PRESIDENT SHOULD PURSUE A “WISE CONSISTENCY OF NON-INTERVENTIONISM”
|| By RON PAUL || Last week two prominent Ukrainian opposition figures were gunned down in broad daylight. They join as many as ten others who have been killed or committed suicide under suspicious circumstances just this year. These individuals have one important thing in common: They were either part of or friendly with the Viktor Yanukovych government, which a US-backed coup overthrew last year. They include members of the Ukrainian parliament and former chief editors of major opposition newspapers.
While some journalists here in the US have started to notice the strange series of opposition killings in Ukraine, the US government has yet to say a word.
Compare this to the US reaction when a single opposition figure was killed in Russia earlier this year. Boris Nemtsov was a member of a minor political party that was not even represented in the Russian parliament. Nevertheless the US government immediately demanded that Russia conduct a thorough investigation of his murder, suggesting the killers had a political motive.
As news of the Russian killing broke, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce (R-CA) did not wait for evidence to blame the killing on Russian president Vladimir Putin. On the very day of Nemtsov’s murder, Royce told the US media that, “this shocking murder is the latest assault on those who dare to oppose the Putin regime.”
Neither Royce, nor Secretary of State John Kerry, nor President Barack Obama, nor any US government figure has said a word about the series of apparently political murders in Ukraine.
On the contrary, instead of questioning the state of democracy in what looks like a lawless Ukraine, the Administration is sending in the US military to help train Ukrainian troops!
Last week, just as the two political murders were taking place, the US 173rd Airborne Brigade landed in Ukraine to begin training Ukrainian national guard forces – and to leave behind some useful military equipment. Though the civil unrest continues in Ukraine, the US military is assisting one side in the conflict – even as the US slaps sanctions on Russia over accusations it is helping out the other side!
As the ceasefire continues to hold, though shakily, what kind of message does it send to the US-backed government in Kiev to have US troops arrive with training and equipment and an authorization to gift Kiev with some $350 million in weapons? Might they not take this as a green light to begin new hostilities against the breakaway regions in the east?
The Obama administration is so inconsistent in its foreign policy. In some places, particularly Cuba and Iran, the administration is pursuing a policy that looks to diplomacy and compromise to help improve decades of bad relations. In these two cases the administration realizes that the path of confrontation has led nowhere. When the president announced his desire to see the end of Cuba sanctions, he stated very correctly that, “… we are ending a policy that was long past its expiration date. When what you’re doing doesn’t work for fifty years, it’s time to try something new.”
So while Obama is correctly talking about sanctions relief for Iran and Cuba, he is adding more sanctions on Russia, backing Saudi Arabia’s brutal attack on Yemen, and pushing ever harder for regime change in Syria. Does he really believe the rest of the world does not see these double standards? A wise consistency of non-interventionism in all foreign affairs would be the correct course for this and future US administrations. Let us hope they will eventually follow Obama’s observation that, “it’s time to try something new.”
Ron Paul is a former U.S. Congressman from Texas and the leader of the pro-liberty, pro-free market movement in the United States. His weekly column – reprinted with permission – can be found here.
16 comments
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…Paul and his son despise American and Israel just like Muslim Obama. SAME foreign policy.America is evil.Let the tyrants run the world.Feckless and dangerous turds.
“feckless turds” — them’s pretty harsh words
Israel is a racist apartheid state which deserves to be despised.
Not true; they remain the chosen people!!
the chosen people? you’re turning “God” into a racist. no one is better than anyone else.
Why does Dr. Paul ignore most of the Ukrainian opposition include those loyal to the Kremlin and mostly Ukrainian Communists whom are supporting the Russian backed rebels? I guess that makes Russian interventionism and the Russian military industrial complex okay.
So you think that “the only good commie is dead commie”? And you want a Ukraine in which there is no opposition? You sound like a Bandera-Nazi to me. I can’t wait till the Russian nationalists and communists seize power. Then it’ll be 1943-45 all over again.
Dr. Paul and the Paulbots embrace people like this Communist. Funny you should mention Nazis, the Pauls and Paulbots are admired by the Nazis.
Most quoted American in Russian (RT news) is Ron Paul.
He also defends Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Iran which most Communist groups would support because of US “imperialism” even though David Duke likes him when he defends Iran, Palestinian and Islamic terrorists.
It’s strange that Paul thinks the US is clever enough to organize a coup, but too stupid to realize that an election was only three months away which would and did yeald the same results.
The only ones to benefit from the “US coup” have been Russia and his separatist supporters.
It is clear by the lack of resistance and violence of the coup and Yanukovych’s fleeing before it even started that the Russia’s had given up on Yanukovych and we’re using the coup as a pretext for partitioning Ukraine.
Evidence published in Russian papers already show that the plans to annex Crimea were made before the coup.
Any one familiar with Czechoslovakia circa 1938-1939 should be able to recognize Putin’s tactics.
This is what happens to your brain on the Bible.
I love when admitted communist post comments. I respect you for admitting it. Your Avatar is appropriate too. It is always convenient to have examples like you, Maduro and Chavez to point out to others.
Brilliant article, Dr. Paul. Thank you, as always, for your insight.
Is the US backing Neo-Nazis in Ukraine? Article in gobalresearch below. It does not matter the politics of this site, what matters is whether it is true.
As the Euromaidan protests in the Ukrainian capitol of Kiev culminated this week, displays of open fascism and neo-Nazi extremism became too glaring to ignore. Since demonstrators filled the downtown square to battle Ukrainian riot police and demand the ouster of the corruption-stained, pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, it has been filled with far-right streetfighting men pledging to defend their country’s ethnic purity.
White supremacist banners and Confederate flags were draped inside Kiev’s occupied City Hall, and demonstrators have hoisted Nazi SS and white power symbols over a toppled memorial to V.I. Lenin. After Yanukovich fled his palatial estate by helicopter, EuroMaidan protesters destroyed a memorial to Ukrainians who died battling German occupation during World War II. Sieg heil salutes and the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol have become an increasingly common site in Maidan Square, and neo-Nazi forces have established “autonomous zones” in and around Kiev.
An Anarchist group called AntiFascist Union Ukraine attempted to join the Euromaidan demonstrations but found it difficult to avoid threats of violence and imprecations from the gangs of neo-Nazis roving the square. “They called the Anarchists things like Jews, blacks, Communists,” one of its members said. “There weren’t even any Communists, that was just an insult.”
DOES THIS MEAN THE USA IS NOW A NAZI COUNTRY? i THINK WE WILL BECOME OR SUPPORT ANYTHING TO FIGHT FOR THE ECONOMIC INTERESTS OF A FEW. THANK GOD FOR PRINCE BANDAR, (Google it) RIGHT JOHN MCCAIN? IS RUSSIA REALLY COMMUNIST? THE INSINUATION IS YES AND NAZI’S ARE FREEDOM LOVERS.
One last thought. I hear there are computers loaded with pre-loaded posts to boards like this one. I always see “The Coronel”, “M 2000”, “Bible Thumper” and others posting absurd posts with nothing but propaganda and insults after Paul articles. I wonder if they are computers, paid trolls, people dedicated to a neocon agenda or other. Either way, I think it is best to not engage them.