Crunchy Con

Realism and Ron Paul

Thursday May 17, 2007

I've been interested in and somewhat excited by Ron Paul not because I could vote for him -- he's a libertarian, and I'm a conservative -- and not because I agree with his stringently non-interventionist foreign policy (the guy thinks NATO was a bad idea). I'm glad Paul is around because he's the only candidate in the Republican field who challenges the Iraq War and the premises of Bush's foreign policy. As I said yesterday, quoting Prof. Bacevich, it's important for the country to take more seriously the heavy price we pay for our military interventions. Paul may be wrong in some particulars, but at least he's put this on the table.

Then again, as Ross says, that someone with as implausible and politically irrelevant a foreign policy as Ron Paul is actually getting some positive attention now says less about the brilliance of Paul, and more about how woebegone the Republican Party is on foreign policy:

The vacuum that Paul currently occupies is supposed to be filled by an internationally-minded realism. Indeed, it's precisely the coexistence of realism and idealism in Republican foreign policy, the fruitful tension between the two strains of thought, that has long made the GOP the party to be trusted in international relations - because the idealists elevate the realists, and the realists keep the idealists grounded. When the pendulum swings too far in one direction or another, this tension has usually produced a correction, of the kind that, say, the original neocons and then Reagan provided to the cynical machtpolitik of Kissinger. But there's no sign of a realist corrective in the current GOP field: There were ten candidates on that stage besides Ron Paul yesterday night, and not one of them was willing to call the Iraq War a mistake, which seems to me like the place that a serious realist critique of his Presidency's foreign policy needs to begin.


Then again x 2, Daniel Larison points out that there's no sign that the GOP base is fundamentally opposed to the Iraq War, as distinct from its poor execution. When I tend to be around Republicans these days, and the war comes up, I see a lot of anger over the situation, but it usually gets expressed as frustration that the US military is not really fighting hard enough to win. The sense is that if only we took the gloves off and got more ruthless, then we'd bring Iraq to heel, and all would be well. I get no sense that there's any awareness of how this exactly the wrong way to run a successful counterinsurgency, or that there's a caustic irony in their wanting the US to essentially run Iraq like Saddam Hussein did. They want to win at all costs, period. The mildest form of this is proposing to continue the occupation in Iraq for another year, two years, etc. Mostly, though, I'm hearing exponents of the "winning is everything, it's losing that's immoral" school.

Iraq has slipped beyond our ability to control in any sense that the American people would stand for, or should stand for -- and perhaps even beyond that. When we cut our losses and withdraw, there will be a powerful impulse on the right to blame "defeatists," Democrats and the media for the loss -- as if the only thing separating the US from victory were sheer willpower. (Was it Romney or Brownback the other night who said that what America needed to do to win was to "come together"? Sheesh.) If this conclusion finds traction on the Right, 15, 20 years from the point of departure in Iraq, we'll have forgotten entirely its lessons about the unwisdom of starting these kinds of wars, and we'll be at it again. Watch.
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Comments
AnotherBeliever
May 18, 2007 2:52 PM
HASH(0xb209b10)

It sends chills up my spine to read the words of the Romans and Greeks who came before us. Behold there is nothing new under the sun.

Bugg
May 18, 2007 3:34 PM
HASH(0xb209888)

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King George W. Bush is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has tried to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of alien people, unless his citizens would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly,failed to ask for a declararion of war as our Constitution so requires, opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to increase without good cause nor reason nor economic need the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing, obfuscating, debasing and ignoring the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; encouraging to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.He has spent our tax revenues like a degenerate in a house of ill repute. He has kept among us, in times of war, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures in foreign lands to die for pointless causes. He has affected to render the Military a social service agency to the Civil Power of his foreign schemes. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops in lands in which we and they have no business: For prosecuting such soldiers, by a mock Trial from punishment for doing their very jobs they hath sent them to do: For encouraging our Trade with all parts of the world, no matter how it so impacts our manufacturers: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury: For transporting us our soldiers beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: For ignoring our Constitution, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these States For failing to enforce our lawa on immigraion, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring our troops out of his Protection and waging War without end in froeign lands with said troops. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, taxed our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large groups of foreign worker Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens allowed aliens toa rrivwe on these shores to bear Arms against our beloved Country, to become the executioners of us and our Brethren, to fall by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, aliens whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our supposed brethren in Congress,those supposedly sworn to uphold such laws. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred. to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. We, therefore, the Representatives of the Uunited States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these States, solemnly publish and declare, That these United States are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the federal government, and that all political connection between them and the federal government, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Franklin Evans
May 18, 2007 3:39 PM
http://madfedor.blogspot.com/

Make haste to reassure us, I beg you, and tell us that our fellow citizens understand us, support us, and protect us as we ourselves are protecting the glory of the Empire." It is with deepest regret and the most profound sadness that their lives are at risk that I must decline to offer reassurance to our beloved fellow citizens in Iraq. Nations always go to war for practical reasons. They may be as simple as survival, or as complex as a multi-threaded economic environment. In the end, though, a nation sells a high ideal to its citizens to persuade them to shed their blood -- and the blood of their children -- for those practical reasons, and the farther the high ideal is from the ethical motivation for the reason, the more important it becomes to stand up against those making such decisions. In certain circumstances, under military law, following orders is the exact thing that made the act a criminal one. In politics, in my opinion, a passive acceptance of the consequences of unethical decisions, especially when those consequences include the spilling our youth's blood, is as bad as following unlawful orders. True, we find the early decisions that led up to the invasion of Iraq flawed using hindsight. However, saying that since we are already there we should pursue our original goals even though the decision to do so was wrong cannot be seen as anything but taking advantage of a crime.

David J. White
May 20, 2007 4:21 PM
HASH(0xb20c524)

MI, I am a classicist. Could you please cite your source for the quotation you posted? Thank you.

MI
May 20, 2007 11:33 PM
http://gravitron5.blogspot.com/

David White, I got that quotation from here:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view414.html#Fury I'd be interested as to your thoughts regarding the authenticity of this quote.
Although I am unsure whether the quotation is authentic, I occasionally cite it as an eloquent expression of how warriors in the field may view the collapse of civilian support for their efforts; and as a reminder that bringing an army home, against its will, without the attainment of victory, can have unpleasant consequences.
Withdrawal from Iraq - aka, surrendering the battlefield to our national enemies - may well be the lesser of evils, but in choosing it we must not make the same mistake that many pro-war advocates did in 2002/2003, by failing to fully consider the potential costs of our actions.
MI

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About Crunchy Con

Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.

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