Libertarian Ron Paul v. Conservative Laura Ingraham

Laura Ingraham (conservative): Why were we attacked? Why are we the ones who attack? I’m going to throw this out to you, Congressman: Why was Bali attacked? Why was the British underground attacked? Why was Madrid attacked? Why was Kenya attacked? Why was Tanzania attacked? You know, why was any number of Saudi Arabian neighborhoods attacked? I mean, I think…

Ron Paul (libertarian): It’s the same reason…

LI: Well, you’re going into treacherous territory when you look like you’re pointing the finger at us…[inaudible]

RP: Well, that’s what they would like to do because if you do that then you say you’re blaming America. I don’t blame Americans, or you, or me, but I blame bad policy. So, even before 9/11 we’ve been involved in the Middle East since World War II. Actually, we started propping up the Saudi government against the will of the people, and they had a dictatorship since World War II. Roosevelt started this because he thought it was necessary to protect our oil, so there is a high degree of resentment. Even Paul Wolfowitz admitted that it was our base in Saudi Arabia that motivated the terrorists to come here. So, it isn’t like it’s new and strange and that nothing happened before 9/11 and these countries say Spain, they had a few token troops, you know, in Iraq, so they get punished. So, close allies…

LI: Why was Bali…

RP: Well, I don’t know the details…

LI: The Bali nightclub bombing, 123 people incinerated; a horrific attack by Al-Qaeda [inaudible]…

RP: Well, you’ll have to ask… Al-Qaeda is not one unit. They must have had some beef.

LI: No, but, maybe it’s just evil, and maybe it’s just something we need to stand up against…

RP: Well, no, there’s always evil in every group of people, but you have to motivate people to give up their lives. Now, the only individual who has come up with a detailed study of that is Robert Pape (Dying to Win), and he explains it. And the Muslims do not commit the most suicide terrorism. It happens to happen in Sri Lanka. It has nothing to do with the Muslim…

LI: Sri Lanka? I must have missed that…

RP: Well, that’s where the greatest amount of suicide terrorism occurs.

LI: Well, Pakistan is certainly creating its own share of terrorists…

RP: Yea, of course. How long has our CIA been in there picking and choosing? We propped up [Pervez] Musharraf. We just gave him 10 billion dollars!

LI: You spend a lot of time, Congressman, talking about what’s wrong with America. Tell us what’s right about America right now.

RP: America is the greatest country ever. We had the greatest document, we’ve had the most amount of freedom and the most amount of prosperity. We have a lot of goodness, but you can’t spread goodness with force. So, we cancel out all our goodness when we go around telling people that they either do it our way or we’ll bomb you; if you do it our way, we’ll give you money. That is not what made America great. America is great because we have a great institution and great traditions. We believe in freedom of…[unintelligible], but we’ve lost our way. Not only the Republican party but the country has lost their way. This is what made America great, and this is what we have to restore.

LI: After 9/11, what would you have done?

RP: Well, I would have gone after the people responsible (Al-Qaeda) and I did support that, but also supported going after…you know, going in Afghanistan and getting Al-Qaeda.

LI: But you just said that Al-Qaeda is hard to identify. It’s clearly a global force…

RP: Right, but we knew where Osama bin Laden was because he used to be our allies and we had propped him up in the Afghan war. But I also looked to the Constitution for guidance. So, a country didn’t attack us. There were a couple hundred radical nuts that were responsible for this. So, I introduced a bill to revive the interest, the idea, [of] the letter of marque of reprisal because our Founders understood that this could come up because of the pirates on the high seas. But they didn’t want to go to war with a country; they went to war against the individuals and you limited the war… there was a mini declaration of war against the pirates, so we could have done that.

LI: But this isn’t pirates, Congressman. I mean this is talking like Johnny Depp land. This is like Islamist terrorists who are unified in their hatred of, not just America, but…

RP: No, no, no. You’re blaming the whole Muslim world.

LI: No, no, I’m not.

RP: No, you are. You’re doing that, but…

LI: Did I just say Islamic Jihadists? Did I say all Muslim people? No, I didn’t, so don’t put words in my mouth.

RP: Yea, but when you do that… this…

LI: Here’s the problem, Congressman… is that when you go around and you say, “After 9/11, I would have gone after Al-Qaeda.” Well, tell me something I don’t already know. What would you do with dictators who refuse to live by, and live up to, resolutions that we were involved in with the UN, shot at our planes, defied our, um, absolute… what they signed and what they said that they would do… You know, they said they were going to do this and they didn’t.

RP: [Laughing] You know, this is the argument… one of the arguments when we talked about the resolution to go to war, which I strongly opposed, and I said, “No aggression has been committed against the United States,” and I thought that this is one of the most preposterous thing. They said they had been shooting at our airplanes…

LI: That doesn’t matter to you?

RP: We were bombing them! They shot at us… they didn’t have an army, they didn’t have an air force, they couldn’t even touch an airplane. We were 6,000 miles away. We had put sanctions on them. Hundreds of thousands of kids died because of our sanctions in Iraq.

