U.S. foreign policy led to chaos in Syria

The civil war in Syria is the result of more than 13 years of U.S. government foreign policy.

America’s Syrian Civil War | Ron Paul Institute | Ron Paul:

July 21, 2025 - "As Syria descends into full-scale civil war, with more than a thousand people killed in just the last few days, it may be a good time to remember the phrase, 'Assad must go.' That was the slogan the regime-changers rolled out some 14 years ago during the 'Arab Spring' that was supposed to usher liberal democracies into power throughout the region.

"From Tunisia to Egypt to Libya and on to Syria, the plan was to remake the Middle East according to the will of Washington’s 'master planners.' The State Department, the media, the Pentagon, and the think tanks fed by the military-industrial complex were all enthusiastically on-board the program because making war and overthrowing governments is their bread and butter.

"If the United States pursued a foreign policy of non-interventionism as laid out by our Founders the massive 'national security state' would cease to exist. We would return to being a republic and they would have to return to honest work.

"Instead, a determined effort that took nearly 14 years finally produced the 'regime change” in Syria last December that the neocons wanted. Assad did finally go – to exile in Russia – but as is always the case with US-directed regime change, his replacement was even worse. Imagine all those years fighting the 'war on terror' and then cheering when a branch of al-Qaeda takes power in Syria. Yet that’s exactly what happened, with President Trump going so far as to praise Syria’s self-appointed president as, 'a tough guy, a fighter, with a very strong background.'

"Assad, like Libya’s Gaddafi and the others targeted for 'regime change,' was no saint. But as with Libya, we are seeing the chaos unleashed by US intervention in Syria is making the country far worse than before. Libya has remained in chaos and civil war for the past decade, with no future for its people. That seems to be what is in store for Syria as well. The new, unelected regime has slaughtered Alawites and Christians from nearly day one, and last week turned its guns on the Druze minority. A country of many different faiths and ethnic groups has been ripped apart, probably for good.

"Those pushing regime change all these years called us 'Assad apologists' when we cautioned against intervention. We should not expect an apology now that their regime change has achieved the opposite of what they promised....

"Centrally-planned economies produce luxury for the elites and poverty for everyone else. Yet the US foreign policy establishment believes it can centrally plan the government, economy, and even religion of countries thousands of miles away and about which it knows nothing. Once again we can see how wrong they are and what destruction their actions cause.

"Syria’s descent into mayhem and violence is another tragic reminder that Washington’s neocons are very good at undermining and overthrowing governments abroad that refuse to 'play ball' according to DC rules, but when it comes to actually bringing anything of value from the chaos they create they are hopelessly incompetent. In Syria the damage is done, and future generations will continue to suffer from the cruel folly of those convinced they know how to run everyone else’s lives."

Copyright © 2025 The Ron Paul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/americas-syrian-civil-war/

Trump revisits a changed Middle East

President Donald Trump's return visit this week is to a Middle East that has changed dramatically since his first-term trip seven years ago. 

Trump plane 001, 2011, courtesy IowaPolitics.com. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

What Will Trump Find in the Middle East This Week? | Ron Paul Institute | Ron Paul:

May 12, 2025 - "President Trump’s return to the Middle East this week, the first since his first-term 2017 visit, will take place amidst great turmoil. It is a region that bears little resemblance to  the Middle East of 2017 and it appears, at least from media reporting this past week, that the Trump Administration has some understanding of this reality.

"Syria has been over-run and is now controlled by the same al-Qaeda that the US government supposedly spent 20 years fighting in the 'war on terror.' Violence against religious and ethnic minorities has, predictably, exploded under the 'rule' of a self-proclaimed Syrian president who until very recently was on the US 'most wanted' terrorist list.

"After the October 7, 2023, Hamas raid [on Israel], Gaza has been reduced to rubble and turned into a humanitarian catastrophe. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and perhaps another million face starvation. US bombs and financial aid have facilitated the utter destruction of Gaza.

"Iran has made peace with Saudi Arabia thanks to Chinese mediation and is deepening its ties with the Kingdom. Thus, the US has little leverage in talks with the two former enemies.

"Israel is conducting military operations against several countries in the region simultaneously as the world increasingly condemns its aggression against its neighbors.

"After tearing up the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran in his first term, President Trump is pushing for a new deal with Iran while threatening to attack if negotiations do not produce the results he demands.

