Ron Paul's Foreign Policy and the world of today.

The world has become a very small place compared to the world of the framers. Things that they would have considered no place for our influence are now key pieces in a chain of commerce that we have become an integral part. You cannot be isolationist exclusively. The Monroe Doctrine was established for our Country to maintain it's sphere of influence, namely the Western Hemisphere. The other side or the Old Side of the world was to be left to the European Nations as their Sphere of influence. It was done to avoid more European intervention in Latin America but it also molded our Foreign Policy almost up to the conclusion of Reagan's second term. It was the oil however, that brought us to Iraq's doorstep and things haven't been the same. If you read T.E. Lawrence, he would explain the quagmire we would be creating for ourselves by involving the U.S. in Middle Eastern affairs. The conflicts are at times thousands of years old and tribal in nature. We do not relate to circumstances as they do. We opened a Pandora's box doing two things; Teaching the Saudi's how to drill for oil and refine it, and the creation of Israel in 1948 by the United Nations, thus displacing a large number of Palestinians who believed the land was theirs. Actually the land has changed hands so much it is hard to assess who's it is. Anyway, as you can see, it isn't so cut and dry.