YES! Ron Paul Says It, No More AIPAC [Jew Lobby] in HIS Administration

Muckraker Report: You seem to have a stronger anti-war stance than even many of the Democratic candidates: unlike Hillary Clinton, for instance, you voted against the Iraq war. In terms of foreign policy, what would a Ron Paul presidency look like?

Congressman Ron Paul: Well, it certainly wouldn’t involve going to war with countries that pose no threat to us. The 2002 Iraq war resolution transferred the authority and responsibility for waging war from the legislature to the executive branch, which is a total breach of the principles of the U.S. Constitution. James Madison pointed this out in 1798, that because the executive is the branch of government most interested in war, the question of war must be vested in the legislature – “with studied care,” I believe his exact words were. You can’t have presidents waging war willy-nilly for reasons that are fundamentally at odds with the basic interests of the American people. I voted against that resolution because I believe strongly that we should avoid getting entangled in foreign alliances and instead seek peace and trade with all nations. This is a reflection of the wisdom of the Founders, who advocated a non-interventionist foreign policy, the most eloquent expression of which can be found in George Washington’s Farewell Address. So to answer your question, if I were president, I would do my best to follow in the footsteps of the Founders by abiding by the rules laid out in the U.S. Constitution, which means limiting the power of the executive to wage war.

Muckraker Report: Each year, the U.S. gives billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel, which, many academics have argued, not only fuels anger and hostility towards the United States among Muslims in the Middle East, but places a heavy burden on the U.S. taxpayer. As president, would you do anything to address this imbalance in America’s foreign aid policy?

Congressman Ron Paul: I’m with the academics on this one. Anyone who is even remotely aware of the facts knows that American foreign policy in the Middle East has stirred up enormous anger among Muslims, our support for Israel included, and you’re correct to say that it’s the American taxpayer who’s shouldering much of the burden. Also, the sanctions in Iraq during Clinton’s presidency, which killed nearly as many Iraqis as have died under the Bush presidency, and the presence of our military bases in Saudi Arabia – together with the situation in Israel, these actions are used by extremists and jihadists as justification for killing Americans. Just look at bin Laden’s public statements throughout the nineties. Can you imagine what it would be like if parts of the United States were occupied by a foreign power, if China was building military bases the size of the Vatican in Kansas? People would be up in arms! This isn’t to say that we “invited” the attacks of 9/11, or any other terrorist attacks, but simply that our policy decisions have certain consequences that we might wish to avoid. The CIA has given a name for this – “blowback.” This was the subject of my recent disagreement with Rudy Giuliani in the debate, who has no idea what he’s talking about. On a global playing field, deeds can have a way of rebounding on the doer, which is why the older imperial powers tended to be very cautious in their dealings with strange peoples in foreign lands. The Clinton and Bush administrations have been absolutely incompetent in comparison. This doesn’t mean that I’m against the idea of spreading the concept of freedom, just not with the barrel of a gun. Like I said, my solution would be to follow the wisdom of the Founders, which means a non-interventionist foreign policy, getting rid of foreign aid to all nations, including Israel. We ought to lead by example, not by coercion or special interest: this was what the Founders had in mind.

Muckraker Report: Where do you stand on Guantanamo?

Congressman Ron Paul: Shut it down. The current rationale at Guantanamo is based on the false premise that detainees are not entitled to due process protections. I support court decisions recognizing fundamental human rights, such as habeas corpus. Again, this is an issue that flies in the face of our civic and legal traditions as outlined in the Constitution. As such, I see no purpose for continuing the facility.

Muckraker Report: In his book “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” former president Jimmy Carter has argued that AIPAC, the so-called “Israeli Lobby” in Washington, exerts an undue influence on America’s foreign policy decisions in the Middle East. Do you agree?

Congressman Ron Paul: The First Amendment grants all citizens the right to petition the U.S. government, and this applies to AIPAC as much as anyone else. However, I oppose certain lobbying groups having more of an undue influence than others, and since one of the main purposes of AIPAC is to lobby for generous taxpayer subsidies to Israel, that portion of their influence would end under my administration.

Muckraker Report: Would you advocate trading with Iran?

