Taft-and Kirk, who waxes particularly eloquent when describing Taft's disdain for crusading "democratism"-the foundational principle of a truly conservative foreign policy is a respect for the natural limits not only of American power but of human capabilities. If, as Taft averred, "socialism will not work" because "there is no man and no group of men intelligent enough to coordinate and control the infinitely numerous and complex problems involved in the production, consumption, and daily lives of one hundred and twenty million individualistic and educated people," then the task of coordinating and controlling a global empire would be a fool's errand. Yet it is precisely that errand on which the fools who now call themselves conservatives-or, more precisely, neoconservatives-would have us embark.
Kirk, in his later years, had a memorable run-in with that movement in a famous lecture delivered at the Heritage Foundation. As prominent neocons sat horrified in the audience, Kirk described the members of this "political sect" as "often clever, but seldom wise."
The other article is The American Spectator's James Antle's anaylsis of the US Senate race in Indiana pitting antiwar Republican Congressman John Hostettler against pro-war Democrat incumbent Evan Bayh. Considering that the GOP establishment seemed to prefer that Republican Congressman Mike Pence challenge Bayh (Pence is not), Antle writes:
There are reasons the National Republican Senatorial Committee preferred Pence to Hostettler. Bayh was re-elected with 62 percent of the vote in 2004; Hostettler lost his House seat, drawing just 39 percent, in 2006. Hostettler's independence from the party line makes him unpredictable -- he was one of just six Republicans in the House to vote against authorizing the war in Iraq -- and his refusal to take political action committee money frequently causes him to fare poorly at fundraising. Bayh is sitting on a $12.7 million war chest.
Some of the problems that have plagued Hostettler in the past may not be an issue this year. His Iraq war vote -- perhaps an unspoken reason some Republican hawks were so interested in finding a different challenger for Bayh -- could help his fundraising through Ron Paul-style "money bombs." Hostettler's campaign is already looking closely at Rand Paul's surprisingly successful effort in Kentucky.
Thanks for the link to Raimondo's article. I am going to check out Antle's piece for more on the chances for antiwar Republicans to be elected to office. Bastiat, where do you donate to Hostettler's campaign?
This isn't the best audio but more evidence of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham's complete dismissal of Ron Paul's adherence to rigid constitutional government. Notice in the first video that instead of addressing the woman's criticism head on, Graham simply asks her who she voted for in the presidential election. When she replied "Chuck Baldwin" Graham then attempts to marginalize her based on her support for the Constitution Party, slamming Ron Paul in the process.
The following took place 10/12/09 at a town hall meeting in Greenville, SC:
Hahahahahahahah! LOL! He's terrified of Ron Paul! " I won't let RP highjack the Rep. party!" What a joke he is. He KNOWS the people are turning to Ron Paul, (who is MY president!)for TRUTH and constitutional principals. Thankyou RP! Please RUN AGAIN in 2012! We NEED you more than ever...
Isn't it interesting that CNN would pick up on this story, while they themselves marginalized Ron Paul during his presidential run. I think CNN is trying to promote the diviseness in the GOP. I'll be watching to see where this goes, but the GOP will be dead without the grassroots.
Those CNN comments are absolutely moronic and delusional.
Lindsay Graham is an embodiment of everything that is wrong with the Republican party, yet he is widely respected by big government Democrats who hate freedom and capitalism and don't mind warmongers.
The following is why guys like William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, who were wrong about everything in the lead up to war in Iraq, are considered solid foreign policy analysts worthy of television time, and Juan Cole (the author of this list) is not:
Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the US.
Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war in modern history (unlike the US or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of "no first strike." This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.
Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.
Reality: Iran's military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.
Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to "wipe it off the map."
Reality: No Iranian leader in the executive has threatened an aggressive act of war on Israel, since this would contradict the doctrine of 'no first strike' to which the country has adhered. The Iranian president has explicitly said that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel.
Belief: But didn't President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to 'wipe Israel off the map?'
Reality: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that "this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all.
Belief: But aren't Iranians Holocaust deniers?
Actuality: Some are, some aren't. Former president Mohammad Khatami has castigated Ahmadinejad for questioning the full extent of the Holocaust, which he called "the crime of Nazism." Many educated Iranians in the regime are perfectly aware of the horrors of the Holocaust. In any case, despite what propagandists imply, neither Holocaust denial (as wicked as that is) nor calling Israel names is the same thing as pledging to attack it militarily.
Belief: Iran is like North Korea in having an active nuclear weapons program, and is the same sort of threat to the world.
Actuality: Iran has a nuclear enrichment site at Natanz near Isfahan where it says it is trying to produce fuel for future civilian nuclear reactors to generate electricity. All Iranian leaders deny that this site is for weapons production, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly inspected it and found no weapons program. Iran is not being completely transparent, generating some doubts, but all the evidence the IAEA and the CIA can gather points to there not being a weapons program. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate by 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed with fair confidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons research program. This assessment was based on debriefings of defecting nuclear scientists, as well as on the documents they brought out, in addition to US signals intelligence from Iran. While Germany, Israel and recently the UK intelligence is more suspicious of Iranian intentions, all of them were badly wrong about Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction and Germany in particular was taken in by Curveball, a drunk Iraqi braggart.
