This is the 'flypaper' argument. If America is busy waging wars in Muslim countries, Muslim terrorists will put down the suitcase nukes they're going to terrorize America with and instead attack American soldiers in occupied Muslim countries with nothing more than small arms and improvised explosives. So don't you dare stop waging pointless wars in Muslim countries, or American cities will be wiped off the map!

At least, that's the theory.

[what's the "eye-roll" emoticon?]

Well, I'm just going by the movies, but...

Doesn't the Eye usually go where there's either a huge battle (like in the third film) or else when someone puts on the Ring, which is evil?

So...by fixing attention on Iraq...

Either he wants the corruption of power THERE, and not in the USA, or else wants the battle in Iraq, and not the USA?

But...we just ENDED the battle in Iraq. So...why do we need to RE-inflame the area?

Furthermore, what's all this bull about going BACK to Iraq???

Perry said the same thing a few days ago...we just got out! After 9 years and thousands of lives and billions of dollars and its the REPUBLICANS that are bemoaning our debt and calling for cuts and chastising spending...what costs more than a war, let alone re-starting a war that we just ended in a country we're happy to be out of, and the feeling--free and happy or not--is likely mutual, free government or no, I think the Iraqis are as happy we're out as we are...

So, really, who wants to go BACK?

I think that might be the first idea most Democrats and GOP could agree to vote together and AGAINST...!

*SIGH*...

Santorum's a bigoted, anti-LBGT fool-tool of the far-religious-right...
Gingrich's time has passed...
Perry's worse than both of them...
I'd list the growing lsit of reasons I find RP the most despicable of them all, but it's futile here...

And even Romney I can't really support, he seems to genuinely be trying to be moderate, and open, and is at least articulate and educated and has a quality of leadership, I'll grant him that much...

But I just can't vote for someone who'd advocate for a "show your papers" system regarding citizens and immigrants, or support an ammendment to the Constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a woman and deny the LGBT community their fair, equal standing in American society...

Looks like I'm sticking with Obama--

Flawed and flailing as he might be at times, he at least, more or less, supports a decent amount of the ideals I do, and nothing he does I disagree on is a deal-breaker like the two I mentioned for Romney (or the dozen or so for Santorum or Ron Paul) with me.

@Tolstoy:

If that's the real theory, the real meaning of the statement...

Good.

Then I say, if that's how you genuinely feel about it, send your OWN children to fight an endless Crusades-style struggle over your religious beliefs.

Innocent men and women who have enlisted shouldn't be made to die for a candidate's personal, religious vendetta (and I'm sorry, but given who's voicing this opinion, Perry and Santorum, who are marked by their affiliation with the far-religious Right, I can't see this as anything but a shameless attempt to start--what would this be, the 15th Crusade, I think there were 14...I know the first 4 by heart, and then there were a slew...

Anyway, it's disgusting, bigoted, short-sighted, and before any Ron Paul booster jumps up and points out RP doesn't support such a war, or any wars...good for him.

I STILL can't stand the man personally or politically, I find him idiotic, inane, reprehensible, nonsensical, illogical antiquated, radical, racist, and to be perfectly honest, it's a scary, sad moment when Americans are so desperate for any sort of change they'll advocate a man who's idea of change is reverting back to an 18th century model and embracing a xenophobic, dated, and potentially racist view of the world and politics as a whole.)

And that's me being NICE about him.

@Obi - While I agree we should not be going back to Iraq, I feel the need to point out that anyone who *volunteers* for military service takes an oath to serve the commander in chief and lay down his or her life for their country. So them being sent to fight is what the *volunteered* for.

But again, I agree we have no need to go back to Iraq.

