Tag Archives: israel

The big, dumb empire stumbles back into the Middle East

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“You asked for miracles, I give you the F.B.I.” So said Hans Gruber, one of the greatest movie villains of all time, played to perfection by the late Alan Rickman. Gruber and his gang are thieves posing as terrorists and need to defeat an electromagnetic lock protecting hundreds of millions of dollars in securities. Although they are unable to do so themselves, Gruber tells his hacker, Theo, not to worry.

What does Gruber know that Theo does not? He knows the U.S. federal government and what local cop Al Johnson calls their “universal terrorist playbook.” The F.B.I. arrives on the scene of the supposed terrorist hostage situation and immediately orders a reluctant city employee to shut down power for ten square blocks of Los Angeles in order to cut off power to the target building. The worker complies and power to the building and the electromagnetic lock protecting the securities is cut off.

One can’t help but laugh as the criminals gleefully charge into the vault to the tune of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But it is no laughing matter that this is a perfect metaphor for U.S. foreign policy in general, and Middle Eastern policy in particular.

In the mid-1990s, Osama bin Laden effectively said the same thing as Gruber. Knowing he could never invade or otherwise fight the United States in its own hemisphere, he said he intended instead to provoke the U.S. into invading the Middle East where it could be defeated in a war or attrition, just as he and his fellow Mujahideen had previously defeated the Soviets. That provocation came on September 11, 2001.

It is unclear if Bin Laden was actually involved in the attacks. But they were certainly carried out by likeminded people and Bin Laden had no problem with allowing Americans to assume he was the mastermind. The attacks did just what Bin Laden hoped they would do – get the U.S. to run the “universal terrorist playbook,” meaning going to war in the Middle East where its soldiers could be killed more easily, and its finances drained.

Twenty-three years later, the big, dumb U.S. empire hasn’t learned a thing. In those two decades, federal government debt has skyrocketed from less than $6 trillion to over $30 trillion. Interest on the debt alone is now over $1 trillion per year. And what have American taxpayers, present and future, received for this enormous expenditure? The Taliban has been replaced with the Taliban. Iraq now has a Shiite government that is allied closely with Iran – the same Iran whose “influence in the region” Washington constantly warns against. Libya now has the most vibrant slave trade in African history.

The real tragedy here is success or failure in any of these endeavors doesn’t affect the lives of people living in the United States one way or another. It’s just a giant rip off that funnels trillions to connected defense contractors while allowing lifelong bureaucrats in the Administrative and Deep States to continue in the delusion that they’re running the world when instead they’re running the U.S. into the ground.

“Big Johnson” from Die Hard exemplifies these would be masters of the universe perfectly. He displays the precise combination of unbridled arrogance and cluelessness as he condescends to the local rubes while being played like a fiddle by Gruber as do the Tony Blinkens and Victoria Nulands of real-world D.C. Every faction in the Middle East has played the empire for its own ends while the empire stumbles around the region like a drunk looking for a brawl. Both Israel and its regional enemies have done so, often simultaneously. So have Washington’s supposed Islamic allies. The empire sees itself as James Bond; in reality its more like Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Puppies and pretty girls beware.

Read the rest at Tom’s Substack…

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

An “Anti-Celtic” on the Empire’s New War in Israel

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Just as it was becoming impossible to deny the empire’s proxy war in Ukraine is lost, along comes another one.

How convenient.

Of course, we heard the usual pronouncements from U.S. politicians about their commitment to “our close ally Israel,” meaning their commitment to send billions of dollars to them, most of which will be spent with American defense contractors.

Anyone familiar with my writing over the past two decades can probably guess my position: no, not a penny. However, I also expressed my opposition to the empire dictating to Israel about how to respond. That’s the real reason for the foreign aid, besides enriching defense contractors. The empire buys compliance with its wishes.

For expressing these opinions, I was immediately called “antisemitic” on social media. If the source of this smear was the shrieking neocon harpy, Nikki Haley, or anyone of her ilk, I wouldn’t even bother to respond. But since some of this is coming from friends, both of the real world and social media variety, I thought I would write about this from a personal perspective.

