Is Ron Paul as dangerous as Bidinotto claims?

[RTB]

I personally have no problem with the USA having contained Soviet Russia, but it sure screwed up royally doing it.

Part of the resources hired by both the USA and England for this end was a group of high-ranking Nazis in the Islamic world left over from WWII. The USA and England funded spy networks and political efforts for these Nazis in order to combat the Soviets. (At least they changed the name from "Nazi.") We were supposed to hang upper level Nazis, not hire them.

Duh.

My jaw still flies open incredulously when I think about that. Look at the mess this policy has made in the world.

Michael

Now wait a minute, You're mixing apples and oranges, sir. Using 'nazi scientists' is not the same as using nazi idealogy. It's just silly in historic contexts to think that there is some moral contradiction in action between 'hanging upper level nazis' and hiring those that would help us beat a similar threat like Soviet Communism. These people were functionaries, not idealaogues of significant degree.

You're confusing the labels with the actual states as nationalities.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

RTB,

I used to think like you did. Then I researched it. Read some of the following (and also some of the things by Bernard Lewis—not to be confused with the Objectivist John Lewis—in the Mideast forum).

I suggest the following article:

Islamic Terrorism's Links To Nazi Fascism by Robert Duncan

I admit Robert Duncan does lean towards conservatism, but his views in general are well reasoned and professionally researched. From what I have studied of this issue, his historical facts are spot on.

I also admit that the term "Islamo-Nazism" is more accurate, but at this distance from WWII, there is an understandable merging of ideologies.

Here is a site not done by conservatives, but by practicing Muslims, devoted to presenting the history of Nazism and Islamism: Tell the Children the Truth (and a newly added blog).

Here is quite an impressive visual: Islam and Nazism, albeit this site is run by former Muslims who are against Islam as a whole.

That should get you started. But beware. These things can turn your stomach.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

RTB,

Here is another post if you are interested in this subject. (Go to the thread and see the following posts for even more information).

Michael

Dustan,

Last night I spent the good part looking at online video resources for antisemitism in Islamic countries and I came away depressed as all get out. Despite all the rhetoric and pure spiteful hatred on both sides that is prevalent, the antisemitism situation in Islamic Middle East countries is horrible. Just horrible. (And the anti-Muslim racism by many Jews I read certainly doesn't help understanding for outsiders. I came across more than one outsider saying the equivalent of, "You folks are all crazy, every last one of you." That's close to how I felt after looking at this. I am not allowing myself to go there, but it sure is a temptation.)

There are two more-or-less objective sources I want to mention right now—the first giving some historical information on the Nazi connection and the second with respect to Ahmadinejad and some of the Jewish support we are seeing for him, but it mainly concerns Hitler.

Here is the first. I saw a documentary a while back on the Nazi roots of Saddam Hussein and the Baath party. It is called Saddam and the Third Reich and was made for The History Channel. Unfortunately the link I just provided gets you a teaser sample, not the whole documentary. However the blurb is worth repeating here:

Few people realize that the Baath party was actually formed upon the principles and organizational structure of the Nazi party.

Iraq, because of its oil and hatred of Jews, was an important battleground between the Axis and Allied powers in World War II.

Nazi propaganda was broadcast throughout Baghdad, and Iraqis often went on rampages against Jews throughout the war.

One of the most ardent Nazi supporters during WWII was named Khairallah Talfah. Talfah was Saddam's uncle.

After the war, many of the key Iraqi Nazi supporters, all of whom evaded prosecution, wound up involved in Saddam's rise to power.

This special examines the key individuals of the Iraqi-Nazi connection, the little-known battle for Iraq in WWII, and the strange link to Saddam Hussein.

Now this is interesting in itself, but there is a section on You Tube from this film (about 7 minutes) that deals specifically with The Grand Mufti, Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini, and his involvement with the Nazi government.: Adolph Hitler Meets with Arab Muslim Grand Mufti Amin Al Hus

Amin al-Husseini was probably the grandfather of modern fanatical Islamism. (It would be interesting later to see if he ever had a connection with or influence on Sayyid Qutb.) After the Nazis fell, he stayed on in the Muslim world in important places organizing and organizing. All his efforts had antisemitism as a base. There are literally oodles and oodles of antisemitic intellectual garbage left over from him in all kinds of places in the Muslim world.