"Massively increased US military action against the Houthis in Yemen starting in March did not result in their capitulation to US demands. Despite attempting to put the best spin on things, it is clear that the US retreated from the region in the face of a series of successful Yemeni actions in defense of their homeland. Biden and then Trump launched attacks against Yemen on behalf of Israel, but in the end the US president wisely removed US military assets from the area and called off the bombing.

"In short, President Trump will be wading into a minefield this week, but it is a peril that the US government has largely brought upon itself. Decades of US interventionism, from at least the 2003 Iraq war, have not produced the peaceful transformation of the region, as promised by the neocons and their mentor, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. From the unnecessary Iraq war – based on lies – to the destruction of Libya and Syria and countless other interventions, the Middle East is a basket case.

"And it turns out none of it actually helped Israel at all! Having ignited the tinder box of the region with US backing, Israel has now found itself friendless in a region increasingly hostile to its policies and even its very existence. Now there are indications that the Trump Administration is tiring of this entangling alliance as the MAGA base looks more warily on foreign interventionism.

"The lesson that President Trump should take with him is that to a large degree it has been US interventionism in the Middle East that has produced these poisoned fruits. His wise military disengagement from the Houthis in Yemen should serve as a US model for the region. Ties forged by trade and friendship produce peace and prosperity and are far preferable to endless neocon war cries."

Copyright © 2025 The Ron Paul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

Read more: https://ronpaulinstitute.org/what-will-trump-find-in-the-middle-east-this-week/

Why there are still US troops in Syria

The story behind Donald Trump’s fake withdrawal from Syria | The SpectatorJohn R. Bradley:

November 2, 2019 - "Last week, American troops and dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles moved to occupy oil fields in Syria. The escalation came just half an hour after Trump had tweeted that all US soldiers had left the country and would be coming home. As so often, the President says one thing, then orders the military to do the other. On Twitter, Trump is ending the endless wars. In the real world, he is perpetuating them.

"Trump’s focus is not really Syria, of course. It is the presidential election next year, and his precious voter base. But he can’t seem to decide if his supporters are peaceniks or bloodthirsty chauvinists. His problem is that they are both and neither. He’s beginning to learn that the relationship between foreign policy and domestic politics is more complicated than perhaps he realised.

"The most important group in Trump’s base are white evangelical Christians. In 2016, evangelicals rallied behind Trump in greater numbers — he took a staggering 82 per cent of their votes — than they had for any candidate since Nixon.... His trouble, however, is that he needs even higher levels of the evangelicals’ support to have any chance of being re-elected. In three crucial mid-western states where there are large evangelical populations, he won by just 70,000 votes. And his poll numbers there are down, so if there is even a 1 per cent drop in the evangelical support he is toast....

"Evangelical leaders condemned his pulling the troops out.... Trump took dozens of phone calls from .... evangelical activists, while Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, evangelical Christians themselves, met with numerous church congregations to try to pacify them. Hours later, Trump made the shock decision to send troops back to Syria.

"Trump’s other great miscalculation in Syria was to underestimate ... the neocons.... With the threat of impeachment hanging over his head, Trump cannot afford to alienate hawks such as Senator Lindsey Graham. Graham ... visited Trump in the White House to show him a map of where the oil fields are in Syria. (For all his boasting about American energy independence, Trump is preoccupied with the idea of seizing Middle Eastern oil.) Within hours of Trump agreeing to seize them, Graham gave his first major public appearance unequivocally denouncing impeachment proceedings....

"The US generals will be over the moon that Graham forced the U-turn in Syria. From the moment he entered the White House, Trump’s inexperience in international affairs meant he had to rely on men in uniform to guide him.... [T]he US annual defence budget is at least $1 trillion (and growing), and there is no group more determined to keep the wars alive (and the money flowing) than the military top brass. The build-up announcements in Syria and in Saudi Arabia in September — which also undermined Trump’s initial promises of de-escalation — following an attack on the kingdom’s oil facilities blamed on Iran came not from the White House but the Pentagon. Last year, the same was true when thousands more troops were sent to Afghanistan, again just days after Trump announced that he was going to withdraw all of those already there. Thus Trump defers to generals and men in uniform.....That he has not completely caved in to the top brass — Trump is the first US president in two decades, we should remember, not to have started a new war — is at least something to his credit.

"At the same time, it is now clear that Trump is not the president that anti-war types hoped he might be. And the reason is that perpetuating wars (while pretending to end them) is the least risky path for him to take electorally.... The reason Trump was put off war with Iran was less to do with a public backlash and more because he was persuaded that it might well mean losing votes. Trump, like most Americans, likes winning and kicking ass. The warmongers now have him exactly where they want him."

