Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Tiger Beer]

Ron Paul makes it on Yahoo News!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070524/pl_nm/usa_politics_paul_dc

[fiveeagles]

This man seems to be the real deal and he is starting to gain a lot of coverage from many media outlets. Some negative, but there are a lot of people pulling for him.

[Gopher]

While I welcome Ron Paul's endorsing the 9/11 Commission's report as not only true and accurate but also necessary reading on American foreign policy, I am not surprised at all regards his other "selections." Indeed, I continue to question his competency and indeed intelligence -- and not only in American foreign affairs.

First, the key book presidential candidates ought to read, consider, and debate is James A. Baker and Lee Hamilton's Iraq Study Group Report. I note Ron Paul failed to mention it entirely. This is the ball we need to focus on, however.

Second, if one were interested in grasping the basics in American foreign affairs, I would most strongly not recommend any books but rather two professional journals: Council on Foreign Relations's Foreign Affairs and the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations's Diplomatic History. Simply read the last five years of these journals and you will be up-to-date on where we are, and you will find multiple perspectives and criticisms.

Finally, not suprising that Ron Paul now explicitly references Chalmers Johnson's books. These are muckraking books and not serious works on American foriegn affairs. Negatively-reviewed if not outright rejected entirely by Foreign Affairs and Journal of Military History.

We can judge a book in many cases by its sources. Johnson's sources are entirely journalistic sources -- he probably Googled his research entirely and never entered a single archive, foreign or domestic. Some of these journalistic sources include the standard, reliable ones that most professionals cite from time to time: New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, for example. However, in Chalmers Johnson's second book of his "trilogy," Sorrows of Empire, to cite the one I am most familiar with, he relies primarily on other muckraking and hostile-to-America sources like CommonDreams.org, Counterpunch, Op-eds from the Guardian, Socialist Worker Online, World Socialist Web Site, and other muckrakers' books, especially William Blum, Bruce Cumings, Seymour Hersh, and Stephen Kinzer.

Ultimately, these people have done little actual research. They peddle gossip and op-eds. They hurl unsubstantiated but plausible assertions, allegations, and invective. And now they cite each other as points and authorities in what must be one of the farest-reaching circular-logic scams I have ever heard of.

In any case, if books like Johnson's inform Ron Paul's worldview, I seriously question his grasp of foreign affairs -- or anything else for that matter.

And I will celebrate the day he withdraws his candidacy -- perhaps here, on this board. According to your source, Tiger Beer, it might come sooner rather than later...

[thepeel]

I don't really care who he reads at this point. I'm quite happy just to have new ideas forced into the debates. The first debate was nothing more than 9 dudes arguing over who could deep-throat ol' Ronnie the bestest and one guy trying to play Goldwater. Paul had, if even slightly, made the nomination process more substantive.

Isn't it elementary, his suggestion that 9/11 has nothing to do with American freedoms? Are we not past that talking point yet?

I wish Canada could have a Ron Paul like player.. Someone who will directly challenge the left wing dogma honestly (as Paul does with the right).

[Tiger Beer]

[Masta_Don]

I wish he would pick up the libertarian party banner after losing the nomination and run with it. They really could use some exposure and he's the closest thing they've got as far as name recognition.

[thepeel]

[Gopher]

Whoa Tiger! This looks an awful lot like an extremely simplistic strawman to me -- or as you recognize, to your credit, "just such incredibly basic simple ideas."

[Masta_Don]

[thepeel]

Gopher,

Why did muslims attack the United States on 9/11, 2001?

[Gopher]

Masta Don: keep me out of those silly and simplistic lefist binaries. I do not accept them. And will not play by those rules.

Rejecting Ron Paul's nonsense does not mean I endorse the W. Bush Administration's motives and especially not its rhetoric in the least.

[thepeel]

I didn't say that it was because of bases in Iraq. I do believe that the ultimate cause was the American support for the "infidel" government in Saudi.

Prior to 9/11 I was very aware of OBL. I know who he was, what he wanted and why. It isn't like AQ just appeared out of thin air on 9/11. As soon as I turned on my TV that morning I knew it was him, and I knew why. Then, as now, I have never seen a solid reason to dispute his claim that America became a target by supporting Saudi. He also wanted to rally the muslim masses against the infidel governments in the "muslim world" and their American supporters.

But, to ROLF, take a look at the "they hate us cause we are free" crowd. America isn't even the most free country.. If it is social freedoms they hate they would hit Holland or Canada. If economic freedom Hong Kong or Singapore. It is beyond absurd.

[Gopher]

Sure it is absurd.

And when have I ever articulated that, by the way?

Theirs is an extremely unstable region, BJWD. Has been since the Ottomans fell and left a power vacuum. America and Britain moved in, eventually, and for a variety of motives (self-interest in India and the Middle East's oilfields, world-system, market interests and stability, strategic denial to Soviet interests during the Cold War, defending Kuwaiti and Saudi interests against an expansionistic Saddam, etc. -- for example, at their request, we protect Japanese oil tankers going in and out of the Gulf, remember?)

[thepeel]

[EFLtrainer]