Ron Paul on Foreign Policy

I've been reading a lot lately about Ron Paul, who's a candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination. I haven't been following the election, but some of those whose blogs I check on a regular basis really like him. However, this blog is not about how I feel about him as a candidate; it's about an article I read on CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/18/martin/index.html).

The main just of the article is that the United States brought the attacks upon itself because of its foreign policy. Paul seems to imply that because we have been in the Middle East for 10 years bombing and generally interfering we were only breeding anger in the hearts of some Iraqis and so here we are today: fighting a war. During the Cold War George Kennan discussed the fact that it is impossible to separate Communism from the internal affairs of a country (take Vietnam, for example). Towards the end of Kennan's life he wrote the same thing about terrorism. It is impossible for us to separate terrorism from the internal affairs in Iraq, which could be part of the reason why this war seems so far from over.

This term I was in a Russian history course and we talked a lot about the Cold War, and there were some perspectives that I had never been taught before. One of those is that the Russians were responding to our actions that they perceived as aggressive; we, in turn, responded to their responses and we almost had a nuclear war on our hands. I know that this view is not wildly popular among some, who, may, in fact, still want to drop a nuke on the Russians. But the point is that there are multiple ways to interpret history and history must be interpreted in the context of the present.

Honestly, I do not know whether or not I support the war. I know that it forever changed the life of one of my friends. I know that not many people support it. I know that the President is trying his best to stay the course while Congress is trying its best to get us out of the boat. Regardless, I think that Ron Paul's opinion deserves some attention, and should not be written off, as Giullani did during the most recent Republican debate (May 15, 2007).

I am not in any way trying to justify the terrorist attacks on the United States. I am simply stating that we as Americans often think that we have done nothing wrong and are innocent victims. I am inclined to agree with Paul: we are not innocent victims here; our foreign policy most likely has contributed to the attacks and therefore, have brought us to where we are now.