Paul and Pat Agree

Congressman Ron Paul using a surprisingly different

pose and setting than most politicians do in photos

A Facebook friend shared an essay by Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), who ran for president twice – as a Libertarian in 1988 and a Republican in 2008 – and sired two things I dislike: the Tea Party movement and U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), one of the scariest politicians in Congress. My friend said she was interested in my response to the piece, entitled, “On the Elimination of Osama bin Laden.”

My reaction is that I agree with everything Paul says in this statement.

I agree that “targeted retribution is far superior to wars of aggression and nation-building.”

I agree that it’s “tragic that it took ten years, trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of American casualties and many thousands of innocent lives to achieve our mission of killing one evil person.”

I agree that “the elimination of Osama bin Laden should now prompt us to declare victory and bring our troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq."

And I agree that we ought not to spend another dime on foreign aid to Pakistan, which harbored bin Laden for years and has been tied to the 2008 terrorist massacre in Mumbai, India, that left over 100 dead.

It’s too bad that Paul wants to withdraw from the United Nations and build a big fence on the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s unfortunate that he supported Pat Buchanan, the pompous and creepy defender of Nazi war criminals, for president in 1992. Newsletter content attributed to Paul has been interpreted as racist and I don’t think he should run for president anymore. (He apparently is.) He’s on record as opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and supports term limits, controlling women’s bodies, and eliminating most federal agencies.

On the plus side, he voted against the Iraq war resolution in 2001 and opposes farm subsidies (because they’re paid to large corporations instead of small farmers), torture, domestic surveillance, the draft and the War on Drugs. And he doesn’t support going to war with Iran, which in my book makes him more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than another politician I won’t name who works in an oval office.

Halliburton shareholder Dick Cheney notwithstanding, most Americans want us out of Afghanistan. It’s time to bring our troops home.

On this point, Paul and Pat agree completely.