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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (109472)	10/7/2007 12:59:15 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Respond to of 132070

KT, By the way, I have one criticism of Paul. Basically, he's for immediate withdrawal. Those that say we can't withdraw immediately suggest the possibility of an all out civil war that kills a million people or more, an expanding war that involves Saudi Arabia and Iran helping opposing sides, Turkey involved with the Kurds, a strongman taking over that exterminates all his political opponents, an Islamist regime forming that allows terrorists and extremists to flourish, all the above causing a major disruption to the free flow of oil which in turn destroys the world economy, a regime hostile to Israel forming etc.... Ron Paul's response is that the same people that lead us into the war are making those predictions. It's a valid point. However, it's not a prediction. He is not firmly saying that they are wrong and everything will turn out OK. He is saying that perhaps their ability to define the probabilities is not so good and we don't belong there anyway. Both are correct. IMO, it's important to make that distinction because there ARE probabilities associated with each and every one of those scenarios, some favorable ones, and probably a few more bad ones no one has thought of. Ignoring them doesn't make them go away. If you weigh those probabilities and make a determination one way or another, you are dealing with reality regardless of which side you wind up on. If your understanding of the situation is limited to "they hate us because we meddle" or "we are there for oil" , that's "partially" true. It's part of the problem (one that many republicans except for Paul refuse to acknowledge), but there are reasons we meddle and severe political and economic risks associated with not meddling that are part of the current landscape (and long have been). You can argue that it took decades of mistakes to maneuver the world into it's dependence on middle east oil and that's why we meddle etc.... but that doesn't change the fact that we are in this situation now. IMO, no one is publicly stepping through the entire thought process required to form an opinion on what to do both short term and long term to avoid all those downside risks now and to eventually eliminate them over time. Not even Paul. Just defining something about the situation that is wrong is not solving it. Also, I see that the Charlie Rose video I linked to is still not available. Everyone should watch that one as soon as it is. It was perhaps his best show ever.