I consider myself first and foremost an American. But like every American who ever lived, including “native Americans” [sic], my ancestors came from other countries. As you may have surmised from my surname, the ancestors on my father’s side came from Ireland.

So, how could an Irish American possibly understand having your country violently attacked by terrorists? Those of you with historical knowledge beyond three weeks ago are already chuckling. For the rest, Ireland was embroiled in a violent civil war for a large part of the 20th century. A religiously inspired, non-governmental paramilitary group launched frequent terrorist attacks on both government officials and civilians alike. They assassinated people. They kidnapped people. They bombed parades. You may remember a U2 song about one such incident. Good tune.

Peace was finally established in the 1990s, before I had formed much of a political philosophy. But were it still going on today, I would oppose any aid by the U.S. government to either side of the dispute and any U.S. intervention into the internal affairs of Ireland.

I suppose that makes me “anti-Celtic” to the terminally limbic currently parroting the empire’s “antisemitic” slur against me or anyone else who opposes U.S. involvement in the current conflict in Israel.

Let me say for the record that I do not hate my fellow Irishmen. That does not follow from my mere opposition to taxing Americans to subsidize them. Nor does my criticism of the Irish government’s abysmal Covid policies translate to hatred for the Irish people. One would think this goes without saying. Apparently, it doesn’t.

I can imagine there are some who consider my analogy a poor one. After all, Ireland is a “western” country of “white people” and can’t compare to what the Israelis are facing in the Middle East. While I don’t share that view, I will respond to it.

Perhaps I’ve buried the lede, but my mother’s ancestors came from Lebanon. Specifically, they were part of the Maronite Christian majority of that country before large influxes of Palestinian Muslims in 1948 and 1967. Some of my mother’s ancestors had already come to America to escape Ottoman rule before WWI. Her own parents came in the late 1920s after a financial crisis cleaned out my industrialist grandfather. But many are still there.

Beirut was once called, “The Paris of the Middle East.” It was a breathtakingly beautiful city in a country with a 5,000-year history of advanced civilization. It was all but destroyed by the same people the Israelis are fighting today.

I have relatives who were killed or displaced during the bloody civil war that raged in Lebanon 1975-90. Violence continues in Lebanon to this day thanks to the presence of Islamic paramilitary groups like Hezbollah (which is also a political party). It is not an exaggeration to say that Lebanon’s and Israel’s problems are virtually identical.

Still, I disapprove of the previous U.S. interventions in Lebanon and would oppose any new subsidies or interventions there in the future, even if ostensibly to rid Lebanon of the violent fanatics who have destroyed it. This doesn’t mean I hate my fellow Lebanese any more than I hate the Irish or the Jews, for that matter. It’s simply a political position. And it’s the right one, for several reasons.

First, I am in a political relationship (whether I like it or not) with 330 million or so other Americans, most of whom do not have familial relationships with people in Ireland or Lebanon. Said political relationship does not give me the right to force them to defend the countries of my ancestors any more than it gives them the right to do likewise to me.

I would consider it especially bad behavior on my part to try to shame other Americans into involving themselves in the affairs of other countries because I happen to have relatives there. And it would be foolhardy of them to allow me to do so.

Second, we already have quite a bit of data on the results of U.S. interventions in the Middle East and those data are not difficult to interpret. Every intervention has been an unmitigated disaster, without exception yielding results precisely opposite of the stated goals. Every. Single. One. And in return for this long train of debacles, American taxpayers have received nothing but $30 trillion in debt and an economy disproportionately skewed towards producing weapons of war that add nothing to their quality of life.

There is no reason to believe it’s going to be any different this time.

Lastly, for those naïve enough to believe the U.S. government’s involvement in this affair is humanitarian or based on any sympathy for the Jewish people, it isn’t. This is pure imperial politics, nothing more. The empire wishes to maintain its hegemony and this conflict will help it do that. It never stopped fighting the Cold War against Russia, despite the fall of the USSR.