The most ironic part of the video excerpt is that Amin al-Husseini could not fully enjoy his Nazi privileges until a Nazi physician declared him to be an Anglo Saxon. Until then, he was deemed to be of an inferior race and this was problematic for the Nazis. In other words, he sold out his own heritage (and, essentially, his followers) because of his hatred of Jews.

Here is a highly informative site on him and includes online books provided by Simon Wiesenthal: Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem

(There are several spellings for our dear Grand Mufti.) There is a video on that site from a German TV show about him (with English subtitles) containing old footage. Ahmadinejad even makes an appearance in that video. I found that site really interesting so far.

This Nazi connection is as good a starting point as any for untangling this mess to try to understand it. At least the Nazis are close enough in history where we can still see cause and effect.

I will do the next set of videos on Hitler and fringe Jewish supporters of Ahmadinejad in the next post to keep this bite-sized.

Michael

[RTB]

I still fail to see how hiring Nazi rocket scientists or using ex low level funtionaries as spies against the Soviets did any harm. We still cooperate with unsavory characters today in order to achieve more important ends. It's the spy business not the boy scouts.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I still fail to see how hiring Nazi rocket scientists or using ex low level funtionaries as spies against the Soviets did any harm.

RTB,

It funded radical Islamism.

Radical Islamism grew because it had formal support.

We helped pay for it.

Pretty stupid.

Michael

[Selene]

The "evil" one just got 11% in Iowa, which Huckabe won big.

[Chris Grieb]

Fox wasn't reporting the Ron Paul results so thanks for the info.

Huckabee winning is still bad news but Romney losing show good sense too.

Candidates have won in Iowa and ended up losing the nomination.

I have to add that while I found the Steven Green article good I thought the TIA cover of Ron Paul was over the top.

Edited January 4, 2008 by Chris Grieb

[emb021]

Fox wasn't reporting the Ron Paul results so thanks for the info.

The MSM were pretty much only showed the top 3-4 candidates. Paul came in 5th, however, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place were close (13%, 13%, and 10%, AIR). Guliliani was 6th place with 3%.

[Selene]

Guliani will be in the ABC debate Saturday night, but Paul has been excluded. Also, Wyoming reps are holding their caucus Sat. Jan. 5th and Paul is doing quite well their. This convention could be decided on the floor. I would love that as a political person since I was about ten!

[Chris Grieb]

A brokered GOP convention is a real possibility.

The last major party convention that went more than one ballot for President was 1952. The 1956 Dem convention took two ballots to nominate a vice president.

[Matus1976]

The Soviet Union "controlling most of the worlds resources" ??

What the heck? (trying to be polite). Russia had nothing at the end of WWII except an enormous, starving Red Army in rags and worn out boots. Subtract Lend Lease, the Russian government would have collapsed in 42. Subtract US and British traitors, they had no chance of building nuclear weapons. Subtract Truman and FDR, they would have had no Eastern European loot, no 'empire' as such. Subtract Oxy and Elf, they would have had no oil wells. Subtract the bonehead US-sponsored U.N., they had no access to the world stage. As Rand put it so succinctly, the only truly Russian thing in the world is failure.

This whole line of discussion is boring. I quit.

DeVoon

Again, considering imaginary Wolf Devoon World where everyone did exactly what wolf thought they should have done for the past half century, and everything turned out exactly how Wolf Devoon guessed they would, then yeah, it would have been unecessary for the US, 25, 30, or 50 years later to act to contain soviet communism because somehow, magically, it never even existed in the first place. Indeed, if Britain had listened to Churchill they would have acted to stop the Bolsheviek revolution in Russia and prevented communism from getting a foothold anywhere in the world. Churchill rallied for the allies after world war II to move right into the Soviet Union and get rid of Stalinistic communism as well, everyone called him a war monger and cried for peace, while you anti-interventionist libertarians would have been right thier complaining about 'entangling alliances' while allowed the greatest threat to liberty humanity has ever faced to gain a stronger foot hold. Of course, none of these alternative histories happened, and Soviet Communism did acquire nuclear weapons, it did invade 1/3rd of the nations of the world, Bolshivism did have the EXPLICIT goal of overthrowing every nation in the world, and it did become the single greatest threat to liberty humanity has ever faced.

Could Soviet communism conquer the rest of the world? If it was pacificistic and appeasing, yes. If it fought back, no. But it sure as hell would and did try, and killed almost 200 million people in the process.

