Unfortunately..that is what it would come down to...the BUCKS.....We started a trend to BUY our friends and how has that worked out?...
Ron Paul: Befriend Iran.....
- Thread starter dieseldiva
- Start date
Unfortunately..that is what it would come down to...the BUCKS.....We started a trend to BUY our friends and how has that worked out?...
RLENT
Veteran Expediter
If Ron Paul had anything to do with it, zero .....
In fact, that's what we'd be spending in foreign aid everywhere - zip, nada .....
Instead we pay to bomb places back to the stone age ....
..... and then pay to rebuild 'em ....
Hard to argue with the pure genius of such a premise .....
The powers that be ... need demons to slay .....
If for no other reason ... than to keep the populace at bay .....
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The hope that an olive branch offering would yield positive results is based on the assumption that the Iranian theocracy wants to be friends with us - they don't! If the Obama administration wanted to gain favor with the Iranian people they should have supported their Green movement in 2009. Instead the US sat silent while the mullahs shot protesting civilians in the streets.
It's this kind of dangerously naive and unrealistic foreign policy position that keeps Ron Paul from being a serious contender for POTUS.
RLENT
Veteran Expediter
Who could blame them really - when you consider the type of so-called "friendship" our nation is guilty of practicing ?":
PBS NewsHour: Examining the Effects
of Economic Sanctions on Iran
Impact of sanctions on the Iranian people and government
“When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will ...” - Frederic Bastiat
To speak with self-righteous indignation and some sort of faux moral superiority, as though it is only we who are the aggrieved party is to utterly ignore 50+ year history of our criminal meddling in their internal affairs, including supplying our buddy Saddam (remember him ?) to fight a proxy war against them, lasting nearly 8 years and which cost somewhere between 800,000 to 1,300,000 Iranian lives ..... is the absolute height of self-delusion.
Stick your head in the sand - or up in some warm, moist place elsewhere if you prefer - but the fact of Life is that when one goes out of one's way to act as an enemy, it conceivable that ya just might create a few.
Of course, the converse, may be equally true.
Perhaps a truly moral nation would seek to acknowledge and honestly confront the consequences of it's own actions in the past and then modify it's behavior so that in the future it isn't committing the functional equivalent of national suicide - by acting in a unjust and utterly arrogant manner which tends to pizz off the remainder of the world.
But then again, a nation made up substantially of mindless idiots, largely incapable of rational thought, and infused with bloodlust and religious hatred, is unlikely to demand any such thing.
Here we go again
: advocacy of more imbecilic tinkering in the the internal politics and affairs of sovereign nations .....You, of course, would have absolutely no problem if the Chinese or the Russians would actively fund and support your political opposition here, right ?
Nope - if we wanted to gain favor with the Iranian people we'd end the sanctions on anything that doesn't honestly pose a real risk in terms of their possible development of a nuclear weapon.
Well Bucko ..... let me explain to you, the grim reality for you, and others of similar ilk, who seem utterly naive to the dangerous political realities of the moment:
If the polls are to be believed (something I'm somewhat skeptical of, in terms of understatement), Ron Paul has somewhere around 10% to 15% support.
It is readily admitted that these supporters are highly committed to the man and, more importantly the philosophy he represents.
If Paul fails to secure the Republican nomination, it may be that he runs under the flag of a 3rd party - some in the Libertarian Party are already calling for him to come on over - and there is another move afoot to provide a path to the Presidency beyond that. His supporters would follow - because they understand that it is the philosophy that is important - not the label.
In any event, there will be a significant portion of the Paul supporters - I among them - who will not support just any candidate who gets the Republican nomination ..... simply because they have an "R" after their name.
It could very well be that some folks (not those Paul supporters mentioned above) may feel entirely comfortable in compromising their own principles and personal integrity by supporting and allowing the nomination one of the various flip-floppers, religious wingnuts, or serial gropers ..... who happen to have attained the establishment "seal of approval".
They should ask themselves this:
Just how well do you like the thought of like sayin ".... four more years ...." ?
...... 10% to 15 % ..... it's enough .....
So ...... how does it feel to have a gun stuck to your temple ?