Read more: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/the-story-behind-donald-trumps-fake-withdrawal-from-syria/
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Endless war continues under Trump, says Amash

Amash on Syria: Trump's not ending anything | TheHill - Zack Budryk:

October 9, 2019 - "Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.) blasted President Trump on Thursday, saying he isn't 'ending anything' with his decision to pull U.S. troops from northern Syria.  Amash, a former Republican who left the party in opposition to Trump earlier this year, said the president isn't really bringing American troops home, and that he has done little to end U.S. involvement in foreign wars.

"'Despite President Trump’s bluster about ending endless war, he’s not ending anything. Our troops aren’t coming home; a small number were moved so Turkey could escalate the war,' he said in a tweet. 'And the president has expanded our role in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and kept us in Afghanistan and Iraq.'

"Turkey launched an offensive on northern Syria on Wednesday, days after Trump said he would remove U.S. troops from the area. Turkey is attacking a Kurdish militia force allied with the United States in the fight against ISIS....

"Amash left the Republican Party and the House Freedom Caucus, which he co-founded, earlier this year after he said special counsel Robert Mueller’s report led him to conclude Trump has committed impeachable offenses.

"Amash has frequently criticized Trump’s moves on Syria from a libertarian perspective, tweeting earlier this week, 'U.S. forces should not even be in Syria without congressional approval. Regardless, Turkey would not take this action without the express consent of the White House. It’s disingenuous for President Trump to suggest it’s all about "ISIS fighters" when the target is Kurdish forces.'

"'Endless war continues,' the Michigan congressman tweeted Monday."

Read more: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/465067-amash-on-syria-trumps-not-ending-anything
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Rand Paul backs U.S. troop pullout from Syria (video)

Rand Paul: Promise To End The War In Syria Is Why Trump Won The Election | Video | RealClearPolitics -Tim Haines:

"December 20, 2018 - On 'America's Newsroom' Senator Rand Paul backed President Trump in the face of harsh criticism from Republicans over his decision to withdraw the 2,000-strong U.S. force from Syria.

"RAND PAUL: 'This is a very bold move for President Trump. It is exactly what he promised the American people -- in fact it is one of the reasons he won the election. Because he is different from so many Republicans who want us to be everywhere all the time around the world. They want us to be the world policeman, that every war on the planet we have to have our soldiers involved with. President Trump said he was going to treat America first....

"'I think there are a lot of independent voters, a lot of people in the middle of these states that President Trump won - Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin - these are states that no other Republican won, because they want to be at war everywhere all the time. President Trump said we're going to go to war when we have to, but when we win we're going to come home. It is an incredibly bold maneuver.

"All of the naysayers in Washington will be against him, but guess what, if you ask the American people, this is why President Trump won the election.'"

Read more: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/12/20/rand_paul_promise_to_end_war_in_syria_is_why_trump_won_the_election.html
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2,000 U.S. troops still in Syria illegally

America’s Creeping Regime Change in Syria | Cato Institute - John Glaser, American Conservative:

February 14, 2018 - "In eastern Syria last week, American air and ground forces attacked Syrian pro-government military units, killing roughly 100 people, including some Russian advisors....

"[A]s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson explained last month, the Trump administration has committed to an indefinite military presence of roughly 2,000 U.S. boots on the Syrian battlefield. Are these troops present at the behest of the host government? Certainly not. Has Congress ratified their deployment in some way? Guess again. Are they there preempting an imminent threat of attack on America? Nope. Are they under the mandate of a UN Security Council resolution? No....

"In fact, the U.S. military presence in Syria has no legal authorization whatsoever.... One might fairly argue that the Assad regime, in its brutality against its own people, long ago forfeited the sovereign right to defend its territory against an invading foreign army. Fine, but we should be clear that Washington, in responding to the lawlessness, is also acting lawlessly....

"Quaint legalisms aside, the clash between U.S. and Syrian forces should make clear just how dangerous our military presence in Syria is. This particular incident, we can reasonably assume, didn’t escalate only because the [Assad] regime is desperate to avoid escalation.... But ... the multi-sided chaos of the Syrian Civil War is neither balanced nor stable and the risk of escalation is very real....

"America has an interest in a stable Middle East, and thus in a stable Syria, but the notion that U.S. policy has contributed to that end is rather dubious. The Islamic State, which exacerbated the Syrian Civil War by orders of magnitude, is, after all, an outgrowth of America’s war in Iraq. And the U.S. and its allies encouraged the Syrian rebellion from early on, an effort that was not only a spectacular failure but also fostered quite the opposite of stability.

