Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich on Iran

ConservativeHQ.com

Tea Partiers and grassroots conservatives are never quite sure whether to be appalled or frightened by President Barack Obama’s national security strategy toward Iran – if there is one. But winning the 2012 presidential election and replacing Obama with a conservative requires that Republicans articulate an alternative to Obama’s vacillating diplomacy and the intentional enfeebling of America’s military power in the Persian Gulf region in the face of Iran’s push to build nuclear weapons.

During the recent CNN/Heritage/American Enterprise Institute Republican presidential candidates’ debate on foreign policy and national security, Congressman Ron Paul and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich led the field -- at least according to CHQ viewers and commentators -- by providing two compelling Republican alternatives to Obama’s non-strategy on Iran.

In this brief two-part series, we will cover their vastly differing views on how to deal with the national security challenge presented by Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

At the conclusion of the series, please be sure to come back to www.conservativehq.com on Wednesday to vote in the poll on this important issue.

Click here for Part I, Ron Paul Sticks to Libertarian Principles

Part 2 of 2

Newt Gingrich Looks to President Reagan for a Successful Model

President Barack Obama’s national security strategy toward Iran -- if there is one -- has been one of vacillating diplomacy and the intentional enfeebling of America’s military power in the Persian Gulf region in the face of Iran’s push to build nuclear weapons.

In reaction to Obama’s policies of vacillation and decline, Speaker Newt Gingrich has offered a radically different set of ideas. The Gingrich approach draws not on the Founders’ admonitions against entangling alliances and foreign adventures, but on the lessons learned from President Reagan’s successful strategy to bring down the Soviet regime and liberate the satellite nations.

In the Gingrich/Reagan model, the United States would begin by having a “massive all-sources energy program in the United States designed to, once again, create a surplus of energy here, so we could say to the Europeans pretty cheerfully, that [with] all the various sources of oil we have in the United States, we could literally replace the Iranian oil.”

After eliminating the economic weapon of Iran’s oil, Gingrich has suggested that, “We need a strategy of defeating and replacing the current Iranian regime with minimum use of force. We need a strategy… of being honest about radical Islam and designing a strategy to defeat it wherever it happens to exist.”

Reagan understood that defeating the communist enemies of freedom meant transcending their oppressive regimes and going directly to the people with the tools (from printing presses to guns) and the message of freedom.

Just as Reagan engaged the communists on every aspect of national power, Gingrich believes we should develop a plan to combat the Iranians on every battlefield as well, be it cultural, economic, and if necessary -- militarily. To win his battle, Reagan pumped up Radio Liberty and the Voice of America, supported the Solidarity labor movement in Poland, and yes, aided the Contras in Nicaragua and the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Gingrich says we should apply those same ideas in the battle against Iran and radical Islam.

Gingrich has also pointed out that there are really only three options in dealing with Iran, “replacing the regime before they get a nuclear weapon without a war [which] beats replacing the regime with war, which beats allowing them to have a nuclear weapon.”

Speaker Gingrich also directly disagreed with Ron Paul’s hands-off approach to the issue of a potential war between Israel and Iran, saying, “If my choice was to collaborate with the Israelis on a conventional campaign or force them to use their nuclear weapons, it will be an extraordinarily dangerous world if out of a sense of being abandoned [by the U.S.] they [Israel] went nuclear and used multiple nuclear weapons in Iran. That would be a future none of us would want to live through.”

How do we avoid “a future none of us would want to live through?” That really sums-up the dilemma Americans will face when they go to the polls and contemplate a world and a future that, if we do nothing, includes a nuclear armed Iran.

Do we allow Obama four more years of vacillation, during which time Iran will surely obtain a nuclear capability? Do we follow the Ron Paul model and engage the Iranians as equals (as we did the Soviets and the Red Chinese) in the hope that a less threatening United States will result in a less threatening Iran? Or do we follow the Gingrich/Reagan model and engage the current Iranian regime on every battlefield of national power in a well coordinated strategy of regime change, to make certain the Iranians never obtain nuclear weapons?

While it is rarely put in such stark terms, when you vote in the 2012 presidential election, you will choose one of those three alternatives.

Now that the series has concluded, please be sure to come back to www.conservativehq.com tomorrow to vote in the poll on this important issue.