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You know it has become fashionable to hate on Ron Paul and his supporters, but he is one of the few politicians I have ever learned anything from. Namely that

• jacquesm 13y ago
  Holy crap, I completely missed that. I thought KAL007 was the worst incident like this. > However, the United States has never admitted responsibility, nor apologized to Iran. Why not? That would seem to be the proper thing to do.
  • hga 13y ago
    KAL 007 was worse. The Iran Air Flight 655 debacle started with Iranian gun boats firing on one of the ship's helicopters. i.e. the shoot down was during combat initiated by the Iranians. KAL 007 was ultimately shot down because the Soviets involved didn't want to lose face or worse by letting it escape their airspace (it had probably left by the time it was fired upon).
    • X-Istence 13y ago
      The gun boats were firing upon the ship's helicopters because they were in Iranian airspace ...
      • hga 13y ago
        That's what the Iranians claim. We obviously claim differently. But even if they were correct, or honestly mistaken, why is shooting at an aircraft a good response to it intruding on your airspace? When you're not in a hot war with the intruder nothing good can come from it. In fact, this brings us right back to KAL 007....
        • jlgreco 13y ago
          The Iranians were in a hot war at the time. A particularly brutal one. The people they were fighting had US support, who were providing: "Several billion dollars worth of economic aid; the sale of dual-use technology and non-U.S. origin weaponry; military intelligence; Special Operations training; direct involvement in warfare"
          • hga 13y ago
            As I said, "nothing good can come from it". Wikipedia says in reference to Sadam's threat to wage chemical warfare and underlining it by gassing a number of Kurdish villages "and some larger towns", and this shoot down (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War#Iran_accepts_the_ceasefire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War#Iran_acce...): "The lack of international sympathy disturbed the Iranian leadership, and they came to the conclusion that the United States was on the verge of waging a full-scale war against them, and that Iraq was on the verge of unleashing its entire chemical arsenal upon their major cities."
            • jlgreco 13y ago
              They were well within their right to shoot at the Americans, who were only in the area to provide aid for Saddam, who was gassing Kurds and threatening to gas Tehran. Expecting the Iranians not so shoot back was foolish, and shooting down that airliner in retaliation was plainly barbaric. The aftermath of the incident has no bearing on whether the Iranian reaction to the intrusion was rational or justified. The order of events does not support such a line of reasoning. What you are basically saying is that nobody should ever shoot at Americans no matter where they are or what they are doing, no matter the current military or political circumstance. Ridiculous.
              • hga 13y ago
                Just to make it completely clear (I hope), I'm saying a country should not shoot at entities of another county it is not in a hot war with.
    • yread 13y ago
      KAL 007 was also shot down because it was in vicinity of a secret missile launch going on and a actual US AF spy plane was close by
  • chubot 13y ago
    Try to get a US politician to talk about anything that we do wrong with regard to foreign policy. Don't forget that we overthrew their democratically elected government too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat). Ron Paul is intellectually honest; I regret not voting for him now. It would have been mostly symbolic but you know he would be on the right side of this whole PRISM debacle.
    • krapp 13y ago
      I respect Ron Paul's honesty. I think he sincerely believes in what he says, and too few politicians are willing to stand for their principles these days, especially when those principles contradict the status quo. I even agree with most of what i've read of his views. I just wish some of what else he appears to believe didn't seem so batshit crazy to me, otherwise I would decamp from the Democrats in a heartbeat. He seems to want to turn us into 50 semi-autonomous laissez-faire oligarchies. I don't actually hate the entire government and I do believe certain things like the FDA, Federal Reserve, Department of Labor, and FEMA serve a valuable purpose.
    • cpursley 13y ago
      Seems like the Pauls, father and son, have ideologies that are positive for the tech industry. I always wondered why the valley and other technologists pull the left-trigger at the polls. Is it that the right is so bad they are voting against it, or they actually think the left cares about their interests (as it is recently apparent that they are not)?
      • dragonwriter 13y ago
        > Seems like the Pauls, father and son, have ideologies that are positive for the tech industry. Aside from ways in which it is good for the wealthy generally, I don't see how it is good for the "tech industry". > Is it that the right is so bad they are voting against it, or they actually think the left cares about their interests? I don't think those are the only two options; I can easily believe, for example, that the policies a particular party is likely to pursue in office will, in fact, be better for my interests than any of the alternatives without thinking that the politicians in that party actually care about my interests.
  • mpyne 13y ago
    Both of those would be the proper thing to do. I don't know why Bush 41 refused to apologize so vehemently, but I believe it's a political issue (especially after Bush 43 included Iran on his "Axis of Evil"). Obama was pilloried by his Republican opponents for so much as saying he'd have talks and discussions with Iran. The U.S. has at least paid reparations. Perhaps on the eve of the election of the new Iranian president it might be possible for Obama to make that apology. I'd hate to see that linger on for years like the way Japan still refuses to accept ownership of some of the country's actions in WWII.
• lukifer 13y ago
  "I will never apologize for the United States; I don't care what the facts are." - George H.W. Bush