Your needless and empty Ron Paul bashing is just plain lame, and getting more than a little annoying. I'm sorry he's not young and pretty, nor a good public speaker. As for being an idiot, all I can say is that he was right about the Iraq War before it even began and he called the inevitable result of the housing bubble on the House floor in 2003 when all the smart intellectuals were laughing at him and calling him crazy. You bring up the 20+ year old racist newsletters, but I challenge you to find racist sentiments in any of the literally tens of thousands of Ron Paul youtube clips, some of which in fact go back even farther than the newsletters.

And I'd like to know how a foreign policy that would require America to stop dropping bombs on millions of brown people is 'racist'. If the Israel question is what you're so worried about, here's one of your landsmen endorsing Paul and explaining (about halfway through) why it would be good for Israel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q37qyfHZ1c

Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate who i can stand to listen to... that said, why do i care about an election next november, silly system, let's see what happen in the upcoming french election!

also eye of mordor? i shudder to think of foreign policy being influenced by JRR Tolkien...

@Draug:

I get that you take an oath to fight for your country and commander in chief...

But as we in the USA--unless a few choice GOP candidates get their way--have a separation of Church and State...

So, if it's a RELIGIOUSLY-FUELED WAR...I don't think that quite flies.

If it's going into Iraq to depose Saddam, fine.
If it's going into Iraq to protect America...in theory, fine (in practice...it's been more complicated.)

But if it's going to Iraq because one man has a personal vendetta against people who pray to a different god, with that being the reason and not one of policy or politics or security or statehood?

I think that's a different ballgame.

@Tolstoy and orathic:

First, Tolstoy, I'm sorry my bashing RP is getting lame--it's my opinion, and I have every right to voice it, just as you have every right to voice the reasons--that *I* find lame--that you support RP.

Second, I don't dislike him because of his age, or looks, or public speaking ability--I've never made that charge, so that's a cheap shot to insinuate that. I WILL say that in judging candidates, I DO think age is something of a factor, and I won't lie by saying voting for ANY candidate of a significantly-advanced age poses understandable concerns (physical and mental health-wise and otherwise) but I don't think that's unreasonable, and it goes both ways--if the dream Democratic merger of FDR and JFK ran and he was 85 years old, I'd have a pretty hard time voting for someone who's already at/past the life expectancy of a person and could very well die in office, or go senile. RP isn't 85, but he IS up there, and that IS a factor to consider...case in point, Reagan was a reasonably-old candidate, and he had Alzheimer's approach, if I recall, near the end of his term...if he had been a few years older, we might have had a sitting president with memory problems, and that's no small matter to consider when voting for the man who gets the nuclear launch codes.

Third, I would posit that his "calling" the Iraq War was due to his philosophical outlook mandating such a view, rather than an actual aptitude on the man's part to ascertain real, modern politics...I would come to the same conclusion with a strictly Jeffersonian outlook--however, that neither justifies an outlook that would advocate an outdated ideal of racism, isolationism (the Atlantic Ocean is not the barrier it was when Jefferson wrote, it can be traversed in minutes by a missile or seconds by a computer virus, it's no longer a huge buffer between us and the rest of the West) and so on.

In short...Ron Paul won the luck of the draw with his philosophy, and when you stick to any philosophy for that long so stringently, you'll get one or two seemingly-amazing calls to go your way.

Again, that doesn't make him up to date nor does it validate his ideas--and if I have to go into a blow-by-blow again of how and why an 18th century Jeffersonian, Constitutionalist, state's-rights-first view does NOT fly in a 21st century where you control the West's largest superpower in a globalized, interdependent world where one wrong button press and we all go up in smoke-style view, I will.

Fourth, I would not EXPECT to find racist sentiments in RP's YouTube clips...those who post them are most often PRO-Ron Paul...even if somehow his campaign didn't do what a smart campaign would and try and make sure any and all interviews were controlled in such a way that any stray words were edited out by the station later (FOX does this sometimes, as no doubt other stations do, on recorded interviews) I wouldn't expect PRO-Ron Paul videos to carry racist sentiments, would I?