(in a figurative sense, of course
)
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Well there seems to be a lot of Kitty footin around and job security for diplomats in all this....we could either fess up and be honest with each other for once...or keep this up for yet another 1,000 years and keep diplomats employed...OR just wipe the country off the map so there is no future generations to come after us......
.OR just wipe the country off the map so there is no future generations to come after us......
Wait a minute. Are you saying that we spend all that money on bombs to blow things up, and then spend all that money to rebuild them, and that, instead, we could just not spend any of that money in the first place? That doesn't sound right.
RLENT
Veteran Expediter
Herein lies the problem: we, as a species, have advanced to a point where we've achieved the technological ability to wipe us all off the map and render the planet uninhabitable.Well there seems to be a lot of Kitty footin around and job security for diplomats in all this....we could either fess up and be honest with each other for once...or keep this up for yet another 1,000 years and keep diplomats employed..
Despite that rather amazing feat, the technology of our political interaction with one another remains at a level befitting the Stone Age .... or the jungle ....
This is a fact that squeaking gerbil class (which constitutes the vast majority of the Amerikan public) apparently fails to recognize .... and it is a huge threat to the survival of the species.
Instead, we watch American Idol and Fox News (or whatever) and strut around thumping our chests like a flock of little banty roosters ........
Eventually, unless we fundamentally change the way we interact with others, we will become capons .... perhaps fried capons .... who will cry for us then ?
That's assuming of course that we don't end up destroying the planet and all life on it in the process ....
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RLENT
Veteran Expediter
I know, I know ..... it does fly directly in the face of conventional American whizzdom ..... but if it did turn out to be true, maybe we could do something else with that money .....
I dunno ...... perhaps pay down our debt ?
Pay down our...?!?! Oh, good grief. Now yer just talkin' crazy. pffft!
paullud
Veteran Expediter
This all boils down to power and control, you need to have an enemy to stay in power and control people. Ahmadinejad is doing that now by using the US and Israel as Iran's enemies and causing fear amongst people that an attack is about to happen, unfortunately he may be right. We are giving him more control over the Iranian people by our threats and by cutting Iran off through sanctions. When times are troubled it allows evil to take over and we have seen it in the past with groups like Nazis, Muslim terrorists, drug cartels, Obama(its a joke). When there is economic prosperity these groups are impacted greatly because people don't need to find something to be angry at or need someone to blame for their hardship. If we get rid of the sanctions it can help Iran become prosperous and make them feel like more of an equal. Ahmadinejad is a dangerous guy but only because we gave him that ability.
Posted with my Droid EO Forum App
Posted with my Droid EO Forum App
greg334
Veteran Expediter
Apparently you don't actually talk to too many Iranians.
Sanctions don't really stop them from living and the power is not in the hands of the president but the ruling council of Iran which have openly said they are not supporting some of his actions and rhetoric.
If we are to think we can fix their problems by using western ideas of sanctions or arrogant enough to think we can scare them as a country into changing, we have a serious problem with ourselves. We still cling onto this idea that we are not at fault for the problems we ended up with in Iran and falsely assume we are more powerful than they are when it comes to their own people.
We are on the brink of falling apart, we neither have the will or the need to go into another country and try to change them. Until we get our own house in order, we need to seriously think about how we approach our foreign policies in the middle east and other parts of the world where we expend a lot of money for a false security.
Israel can take care of themselves, we may be hindering them by sticking to our own ideas of what the middle east should look like. They will need us to back them but not to fight for them. I think we are going to see more of an emergence of an opposition towards the US from Libya and Egypt in the near term because of the sides we have taken and I am not speaking of the side of Israel
Sanctions don't really stop them from living and the power is not in the hands of the president but the ruling council of Iran which have openly said they are not supporting some of his actions and rhetoric.
If we are to think we can fix their problems by using western ideas of sanctions or arrogant enough to think we can scare them as a country into changing, we have a serious problem with ourselves. We still cling onto this idea that we are not at fault for the problems we ended up with in Iran and falsely assume we are more powerful than they are when it comes to their own people.
We are on the brink of falling apart, we neither have the will or the need to go into another country and try to change them. Until we get our own house in order, we need to seriously think about how we approach our foreign policies in the middle east and other parts of the world where we expend a lot of money for a false security.
