Tuesday, November 06, 2007

RON PAUL

Raining on the Paul-istinians Fundraising Parade

So Ron Paul's supporters, in a 24 hour period, donated $4.2 million to their man.

That's impressive, no two ways about it. But I have to disagree with my Corner colleague David Freddoso when he says, "among those for whom a sustained Iraq occupation is not a make-or-break issue, Paul's big day is going to win him a second look." How about those for whom a sustained military commitment to Afghanistan is a make-or-break issue? Ron Paul wants the troops home from there, too; he's not merely opposed to the controversial second post-9/11 U.S. military effort; he's opposed to the uncontroversial first one as well. Because it was... "mainly motivated by oil pipelines."

JW: What about Afghanistan? Would you continue the operations there?

RP: No, I would come home, unless there was specific knowledge of where Osama bin Laden was. Then I send out just a small team of people to take care of him.
     I would not maintain the occupation of Afghanistan. That was mainly motivated by oil pipelines and some other things that are never discussed.

JW: Could you elaborate a little bit how oil pipelines were the motivation for going into Afghanistan?

RP: It's been known that certain oil companies were anxious for many, many years to be able to transverse Afghanistan to move natural gas. And that effort is still alive and well.
     Too often, whether it's a pipeline in Afghanistan or control of oil wells in Iraq, oil and economics motivates our national policy much more so than national security.

In the day after the Senate voted to rebuke their "Betray-Us" ad, MoveOn.org raised $500,000. If an organization with that kind of an attack on a man like Petraeus can attact cash like that in a day, I'm less impressed by anybody able to gather cash over the net. Both efforts demonstrate that lot of people will donate money just to extend a middle finger to the establishment.

11/06 08:15 AMShare