I CAN say I've found at least one that a Pro-Ron Paul friend posted to me on Facebook rather insensitive, cold, and potentially-misogynistic towards women, but that's open for debate, nothing expressly stated.

Again, in any case, it's not in BROADCASTS, which can be controlled, one would EXPECT to find a stray racist comment that wasn't caught, suppressed, controlled, and doctored by RP's team...rather, it'd be exactly how they WERE found, in arcane, 20-year old newsletters, the sort of thing that would fly under the radar of most all but RP's audience most of the time...as is so often the case in the world of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, it's not what's overly said, but the few stray pieces of paper here and there under the door and passed about that lead you towards cracking the case and learning the truth.

Fifth, you're lining two things--my charge of racism and RP's alleged anti-war stance--that do not and are not meant to go together in any capacity. One does not affect the other, especially as I am not arguing RP is racist towards those we ARE dropping bombs on.

I'm arguing he's racist, by the nature of his comments, towards African-Americans in PARTICULAR, and potentially Jews and other groups within America ITSELF as well, in addition to a view on women's rights and feminism I'm not sure I support, again, I'm not sure if that counts so much as misogyny as just somewhat cold and at worst degrading...but in any case, we're not dropping bombs on countries with Jews in them, or bombing all-female states, or Africans...but rather Arab nations, so the people I charge RP with having racist/insensitive/problematic views towards are NOT linked with his allegedly-anti-war stance (and I say ALLEGEDLY because I'm still not convinced, DESPITE his Jeffersonian stance, that he truly IS anti-war...his comment towards Gingrich in the last debate, attacking him for not going to Vietnam while asserting proudly "I was married, and *I* went" seems to reek of a sort of a sort of valuation of the same military he'd allegedly cut, which is fine, but to the point where you attack someone for not serving while having a family, and in Vietnam, of all wars? I KNOW the context was such that RP was arguing that those who haven't served shouldn't, as politicians, fling soldiers into wars, but with his caveat that he himself has served, in that context, that does open the door for him to state that HE is "qualified" to do so...and that seems a more sabre-rattling position than simply "Let's not go to war in Iraq again," which is a statement I'd agree with him on--incidental though his reasoning might be--and he should have stopped there.)

In any case, AGAIN, the war element =/= the racism charge, as it's different groups, and different social elements at that. You can say "No war in our time!" and still be fine with thousands or millions going to their deaths because you could care less, or you yourself don't particularly care for the group yourself...this has, as we've seen, been the case...

Sixth, a swallow does not a summer make, and one Israeli supporting RP doesn't change the fact most Israelis--and I'd go so far as to wager most Jews, secular or Orthodox or anywhere in between--dislike and stand in opposition to Ron Paul...and again, of all the GOP candidates invited to that Jewish Summit a while back...

Guess who the ONLY candidate NOT invited (purposefully) was?

Seventh, why, orathic? Why can you bear to listen to someone who's racist, who's ideas are antiquated, who's a radical, and who, quite frankly, should go back to the extremist, narrow-newsletter-audience of like-minded radicals and extremists he has spawned from in the first place?

Ron Paul, quite frankly, is a candidate that makes me wish me hero Mr. Hitchens could have hung on at least one more year to cover this 2012 election year...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIPdkLHOaEs

Hitchens on Paul, to save those the trouble, if they don't want to wait three minutes...

He calls his ideas and interpretation of Jefferson (a hero if HITCHENS) "empty."

I'd agree, wholeheartedly.

@obi - Religious war? What the fuck are you smoking? And please *REREAD* what I wrote. I said I don't think we belong back in Iraq. Get it fucking straight, douche. Seriously, you're in college and your reading comprehension sucks this fucking bad?

Santorum ought to know that one does not simply walk into Mordor.