Operating under the “Whoever controls Eurasia controls the world” thesis, the empire has done everything it can to keep Russia from establishing economic relationships with Europe or the Middle East. Thus the “humanitarian” regime-change operations in Syria and Ukraine throughout this century, in countries which “coincidentally” are home to Russia’s only warm water ports on this side of the world.

This is also the reason for the disproportionate hatred of Iran. Were Iran and Syria to form a “Shiite corridor” in the Middle East, Russia would have an opportunity to exert enormous influence in the region. That the Iraq War made this corridor far more possible by handing Iraq to the Iran-friendly Shiites is proof that the empire can be both evil and stupid at the same time.

Were Russia still supplying Europe with most of its energy through the Nordstream pipelines, the empire’s control over Eurasia would be seriously threatened.

So, the empire badgered the Russians into invading Ukraine and now has a proxy war in the Middle East to, at the very least, keep that region in a state of chaos, making it difficult for Russia (or China) to strengthen relationships there.

It’s also an opportunity for another large scale rip off of the American taxpayer. Notice that the media are already preparing the American public that this will be a “long war” that will require America’s full support. Translation: we’re about to lose Ukraine as a funding vehicle and we’re going to pivot back to the Middle East.

The empire will send billions to Israel because it wants Israel to respond to the Hamas attack in a way that will benefit the empire, not the Israeli or American people.

This not a binary choice between U.S. support or the destruction of Israel as a nation. Israel is a rich country with a modern military, including over 200 nuclear warheads. It could crush the Palestinians in Gaza in a single day and is capable of defeating every hostile nation in the region.

The empire doesn’t want that. It wants its “long war,” meaning years of funding, with complicated rules of engagement for the Israelis so that everyone can tell themselves the lie that they are not killing civilians. Meanwhile the empire can go on sucking the lifeblood out of both Israeli and American taxpayers for the benefit of its corporate partners.

One might be tempted to think it is at least a good thing that the empire restrains Israel. After all, no one wants to see the whole region turned to glass, no matter how heinous the attacks on Israel may have been.

Neither does Israel. When the war is over and the enemy defeated, Israel still has to go on existing in the region. It does them no good to create a desert around their country. Absent U.S. involvement, Israel would have to tailor its response to its consequences. It must do enough to eliminate the threat, if possible, while not going so far as to alienate the rest of the region.

Contrary to neocon talking points, Israel is not “surrounded by enemies bent on its destruction.” Egypt tried to warn Israel about the Hamas attack. Its government has no more love for the Palestinians than Israel does. Much progress has been made between Israel and its Muslim neighbors in the past decade. It is not in Israel’s nor its neighbors’ interests to return to 1967.

It is not in American taxpayers’ interest to be involved in this conflict. Americans are constantly told Israel is a “key ally” but are never told how they benefit from this alliance. They don’t. The empire benefits. And like every other empire in human history, its interests run contrary to those of its citizens.

Like Great Britain before it, America became the richest country in the world with a limited government and a free market economy. Also like Great Britain, it is bankrupting itself trying to maintain a global empire. Adding a proxy war in Israel to the debacle in Ukraine might just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back (no pun intended).

That’s not antisemitic. It’s anti-suicide.

Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

U.S. Foreign Policy: 100 Years of Failure

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TAMPA, November 19, 2012 — An Iraqi diplomat has called upon other Arab oil producers to “use oil as a weapon” against the United States. Fox News reports this as if it should come as a surprise.

“The shocking statement from a democratic government in power only after the U.S. and allies ousted murderous dictator Saddam Hussein in a costly and bloody war laid bare the Middle Eastern nation’s true allegiance,” reports Fox.

The detachment from reality exhibited by news organizations like Fox and Americans in general is stunning. Americans actually believe that Iraqis should be grateful that the United States invaded their country, destroyed their infrastructure, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and made homeless refugees of millions more.

They also believe that after deposing a relatively westernized dictator and putting the Shia majority in power, the resulting government would not seek to retaliate against U.S. support for Israel.

