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Afghanistan is not the first painful U.S. experience with withdrawing from a troubled Middle Eastern state. Similar involvement with jihadist violence in Beirut, Lebanon, during the Ronald Regan administration in the 1980s precipitated a hasty pullout in just under half a year. In his memoirs, Reagan noted that the “irrationality of Middle Eastern politics” had been the nail in the coffin for America’s intervention in the region. More than 30 years later, our political leaders are struggling over how best to withdraw from Afghanistan, leading to this week’s dire situation in the war-torn country.
Twitter has been brimming with calls of “Ron Paul was right” for his prediction ten years ago of the events that would unfold if the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continued. The former Texas congressman has recently resurfaced on social media after a long departure from the national spotlight. Paul’s brief rise to stardom grew out of his libertarian-minded political philosophy that deviated from the traditional Republican platform as he grew in popularity. Donald Trump’s original status as a “meme candidate” for the Republican nomination in 2016 had a striking similarity to Paul’s reputation in 2008.
Both were unafraid to speak their minds in the face of an unsympathetic media, were repeatedly challenged for their utter disregard of the status quo, and held significant grassroots support. During his time in the political spotlight, Trump decried the country’s continued involvement in “foolish wars,” a catchall term for almost every instance of America’s military presence in the Middle East. His success with anti-war Republicans almost certainly drew from the same voter circles that supported Paul in the last two election cycles.
Ron Paul
(Photo by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images)
Paul was the only candidate on the debate stage in the 2008 and 2012 Republican primaries to publicly oppose America’s intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. Specifically, the maverick predicted a backlash against the Republican Party for supporting America’s presence in Afghanistan, Iraq, and eventually Libya as the purposes of these occupations shifted. Paul’s viral moments began to resurface on Twitter, such as his back-and-forth with Rudy Giuliani during the 2008 debates about the consequences the country would face for such actions. At the time, Paul argued that counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering were no longer the primary motives of our occupation, supplanted instead by idealistic dreams of nation-building.
Mainstream Republicans were busy criticizing Democrats for not doing enough in the Middle East. At the same time, Democrats were hellbent on defending President Barack Obama’s various escalations in the region to shield their side from criticism for following the interventionist trend. Today, the tumultuous collapse of Afghanistan to Taliban forces has proven Paul’s predictions correct. The obsession with nation-building bore no fruit, and now the Taliban has quickly swept through Afghanistan buoyed by the fact that foreign invaders were finally being expelled from their lands. While the media continue to blame either Trump or Biden for the tragedies unfolding today, Paul resonates with the Twitterverse for long ago telling the unsavory truth.
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