While the U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound earlier this month was roundly praised by those on both sides of the political spectrum, there were also a fair share of detractors. One of those was Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul, an announced candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
Paul, in an appearance on Wednesday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, voiced his frustration over the particular incident involving bin Laden’s death. However he blamed the entire U.S.-Pakistani relations as a whole for the way it had to be handled. He explained there had been some successes during the Bush administration and questioned why the Obama administration had abandoned that policy.
However, he made a bombshell prediction and said the United States will ultimately occupy Pakistan.
“I see the whole thing as a mess,” he said. “And I think that we are going to be in Pakistan. I think that’s the next occupation, and I fear it. I think it’s ridiculous, and I think our foreign policy is such we don’t need to be doing this. So when I talk about doing it differently, I talk about in the context of our foreign policy and not in the fact of whether or not we should have gotten him. As a matter of fact, I voted for the first authority. I think what’s the real tragedy is that we didn’t get him 10 years ago when we could have and should have. But yet we now have spent $1 trillion. We’ve lost 5,000 people, our soldiers, in fighting two wars that had nothing to do with bin Laden. And to me, we have to reassess the foreign policy just like we have to reassess our economic policies here.”
Later in the segment, “Morning Joe” co-host Willie Geist asked if Paul had any information an actual invasion was in the work. Paul said he didn’t but based it on the past four decades of American foreign policy.
“No – just because I look at what has happened in the past 30 or 40 years of all the unintended consequences and what we have done and how we are spreading and how we are spreading in the attitudes that has been pervasive in our government for the past 10 years that we have this obligation to spread our goodness and protect our financial interests,” Paul said. “And right now Pakistan is a big problem. And the people there, we have created a civil war there. And the fact that we go over there and we violate their security and the people rebel against the government because they see their government as being a puppet of the American government, so it’s total chaos, and I am afraid — I hope I’m absolutely wrong — but I’m afraid we will be in Pakistan trying to occupy that country, and it will probably be very unsuccessful.”
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