This is by no means an isolated incident. It is a recurring theme. Contrary to official myth, U.S. foreign policy has been a failure for the past 100 years, virtually without exception.

We’re constantly told that the United States has a “special role” in the world, due to its status as sole superpower and the role it has played over the past century “defending freedom.” This is pure delusion.

A small percentage of Americans are vaguely aware that Osama bin Laden did not create Al Qaeda (Arabic for “the base”). It was started in Pakistan by Sheik Abdullah Azzam with CIA support. According to veteran reporter Eric Margolis,

“I know this because I interviewed Azzam numerous times at al-Qaida HQ in Peshawar while covering the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. Azzam set up al-Qaida, which means “the base” in Arabic, to help CIA and Saudi-financed Arab volunteers going to fight in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. In those days, the west hailed them as “freedom fighters,” writes Margolis.

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

President Obama: Staying out of Gaza conflict your biggest test

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TAMPA, November 16, 2012 – Dear President Obama,

Push may be coming to shove in Israel. There is only so long that one side can tolerate rockets being fired into its territory and the other can tolerate living under martial law imposed by a foreign power. The whole world hopes for a diplomatic solution, but one side or both may insist upon war.

If it comes to that, then you will face the biggest test of your presidency. Under enormous pressure to do otherwise, the right decision will be to do nothing.

The government you run is bankrupt and the nation is weary of war, especially the pointless kind we’ve waged in the Middle East over the past decade. History will eventually judge both of those wars U.S. defeats. A mighty empire invaded a third world backwater and was eventually expelled by guerilla “freedom fighters” defending their homeland. It’s an old story, but apparently neither voters nor world leaders learn much from history.

For now, the U.S. can declare victory in Afghanistan and withdraw and only good can come of that. What we cannot afford, economically or from a national security standpoint is to go right back into the Middle East, this time with world war a very real possibility.

There is already some speculation that a major offensive by Israel into Gaza may merely be a warm-up for a war with Iran. That may or may not be the Israeli government’s intention, but no rational person can deny that the situation has enormous potential to go there. At that point, it will be more important than ever to adopt the foreign policy that 24 consecutive U.S. presidents said was what made our nation wealthy and powerful: nonintervention.

U.S. citizens have been badgered for a decade with the tired argument that history has taught us not to “appease” a dictator. First Saddam Hussein and now Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been the latest Hitler. Appease them, we are told, and they will not stop until they take over the world. Of course, no one stops to ask the obvious question: With what?

Let’s talk about Hitler and what we learned from history. Chamberlain’s infamous agreement is rather late in the game to pick up the story. Let’s rewind back to Hitler’s rise to power. It could never have happened without the economic hardship Germans suffered as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. That one-sided treaty would never have been signed had the U.S. not entered WWI and turned a stalemate that all countries wanted a way out of into a decisive Allied victory.

Sound familiar? It should, although there is a major difference here. Any war between Israel and either the Palestinians or Iranians – or even both of them together – would not be a stalemate. It would be a decisive Israeli victory that might lead to a lasting peace, if all of the players understand that they are on their own.

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

God is a non-interventionist

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As technology has advanced and the world has “grown smaller,” it has become increasingly evident that little miracles don’t really happen. By “little miracles,” I mean people levitating, disappearing, parting seas, or making the sun stop in the sky. If they did occur, we’d be watching them on You Tube. But they don’t. That’s a good thing, because it leaves us less distracted from the real miracles: that we are here, that we live in a universe governed by natural laws that explain the world around us and that we have been blessed with reason to discover those laws.

In addition to the natural, physical laws that cause the planets to rotate around their stars and the plants to photosynthesize sunlight, there are also natural, moral laws. Like the physical laws, we are able to discover these by reason. First, we gather facts that we can observe directly with our senses. We then use reason to draw conclusions from those facts.

One observation we have made is that all human beings are created equal. No, they aren’t all the same color, height, shape, or sex. They don’t all run as fast or play the piano as well. There is a wonderful diversity to human life in that no two human beings are exactly alike. Yet, there is nothing so different about any one human being that gives him any innate right to exercise authority over another. In that respect, we are all truly equal.