"An enduring feature of U.S. foreign policy is that each intervention, whether it is seen to fail or succeed, eventually serves to justify further intervention. While it’s true that the Islamic State has been decimated ... it has been accomplished at great cost in blood and treasure. The answer to this near-Pyrrhic victory is not for Washington to invent new missions that lack legal authorization or a plausible timeline of success, but instead to reckon with its own role in this interminable tempest and acknowledge the very real possibility that backing away may be in the best interest of America and of Syria."

Read more: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/americas-creeping-regime-change-syria
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Asking the wrong questions about Syria

We’re Asking the Wrong Questions About Syria -- Antiwar.com - Thomas Knapp:

April 7,  2017 - "As I write this, two key questions remain unanswered, and a third mostly unasked, about a deadly daybreak attack on Khan Sheikhoun, a northwest Syrian city of (pre-war) 50,000. Hundreds were wounded and as many as 100 killed, apparently chemical weaponry (Turkey’s health ministry believes the agent in question was the nerve gas sarin), on the morning of April 4.

"The two most obvious questions are who did this, and why?

"The US government (and unfortunately most American media, acting as stenographers rather than journalists as is too often the case in matters of war and foreign policy) have settled on the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as the culprit. That claim seems very questionable, if for no other reason than that there’s no plausible 'why' attached to it.

"After more than six years of civil war, the Syrian government has (with Russian assistance) turned the tide. Assad is well on his way to defeating both the Islamic State and the 'moderate rebels' (read: al Qaeda) backed by the US, restoring his control over the country.

"A chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun doesn’t seem to fit into that scenario. Not only does it serve no obvious military objective, but it’s precisely the kind of atrocity that American hawks will latch onto and use as an excuse to continue and escalate the US military intervention in Syria at Assad’s expense....

"But who and why are the wrong questions. The third question – the right question – is: Why is the US involved in this war?

"The Assad regime has not attacked the US, nor has Congress declared war on Syria. There’s simply no defensive – or for that matter even legal – rationale for a US military presence in Syria. Whatever horrors the civil war there may entail, American military adventurism makes them worse, not better. It perpetuates instability rather than bringing peace.

"Donald Trump ran for president on a platform of reducing US military meddling in other countries’ affairs. It’s time for him to follow through and order a US withdrawal from Syria."

Read more: http://original.antiwar.com/thomas-knapp/2017/04/06/were-asking-the-wrong-questions-about-syria/
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GOP libertarians stand against Syria bombing

GOP’s war skeptics, once hopeful about Trump, wonder whether he’s changed - The Washington Post - David Weigel:

April 7, 2017 - "After the final confirmation vote on Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) walked into a crowd of reporters to inveigh against the airstrikes in Syria. He’d been doing so nonstop since Thursday night — first in a statement, then on TV, then in a column decrying the 'unconstitutional rush to war'....

"Until this week, and despite Trump’s early personnel moves, libertarian skeptics of foreign intervention thought they had an ally in the White House. But in the space of 24 hours, Paul — who came off a golf trip with Trump with praise for the president — found the anti-interventionist Republican posse shrunken back to pre-Obama levels....

"With President Barack Obama in the White House, Republicans and their voters were growing more skeptical of foreign intervention. The autumn of 2013 seemed to present a pivot point, when most Republicans rejected Obama’s call for airstrikes in Syria. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), a rival for the libertarian vote, said that attacking Syrian airfields could turn the United States into 'al-Qaeda’s air force' and wondered whether Obama was asking Congress to approve military action because “his bluff was called.

"The vast majority of Republicans who opposed Obama’s 2013 strike plan have come out in favor of Trump’s — which, analysts acknowledge, was more limited in scope. An analysis by the Denver7 news channel found that every Republican member of the congressional delegation who had been critical of the Obama attack, some even calling it 'unconstitutional' without congressional approval, had backed Trump....

"To Congress’s libertarians, Trump’s decision to act without consulting Congress was an obvious contradiction of how he had campaigned. On a Friday episode of former congressman Ron Paul’s online show, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) hammered home the increasingly fringe — but once Republican mainstream — position that striking Syria without congressional authorization risked blowback.

"'ISIS is better off today than it was yesterday,' Massie said, using another name for the Islamic State....

"Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who joined Friday’s briefing for senators, said that Trump had been clear up until he became president. He had repeatedly spoken, tweeted and recorded short videos against the idea of bombing Syria.

"'Back in 2013, the situation was fairly similar,' Amash said. 'President Obama suggested that he might attack, and [Trump] opposed it.'"

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/04/07/gops-war-skeptics-once-hopeful-about-trump-wonder-whether-hes-changed/?utm_term=.639f49d145d9
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Why the mainstream media pile-on on Johnson?

In Defense of Gary Johnson - Antiwar.com Original by -- Antiwar.com - Justin Raimondo:

October 3, 2016 - "The Clinton smear machine, having finally noticed that Gary Johnson is cutting into what they regard as Hillary’s rightful share of the so-called 'millennial' vote, has set its sights on the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate.

"It wasn’t supposed to be this way: the conventional wisdom was that the Libertarian ticket of Johnson and former Massachusetts Governor William Weld would split the traditionally Republican base, providing an outlet for the 'Never Trump' crowd to vent their spleen. This delighted the pro-Clinton 'mainstream' media, which gave both Johnson and Weld more publicity – most of it highly favorable – than any third party ticket in memory....

"This strategy has had consequences that hardly anyone foresaw. While Johnson-Weld went out of their way not to criticize Mrs. Clinton except in the mildest possible terms – saving their venom for Donald Trump, whom Weld likened to Hitler – what everyone overlooked is that Trump was defining the race. One was either for Trump, or against him – and the Libertarians wound up splitting the anti-Trump vote.

 "This was exacerbated by their left-sounding campaign rhetoric.... Add to this Johnson’s notoriety as a marijuana advocate, and the campaign’s targeting of 'millennial' voters, and polls of a four-way contest (including Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate) began to show that Johnson-Weld spelled trouble for Hillary. This was the signal for the Clintonian regiments of the Fourth Estate to go into action.

"It began with an interview on Morning Joe, when Johnson was asked: "What would you do about Aleppo?" His answer was to look baffled for a moment and then ask, 'What is Aleppo?'... once Johnson understood what [Mike] Barnicle was referring to he gave an excellent answer: 'I do think that it’s a mess. I think that the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that [to] an end. But ... this is the result of regime change that we end up supporting. And, inevitably, these regime changes have led [to] a less-safe world'....

"None of this matters to the 'mainstream' media, however, which is so determined to elect Clinton that sparking a nuclear conflagration seems to them a small price to pay. They gleefully piled on Johnson’s 'Aleppo moment,' echoing Scarborough’s ridiculous contention that not knowing how 'important' Aleppo is 'disqualifies' him as a credible candidate. The derision was universal, the snark was endless – even Bill Maher and Colbert got into the act — and it didn’t stop there.

"In a subsequent interview with both Johnson and Weld, Chris Matthews asked them all the requisite questions about Trump’s unmitigated evil, and they went along with it, saying all the 'right' things.... Toward the end of the interview with Matthews came what Johnson himself said was another 'Aleppo moment':

"MATTHEWS: I got actually a little lightning round here. This is where we have fun and maybe make some news. Who is your favorite foreign leader?.... Name one foreign leader that you respect and look up to, anybody.... You have got to do this. Anywhere. Any continent.... Name a foreign leader that you respect.
JOHNSON: I guess I`m having an Aleppo moment ...

"The idea that any libertarian could have a 'favorite foreign leader,' a head of state one could 'look up to,' is absurd. There is no such person on earth.... That aside, however, Johnson himself saying he was having another 'Aleppo moment' was enough to invite yet another storm of derision from Hillary’s partisans in the media. Matthews is no dummy: he knew perfectly well what he was doing, and even hinted at what he was up to when he said they might 'make a little news.'

"I’ve been very critical of Johnson, but in this case I have to come out in his defense.... In spite of his many shortcomings as a candidate, he has managed to put on a good showing.... For the most part he’s been relatively principled when it comes to foreign policy....

"Johnson has been falling in the polls a bit, and with the pro-Clinton media pounding away at him his descent may continue. However, the Johnson Effect, to coin a phrase, will likely continue to impact the election in potentially significant ways.... Gary Johnson, in spite of himself – and in spite of the sinister Weld – may wind up stopping Hillary Clinton from taking the White House."