So please feel free to bow out, as your comments have been hardly more than petty pandering quips.

[Matus1976]

I personally have no problem with the USA having contained Soviet Russia, but it sure screwed up royally doing it. ...

My jaw still flies open incredulously when I think about that. Look at the mess this policy has made in the world.

Michael

That's an easy Monday Morning quarterbacking assessment to make, Mike, but absent Omniscience you really don't know if you would have done any better. Absent Omnipotence, you would still have to dealth with all the petty backstabbing and corruption that plagued the US and the countries it was involved in, and all the mistakes and misdirections that came from it. Put yourself into the exact same situation, at some particular level of influence, in the context of the era, and ask yourself what decision you would have made in that case, and could you have gotten anyone to follow your decision? Wolf like's to imagine a perfect world where everyone is perfectly Wolfish and everything turns out perfectly Wolfian, but the real world is far more complex and difficult to work in than our 30 second alterna-histories fool us into thinking.

[sjw]

"Is Ron Paul as dangerous as Bidinotto claims?"

No. Bidinotto is off his rocker. There is no reason for a freedom lover not to wholeheartedly support Ron Paul.

Most of what Bidinotto writes of Paul's view is just plain misrepresentation of Paul's position, but Paul's views on terrorism go against the context-dropping statist views on terrorism that are popular in the mainstream and among Objectivists. Objectivists should be worried when their views look almost exactly like those of the mainstream Republicans.

[Matus1976]

It is Bidinotto who engages in the platonic, utopian notion that US government military intervention is necessary for our defense, despite massive historical, economic, and philosophical evidence to the contrary.

Every one of those 'noninterventionist' nations would have been a totalitarian soviet communist hell hole if it werent for the US and its "hundreds of overseas military bases, an arsenal of thousands of nuclear and conventional weapons, a huge active duty and reserve military, and a government that spends more money on its military than the rest of the world combined"

As has been pointed out many times, the GNP of Western Europe greatly exceeded that of the Warsaw Pact nations.

Indeed, I have heard estimates that up to 60% of the GDP of Russia was used in military spending. Considering that today the population which made up the former Soviet Union equal about 6% of the worlds population yet only 3% of the Worlds GDP, while the US alone has about 6% of the Worlds Population and 30% of the Worlds GDP, this seems a reasonable assessment. Economically, the soviet union absolutely could not compete with the US, the SDI program essentially completely bankrupted it. But you don't need to outspend the US to kill a hell of a lot of it's people, you don't need to dominate the worlds GDP in order to brutally enslave and oppress hundreds of millions of people. You act like if the US just curled up and ignored the rest of the world, the Soviet Union would have just imploded on it's own rather peacefully and early on. This is utterly rediculous. Had we not helped South Korea defeat the Chinese Communist backed and Soviet Communist backed invasion from North Korea, the whole Korean penninsula today would be communist, how long before Japan would have been invaded and conquered? Tawain? Shortly there after no doubt the Phillipenes would have been attempted.

As such, Western Europe was quite capable of defending itself against any Soviet invasion. But the nations of Western Europe preferred to have their defense subsidized by the United States, which did subsidize their defense to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, quite unnecessarily.

On this I agree, the US should have always pushed as much as possible for Nations to be able to stand on their own and defend themselves, or at least through allieances with neighboring nations to put up one hell of a fight.

The US also subsidized the defense of wealthy Asian nations such as Japan and South Korea, which had booming economies and were also more than capable of defending themselves but chose to have their defense unnecessarily subsidized by the United States.

Again I agree, to a point. Was South Korea capable of defending itself against North Korea armed by The Soviet Union and Staffed with millions of chinese soldiers? No. But South Korea has been mooching off us for about 30 years too long now.

With the attempted and possibly successful conversion to communism of the Korean penninsula and the Indochina penninsula (halted significantly of course by our arming and helping Vietnam) how long would it have been before India and Pakistan were targeted?

The explicit goal of the Bolshieviek revolution was to overthrow every single non communist nation in the world, and it actively worked toward this goal. The global efforts by the US to contain this spread, where communism has been the single greatest threat to liberty humanity has ever faced, was an absolutely just cause. Whether every individual action was just is debatable, but the overall effort seriously delayed the spreading of communism, made it much more costly in lives and economies than had it not been, and was the right thing to do. Remember, you are suggesting that the US should have NEVER been involved in any of these conflicts, never even supplied military aide to nations fighting against communism, never supported leaders, tyrants or freely elected, in their fight against communism. Absent this global effort of containment by the worlds only superpower, how long do you think it would have seriously taken communism to have engulfed most of the world?