From that observation, we can draw the conclusion that comprises the most basic, fundamental moral law of nature. As John Locke put it,

““The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions…”

Reason also leads us to the conclusions that life is good, that whatever promotes life is good, and that whomever or whatever created life, the world around us and the natural laws that govern it must also be good. Some people explain the miracle from a purely scientific point of view. We are here simply because certain materials interacted with others and started a chain reaction. Where those materials came from they do not know. Others insist that it is the work of not only a sentient being, but a loving God.

However, the latter group has always faced a philosophical dilemma. How could a loving God allow terrible things to happen to innocent people? How could he allow atrocities committed by humans, such as those by Stalin, Hitler, or Pol Pot? How could he allow natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis to kill thousands of innocent people, when he has the power to prevent them?

The only answer most of us are ever given is “It’s a mystery.” Indeed it is, but that isn’t very satisfying. We’ve been endowed by this creator with a natural curiosity about the nature of our existence. This compels us to ask “Why?” While no one can give a definitive answer, I’d like to suggest one that fits the facts. God is a non-interventionist.

What does that mean? It means that God does not override his own natural laws in order to prevent some of their consequences. Imagine if he did? At any given time, a good percentage of the nearly 7 billion people who inhabit this planet are asking him to violate the most fundamental natural law of cause and effect. Were he to grant even a small percentage of those requests, we would live in a chaotic world that would be impossible to understand or predict. One could not even know for sure that the next step would take one forward instead of backward. No human progress would be possible.

Similarly, God does not override the decisions of men, even if it would save lives or prevent suffering. That was the whole point of the Genesis story, wasn’t it? While Adam and Eve were in the garden, they did not know the difference between good and evil. There was no suffering, but no real joy either. God did not want robots that did his will merely because he programmed them to do it. He wanted sentient beings that would choose to do his will. In order to choose to do his will, they had to have the ability to choose not to. That has never changed.

So, God has the power to prevent suffering, but chooses not to because to override man’s free will or the immutable laws of nature would be worse. He has already provided everything necessary for human beings to live in peace, happiness and prosperity.  We need only use our reason to discover the natural laws, to continue to understand them better, and to follow them.

The United States is right now the most powerful nation on earth. Whether that will be true in fifty years, we do not know. However, today its government has the power to intervene in the affairs of almost any other nation. Often, there is the temptation to use this awesome power to intervene between a dictator and his people or between an aggressor nation and an ally. When have the consequences of intervention ever been better than those of non-intervention would have been? Never.

Yet, we continue to intervene in a most ungodly way, with those who claim to be most devoted to God exhorting us most vociferously. When will we ever learn?

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

Non-Aggression Is Not Pacifism (Libertarians Hit Back)

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Heading into “Super Tuesday,” many conservatives lament that they do not like any of the remaining Republican candidates for president. Romney is too moderate, Gingrich too much a “Washington insider,” and Santorum both an insider and a guaranteed loser against Obama thanks to his willingness to bare his soul about some of his more outlandish socially conservative views.

That leaves Ron Paul, who would seem to be the ideal conservative candidate. Paul’s Plan to Restore America actually cuts $1 trillion from the federal budget in his first year as president, including eliminating the Department of Education that Ronald Reagan promised to abolish.

Paul is the only candidate that actually disagrees with President Obama in principle on “spreading the wealth around.” Paul doesn’t just nibble a few pennies away from financially insignificant welfare programs. He actually has a funded plan to let young people opt out of Medicare and Social Security. This is really a plan to responsibly end these programs. Government-mandated programs only survive because people are forced to participate. If conservatives really do oppose socialism, they should agree with Paul on this. Where do they think Social Security got its name?

For a large group of conservatives, they are with Paul right up until he explains his foreign policy. Suddenly, not only does the courtship end, they stop taking calls and change their phone numbers. That’s unfortunate because most conservatives make this decision upon a completely distorted view of Paul’s foreign policy.

