[Peace-discuss] Ron Paul

[Brussel]

 From http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm? 
SectionID=90&ItemID=14678

Titled Ron Paul-Is Being Against the War Enough?
by Ron Jacobs

The last line is the kicker.

…The solution Ron Paul appears to provide is inviting if for no other  
reason than its sheer simplicity.  Vote for Paul in the GOP primaries  
and get him into the presidential race.  Then elect him president.   
Then he will end the war.  That alone is reason enough for many  
fervent (and not-so-fervent) anti-warriors.  Hell, a half-dozen of my  
old leftie friends are seriously considering the idea and I have to  
admit there are times it even appeals to me.  After all, not too many  
other candidates have consistently opposed allowing electronic  
surveillance without a warrant or continuing intelligence gathering  
without civil oversight.  Even fewer said of the 2001 attack on  
Afghanistan while connecting it to Unocal's desire to build a gas  
pipeline through the country:  “The terrorist enemy is no more an  
entity than the "mob"or some international criminal gang. It  
certainly is not a country, nor is it the Afghan people....  The  
Afghan people did nothing to deserve another war.”

However, I can’t give my vote to Mr. Paul.  I can’t ignore the  
repercussions of the libertarian capitalism Mr. Paul espouses,  
especially in a world where corporate monopolies have been ruling the  
market for over a hundred years and, by doing so, have made any  
possibility of a free, much less fair, market absolutely impossible.   
I can’t ignore his musings about preventing people from so-called  
terrorist countries from visiting the United States.  I can’t ignore  
his yes votes on building a fence along the Mexican border, or his  
vote against tipping off immigrants about the Minuteman Project, or  
on reporting undocumented residents who receive hospital treatment.   
Furthermore, his calls to find and deport every person living in the  
United States with an invalid (or no) visa and to end the  
constitutionally guaranteed citizenship of every person born in the  
United States are just plain wrong and would increase the police  
state he claims to oppose.   I can't ignore his votes against  
restricting employer interference in union organizing or his  
opposition to increasing the minimum wage.  I couldn’t ignore Ronald  
Reagan or George Bush’s fundamentally anti-labor positions and I  
won’t ignore Mr. Paul’s.  Nor can I ignore Mr. Paul's position  
against women's reproductive choice.  His vote to ban gay adoptions  
in DC ticks me off as does his vote against continuing the   
moratorium on drilling for oil offshore, his vote for continuing  
military recruitment on college campuses, and his support for the  
Star Wars weaponry plan (SDI).

What the support for Ron Paul among potentially progressive voters  
signifies to me is the failure of today’s left to enunciate an anti- 
imperialist position better than that put forth by the libertarian  
right.  This is not a new phenomenon in US history.  Indeed, some of  
the members of the Anti-Imperialist League of the late nineteenth  
century were much closer to the Ron Paul philosophy than anything  
Marx, Lenin, or Luxembourg ever wrote.  This is not necessarily  
because that philosophy is a better one, but it is certainly better  
received in a capitalist nation like the US.  The most positive thing  
I can pull out of the Ron Paul phenomenon is that the people of the  
United States want something radically different.  In a capitalist  
society, radical capitalism is as far as many folks will go--and  
that's essentially what libertarianism is.

But, say the supporters of Paul who consider themselves progressive  
or left, he has promised to end the war.  My immediate response is,  
so have Kucinich and Mike Gravel, so why not lend them your support?   
At least on the slight chance they got elected they wouldn’t want to  
turn the country into a greater paradise for predatory capitalism  
than it already is.  My more thoughtful response is that nothing— 
especially nothing as important as ending the occupation of Iraq and  
Afghanistan—can be solved simply by voting another face into the  
White House.  Getting rid of the current one and replacing him with  
someone who has at least expressed a desire to end those adventures  
is certainly a step in the right direction, but only a widespread and  
mobilized movement willing to use a multitude of tactics is going to  
accomplish that.  On the other hand, do I think it’s the end of the  
world if Ron Paul gets your vote (or gets elected)?  Of course not.   
In fact, a vote for Ron Paul is certainly a better use of the  
franchise than a vote for almost any of the other candidates  
currently running.  For better or worse.
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