Sure, it would have probably eventually imploded, but may have lasted another hundred years before it did so, and cost hundrends of millions of more lives. This fantasy land where the Soviet Union takes over one or two countries, then shrinks until imploding in a few years, is utterly rediculous and typical of libertarian fantasies.

The Soviet Union was an economic basket case, a third world nation with nuclear weapons. The idea that all of these wealthy nations could not defend themselves against the Soviet Union is ludicrous.

You are suggesting, lest you forget, that no nation ever assist another nation in defending itself against the soviet union. The absolute stupidity of this should be obvious, and the only 'brilliant' strategic advance the Soviet Union need embrace would be to simply invade only one nation at a time. All the while, as these nations fell one after another, as the Soviet Union subjugated millions of more people at each step, instituted counter revolutionary purges and murder quotes, and took control of tremendous additional resources (even though it would use them inneffeciently) you anti-interventionist would be crying every step of the way to 'mind our own busienss' and 'leave them alone'

I never suggested that the Soviet Union would *defeat* the wealthy western nations, they never could as long as the wealthy western nations FOUGHT TOGETHER, which is something you explicitly don't think they ever should have. In that case, conquering one nation at a time would have been easy, what SINGLE western nation in 1950 could stand up to the Soviet Union, besides the US? Answer, none.

Why are US military expenditures at record levels?

Adjusted for inflation this is untrue, at the height of WWII military spending as a percentage of GDP rose to almost 40%. Today is is around 4%

Why isn't the US abanding its overseas military bases, now that the bogeyman of the old Soviet Union no longer exists?

I agree that many should be abandoned, but some are necessary to fight the greatest threat human liberty now faces, Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism.

Could it be that no bureaucracy will ever stand for being shrunk, including the huge bureaucracy that is the US military-industrial complex?

No doubt partially true.

Or do we really need to spend all of those hundreds of billions of dollars defending ourselves against "Islamo-fascist" nations that are even worse economic basket cases than the old Soviet Union?

Martin, do you primarily judge the threat something poses purely by it's economic status? Do you guage an attacker yielding a gun as less of a threat if he appears poor than if he appears wealthy?

Rapid technological growth has allowed more and more people to be killed with fewer and fewer resources, a nation can be an 'economic basket case' yet still easily kill millions of people. In the future a single person will be able to kill millions of people.

[sjw]

<snip>

The best way to promote freedom is to actually practice it. The USA doesn't anymore. America is the biggest threat to the spread of freedom throughout the world, because its own citizens are killing it from within.

[Matus1976]

There is no reason for a freedom lover not to wholeheartedly support Ron Paul.

As a "Freedom Lover" I love freedom so much that I extend that same basic courtesy to all people of the world. Paul, like most libertarians, couldnt give a shit about freedom as a philosophical principle, only as something pragmatic that he and a few others adopt and get to enjoy. His Foreign policy (which consists of having no policy) is idiotic, and if it had been adopted throughout this century, we would today be living in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Amerika, where people like Paul, and all of his supporters, would have been killed as counter revolutionaries years ago. There has never been a greater threat to human liberty and freedom than Soviet Communism. Today the largest threat it faces is Islamic Terrorism and the incompetance and aggresion of totaliarian states.

[sjw]

There is no reason for a freedom lover not to wholeheartedly support Ron Paul.

As a "Freedom Lover" I love freedom so much that I extend that same basic courtesy to all people of the world.

"I extend that courtesy" is a euphemism for forcing others to value what you value. Your position is a contradiction.

What we should extend is the freedom of people to immigrate here--after we have ended the welfare state.

Shayne

[Matus1976]

<snip>

The best way to promote freedom is to actually practice it. The USA doesn't anymore. America is the biggest threat to the spread of freedom throughout the world, because its own citizens are killing it from within.

Now *that* is funny.

By what standard are you measuring "freedom"?

Freedom house (www.freedomhouse.org) ranks, politically, the US with it's highest scores along with some 30 other nations.

The Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom (http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/) ranks the US in the top 10 economically free nations on the planet. (http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/topten.cfm) Hong Kong is #1

Where do you rank it? Why? What are your standards? Where is North Korea? Burma? Laos? Iran?