Israel can take care of themselves, we may be hindering them by sticking to our own ideas of what the middle east should look like. They will need us to back them but not to fight for them. I think we are going to see more of an emergence of an opposition towards the US from Libya and Egypt in the near term because of the sides we have taken and I am not speaking of the side of Israel
RLENT
Veteran Expediter
Please allow me to recalibrate the above slightly with the following:
And that's nearly a year before the General Election - imagine what the number might be as the public gets to know him and the message of Freedom and Liberty better, things go further in the toilet here at home and abroad (which is almost a virtual certainty) ..... and the rest of the unsupervised candidate children continue shooting themselves in the foot.
Yes my little neocon boys and girlies - although Halloween is past, the bogeyman is still around .... and it's time to be very, very afraid ....
Mark your calendar for around a year from now - for The Neocon Nightmare Before Christmas .... 'cause Oogie-Boogie in da house:
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RLENT
Veteran Expediter
Perhaps ....
If you really believe that, then you might wanna work real hard to ensure Paul gets the Republican nomination ....
BTW, if you think that your message above is going to act as a scare tactic to just support whoever the Republican party nominates, that won't fly for a very significant percentage of that 18% support that Paul enjoys ....
You'd have to be smokin' somethin' other than normal tobacco to believe that ....
You see, many of us see the "establishment" Democrat/Republican parties (and their "establishment" candidates) as being functionally identical.
Obama .... Romney .... same thing.
You could probably use it on LDB with great success however ....
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RLENT
Veteran Expediter
Dave,
Fair enough
I think that things are going to get real interesting this time around. Things are very different.
People are very unhappy - with both parties, Congress, and government generally.
As pointed out by Chuck Todd recently, there may be a 3rd - and even a 4th party - if the choice comes down to Obama v. Romney.
Chuck Todd: Populist Third-Party
Presidential Candidates Will Emerge In Spring
There are plenty of people who voted for Obama - who are very unhappy and feel betrayed by what he has done - and what he hasn't - since arriving in office.
However, it would be a huge mistake to assume that these folks are going to rush to the Establishment Republican "brand", simply because of that disappointment - they won't.
To truly understand the dynamic that's at play, one would to assume the viewpoint of someone that voted for Obama - and understand what motivates them.
It may just be one or two issues .... not that they are in total lockstep with the complete ideological package. At the time, for some, it was simply that he was the "not Bush"
This time around a great many people are looking for the "not Bush, not Obama"
Clearly, I'm a fan and supporter of Dr. Paul - I think he can win - and I think it very possible that he has real chance of winning - even as a 3rd party candidate.
Fair enough
I think that things are going to get real interesting this time around. Things are very different.
People are very unhappy - with both parties, Congress, and government generally.
As pointed out by Chuck Todd recently, there may be a 3rd - and even a 4th party - if the choice comes down to Obama v. Romney.
Chuck Todd: Populist Third-Party
Presidential Candidates Will Emerge In Spring
There are plenty of people who voted for Obama - who are very unhappy and feel betrayed by what he has done - and what he hasn't - since arriving in office.
However, it would be a huge mistake to assume that these folks are going to rush to the Establishment Republican "brand", simply because of that disappointment - they won't.
To truly understand the dynamic that's at play, one would to assume the viewpoint of someone that voted for Obama - and understand what motivates them.
It may just be one or two issues .... not that they are in total lockstep with the complete ideological package. At the time, for some, it was simply that he was the "not Bush"
This time around a great many people are looking for the "not Bush, not Obama"
Clearly, I'm a fan and supporter of Dr. Paul - I think he can win - and I think it very possible that he has real chance of winning - even as a 3rd party candidate.
The War Of 1812 comes to mind. That was a war against Britain, with Canada being an ally. Now when we war with Canada it is usually on a sheet of ice.
Let us befriend Iran and then kick their butt on a sheet of ice. Curling anyone? Brooms, Brooms, rocks and jocks, Ahmadinejad sucks... Camels, camels, hooves and humps, we all think Iran's a dump. Hockey, hockey, sticks and pucks...
Canada was just a British territory under complete control of Britain at that time....there was no country of Canada yet...not till 1867...