Congressman Ron Paul: I believe in free-markets, and I think the goal of the United States should be to have a friendly trading relationship with all nations. Look at how much we accomplished in Vietnam since we stopped fighting with them and started trading with them. I believe that it’s wrong for the government to encourage or discourage trade with anyone. So while I do not advocate trading with Iran in any special or exclusive sense, I would look at how best to remove government limitations on international trade. If this should result in increased trade with Iran, then so be it.

Juan Cole: Ahmadinejad: "I am not anti-Semitic"

Source: informationclearinghouse (6-27-07)

Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul continue to show themselves among the few in Congress with any integrity and backbone. They declined to go along with a resolution charging Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad with incitement to genocide, given his alleged call for Israel to be 'wiped off the face of the map.'

As most of my readers know, Ahmadinejad did not use that phrase in Persian. He quoted an old saying of Ayatollah Khomeini calling for 'this occupation regime over Jerusalem" to "vanish from the page of time.' Calling for a regime to vanish is not the same as calling for people to be killed. Ahmadinejad has not to my knowledge called for anyone to be killed. (Wampum has more; as does the American Street).

If Ahmadinejad is a genocidal maniac who just wants to kill Jews, then why are there 20,000 Jews in Iran with a member of parliament in Tehran? Couldn't he start at home if that was what he is really about?

I was talking to two otherwise well-informed Israeli historians a couple of weeks ago, and they expressed the conviction that Ahmadinejad had threatened to nuke Israel. I was taken aback. First of all, Iran doesn't have a nuke. Second, there is no proof that Iran even has a nuclear weapons program. Third, Ahmadinejad has denied wanting a bomb. Fourth, Ahmadinejad has never threatened any sort of direct Iranian military action against Israel. In other words, that is a pretty dramatic fear for educated persons to feel, on the basis of . . . nothing.

I renew my call to readers to write protest letters to newspapers and other media every time they hear it alleged that Ahmadinejad (or "Iran"!) has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map." There is no such idiom in Persian and it is not what he said, and the mistranslation gives entirely the wrong impression. Wars can start over bad translations.

It was apparently some Western wire service that mistranslated the phrase as 'wipe Israel off the map', which sounds rather more violent than calling for regime change. Since then, Iranian media working in English have themselves depended on that translation. One of the tricks of Right-Zionist propagandists is to substitute these English texts for Ahmadinejad's own Persian text. (Ethan Bronner at the New York Times tried to pull this, and more recently Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute.) But good scholarship requires that you go to the original Persian text in search of the meaning of a phrase. Bronner and Rubin are guilty disregarding philological scholarship in favor of mere propagandizing.

These propaganda efforts against Iran and Ahmadinejad also depend on declining to enter into evidence anything else he has ever said-- like that it would be wrong to kill Jews! They also ignore that Ahmadinejad is not even the commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces.

Anyone who reads this column knows that I deeply disagree with Ahmadinejad's policies and am not interested in defending him on most things. I profoundly disagree with his characterization of Israel, which is a legitimate United Nations member state, and find his Holocaust denial monstrous. But this quite false charge that he is genocidal is being promoted by Right-Zionists in and out of Congress as a preparatory step to getting up a US war against Iran on false pretences. I don't want to see my country destroyed by being further embroiled in the Middle East for the wrong reasons. If the Israeli hardliners and their American amen corner want a war with Iran, let them fight it themselves and leave young 18 year old Americans alone.

The mixed views of candidate Ron Paul

Mano Singham's Web Journal: The mixed views of candidate Ron Paul: "If anyone had any doubts that the US is ruled by a single pro-war, pro-business party, recent Congressional action should dispel them. It is clear that the wheels are already being oiled for starting a war with Iran, and the Democrats are complicit in this pre-war demagoguery, just as they were before the war with Iraq, when many voted for the Iraq war authorization resolution.
Take the recent resolution H. Con. Res. 21 of the 110th session passed by the House of Representatives. As Arthur Silber points out, it lays the groundwork for what can be used later to start a war with Iran. 411 members voted for it, and only two voted against. The two were (no surprise) Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul and Kucinich explains why.
The vote may have been seen by some as symbolic, a chance for them to grandstand against Iran, the current target of demonization by the pro-war lobby. It was triggered by an alleged inflammatory statement by the Iranian leader that people who know the language and idiom well say is a mistranslation. (See Juan Cole and also here.) But as the bitter experience of Iraq reveals, so-called symbolic resolutions have a way of being used as if they are legal authorizations for war.
As for Paul, Rudy Giuliani must be kicking himself for taking on congressman Ron Paul during one of the early GOP debates. As a result of that exchange, Paul has received a lot of media exposure. I have mentioned approvingly his views on the Iraq war and the negative consequence of militarism in foreign policy. Another big thing in his favor is that he does take the constitution and the Bill of Rights seriously."

