Ron Paul: “I Think Sanctions Give Iran Motivation To Want A Nuclear Weapon”

Zero Hedge
Monday, March 5, 2012

There are those who say that while they agree completely with Ron Paul’s economic policy of fixing the #1 issue that ails America (as a reminder, total US debt/GDP would only decline under a Ron Paul presidency) they disagree with Paul on his foreign policy. We wonder why when all he does is instead of appealing to the jingoism of warmongers and patronizing the basest of herd instincts, he simply tells the truth. Such as on Today’s State of the Union show on CNN when asked if Obama has done “enough” to force Iran to stop its nuclear development via sanctions and others, his reply was spot on: “I think he gets too much involved. I think sanctions gives the motivation for them to want a nuclear weapon. We have 45 bases around them, we can demolish them within hours. And the worst thing the sanctions do, and Republicans and Democrats both support it and the other GOP candidates want war even more, the whole thing is there is a lot of dissension in Iran and we should encourage it by not interfering, once we get involve and threaten to bomb them, it becomes nationalistic – everyone joins the Ayataollah and Ahmedinejad. So there is a blowback – unusual circumstances and unintended consequences. So yes, our people are well-intended, but they don’t realize how much damage they do by not accomplishing what they want and causing more harm to us. So our military personnel right now are very adamant not to be involved in a bombing of Iran, it makes no sense whatsoever to our military personnel, to the CIA, even though they are much more interventionist than I am.”

And probably even more important in light of Obama’s apology for burning down Korans (but not for pictures of torture), Paul had this to say: “I thought McNamara was rather astute when he they asked him about the mess he caused in Vietnam: “don’t you think you should apologize to the American people and to the world” he said: “what good is an apology: if you make mistakes and you see this and you stir enough trouble, why don’t we change our policy. That’s what he said: “we should change our policy.”  So if we have a policy going on in the middle east that is begging that we apologize now and then and others condemning it, I think we should reassess our foreign policy, and that is what I think we are not doing, and that is why I am quite different than the other candidates - the American people are sick and tired of the wars going on over there, we are going broke fighting these wars that are not legitimate in that we were not attacked, they were not declared, and the American people in their majority want us out of there.”

This article was posted: Monday, March 5, 2012 at 6:03 am

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