Belief: The West recently discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapons plant in a mountain near Qom.
Actuality: Iran announced Monday a week ago to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it had begun work on a second, civilian nuclear enrichment facility near Qom. There are no nuclear materials at the site and it has not gone hot, so technically Iran is not in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, though it did break its word to the IAEA that it would immediately inform the UN of any work on a new facility. Iran has pledged to allow the site to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, and if it honors the pledge, as it largely has at the Natanz plant, then Iran cannot produce nuclear weapons at the site, since that would be detected by the inspectors. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted on Sunday that Iran could not produce nuclear weapons at Natanz precisely because it is being inspected. Yet American hawks have repeatedly demanded a strike on Natanz.
Belief: The world should sanction Iran not only because of its nuclear enrichment research program but also because the current regime stole June's presidential election and brutally repressed the subsequent demonstrations.
Actuality: Iran's reform movement is dead set against increased sanctions on Iran, which likely would not affect the regime, and would harm ordinary Iranians.
Belief: Isn't the Iranian regime irrational and crazed, so that a doctrine of mutally assured destruction just would not work with them?
Actuality: Iranian politicians are rational actors. If they were madmen, why haven't they invaded any of their neighbors? Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded both Iran and Kuwait. Israel invaded its neighbors more than once. In contrast, Iran has not started any wars. Demonizing people by calling them unbalanced is an old propaganda trick. The US elite was once unalterably opposed to China having nuclear science because they believed the Chinese are intrinsically irrational. This kind of talk is a form of racism.
Belief: The international community would not have put sanctions on Iran, and would not be so worried, if it were not a gathering nuclear threat.
Actuality: The centrifuge technology that Iran is using to enrich uranium is open-ended. In the old days, you could tell which countries might want a nuclear bomb by whether they were building light water reactors (unsuitable for bomb-making) or heavy-water reactors (could be used to make a bomb). But with centrifuges, once you can enrich to 5% to fuel a civilian reactor, you could theoretically feed the material back through many times and enrich to 90% for a bomb. However, as long as centrifuge plants are being actively inspected, they cannot be used to make a bomb. The two danger signals would be if Iran threw out the inspectors or if it found a way to create a secret facility. The latter task would be extremely difficult, however, as demonstrated by the CIA's discovery of the Qom facility construction in 2006 from satellite photos. Nuclear installations, especially centrifuge ones, consume a great deal of water, construction materiel, and so forth, so that constructing one in secret is a tall order. In any case, you can't attack and destroy a country because you have an intuition that they might be doing something illegal. You need some kind of proof. Moreover, Israel, Pakistan and India are all much worse citizens of the globe than Iran, since they refused to sign the NPT and then went for broke to get a bomb; and nothing at all has been done to any of them by the UNSC."
Awesome article! Where is the emotion, the hysteria, the fear mongering? Just an organized, sequential, factually based article, what an original concept. Unfortunately short sound bites are influencing too many Americans. Please keep up the excellent and important work of educating the masses, me included.
- Iran is a signatory to NPT & it's constituion FORBIDS aquiring any type of Nuclear weapons.
- Over 200 Israeli nuclear warheads is pointed to Iran. Quarter of a million US troops are deployed surrounding Iran in Iraq,Afganistan,Kuwait & the Persian Gulf. Who is the real threat here ? Isn't it Israel & US ?
Let voice of reason prevail and zealots like William Kristol,Charles Krauthammer & others dictate US foreigh policy.
Let the TRUE citizens of America decide what is good for them & let CONTITUTION be the guiding light for any foreign policy discourse.
I actually know Juan Cole's son personally; nice guy. Cole teaches at my alma mater.
This is a good article, but Cole is generally pro-UN, pro-globalism, pro-Israel. Not that I follow his work closely, but I dimly recall being dissatisfied with everything I read of his, up to this point. He would have nothing to do with my ragtag group that brought Norman Finkelstein to campus in '04.
Beware of gatekeeper. There's much better material on the subject by James Petras, Justin Raimondo, and others. Also, for the details on Ahmadinejad "denying the Holocaust" and wanting to "wipe Israel off the map" be sure to check out http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12790.htm which really exhausts the subject.
1. By taking American Diplomats as hostages the nation of Iran has forfeited its right to be considered among the ranks of modern civilized nations in perpetuity.
2. The nation of Iran has demonstrable nuclear ambitions and not just for peaceful reasons, but for the development of nuclear weapons.
3. Unlike the Soviet empire which was disuaded from the use of nuclear weapons by an appreciation of the idea of mutually assured destruction, the ideology which prevails in the leadership of Iran includes no such reticence. The ideology of Iran glories in and celebrates death.