@obi - One more thing... Despite what you may think (and despite the Supreme Court's stupidity with regards to WBC), voicing one's opinion on/in/at a private forum or function is *not* one of the rights guaranteed the citizens of the US in the constitution. You have a right to an opinion. Yes. You even have a right to express it in a public forum. But the owner of a private forum/home/business has a right to shut you up and stop you from expressing that right in their domain. So, no, you do not have a "right" to express you opinion. You have a the *freedom* to do so here as long as Kestas continues to grant it.

Please learn the difference between rights and freedoms as well as public and private domains.

* correction: that *opinion* in their domain

"Santorum ought to know that one does not simply walk into Mordor." - Yeah but how would he have learned that. He couldn't have found it out using the Google trick. He obviously doesn't know how Google works.

On age - Paul, despite being rather old, is in incredibly good physical and mental shape. I would expect that he'll be up and at 'em well into his late 80s/early 90s. Age can be a concern, but in this case, I'm not too concerned.

On Iraq - You're welcome to think he got lucky, but I'm not sure I understand how adherence to libertarianism "mandated" that he call the Iraq War. In fact, I'm sure I could think of several libertarians who did *not* call the War (although, it having started when I was at the ripe old age of what, 11? I cannot recall any directly from memory). Certainly it seems reasonable to think that one could put enough pieces of the puzzle together to figure out that the USA was planning to invade Iraq in 2002 without having to resort to a crapshoot based on adherence to a specific political ideology. Whether or not you think Paul pulled that off or that he just got lucky is your own choice, but I would ask you to qualify how exactly libertarian ideology would have "predicted" the War. (And, if you can, I would then ask why adhering to an ideology so well-in-tune with reality that it allows its adherents to predict the future with accuracy is a bad thing.)

Further, he's made a lot more than just one or two calls... and the two calls already posted which he made are two calls better than anyone else in the race right now, so either way, I don't see how this is a mark against Paul.

On race - Yeah, agreed, you probably shouldn't be finding racist sentiments in public broadcasts if he's a racist who's smart enough to control his message. I feel compelled to note that you probably also shouldn't be finding racist sentiments in public broadcasts if he just plain isn't a racist. And I should also note that for him to be a racist - while opposing the two biggest means of institutionalized discrimination in contemporary America, the War on Drugs and the death penalty - would require him to be an incredibly incompetent racist. If the man simply did not discuss it then it would be another matter, but he has on countless occasions put himself out there and opened himself up to criticism from other Republicans for taking a strong stand against these undeniably racist institutions *and* called them on their racism. For a racist, he sure is doing a good job of opposing the major forces of racism in government today...

As for the newsletters themselves, whether you buy it or not, Paul's story seems to have been somewhat validated. Ben Swann, a journalist from Cincinnati, has apparently unearthed a ghost writer in at least one of the infamous newsletters... one James B. Powell. Full story here: http://www.fox19.com/story/16458700/reality-check-the-name-of-a-mystery-writer-of-one-of-ron-pauls-racist-newsletters

(Note that Swann's apparently weak stance on whether some of the parts of the newsletter he's reporting is actually correct here; this newsletter, apparently, did not contain any explicitly racist comments, but matched the writing style of the ones that did to a 't.' Swann tries hard to stick strictly to the objective parts of what he's reporting and as a result sounds like he's not taking a very strong stand against the newsletters, so I wanted to point this out in advance because it would be easy to misinterpret what he's doing as defending the newsletters when he's not.)

Now, obviously that doesn't mean Powell wrote *all* of the newsletters. But it brings some more credence to the notion that Paul had a managerial gaffe in letting the racist bullshit into his newsletter. And combined with his clear stand against racism in his actual platform, I think that this whole incident should be chalked up to a very tragic mistake in management on Paul's part, and not that the man is racist. His platform just doesn't add up otherwise.

The women's rights thing - is this part of the newsletters as well or something else? I've heard the allegation separate from his newsletters and if so I'm not sure what exactly it references, because the only other person who argued that never explained to me how when I asked. If it's part of the newsletters, well, see above...