Read more: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/10/02/defense-gary-johnson/
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Gary Johnson and the Aleppo ambush

Election 2016: It’s a Presidential Campaign, Not a Geography Quiz | The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism - Thomas L. Knapp:

September 9, 2016 - "On September 8, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where panelist Mike Barnicle hit him with the question:

Barnicle: “What would you do if you were elected about Aleppo?”
Johnson: “About?”
Barnicle: “Aleppo.”
Johnson: “And what is ALEPPO?”
Barnicle: “You’re kidding.”
Johnson: “No.”

"Maybe you’ve heard about this exchange. Maybe you know (or maybe you Googled and found out) that Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and a focal point of the war between Syria’s government and Islamic State rebels.

"Be warned: If you listened to MSNBC’s 'expert' on Syria, or read the New York Times account of Johnson’s 'faux pas,' you got bad scoop. They didn’t know much about Aleppo either, inaccurately describing the city as the Islamic State’s 'capital' (that’s Raqqa, not Aleppo).

"My gut feeling is that the average American will come down on Johnson’s side of this teapot tempest, for two reasons.

"First, most Americans likely know little if anything about Aleppo and don’t care to, so they can probably sympathize. Johnson’s foreign policy focus as a presidential candidate is 'big picture.' He wants the US to stop militarily intervening everywhere around the world at the drop of a hat. He doesn’t have to know the name of every city in the world to know that he doesn’t want to bomb them.

"Secondly, the question was transparently framed as an ambush. Barnicle’s obvious intent was to try and get a Dan Quayle or George W. Bush type howler or malapropism out of Johnson.

"Any TV talking head who queried Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump on the subject would do so roughly as follows:

Moving on to Syria: If elected, what is your plan to address the civil war there, destroy ISIS and bring peace to the region? And what do you think of reports of new chemical attacks in the country’s largest city, Aleppo, where fighting between regime forces and ISIS has flared up again?

"Not: “What would you do if you were elected about Aleppo?'

"To Johnson’s credit, he quickly owned up to and apologized for his knowledge gap in the area of Syrian geography. But he shouldn’t have had to, because he shouldn’t have been asked that question in that exceedingly unprofessional manner.

"Running for president is not a geography quiz.

"And Morning Joe isn’t — or at least shouldn’t be — an arm of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, charged with helping her regain traction among voters who have abandoned her for third party candidates because of her demonstrated personal corruption and incompetence, not to mention her dangerous foreign policy belligerence."

Read more: http://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/7522
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Public domain: To the extent possible under law, Thomas L. Knapp has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism. This work is published from: United States.

Paul confronts warmongering in 5th GOP debate

How Rand Paul Proved His Usefulness | New Republic - Jamil Smith:

"While the other Republicans spent debate night measuring their manhood, the senator from Kentucky provided the lone voice of reason."

December 16, 2015 - "Rand Paul should not have been on the Las Vegas stage Tuesday night for the fifth Republican presidential debate.... But  ... it is inarguable the senator from Kentucky emerged as a key figure during the debate....

"Nearly all the GOP candidates and CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer discussed on Tuesday night was the kind of terrorism associated with radicals espousing Islam. But that gave Paul a chance to shine during the discussions about military force and surveillance — which, not coincidentally, are virtually the only policy areas where he remains an actual libertarian. Paul stood out in a debate lacking in viable ideas for avoiding another endless cycle of war and the continued infringement of personal liberty.

"After warning that regime change in Syria would only exacerbate the challenge presented by ISIS, Paul confronted the reckless and alarming suggestions Republican frontrunner Donald Trump made earlier in the debate that bombing the families of terrorists and closing parts of the Internet might be necessary to alleviate the terrorist threat. 'That entails getting rid of the First Amendment, okay? No small feat,' Paul said. 'If you are going to kill the families of terrorists, realize that there’s something called the Geneva Convention we’re going to have to pull out of. It would defy every norm that is America.'

"He called out [Marco] Rubio for supporting increased surveillance by law enforcement — an issue that Rubio was using to paint Ted Cruz as insufficiently tough on terror. But the exchange Paul had with fellow also-ran candidate Chris Christie about Russian planes was a pivotal moment in the debate....

"In an October interview with The Washington Post, Paul had deemed the idea of a no-fly zone over Syria a terrible one.... On Tuesday night, Blitzer asked Christie whether he would shoot down Russian aircraft if one or more encroached over such a no-fly zone. 'Not only would I be prepared to do it, I would do it. A no-fly zone means a no-fly zone, Wolf. That’s what it means'.... Christie added, ... 'Yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now'....