Read the rest at The Daily Caller…

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

 

[1] Jefferson, Thomas Letter to Francis Walker Gilmer June 7, 1816 from The Works of Thomas Jefferson edited by Paul Leicester Ford G.P. Putnam’s Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press 1905  pg. 533-34

Ron Paul Is Dangerous? Americans Must Start Thinking for Themselves

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American politics in the 21st century is about soundbytes, image, and spin. That’s the only way for candidates to try to reach 300 million people in the time that they will likely be in front of them on any given day. For some candidates, the soundbyte is the length and breadth of their views on the issue. For others, that is not necessarily true. In any case, the issues that they speak to are issues of substance and there is no way to form an opinion about them unless you think them through.  That might seem like stating the obvious, but here’s the rub: almost no one is thinking about issues that could profoundly affect all of us for the rest of our lives.

What most Americans are doing is repeating the soundbytes and buzz words that they hear from talking heads as if they were indisputable fact. Maybe some of them are. Maybe some are not. What is crucial is that every individual think about them critically. That means challenging the veracity of those statements and determining for yourself if they stand up to the most vigorous intellectual attack that you can mount against them.

Ron Paul’s opponents use soundbytes to discredit him and Ron Paul does likewise. He has accused Newt Gingrich of “serial hypocrisy” and accused all of his opponents collectively of being “shitzus” on cutting spending. No one should accept those allegations as true without looking into the evidence for and against them and determining for himself whether or not they are true. Part of that process must be the intellectual exercise of taking the position that they are not true and saying to Ron Paul, “Prove it. Newt Gingrich is not a hypocrite just because you said he was in a 30-second TV ad. Where is your proof? I’ll consider it and get back to you.”

I recently had a conversation with an acquaintance of mine as we prepared for a class that we take together. He asked me who I was supporting for the Republican nomination and I said that I was supporting Ron Paul. He immediately smiled and said that Ron Paul was too “crazy” for him. Not one to go on the attack just because someone disagrees with me, I calmly replied, “I hear that a lot. Which of his policies do you think are too crazy?”

I was not surprised by the blank stare that I received in response. That was followed by some stammering and searching for an answer. He finally said that it was Ron Paul’s stance on regulations. I asked, “Which regulatory issues do you disagree with him on?” More of the same stammering and searching and finally the answer was “Well, I haven’t caught up on the issues this time around yet, but I remember hearing him talk about a regulation a while back. I can’t remember which one.”

Out of the tens of thousands of pages of federal regulation, he had heard Ron Paul’s views on one of them and had concluded that he was crazy. Not misinformed. Not wrong. Not even very, very wrong. Crazy. Does that sound like a reasonable conclusion to you?

Let’s be honest. This gentleman just made up the whole “stance on regulations” answer to cover for the fact that he had no answer. He had no idea why he thought Ron Paul was crazy. He had heard it on television in a five second soundbyte, had accepted it as true without even four seconds of critical thought, and was now repeating it to other people who for the most part will do likewise.

However, the “Ron Paul is crazy” narrative is losing its effectiveness. It is getting harder and harder for his opponents to make that charge stick. After predicting the stock market crash of 1987 four years in advance and predicting the housing market collapse five years in advance, Ron Paul has emerged as the only candidate who is not crazy by Albert Einstein’s definition (doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result).

So Paul’s opponents need a new buzz word. I’m sure you’ve heard it. Ron Paul is now “dangerous.” Not wrong. Not very, very wrong. Not even “crazy” anymore. Now he’s dangerous. That’s an extraordinary claim. I can’t say that I remember it ever being used against another politician. I don’t remember any politician being called “dangerous” during the Cold War, when the Russians had 40,000 nuclear weapons pointed at every major American city. But that is the word that Paul’s opponents use to describe him now. One should immediately wonder why.

Of course you have heard this word repeated by every journalist and talking head as if it were true just because some enterprising young campaign staffer put it out as a talking point. That is fine. That is how the game is played. What is important is that you don’t immediately believe it just because you heard it on television, even if you heard it from a lot of people. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not. You have to at least challenge the claim before you decide.

