Former Republican Rep. Ron Paul has a few choice words to say about those who do not support war. He is making a controversial claim that the Congressional Black Caucus is opposing war to save money specifically for food stamps.
“I was always annoyed with it in Congress because we had an anti-war unofficial group, a few libertarian Republicans and generally the Black Caucus and others did not—they are really against war because they want all of that money to go to food stamps for people here,” Ron Paul said.
“But when it came to sanctions they just could never vote against sanctions that would prevent war and they wanted to look tough and they would go on with the sanctions but never get the results that they thought there were going to get.”
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He went on to say that he does not believe sanctions work against Iran, saying, “I think it does the opposite. So if you have the senators in Iran and then you put on sanctions, people by their very nature unify. If we were attacked by foreigners and you know, have a 9/11 you know, Republicans, Democrats come together because we see it as a foreign source. So you know, this undermines the dissonance in these countries. But the two areas — as a matter of fact the neocons claim the sanctions have done this wonderful good because that is what brought them to the table — but at the same time many neocons say we don’t even want to talk to them. But uh, I don’t believe that they do achieve anything.”
He also claimed that sanctions against groups like the Islamic State are nearly impossible to use effectively once oil or other resources are involved.
“I mean if ISIS can get the oil out of the ground, pack it up sell it, and get millions of dollars to run their so called quasi-government and fight these wars, I mean how, the sanctions don’t seem to be, you know, a tremendous success. Also, they have always used South Africa as an example where sanctions made the difference. But I think that they’re some geopolitical social changes that occur there that made that come about. But they won’t give up, they have to feel good about it.”