Rush Transcript:Quote (Rand Paul)
Q: Im a big fan of you and your father. I want to thank you for everything you have done for us to stop the outreach of the federal government.
My Question is on Iran. I wanted you to explain how you came to the conclusion in order to vote for sanctions on Iran considering the past that it seems to be a precursor to war in Libya, Iraq, there was millions of children that died from sanctions there.
Can you explain how you came to the decision to vote in favor of sanctions against Iran?
A: The big debate over Iran, and it is a very emotional debate, is over Iran getting nuclear weapons.. and um i don't think it would be a very good idea for them to get nuclear weapons. It could destabilize the middle east.
But then the question is how do you respond or try to prevent them from making nuclear weapons? You can do nothing, you can do a little bit, which I think would be sanctions, or you can have an all-out war where you invade.
And I did finally come down to the conclusion that doing something was better than doing nothing.
But I still do argue very strenuously, and I think its important, there may be people in this room who disagree me, is that we have to be careful about having a preemptive war in Iran, in the sense that you sometimes get unintended consequences.
A lot of people think oh thats really radical left wing not to be for a new war, but to tell you the truth if you ask the troops are you ready to go for a third war now, out troops are not, the young men and women who are volunteering they're not ready for a third war right now. We can't afford its another reason. But also even many conservatives, the last 3 heads of the US central command, you dont think of generals as being from the left wing. (*names generals*. i wont butcher the spelling) all said that if we have a preemptive strike or bombing of Iran, sometimes you rally the people around their own leaders. You get nationalism there and they rally around the mullahs. So the people, this happened a little bit when they had that election. It wasnt a fair election you know and um Ahmadinejad won again, but when they had that election I remember when the guy who was running, his son was over here he was telling us keep it down, dont be, because by amerians being in favor of the people running against him it hurtstheir vote because nobody over there really wants to be seem as being just sortof the puppet of the Americans.
So sometimes we get the opposite of what we intend and i think bombing could end up rallying them around their leaders. Other people are saying militarily it won't work. The stuff is too far underground to even get militarily. And the final point i'd make on Iran is just have everybody think about it a little bit, is that the head of the Mossad; this is Israels intelligence agency. The head of the mossad said about three weeks ago that we need to be careful about saying that Iran getting a nuclear weapon is an existential threat to Israel because if we say that we trap ourselves into one response and that is cataclysmic war. You can't accuse the head of the Mossad of saying he wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Obviously he doesn't, but he is worried about the repercussions. So even in Israel, people think oh everyone in Israel are all for attacking Iran. Israel is like we are. They're a pluralistic society with agreement and disagreement and not everybody over there wants war either.
Um but it also means you cant be shrinking away from it completely and I took the middle ground on sanctions. Seeing if sanctions will work and um there are times when sanctions have made it worse.
I mean there are times leading up to WW2 we cut off trade with Japan and it probably caused Japan to react angrily. We also had a blockade on Germany after WW1 which may have encouraged them, some of their anger.
I think Foreign policy is not always an exact right or wrong answer either in that there is a lot of murkiness and that we need to just 1. Be careful, reluctant to go to war, and make sure that when war does happen it goes through congress and isn't the decision of one person in the white house.
/end transcript.
That seemed like a very thoughtful and level headed approach to foreign policy. Some would even say moderate.
Nowhere in that do you see him say we "invited" pearl harbor and world war 2.
from the first article I posted:
Quote
I don’t entirely agree with Paul’s formulation, but contending that the punishment inflicted on Germany “after World War I” – which the United States played a part in – “may have” precipitated anger among Germans which in turn may have spurred resentment and made Nazism possible is neither an excuse for Nazism nor does it lay the blame for war on the United States. If the extent of the burden inflicted on Germany is a common debate, it is not eccentric. What Paul never contends is that Hitler’s ideology hinged on the idea of opposing Versailles. He was talking about Germany and Germans. In front of me is Paul Johnson’s Modern Times, where the author basically makes the same case and Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, in which she writes that though Versailles’ impact had likely been exaggerated by German governments, it allowed political parties like the Nazis to tap into widespread “anger” and resentment. Sounds like that’s what Rand was saying.
Another thing Paul didn’t do was blame “the U.S. for Pearl Harbor.” Historians often debate the role that trade restrictions imposed by the United States may have had on Japan believing war with the United States was inevitable sooner than later. That neither excuses the Japanese fascism nor Japan’s attack.
This post was edited by cambovenzi on Apr 2 2014 06:37am