BOVARD » Ron Paul on Not Attacking Iran

BOVARD » Ron Paul on Not Attacking Iran: "June 21, 2007
Have We Forgotten 2003 Already?
Statement on H Con Res 21
by Rep. Ron Paul
This resolution is an exercise in propaganda that serves one purpose: to move us closer to initiating a war against Iran. Citing various controversial statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this legislation demands that the United Nations Security Council charge Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Having already initiated a disastrous war against Iraq citing UN resolutions as justification, this resolution is like déja-vu. Have we forgotten 2003 already? Do we really want to go to war again for UN resolutions? That is where this resolution, and the many others we have passed over the last several years on Iran, is leading us. I hope my colleagues understand that a vote for this bill is a vote to move us closer to war with Iran.
Clearly, language threatening to wipe a nation or a group of people off the map is to be condemned by all civilized people. And I do condemn any such language. But why does threatening Iran with a pre-emptive nuclear strike, as many here have done, not also deserve the same kind of condemnation? Does anyone believe that dropping nuclear weapons on Iran will not wipe a people off the map? When it is said that nothing, including a nuclear strike, is off the table on Iran, are those who say it not also threatening genocide? And we wonder why the rest of the world accuses us of behaving hypocritically, of telling the rest of the world “do as we say, not as we do.”"

Foreign Policy of Failure

Foreign Follies

Doug Bandow
Rare is it to find a president whose foreign policy has imploded as dramatically and catastrophically as has that of George W. Bush. Little more than a year after taking office, the candidate who espoused humility turned into the chief executive who embraced empire. Four years later, the administration's drive for global primacy irrespective of the needs of America, interests of other nations, and wishes of other peoples has dramatically sapped Washington's power and influence. Washington's fulminations – about defeating Iraq's insurgents, preventing North Korea's missile launches, dismantling Iran's nuclear program – look increasingly hollow. Countries and movements once thought to be cowering in Uncle Sam's shadow now exhibit flagrant contempt for Washington's desires.

It is the administration determined to stay in Iraq, not its critics who advocate withdrawal, that is responsible for the fact that thousands of patriotic men and women, through no fault of their own, will die in vain. Indeed, not just die in vain, but die in a conflict that is weakening the U.S. and making all Americans less secure. The president says that the Iraq war is "straining the psyche" of America, but it is really the administration's botched foreign policy that is straining our psyche.

Consider the international environment on Sept. 12, 2001. Terrorists had struck a shocking blow, but the U.S. held a position of enormous advantage. America possessed the greatest military on earth, was allied with all of the major industrialized powers, and benefited from a surge of international goodwill reaching even into the Muslim world.

The Politics of Rage: Why Do They Hate Us?
To dismiss the terrorists as insane is to delude ourselves. Bin Laden and his fellow fanatics are products of failed societies that breed their anger. America needs a plan that will not only defeat terror but reform the Arab world
By Fareed Zakaria

To the question "Why do the terrorists hate us?" Americans could be pardoned for answering, "Why should we care?" The immediate reaction to the murder of 5,000 innocents is anger, not analysis. Yet anger will not be enough to get us through what is sure to be a long struggle. For that we will need answers. The ones we have heard so far have been comforting but familiar. We stand for freedom and they hate it. We are rich and they envy us. We are strong and they resent this. All of which is true. But there are billions of poor and weak and oppressed people around the world. They don't turn planes into bombs. They don't blow themselves up to kill thousands of civilians. If envy were the cause of terrorism, Beverly Hills, Fifth Avenue and Mayfair would have become morgues long ago. There is something stronger at work here than deprivation and jealousy. Something that can move men to kill but also to die.

Ron Paul: Don't Do It Mr. President. Don't Bomb Iran!