The new “dangerous” tag is based upon the argument that Ron Paul will not preemptively bomb or invade Iran to try to stop them from developing a nuclear weapon. His political opponents (including the other Republicans and Barack Obama) uniformly state that “We cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”  The establishment candidates also assert that Iran will have a nuclear weapon as early as a year from now. That means that whatever the U.S. government is going to do about it must happen now.

Q. What exactly is the danger of electing this man? A. He will “allow” Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

Q. What can the United States do to stop another nation from developing a nuclear weapon? A. Bomb or invade them immediately and destroy their capacity to build it.

Q. What if Ron Paul was president and Iran did develop a nuclear weapon? What would happen next?

Here is where most people completely shut down and stop thinking. The standard answer is that Iran will “wipe Israel off the map” or, even more irrationally, that they will “take out an American city.” Now, I know why Ron Paul’s political opponents say those things and we’ll get to that in a minute. What I’m concerned with is this: How could any rational, average American believe them?

Let’s say that Iran does indeed develop a nuclear weapon by January 2013. They would still be decades away from an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the United States. However, they may be able to use it against Israel. What happens next?

Nuclear weapons are a terrible thing. I think that most people wish that they didn’t exist. I know I do. But let’s acknowledge reality. Iran could not “wipe Israel off the map” (something Ahmadinejad NEVER EVEN SAID, by the way) with one nuclear weapon. They could kill a lot of people. On the other hand, Israel has 200-300 nuclear weapons. They could wipe Iran off the map and would do so the minute that Iran launched their missile. Every square inch of Iran would be incinerated before Iran’s nuclear missile ever reached Israel, if it got there at all. That is a fact that no reasonable person could dispute. That’s without even broaching the subject of what would happen to Iran if they showed any sign of aggression toward the United States. Think about it. To say that Iran is a danger to Israel or the United States is crazy.

That raises another question. If it indeed is crazy that Iran could ever threaten either the United States or Israel, why would so many politicians and talking heads be saying it? Could it possibly be that these politicians have something to gain if the United States goes to war with Iran?

Is it possible that politicians, supported by military contractors and financial institutions that together make trillions of dollars on these wars at your expense are saying this because they want to keep making more money? Or is it more likely that even though these people will “just happen” to profit immensely from a war with Iran, that they are both sincere and correct that Iran with one nuclear bomb is a threat to Israel and the United States, that between them have tens of thousands?

Ron Paul has argued that the war rhetoric today about Iran is identical to the war rhetoric about Iraq in 2002-2003. Is he right? Aren’t the same people who told us that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction” telling us the same thing now about Iran? Aren’t all of the same elements of the argument about Iraq present in the arguments for war with Iran? They are evil. They want to destroy Israel. They are developing weapons of mass destruction. There is even the same time limit. “They may have one as early as a year from now.” That’s just what they told us about Saddam Hussein. There is no time to think it over. Within a year there will be a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv, possibly New York City. Haven’t we heard all of this before? Isn’t it insane to accept the same claims from the same people without question?

Conversely, isn’t Ron Paul telling us the same thing that he told us about Iraq? Exactly why should we believe the people that lied to us or at least were dead wrong about Iraq and dismiss the one man that told us the truth and was dead right about Iraq? How long will we go on doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? Isn’t that crazy?

Dangerous. That’s what you are going to keep hearing about Ron Paul. There is no reasonable argument to be made that Ron Paul’s foreign policy is dangerous. This is an act of desperation by people that are deathly afraid that Ron Paul is going to put them out of business (not just the war-making business, but a trillion dollars of other government waste that he’ll end in his first year as well).

They aren’t appealing to your reason. They are appealing to your emotions. They are trying to strike an irrational fear in you that will cause you to reject Ron Paul, support one of their candidates, and support another unnecessary war that they will profit from at your expense. Again. Just like Iraq. However, there is one thing that you can do to avoid being fooled again.

Think about it.

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.