QOTD: Senator Paul
by digby
Waving the bloody shirt for all it’s worth:
“Children are murdered — please show restraint. Cafés and buses are bombed — please show restraint. Towns are victimized by hundreds of rockets — please show restraint while you bury your dead once again. I think it is clear by now: Israel has shown remarkable restraint. It possesses a military with clear superiority over that of its Palestinian neighbors, yet it does not respond to threat after threat, provocation after provocation, with the type of force that would decisively end their conflict.But sometimes restraint can work against you. Sometimes you just have to say, enough is enough.”
This was in response to the administration’s expressed outrage over the killings of the three Israeli teenagers, while calling for a restrained response. (They foolishly thought it wasn’t a good idea to fan the flames by screaming “enough is enough!!!”)
The Politico article linked above declares this to be nothing more than a political ploy to appease the GOP establishment as Paul seeks the presidential nomination. Perhaps it is. But it’s probably a mistake to make such assumptions if the issue being played with is something as vital as middle east foreign policy.
Also too, this:
While talking with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto on “Your World with Neil Cavuto” following the prisoner trade of five Guantanamo Bay detainees for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, Senator Paul said, “there would be a drone with their name on it.”
Senator Paul continued by saying “if people plot to attack our country, they will be dealt with, and they will be dealt harshly.”
Q. Can you see a time when you would think it was a good idea for air strikes or to send in ground troops?
A. Yeah, I’m mostly talking about ground troops. I think that we have aided the Iraqi government for a long time, I’m not opposed to continuing to help them with arms. I would not rule out air strikes. But I would say, after 10 years, it is appalling that they are stripping their uniforms off and running. And it concerns me that we would have to do their fighting for them because they won’t fight for their own country, their own cities. I am thinking that it is time that they step up.
Very nuanced understanding of the issues there …
These comments have been buried among his contradictions, so it’s hard to know exactly where he stands. But suffice to say that he is a member of the Republican Party and if he cannot stand up to them as a matter of principle in a quixotic presidential run what makes anyone think he will do it in a position of real power?
Oh, and hiding behind the process argument wherein the “real issue” is whether congress signed off is a fool’s game that liberals learned a long time ago. The congress will very, very, very rarely object to any military action the president wants to undertake — and pretty much never if that president is a Republican. It’s a dodge.
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