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SYRIA
2008
Troops
Special Forces in helicopter raid 5 miles from Iraq kill 8 Syrian civilians
"The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people." -- Ron Paul
As I watched the disgraceful Republican Presidential primaries during 2008, I wondered what had happened to the conservative Republican Party. It had been hijacked by the neoconservatives. These people are as far from conservative as you can get. Their agenda is to aggressively use American economic and military power to bring liberalism and democracy to foreign countries, whether they like it or not. Ron Paul was the only candidate to stand for the true principles of the Republican Party. He pointed out that the Republican Party had been non-interventionist throughout the 20th Century and as recently as the year 2000, it was still the hallmark of the party:
"Throughout the 20th century, the Republican Party benefited from a non-interventionist foreign policy. Think of how Eisenhower came in to stop the Korean War. Think of how Nixon was elected to stop the mess in Vietnam. How did we win the election in the year 2000? We talked about a humble foreign policy: No nation-building; don't police the world. That's conservative, it's Republican, it's pro-American - it follows the founding fathers. And, besides, it follows the Constitution."
As I watched the kindergarten military experts Guliani, Romney, and Huckabee scornfully lecture Ron Paul on American foreign policy, I was taken aback by their utter hypocrisy and lack of Constitutional knowledge. Three men who never spent one second in the U.S. military, even though two were in their twenties during the Vietnam War, lecturing a man who served in the U.S. Air Force from 1962 through 1968 as a flight surgeon. These men join the other neo-cons that avoided service in Vietnam, George Bush and Dick Cheney (applied for 5 draft deferments) in the neo-con hall of shame. The military "hero", John McCain, was disdainful towards Mr. Paul's contention that the invasion of Iraq was unconstitutional. McCain's impeccable military record of graduating 894th out of 899 at the Naval Academy, crashing 3 planes, being shot down over Hanoi, and cracking under torture by the North Vietnamese, certainly qualified him as an expert in casting aside the Constitution forged by George Washington and true patriots. Ron Paul was the only true conservative Republican, in the spirit of Ronald Reagan, on that stage.
"Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense." -- Ron Paul
"History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap." -- Ronald Reagan
Civil Liberties
George Washington warned against the usurpation of civil liberties by those seeking power in his Farewell Address:
"However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution, in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the Guardian of the Public Weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them."
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