"'Well, I think if you’re in favor of World War III, you have your candidate,' Paul said, earning applause. 'My goodness, what we want in a leader is someone with judgment, not someone who is so reckless as to stand on the stage and say, "Yes, I’m jumping up and down; I’m going to shoot down Russian planes." Russia already flies in that airspace. It may not be something we’re in love with, the fact that they’re there, but they were invited by Iraq and by Syria to fly in that airspace.' Paul added that Hillary Clinton also supports a Syria no-fly zone — she called for one in October — but he circled back to criticizing the kind of leadership that GOP candidates like Christie are demonstrating during this long job interview process.

"'We need to confront Russia from a position of strength, but we don’t need to confront Russia from a point of recklessness that would lead to war,' Paul said, before dropping a zinger about the Bridgegate scandal. 'I mean, I think when we think about the judgment of someone who might want World War III, we might think about someone who might shut down a bridge because they don’t like their friends.' Christie shrugged off the dis, but the damage was done.

"I don’t want Rand Paul anywhere near the White House, except perhaps to visit the next Democratic president.... But his presence in the race is serving a key purpose.... Republican candidates, Donald Trump and Christie in particular, have a politics fed by the tough-guy act that their passionate audiences crave, without betraying any understanding of the consequences of unfettered warmongering.... Trump and others in the field are proving that you just need to talk bold to win conservative hearts; it’s irrelevant how many people you talk about casually spying on or murdering to pacify overblown fears of terrorist attacks here in the United States.

"Polling as low as he is, Paul may not prove to be an antidote to all this talk. But it was still heartening to see him — to see someone — inject some sensibility into a debate that seemed more a measurement of manhood than of presidential qualifications."

Read more: https://newrepublic.com/article/125967/rand-paul-proved-usefulness
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World Internet freedom down for 5th straight year

Freedom House: World Internet Freedom Keeps Eroding - Alberto Pimienta, Voice of America:

October 28, 2015 - "Internet censorship around the globe continues to intensify. According to a report by the independent monitoring group Freedom House, for the fifth consecutive year, more nations are censoring information online and demanding that companies and individuals remove content or face retribution.

"The annually released Freedom of the Net Report assessed 65 countries and identified China as the worst offender.... Gady Epstein, former Beijing bureau chief for The Economist magazine, said China has become more aggressive with censorship in the last couple of years under President Xi Jinping. 'They’ve blocked Google; they’ve blocked Gmail and other Google services. They arrested more online activists, people who comment independently on a range of issues, including corruption,' said Epstein....

"In Russia and Iran, people who post content deemed offensive by the government can quickly and easily land in prison. 'Those countries tend to block materials of political and social relevance. They tend to arrest users for writing about human rights and opposition,' said Sanja Kelly, director of the report.

"Syria is the second-worst performer in the study. Bloggers, journalists and activists face execution by armed groups in the country, according to Freedom House.

In Iran, rated the third-worst nation, Tehran’s conservative powerbrokers, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, keep extremely tight control over the Internet, despite better bandwidth and the increase of 3G cellular connections.

"Social media, like Facebook and Twitter, increasingly play a big role in the way people get access to information in countries with restricted Web freedom.... The combination of social media services and content that authorities dislike, though, can be life-shattering. That is the case for Atena Farghadani, 28, an Iranian cartoonist. She was sentenced to 12 years in jail for posting one of her caricatures on Facebook, which portrayed Iranian lawmakers as animals.

"Freedom House said that during the research for the report, which focuses on events from June 2014 through May 2015, it stumbled upon a new development: Governments increasingly attack the source now....  'The governments are actually going to the company and saying, "This type of information exists on your servers. Take it down. If you don’t take it down, we’re going to either block your services or we’re going to take away your license so you will not be able to operate in our country any longer",' said Kelly."

Read more: http://www.voanews.com/content/freedom-house-world-internet-freedom-keeps-eroding/3027570.html
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What should a libertarian foreign policy look like?

In Search of Libertarian Realism - Reason.com - Matt Welch, Reason (January 2015):

December 8, 2014 - "For the next decade [after the invasion of Iraq] ... American appetite for war, occupation, and the concomitant surveillance state went on a steady and uninterrupted decline, culminating in the shockingly successful September 2013 public and congressional revolt against President Barack Obama's plans to attack Bashar Assad's regime in Syria. With the occupation of Afghanistan becoming the most unpopular war in recorded U.S. history, and with people telling pollsters they feared their own government more than they feared terrorists, it became possible to imagine a cross-ideological coalition against war, spanning from the progressive left to the constitutional-conservative right, and headed up by the libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

"But 2014 has complicated that narrative. The rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) within war-torn Syria, Iraq, and Libya halted the public's decade-long bear market on war, with more Americans favoring combat troops against ISIS in October than in September....

