Have fun with that bankruptcy there bub. All I know is Germany isn't set to start a world war any time soon so there is no point in having our troops there.
I'd be happy to pull everything we have out of Germany and most of the rest of the world. But he's absolutely 100% wrong about not enforcing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty with Iran.
His isolationist zealotry isn't going to keep us safe, and the belief that it will is a conceit that we can't afford to make. It pretends that we're so powerful that we actually cause all of our own problems - which simply isn't true.
Don't get me wrong, I think we need to pull troops back in a major way. I think our military is exceptionally wasteful, and I think he's right to poke at it. But he has basically advertised (pre-election) that he's willing to sit by idle and let Iran violate the NPT. When he takes office, what do you think they'll do? What do you think other signatories of the NPT will do? What kind of message does that send to the rest of the world about any and all of the treaties they've signed with the US under a Ron Paul administration?
It's a real shame, because I like almost all of his message, but he's damned reckless on this issue and I think it makes him look completely inadequate for the commander in chief role.
It's not an all-or-nothing situation. We don't go bankrupt just because we're willing to enforce our treaties. We don't have to have troops stationed all around the world and continue to occupy other countries just to enforce our treaties. It's not a question of bankruptcy vs. let everyone do whatever they want regardless of what they promised us.
The only problem I have with his foreign policy is that we'd have to build a totally new infrastructure for all the returning troops. For all the troops we have in Germany, Korea, and Japan, there would be no way to accommodate them without a major overhaul of the facilities across the country.
Korea is another good example where we need to not pull the troops home, at least not all of them. Japan, Germany, that's fine. Almost everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan can come home too. Korea is another NPT issue that we need to be vigilant about.
I have no doubt that we need to roll off the troops slowly and carefully and I also have no doubt that we could manage to do this under a ron paul administration perfectly fine. That's not a real issue, and I think you're well aware of that. I think it's reckless to let these countries take a lighter to our treaties without consequences. It undermines all of our current foreign policy and will weaken our position for many years to come. Even worse than letting them crap on our treaties is telling them ahead of time to feel free to do so because we won't do anything about it.
Edit: Unless he can do some serious backtracking, I think he should pull out of the race for presidency and let someone who hasn't gone on record as advertising our treaties as worthless come forward. Even the libertarian party should shy away from the guy at this point.
. America has been doing just fine for ten years now with Osama alive so to think that he'd some how get us good holds little water seeing as we could find him and watch him. Also even if we pulled the troops out, CIA and SOCOM just don't stop operating they do function in "peace time" so really they would have still caught him war or no war. You're making talking points for Obama like people did for Bush and it's not right on either side. Last but not least Obama made promises in 2007 while campaigning to make the war pullout his first priority, yet instead troop number have been uped more than once and he still isn't going to take out the troops anytime soon.