4. The weakness of western nations has been perceived by Islamo-fascists all over the world, including Iran, as an opportunity for aggression.
5. Once the Iranians have an operational bomb, they will use it to fulfill their eschatological expectations.
6. Israel, which has the capacity to attack Iran, but not the power to destroy these plans, will not act alone.
7. Iran will use a bomb, perhaps after having sold or given nuclear technology to a number of other nation states and even private organizations.
8. The result of Iranian use of a nuclear weapon will be a virtually universal response. An attack on Jerusalem or Tel Aviv will be seen as demonstrated ability and willingness to attack any and all other gulf states, Russia, Egypt, Europe and so forth.
9. In the end the Iranian nation will be largely destroyed through the use of tactical nuclear weapons, from a variety of different nations.
10. To me these trends seem irreversible and inevitable.
The administration in Washington is not competent to deal with this situation and is haunted by ideas of the essential historic iniquity of the United States, and that trends such as have been identified are our fault. But apologies, and humiliations of the United States will not be sufficient to change the course upon which the nation of Iran has embarked.
I read the article and it seems accurate in its assessments. But, I believe that Michael is coming at this from a philosophical point of view. The germ is the Koran and its teaching. How much the Koran will hold sway among the general population will determine the path they will take. And, that path could be idealistically violent.
The one unforgiveable sin of international relations is the violation in any respect of diplomatic immunity. This is a tradition which stretches back not decades or centuries, but thousands of years. All by itself that act shows that the leadership of Iran are not rational actors.
But I am not an advocate of a preemptive attack on Iran.
I am not even an advocate of sanctions. I merely see them for what they are... and I don't live in a fantasy world which suggests that they are really nice guys whom we have just misunderstood.
I am merely predicting, based on what I know to be their ideology, that they want a bomb and that they will use it.
Further, that it is my prediction that such an event will not go entirely unanswered.
I don't really have any investment in this question because I live in central Florida and it is extremely unlikely that Iran would waste one of their few bombs on my home town. I would think they would use it on an American city like Philadelphia or on an iconic American symbol like Yellowstone National Park.
There are policies which might be announced to prevent or delay this inevitability but the US administration is not intelligent enough to discover it.
However, an Iranian use of a nuclear bomb may be disguised so as to leave open a question as to from whence it came. In that event, there will be broad opposition to any meaningful response, and any nation responding will be subjected to severe criticism.
In the end, I don't care what the Iranian's do, but that does not stop me from knowing what they actually believe and what they actually do. The world in the end will not tolerate the behavior of these barbarians and will right itself. The only open question is how many millions will die first before western nations discover this knowledge.
By the way, we will know with great certainty fairly soon whether or not in fact Iran has a bomb. When other Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia demand nuclear technology....that will be the indicator that Iran has a bomb.
The Saudi's unlike most Americans understand the Iranians.
Achmadenijad has the belief that he has the personal moral obligation and religious duty to usher in the end of days.
The Saudi's know and understand this and they take it seriously.
Great points. For once, it is great to be able to read some real facts on Iran.
Our MSM ( both television and newspaper ) has absolutely no credibility.
The fact that Krauthammer and Kristol continue to distort the facts after 8 years and so many Americans continue to believe them blows my mind.
These neo-cons are beyond dangerous. I'm no fan of Iran but it's hard to condemn them for wanting nuclear weapons when they are completely surrounded by "perceived" enemies.
As far as Iran wanting to usher in the "end of days", who knows.
Questions that I would like to know:
Aren't the Saudi's Sunni and the Iranians Shiite? And aren't those two very different sects?
Also, weren't the Iranians pretty moderate and Westernized before we overthrew Mossadegh in 1953 coup?
Last time I checked, Tehran looked more like a modern 21st century city and not some slum.
I read this on the air this morning and thought it worth passing around. I thought of it on September 11, 2001 and still think of it every anniversary.
This is Pat Buchanan describing a hypothetical terrorist attack that could take place in the future as a result of U.S. interventionist foreign policy. From page 44 of his 1999 book "A Republic, Not an Empire:"
It is in February of 2005 that the explosion occurs in the port of Seattle. It is a low-yield crude atomic device, but the devastation is incredible. Thousands are dead; thousands more are injured or wounded, many burned horribly. The device was smuggled in the cargo hold of a ship and detonated only hours after the ship had docked. No one knows for certain who put the device there. Iran condemns the act as an inhuman atrocity and an affront to Islam, but notes that America was the first to use such weapons. North Korea is also suspect. But intense speculation focuses on a group associated with the financier of terror Osama Bin Laden, whom U.S. special forces ran down and killed years earlier. Bin Laden's agents reportedly acquired nuclear weapons from rogue army elements is Russia or Kazakhstan in the 1990's, or got one from a Pakistan now controlled by allies of the Afghan Taliban.
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