During last night’s debate there was a great argument between Ron Paul and Michelle Bachmann on foreign policy. Dr. Paul totally obliterated the idea that we need to go to war with Iran, something every other candidate is chomping at the bit to do:
Some excellent facts were made by Dr. Paul. The most obvious is the fact the terrorists in the Middle East aren’t coming here because they hate our way of life, if that were the case they would also be striking Switzerland and Sweden. Unlike our country, neither Switzerland or Sweden have a foreign policy built upon imperialism. In fact Switzerland, because of their neutrality, is the only channel of communications that exists between the United States and Iran.
I also love the fact he brings up the drone captured by Iran. While the other candidates were berating Obama for asking Iran to return the drone Ron Paul asked why the drone was even being flown of Iranian airspace to begin with. That is the million dollar question.
Bachmann than falsely claims there are reports stating Iran is only months away from developing a nuclear weapon. Again Dr. Paul explains that this isn’t true and that no evidence exists of Iran being anywhere near developing a nuclear weapon.
Then Dr. Paul brings up the Cuban Misslie Crisis. We didn’t perform a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union when they parked nuclear weapons in Cuba, instead Kennedy called up Kruschev and talked. Through conversation we reached a compromise where the Soviet Union would remove their nuclear weapons from Cuba and we would remove our from Turkey.
I’ve been saying that a nuclear armed Iran is the biggest boogeyman put out by our government. First of all Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon, second if they eventually build one they will still lack a delivery system that can get it from their country to ours, and third we’re so far ahead of the game that our anti-missile defense system (which we’ve also given Israel so don’t worry about them) that it’s practically impossible for Iran to leapfrog ahead of us. We also encourage the Iranians to develop nuclear weapons by constantly threatening invasion. The leaders of Iran aren’t stupid, they realize the only countries that get any form of respect from the United States are nuclear armed countries. They also saw what happened with Libya where we encouraged them to stop development of nuclear weaponry, they listened, and we ended up killing them.
The more we rattle sabres with Iran the more they’re going to want nuclear weaponry. Looking at a map it’s pretty easy to see that Iran is now surrounded by American military bases. Iranians also still remember that little incident in 1953 where we toppled their democratically elected government and replaced it with a brutal puppet dictatorship. After 26 years they finally booted our puppet out and the new regime has been using anti-American sentiment caused by our last action in that country to both cement their own power and prevent an easy overthrow by our forces again. We should all stop and remember that the only reason extremist Islam was able to overtake that country was because we decided it was a good idea to eliminate their democratically elected government in the first place.