[Matus1976]

What we should extend is the freedom of people to immigrate here--after we have ended the welfare state.

Shayne

I agree with that.

Tell me in what why Ron Paul will act to promulgate the freedom of other people in the world? This is not just a humanitarian issue, non-free nations start all the wars, cause all the famines, will be the source of the spread of international contagions because of their pathetic health care infrastructures and oppressive policies, and will breed the murderous terrorists of the world because of their totalitarian brain washing and economic oppression.

[BaalChatzaf]

"I extend that courtesy" is a euphemism for forcing others to value what you value. Your position is a contradiction.

What we should extend is the freedom of people to immigrate here--after we have ended the welfare state.

Shayne

What if a half billion decide to show up at the same time? Read -Camp of the Saints- by Jean Raspaille.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[sjw]

What if a half billion decide to show up at the same time? Read -Camp of the Saints- by Jean Raspaille.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I'd institute a transition plan, I wouldn't just open the borders one day. I'd phase out entitlements gradually and open borders gradually. If new problems emerged during the transition I'd identify and mitigate them. Eventually though there can be no justification for prohibiting someone from immigrating here.

Shayne

[Wolf DeVoon]

What if a half billion decide to show up at the same time? Read -Camp of the Saints- by Jean Raspaille.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I'd institute a transition plan, I wouldn't just open the borders one day. I'd phase out entitlements gradually and open borders gradually. If new problems emerged during the transition I'd identify and mitigate them. Eventually though there can be no justification for prohibiting someone from immigrating here.

Shayne

I'm not convinced that half a billion people can afford to fly here and demonstrate adequate funds to sustain themselves for 90 days, which seem like reasonable requirements for entry. Refugees would have to be sponsored by charitable groups on the same basis. Literacy and health tests might be another requirement. So we have a few hundred million more noses. Do wonders for the property market, banks, lawyers, and private security agencies.

I vote yes.

Edited January 7, 2008 by Wolf DeVoon

[sjw]

<snip>

The best way to promote freedom is to actually practice it. The USA doesn't anymore. America is the biggest threat to the spread of freedom throughout the world, because its own citizens are killing it from within.

Now *that* is funny.

By what standard are you measuring "freedom"?

Freedom house (www.freedomhouse.org) ranks, politically, the US with it's highest scores along with some 30 other nations.

The Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom (http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/) ranks the US in the top 10 economically free nations on the planet. (http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/topten.cfm) Hong Kong is #1

Where do you rank it? Why? What are your standards? Where is North Korea? Burma? Laos? Iran?

In no particular order: The war on drugs, the IRS taking about half of your income every year, social security and welfare, the federal reserve, antitrust laws, public education, zoning regulations prohibiting running all manner of businesses, taxes and prohibitions on alcohol and tobacco, ... I could go on and on.

This is not a free country, not even close. You have to be quite brainwashed to think otherwise. The best we can tout is free speech. Freedom of speech is a lot, but it is not freedom, and it means zilch if you're too brainwashed to exercise it except in defense of the status quo.

Shayne

[sjw]

Tell me in what why Ron Paul will act to promulgate the freedom of other people in the world?

First and foremost, I believe that setting the example is the most important thing. I have no doubt that if America was actually free and hadn't been violating its founding premises for 100 years that we'd have long ago spread freedom throughout the world. We act proud of being American etc. but we should be ashamed of being the hypocritical nation that had freedom and gave it up.

Since you evidently believe in forcing people to be free I'm not sure how to answer your question, but I will make another point. Communist China seems to be getting more free simply from trading with them. We didn't threaten them, we just gave them the chance to trade with us.

Perhaps what we should be talking about here is the mistaken premise that America should be forcibly be spreading freedom throughout the world. There is perhaps no worse foreign policy than that. It's a contradiction on its face and--at best--turns the government into some sort of charity rather than being a protector of its citizens.

Shayne

[Wolf DeVoon]

Right on, Shayne. Trading with China was beneficial to China. However, it came at a steep price.

See America's inflated asset prices must fall

It is absolutely imperative to get US government out of the fiat money business, kill the Fed, precisely as Ron Paul rightly argues. Possibility of doing that is zero. I'm not sure that half-measures will avail. We're screwed -- and China is five times stronger as a result.

W.