"With Rand Paul at or near the top of GOP presidential polls for 2016, the principled noninterventionism of his father is colliding with the complications not just of the Islamic State but of Washington politics. If Ron's project is to spread the pure principles of anti-intervention, Rand's is to see how much anti-intervention he can sneak into the mainstream diet. These differing approaches — and the different men behind them — have triggered all sorts of fierce debates about what a libertarian foreign policy really looks like.

"The Hoover Institution's Richard Epstein, in a September piece titled 'Rand Paul's Fatal Pacifism,' criticized libertarians for being 'clueless on the ISIS front,' arguing that 'In principle, even deadly force can be used in anticipation of an attack by others, lest any delayed response prove fatal.'

"Responding at Antiwar.com, reason Contributing Editor David R. Henderson countered that 'whatever else libertarian non-interventionists believe, few of us have what Professor Epstein calls an "illusion of certainty." It is the exact opposite: we are positive that there is great uncertainty. It is this uncertainty that should, in general, cause us to pressure our government to stay out of other countries' affairs.'

"So who's right? And what should libertarian principles about foreign policy look like after colliding with messy reality? In the pages ahead, we have convened a forum of self-identified libertarians who have a range of informed opinions on U.S. foreign policy. The results are designed to start a debate rather than finish it, to take a thoroughgoing skepticism about intervention into the realm of the real. In short, it's a search for libertarian realism."

Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2014/12/08/in-search-of-libertarian-reali
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Libertarian / progressive alliance against Syrian intervention

Alliance of Tea Party libertarians and anti-war Dems looks like the real thing - Greg Sargent, 'The Plum Line,' Washington Post:

September 6, 2013 -"How real are the prospects for a genuine alliance against action in Syria between progressive anti-war Democrats and isolationist Tea Party libertarians?...

"I compared the current whip count of Members of Congress who are firm or leaning No votes on Syria right now, with the Members who voted Yes on the recent amendment to end bulk NSA surveillance that corralled a surprising amount of bipartisan support. The vote on that amendment — which was sponsored by GOP Rep. Justin Amash and Dem Rep. John Conyers — was perhaps the clearest demonstration of such a developing alliance we’ve seen.... I count nearly four dozen Representatives — from both parties — that are on both lists....

"On the Republican side, they are ... Tea Partyers who buck the neocon line on intervention abroad and whose support for limited government translates into real concern for civil liberties, at least in some areas. These are Republicans you might find in the Liberty Caucus. On the Democratic side, you have lawmakers who are more anti-war than liberal internationalist, and care about privacy issues — not because of an embrace of limited government, but because they embrace civil liberties from the left. They are willing to ally with these Republicans because their anti-war views mesh to some degree with the former group’s anti-interventionist streak; and because there is some civil libertarian overlap.

"In both cases — on Syria, and on the amendment to end NSA surveillance — this loose alliance of lawmakers is allied against the leadership of their own parties. And in both cases, they represent a genuine threat to the outcome."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/09/06/alliance-of-tea-party-libertarians-and-anti-war-dems-looks-like-the-real-thing/
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Jewish Press: Ron Paul making sense on Syria

The Jewish Press » » Ron Paul Making Sense on Syria – Now We’re Really Done For:\ Yori Yanover:

June 24, 2013 - "I’m not arguing with all the true facts being raised by Congressman Ron Paul – of course he’s right. Every single thing he’s saying makes perfect sense and should be paid attention to by our policymakers – and that’s the source of my despair. Because no one ever listens to Ron Paul.

"What’s the point in upper class idiots like John Kerry repeating all the worst mistakes that upper class idiots like G.W. Bush have committed in the same region – just so Ron Paul would be proven right once again? It’s almost as if by opening his mouth and speaking the truth, he’s making it impossible for anyone in government to act rationally any more. After all, who wants to come across sounding like Ron Paul?

"But he’s right, alas, and he opened his mouth and now the U.S. is setting up training camps for the new mujahideen, just like good ol’ Ronny Reagan did in Afghanistan, and the countdown has already started to the moment these nice gentlemen with the head scarves will turn and bite the hand that trained them."

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/syria/ron-paul-making-sense-on-syria-now-were-really-done-for/2013/06/24/
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