On war - you're trying too hard on this one, obi, I'm sorry to have to say it. Paul's comment toward Gingrich was a rebuttal to his claim that he ducked out of Vietnam for family. He said that he went in order to illustrate that Gingrich's excuse is invalid, thereby dismissing Gingrich's defense against the "chicken hawk" comment made against Gingrich earlier in the race. This is all part of a broader attack against Gingrich... for sending us to war unnecessarily. There's just no way you can reasonably argue that he's not anti-war from that comment. Try another tack, maybe, if you wish, but this one just isn't logically valid.

On Jews/Israel - The reason Paul isn't getting invited to these things is because, unlike all the other Republican candidates, he's not putting Israel on a sacred pedestal and subverting American interests to defend an extremely unpopular state. The facts nonetheless indicate that despite this refusal to worship Israel, Paul's policies would actually benefit Israel. They would grant Israel greater autonomy to pursue their own foreign policy interests without having to come to us to validate everything, and in removing foreign aid from Arab states that oppose Israel, Paul is actually giving Israel a net benefit (because despite the cuts in aid to Israel, Israel still comes out better vis-a-vis her Arab rivals when you factor in Arab cuts). This whole anti-Semite shtick is just playing on unfortunate connections between old defenders of limited government and anti-Semitism in order to slam Paul in possibly the most dishonest way of all the attempts made. (Which, considering the magnitude of the attempts, is rather impressive.)

Finally, I hope you don't mean to imply that you only wish Hitchens stayed alive another year just to slam Ron Paul. I would think if you were really a Hitchens fan you wouldn't qualify your wish that he live through 2012 by saying you wish it just so he could attack Paul. Perhaps I am reading too much into what you said there - in fact, I hope I did - but it certainly did not come out that way.

Anyhow, getting back to the OP. Santorum's comparison essentially goes like this:

As we near the completion of our war against Islamic terrorism (making America proper the hobbits, climbing the Mt. Doom of Islamic terrorism in an effort to purge its wicked terrorist acts (the Eye itself and its gaze) forever from the face of time), we have the terrorists focusing hard on the army of the Last Alliance who are engaging orcs (making the American military in Iraq the Last Alliance Army, and Iraqis orcs -- you want to talk about racism...) instead of attacking our homeland (the hobbits). We don't want the terrorists to turn toward our home, so we keep attacking Iraq in order to keep the terrorists focused in Iraq.

Essentially, aside from calling brown people subhuman, Santorum says the only way we can win the war now is to attack other countries so that terrorists attack us there instead of at home. If you haven't dismissed him as a loon yet...

President Eden does a pretty good job with the analysis. I am not sure if it is Santorum's poor analogy or Eden's interpretation, but here are the points I would like to make.

What is The One Ring in the real world? What is our secret weapon/plan that is sure to give us absolute victory if only it can be executed? As best I can tell, the plan was to kill Bin Laden and he is already dead. Perhaps there is another plan I am unaware of but I can't think of any silver bullets to end terrorism.

The Last Alliance Army would have been annihilated if The One Ring was not destroyed when it was in Mt. Doom. So, if we don't have The One Ring, then aren't we just standing in a field waiting to get our heads cut off by orcs?

Lastly, what about Gollum? In LOTR, despite Frodo's arduous journey and incredible resistance to The One Ring, he falters at the end. It is only because Gollum attacks the corrupted Frodo at the end that The One Ring is destroyed. So, who/what is Gollum in this situation and doesn't this analogy suggest things go pretty badly for America at the crucial moment?

I limited my analysis to what parts he said, because I couldn't work out the rest. lol.

Analogies don't have to perfectly mirror the entire story. Santorum's analogy is just about the struggle to get there, not the final end result and everyone involved in that.

Also, who claimed that Allah was a 'different' God? i'm pretty sure that the old testament God of the Jews and the new testament God of the Christians is one and the same as the Islamic Allah.