Obama Channeled Ron Paul Last Night (Kind of)

During the
State of the Union address last night Obama said the
following:

We must fight the battles that need to be fought, not those that
terrorists prefer from us – large-scale deployments that drain our
strength and may ultimately feed extremism.

This doesn’t that much different from what has been said by the
non-interventionist former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who has
pointed out that American foreign policy and diplomacy might have
something to do with why the U.S., and not another country which
allows for freedom of religion and women’s rights, is one of the
primary targets of Islamic extremists.

During the race for the Republican presidential nomination in
2008 Paul’s differences with most of the rest of his party when it
came to foreign policy were highlighted by an exchange with former
New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Watch that exchange below:

The main difference between what the president said last night
and what Paul has argued is that Obama’s statement is
understandably less definitive. Obama drew a comparatively weak
causal relationship between “large-scale deployments” and
“extremism” by saying that the former “may” lead to the latter.

It is ironic that it is Obama, who has overseen years of what is
perhaps the most
unpopular war in American history as commander in chief, is the
one warning of the risks of large military deployments abroad.
Around
37,500 American troops are in Afghanistan.