LI: Well, yea, but you know what our sanctions were in Iraq? You know what ended up happening with those, right (at the UN)? I mean the US sanctions were…

RP: Well, why do we go along with all that UN stuff?

LI: Well, you and I are in agreement with a lot of that…

RP: Let’s get it out of the UN. We went to war with Korea under UN resolutions. We’ve been going to war…

LI: Right.

RP: And this war was to enforce UN resolutions…

LI: But, right…

RP: This war in Iraq. You have to remember that.

LI: Congressman, we’re there now and, um… Have you been to Iraq?

RP: No, but…

LI: Why haven’t you been to Iraq when…?

RP: Because I don’t need to go to Iraq to understand the Constitution! [LOL]

LI: You don’t? You don’t need to talk to the troops, or talk to the military commanders?

RP: Well, read the Constitution. Why do I have to read the Constitution in Iraq? [LOL!!!]

LI: Well, we’re in Iraq…

RP: I know. It’s an undeclared war.

LI: Well, we, we’ve… [LOL]

RP: Why don’t you read the Constitution? We don’t go to war without a declaration, and I don’t need to go to Iraq for that. [LOL]

LI: So, you don’t think it’s important to talk to the military leaders about what’s happening on the ground?

RP: Not for policy. They’re not policymakers; they take directives. So, why go over there?

LI: But [inaudible]…

RP: The war isn’t just mismanaged. We’re not supposed to be there. It’s unconstitutional. It’s illegal. We’re there to enforce UN resolutions. There was no threat to American security. There was nothing—no connection to Al-Qaeda, no connection to 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction.

LI: Well, if stockpiles of weapons had been found, and you would have admitted they were there at some point. Saddam did have…

RP: Yea, we gave them to them. We know they were there because we gave them those weapons at one time.

LI: So, if they had been found, you would have admit then you were right or you were wrong or would you say…[inaudible]

RP: No, they weren’t a threat to us. How did we handle the Soviet Union? They had 40,000.

LI: So, 9/11… but 9/11 did not change the calculus at all, to you?

RP: Against Iraq?

LI: About how we deal with other countries in a preemptive way.

RP: No, with Iraq. We went to war with Iraq. It’s preposterous to think that 9/11 justified attacking and invading and crusading in Iraq. That is the reason they come here! If you don’t understand that, we can’t solve our problems.

LI: Right.

RP: We’re going to have more terrorists come because they have to have an incentive to come.

LI: Right, but we’ve helped a lot of Muslims in the Balkans and we’ve clearly helped them in the…[inaudible]

RP: And all the Republicans opposed it. And a matter of fact George Bush ran in the year 2000 condemning that interference by…

LI: Look, my point is, before 9/11, I mean, we have done an enormous amount to help the Muslims. Whatever the party that agreed or didn’t agree, we helped the Kuwaitis, we had done an enormous amount for Muslims across the globe, and you know what we got for it? We got 3,000 of our fellow Americans incinerated. That’s what we got. Or is it Israel’s fault?

RP: You’re arguing my case. We didn’t get any thanks, we lost 3,000 men—that’s intervention blowback, unintended consequences. You just made the case for the constitutional position that the Founders taught is: “Stay out of entangling alliances. Don’t get involved in internal affairs of nations.” George Bush says, “No nation-building, no policing of the world, a humble foreign policy…” That’s what I’m talking about.

LI: He said that when he came in. He did. He wrote a big article…[inaudible]

RP: Yes, but he said that… he changed his mind before 9/11. Read Paul O’Neill’s book and he says the first thing on the agenda was invading Iraq.

LI: Can we defeat China economically, and as [inaudible]?

RP: Not at the rate we’re going now. They’re our banker. They’re capitalists. They don’t waste their money and energy by invading countries. They take our money. They take their investment, and they’re making deals in Iran.

LI: Well, they’re making deals in Africa, too, which is…[inaudible]

RP: Sure! But we spend all our money on the military and doing it by force.

LI: But they’re spending an enormous amount of money on the militarization of Spain.

RP: But they earned it. They work hard.

LI: Right.

RP: They sell us stuff. We print our money and they take their money and they invest. They’re capitalists.

LI: You would agree that this world… it is a bit different than it was when we had the old gold standard. I mean, people could move easily, commerce can move easily, and obviously things can come into this country, whether it’s containers or people, and ease of travel does change, a little bit does it not, our ability to compete by retreating. I mean, I’m not where these total free marketers, of free trade regardless of what it does to American people, but I do believe that it is hard to just say, “Okay, we’re going to pull back. We’re going to pull back.”

RP: I’m not even talking about that. I’m talking about not telling other people how to live and not bombing and giving foreign aid, but I’m a free-trader. I don’t want sanctions. Why can’t you go to Cuba? You might like a trip to Cuba. Canadians can go to Cuba.

LI: No, thanks.

RP: They have more rights in Canada…

LI: Do you think CAFTA and NAFTA has [sic] been good for America?

RP: No, I voted against that. I think those managed trade agreements are terrible, but I still think low tariffs are good because tariffs are high taxes for the consumer. So, we want free trade. We don’t want managed trade for the benefit of big corporations, but that’s what managed trade does and the WTO does.