Hot Air’s Bryan Preston posts a much more extensive interview with Paul on Fox News:
Paul says the incident is a “grave policy failure” for the United States and demonstrates that we shouldn’t have supported Musharraf and should simply be minding our own business in Pakistan. “It’s their country, not our country.”
Paul’s foreign policy views are ridiculously simplistic for a man who aspires to the presidency of a global superpower. It’s obviously true that American foreign policy has consequences and leaves us open to blame. At the same time, the idea that most or even much of what happens in other countries is a reaction to U.S. policy is arrogant nonsense.
That said, Paul isn’t blaming American policy for Bhutto’s death. Nowhere does he say, as the LGF post claims, that “Al Qaeda is justified in being ‘annoyed’” with us — let alone that they were justified in killing Bhutto. For that matter, he’s not even saying, directly at least, that our policy was the reason she was murdered.
Instead, he’s simply arguing that we shouldn’t be involved in these places and that they should sort out their own messes. Preston’s summary is quite accurate:
[I]n Ron Paul’s world, all problems are the result of the US taking action. Any action. Anywhere. Against anyone, doing anything. In the case of Pakistan, he says we should cut off aid to our “puppet” in Pakistan and make sure not to march in there with troops.
Given the geopolitics, that’s a kindergarten foreign policy. But it’s not anti-Americanism.
