Charles P. Pierce - For the Benefit of Mr. Paul

[n2doc]

Some rude people are pointing and laughing at brogressive man-crush Senator Aqua Buddha because, once again, too many people ignored the Five Minute Rule and discovered that Aqua Buddha, unlike his pappy, Crazy Uncle Liberty (!), really, really, really wants to be president of these here United States. To that end, confronted with a golden opportunity to be at least as bellicose than thou, Aqua Buddha has placed his isolationist principles atop the chiffarobe and strapped on the Kevlar -- metaphorically, of course, because, come on, the man is a youngish Republican, and actual service is for suckers.

Speaking to a ballroom later, some of the loudest applause for Paul came when he quipped: "If the president has no strategy, maybe it's time for a new president." In an emailed comment, however, Paul elaborated by saying: "If I were President, I would call a joint session of Congress. I would lay out the reasoning of why ISIS is a threat to our national security and seek congressional authorization to destroy ISIS militarily."

Let's see. Deliberate misinterpretation of what the president said? Check. Pandering to the yahoos? Check. Misty, watercolored banalities in which we are told what Aqua Buddha would do, but not a thing about how he would proceed to do it? "To destroy ISIS militarily" means what, exactly? We have a winner.

Paul had recently expressed ambivalence about U.S. military action against the Islamist terrorists who are building a state in Iraq and Syria. "I have mixed feelings about it," Paul said of U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in early August. ‘I'm not saying I'm completely opposed to helping with arms or maybe even bombing," he added.

He's had a helluva month trying to keep his brand together. Events -- which is to say, reality -- keep rising up to inconvenience his usual artificial transformative palaver, and to expose it for the clever con that it is. Destroying ISIS militarily would require at the very least a massive bombing campaign in which civilian casualties would have to be an afterthought, and/or a serious commitment of actual ground troops from somewhere beyond Iraq and Syria. And, even then, if you crushed ISIS, some splinter group of barbarians would rise from the rubble you created, just as ISIS rose from the rubble created by our excellent invasion of Iraq, and we'd be off again. This is a damnable conundrum for anyone, but for someone who is still trying to euchre the non-interventionist left into a coalition with the New Gilded Age right, to say nothing of someone who once pronounced himself opposed to any kind of foreign aid to that part of the world, it is the intellectual equivalent of locking yourself inside a Rubik's Cube.

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http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Aqua_Buddha_Is_Confused

[FSogol]

1. K & R. n/t

[msanthrope]

2. Kick. nt

[sabrina 1]

3. Guess he figured it out. Talk of non-military intervention will totally disqualify you from

getting anywhere close to the WH in this Empire. Tough situation if he really wants to run. The support he has managed to get is mostly BECAUSE he opposed these wars. But, looks like he's wavering. They all do eventually. The MIC is pretty powerful and no enemy in far off places can destroy the ambitions of a US Politician more quickly than our own war mongers.

Soon he'll be doing a duet with McCain:

'bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb em..wait, who am I supposed to bomb?

oh, yeah, got it:

Cue music:

'bomb, bomb, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine!'

'Okaaaaay! Cut! You got it!'

It sucks living an Empire.

[conservaphobe]

4. If living in an empire means we'll never have President Paul...

I'll wave a foam finger and chant U-S-A until I fall over from exhaustion.

[sabrina 1]

8. Didn't get it, did you? Paul appears to be 'getting' what he needs to do in order to

make it to the WH, so the fact that we ARE an Empire makes it very possible that he CAN succeed.

What a sad thing to say. That you give up this Democracy so easily. I expect you would 'wave a foam finger and sing USA! USA! Never doubted it frankly. Btw, would you also support FOREVER WAR for such a trivial reason?

We can live through bad politicians, we have, but democracy will not survive if the people become so partisan that they are willing to give it up themselves.

Never thought I'd see that here on DU. But then there's a lot we never thought we'd see here.

[Dont call me Shirley]

5. Doesn't Paul know his buddies McCain and Graham helped to create Isis, isil

whatever the heck. Maybe it's really Osiris 😳

[Blue_Tires]

6. Pieces like this should be pinned to the top for our Rand fanclub on DU

[maddiemom]

7. Chiffarobe! I haven't heard this term used since...I think, "To Kill a Mockingbird."

It was the piece of furniture needing to be chopped up, which led to the accusations. My parents had a chiffarobe, a big piece of bedroom furniture with a place to hang clothes on one side, drawers on the other, and a shelf up top. It was in a sort of sort of mottled wood veneer popular in that period and part of a nineteen fortyish bedroom suite. Probably worth a fortune now, but gradually replaced with tasteful cherry stuff. Sorry, Mr. Pierce, to go wildly off topic, but OMG! Chiffarobe? A true blast from to past to any but antique dealers.

[Enthusiast]

9. I knew he was dishonest.

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[DonCoquixote]

10. one sad, but real,silver lining

Rand had a chance to truly lure many of leftists by taking a hard, solid, for real, anti war platform. He just blew that one.

Not that Hillary will not want to go to into Syria either.

[freshwest]

11. Awww, there goes the 'Brogressive Savior,' huh? That's a keeper!