Ron Paul’s foreign policy problems

This post from Right Wing News has been making the rounds on the internet; John Hawkins mailed it to us yesterday and I just got around to reading it today. Sorry, but I’m feeling lazy this week. But anyway, it’s an interview John did with former Ron Paul staffer, Eric Dondero.

Dondero tells us in the interview the same thing I’ve been saying for years. The worst part about Ron Paul is his naive world view and pre-WWII isolationist beliefs. Dondero says the he believes that we were wrong to fight the Germans in WWII and save the Jews from the Holocaust. But he does concede when pressed that maybe Germans invading our shores and blasting our ships on the open seas was reason enough.

But to me this was the most troubling. Paul fully intended to vote ‘no’ on Congressional approval for military action in Afghanistan but changed his mind for purely electability reasons;

Ron was “under the spell” of left-anarchist and Lew Rockwell associate Joe Becker at the time, who was our legislative director. Norm Singleton, another Lew Rockwell fanatic agreed with Joe. All other staffers were against Ron, Joe and Norm on this, including Lizardo. At the very last minute Ron switched his stance and voted “Yay,” much to the great relief of Jackie and I. He never explained why, but I strongly suspected that he realized it would have been political suicide; that staunchly conservative Victoria would revolt, and the Republicans there would ensure that he would not receive the nomination for the seat in 2002.

So, either way, in my opinion, Paul is screwed on this. If he really intended to vote ‘no’ on Afghanistan, that was just wrong. If anyone deserved to be punished, it was al Qaeda and their caretakers, the Taliban. But then he compounded his mistake by changng his vote at teh last minute in order to be ‘right” in the view of the Party, so he could keep his seat in Congress. So all of that talk about Ron Paul being principled and not for sale is just what the paulians want to believe rather than what is the truth.

When the chips were down and Paul could take a principled stand, he caved to political pressure. A quick and revealing peek into the Ron Paul presidency.

According to The Hill, the Paul campaign is trying to discredit Dondero;

Paul campaign manager Jesse Benton described Dondero as “a disgruntled former staffer who was fired for performance issues. He has zero credibility and should not be taken seriously.”

Dondero cites several witnesses to the events he’s recounted and I don’t see any of them coming out to denying the most troubling aspects of the interview. A President Ron Paul would be a disaster on the world stage, worse than we have now, I suspect.

Category: Ron Paul