{"id":8187,"date":"2015-03-31T11:29:22","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T15:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=8187"},"modified":"2024-09-11T21:18:41","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T01:18:41","slug":"rand-pauls-early-foreign-policy-wobbles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/31\/rand-pauls-early-foreign-policy-wobbles\/","title":{"rendered":"Rand Paul’s Early Foreign Policy Wobbles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many libertarians are justifiably exasperated by Sen. Rand Paul<\/strong> joining the saber-rattling against Iran. But his foreign policy positions have been shaky for a long time.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a review of his 2012 book, Government Bullies<\/em>, from the American Conservative<\/em> magazine (perhaps Rand\u2019s biggest supporters in the Washington media). Rand has\u00a0been getting dreadful foreign policy advise for a long time \u2013 as evidenced by\u00a0his endorsement of the National Endowment for Democracy and his faith that foreign aid can be redeemed.\u00a0 And his \u201cback of the hand\u201d solution for TSA abusive searches\u00a0remains as ludicrous as when he first proposed it.\u00a0The review concluded by asking whether Rand would \u201cbecome simply another conservative who flourishes government waste, fraud, and abuse stories to make supporters believe he is going to roll back Leviathan<\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0 Two and a half years later, Rand Paul has not yet provided a satisfying answer to that question.<\/p>\n

Getting a Read on Rand Paul<\/a><\/p>\n

Government Bullies: How Everyday Americans Are Being Harassed, Abused, and Imprisoned by the Feds<\/em>, Rand Paul, Center Street, 280 pages<\/p>\n

By James Bovard \u2022\u00a0 American Conservative<\/em> \u2013 November 20, 2012<\/p>\n

With Ron Paul\u2019s exit from Congress, his senator son, Rand Paul, is now the great hope of many conservatives and libertarian-leaning activists. Senator Paul has done superb work challenging the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act. He is seeking to burnish his bona fides with a new book, Government Bullies.<\/em><\/p>\n

This volume will tell you all you ever wanted to know about federal wetlands policy, which is discussed exhaustively in the book\u2019s first hundred pages. The Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, and other agencies have trampled property owners\u2019 rights time and again on the most arbitrary and unjustified pretexts. Similarly, Government Bullies contains extensive discussions of the government\u2019s abuses of farmers, small businessmen, a guitar manufacturer, and other likeable victims.<\/p>\n

While Government Bullies<\/em> thrashes federal bureaucracies despised by conservatives, the book avoids controversial subjects. And it repeats the myth of Flight 93, which President Bush once trumpeted but was eventually shamed into dropping: \u201cThose brave passengers on board that day had heard of what had just happened to the World Trade Center. They knew this was not a typical hijacking. \u2026 Those passengers knew that thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of innocent people might die if the hijackers succeeded in crashing the plane. So they acted. They overpowered the hijackers and took down the plane themselves, sacrificing their lives to save countless others. No one knows for sure how many lives they saved that day. It is hard to imagine an act of heroism any greater.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was never any evidence that Flight 93 passengers chose to commit suicide as opposed to fighting to capture control of the plane from the hijackers. FBI director Robert Mueller told a closed congressional hearing in 2002 that Flight 93 crashed a few minutes after one of the other hijackers \u201cadvised Jarrah\u201d\u2014the one piloting the flight\u2014\u201cto crash the plane and end the passengers\u2019 attempt to retake the airplane.\u201d A 2003 Associated Press report noted that the FBI\u2019s interpretation, \u201cbased on the government\u2019s analysis of cockpit recordings, discounts the popular perception of passengers grappling with terrorists to seize the plane\u2019s controls.\u201d In 2006, the feds finally released the transcript the final minutes of Flight 93 that showed the hijackers chose to crash the plane into the ground after passengers stormed the cockpit.<\/p>\n

Senator Paul says that the federal government had some \u201cgood reactions\u201d after 9\/11, such as \u201cwe took steps to put air marshals on planes.\u201d He\u2019s too generous. Air marshals have become the biggest law-enforcement laughingstock in the land. They are far more likely to lose a gun in an airplane bathroom than to catch a terrorist. Security expert Bruce Schneier, whom Rand quotes elsewhere in the book, noted in 2010 that \u201cmore air marshals have been arrested [for felony offenses] than the number of people arrested by air marshals.\u201d Schneier examined the air marshals\u2019 budget and performance and concluded that \u201cwe are spending approximately $200 million per arrest\u201d by the marshals. There is no evidence that they have prevented a single terrorist attack.<\/p>\n

Government Bullies<\/em> offers a long list of TSA horror cases, and Paul is justly outraged by abusive TSA patdowns, which are often instigated after false alarms by unreliable scanning equipment.\u00a0 He notes: \u201cPassengers who do everything right\u2014remove their belts, their wallets, their shoes, their glasses\u2014and all of the contents in their pockets\u2014are then subjected to random patdowns and tricked into believing that the scanners actually do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Rand Paul\u2019s solutions in his Air Travelers Bill of Rights, however, is \u201cGuaranteeing a traveler\u2019s right to request a patdown using only the back of the hand.\u201d This is akin to entitling rape victims to request their assailants wear a condom<\/strong>. There would still be no way to hold TSA liable when its agents help themselves to a full handful.<\/p>\n

The senator\u2019s proposal also calls for an \u201cexpansion of canine screening at airports.\u201d It is difficult to understand how boosting the number of German shepherds and their handlers sweeping around passengers will revive the spirit of liberty. The dogs are notorious for giving as many false positives as TSA scanning machines.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the starkest difference between Senator Paul and his father is on U.S. government meddling abroad<\/strong>. Ron Paul was one of the most outspoken critics of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In contrast, Rand Paul heaps praise on the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, divisions of NED. \u201cThese organizations are not partisan. They do not choose political sides. They do not provoke or become involved in the politics of any country they work in. They do not encourage or cause dissent. They do not advocate against government.\u201d<\/p>\n

In reality, NED has been involved in election-manipulation scandals ever since it was created in 1983. The International Republican Institute played a key role in the overthrow of Haiti\u2019s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In February 2004, an array of NED-aided groups and individuals helped spur an uprising that left 100 people dead and toppled Aristide. Brian Dean Curran, the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, warned Washington that the International Republican Institute\u2019s actions \u201crisked us being accused of attempting to destabilize the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

NED pulled out all the stops to help its favored candidate win an election in 2004 in Ukraine. In the two years prior to the election, the United States spent over $65 million \u201cto aid political organizations in Ukraine, paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet U.S. leaders and helping to underwrite exit polls indicating he won a disputed runoff election,\u201d according to the Associated Press. Ron Paul complained at the time that \u201cmuch of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and \u2026 millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is mystifying why a senator as smart as Rand Paul would hitch his wagon to a federal agency that has tarnished itself and the United States around the world<\/strong>. Is the senator receiving extremely bad information from someone?<\/p>\n

Rand Paul has made excellent comments in floor speeches and TV interviews on the folly of foreign aid. Yet Government Bullies<\/em> champions the notion that U.S. foreign aid can be used to spread good government abroad.<\/strong> The senator declares, \u201cWe need a firmer hand. We need a stronger voice. We need to say no more aid to countries that do not have democratic elections, no more aid to nations that terrorize their own people\u2014and no more aid to anyone who detains innocent American citizens.\u201d Sounds great, but who will be administering the new conditionality of the foreign-aid program? The State Department and the U.S Agency for International Development, a bureaucracy that exists to disburse U.S. tax dollars abroad.<\/p>\n

Rand Paul remains a work in progress<\/strong>. Will he take the principled high road that his father paved with such courage? Or will he become simply another conservative who flourishes government waste, fraud, and abuse stories to make supporters believe he is going to roll back Leviathan<\/strong>? Unfortunately, the answer to those questions will not be found in Government Bullies<\/em>.<\/p>\n

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy.<\/p>\n

** On Twitter @jimbovard\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 www.jimbovard.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many libertarians are justifiably exasperated by Sen. Rand Paul joining the saber-rattling against Iran. But his foreign policy positions have been shaky for a long time.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a review of his 2012 book, Government Bullies, from the American Conservative magazine (perhaps Rand\u2019s biggest supporters in the Washington media). Rand has\u00a0been getting dreadful foreign policy advise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[415,15,451,327,82,45,43,164,578,249,33,117,58,37,26,76,151],"class_list":["post-8187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-boondoggle","tag-congress","tag-constitution","tag-cynicism","tag-foreign-aid","tag-freedom","tag-iran","tag-leviathan","tag-national-endowment-for-democracy","tag-national-security-agency","tag-patriot-act","tag-privacy","tag-rand-paul","tag-ron-paul","tag-terrorism","tag-tsa","tag-waste"],"yoast_head":"\nRand Paul's Early Foreign Policy Wobbles - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/31\/rand-pauls-early-foreign-policy-wobbles\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rand Paul's Early Foreign Policy Wobbles - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Many libertarians are justifiably exasperated by Sen. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8187"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9694,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8187\/revisions\/9694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}