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Where does Paul Ryan stand on foreign policy and social issues?

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Rep. Paul Ryan
Rep. Paul Ryan

We all know that Paul Ryan is conservative on fiscal issues. He’s the man with a plan to stop overspending and solve the debt problem. But where does he stand on other issues?

Here’s an article from the liberal Washington Post about Ryan’s foreign policy views.

Excerpt:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) gave a speech Thursday to the Alexander Hamilton Society in Washington. If one is looking for clues as to Ryan’s interests beyond chairing the House Budget Committee, a speech, as he put it, to “a room full of national security experts about American foreign policy” would merit attention.

…Ryan delivered an above-the-fray talk on the subject of American uniqueness (a less loaded term) and the myth that American decline in inevitable. He posited, “Our fiscal policy and our foreign policy are on a collision course; and if we fail to put our budget on a sustainable path, then we are choosing decline as a world power.”

Ryan contends that the debt crisis is not a bookkeeping problem or even simply a domestic problem; it is about maintaining our status as a superpower and about American values.

[…]He plainly is not with the cut-and-run set on Afghanistan. “Although the war has been long and the human costs high, failure would be a blow to American prestige and would reinvigorate al-Qaeda, which is reeling from the death of its leader. Now is the time to lock in the success that is within reach.” Nor can he be accused of wanting to “go it alone.” “The Obama administration has taken our allies for granted and accepted too willingly the decline of their capacity for international action. Our alliances were vital to our victory in the Cold War, and they need to be revitalized to see us through the 21st century.”

As for China, he bats down the idea that we should go along to get along… He’s clear that China has “very different values and interests from our own.”

And finally on defense spending, he rejects the sort of penny-pinching isolationism of Jon Huntsman or Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.).

According to On The Issues,he’s solid on military spending:

  • Rated 22% by SANE, indicating a pro-military voting record
  • YES on $266 billion Defense Appropriations bill
  • YES on deploying SDI
  • YES on emergency $78B for war in Iraq & Afghanistan
  • YES on continuing military recruitment on college campuses
  • YES on restricting no-bid defense contracts

He’s solid on counter-terrorism:

  • NO on Veto override: Congressional oversight of CIA interrogations
  • NO on requiring FISA warrants for wiretaps in US, but not abroad
  • YES on making the PATRIOT Act permanent
  • YES on continuing intelligence gathering without civil oversight
  • YES on allowing electronic surveillance without a warrant
  • YES on removing need for FISA warrant for wiretapping abroad
  • YES on retroactive immunity for telecoms’ warrantless surveillance

And supports military intervention against Islamic terrorists:

  • Strengthen sanctions on Syria & assist democratic transition
  • Sanctions on Iran to end nuclear program
  • YES on authorizing military force in Iraq
  • YES on declaring Iraq part of War on Terror with no exit date
  • NO on redeploying US troops out of Iraq starting in 90 days
  • NO on investigating Bush impeachment for lying about Iraq

I agree with him on all of that. But how is he on social issues?

Excerpt:

Ryan, the top Republican on the Budget Committee who has a strongly pro-life record, talked about the place social issues have in the election in an interview with CNBC last week.

“We will agree to disagree on those issues,” Ryan said last Monday on CNBC. “But let’s rally around the tallest pole in our tent

Ryan also released a statement today that LifeNews.com received saying pro-life issues are not on a list of menu items that have to be given up during the election season.

“Healthy debate should take place within the Republican Party on specific policies, but it is a false choice to ask which natural right we should discard

“All planks – economic liberty and limited government; keeping our nation secure; championing America’s founding truths and the dignity of every human person – are rooted in same timeless principles, enshrined in our Founding and the cause of our exceptionalism,” Ryan added. “The American family must remain at the core of our free society, and I will remain ever-vigilant in its defense.”

Conor Sweeney, a top Ryan spokesman, told LifeNews.com today that Ryan doesn’t agree with the “truce” on social issues Barbour and Daniels have advocated.

“Paul Ryan rejects the false choice that our natural rights to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ are a menu of options,” he said, adding that Ryan has been “calling upon his colleagues to defend the sanctity of life.”

He also pointed to comments Ryan made in a Weekly Standard interview rejecting the “truce” language and putting him outside the Daniels-Barbour circle.

“I don’t see it quite the same way [as Daniels],” Ryan said in June, “we don’t need to ask anybody to unilaterally disarm.”

“I’m as pro-life as a person gets,” Ryan continued. “You’re not going to have a truce. Judges are going to come up. Issues come up, they’re unavoidable, and I’m never going to not vote pro-life.”

Here’s his voting record on pro-life issues:

  • Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record
  • Rated 100% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-life stance
  • Prohibit transporting minors across state lines for abortion
  • Bar funding for abortion under federal Obamacare plans
  • Congress shall protect life beginning with fertilization
  • Prohibit federal funding to groups like Planned Parenthood
  • Grant the pre-born equal protection under 14th Amendment
  • YES on barring transporting minors to get an abortion
  • YES on banning partial-birth abortions
  • YES on banning Family Planning funding in US aid abroad
  • YES on federal crime to harm fetus while committing other crimes
  • YES on funding for health providers who don’t provide abortion info
  • YES on banning partial-birth abortion except to save mother’s life
  • YES on making it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime
  • YES on restricting interstate transport of minors to get abortions
  • NO on allowing human embryonic stem cell research
  • NO on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines

And he is also a strong defender of traditional marriage:

  • Rated 0% by the HRC, indicating an anti-gay-rights stance
  • YES on banning gay adoptions in DC.
  • YES on Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage
  • YES on Constitutionally defining marriage as one-man-one-woman
  • YES on prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation
  • NO on enforcing against anti-gay hate crimes

Tough on crime:

  • Rated 30% by CURE, indicating anti-rehabilitation crime votes
  • YES on more prosecution and sentencing for juvenile crime
  • NO on funding for alternative sentencing instead of more prisons.
  • NO on expanding services for offendors’ re-entry into society

Favors school choice:

  • Rated 8% by the NEA, indicating anti-public education votes
  • NO on environmental education grants for outdoor experiences
  • NO on $40B for green public schools

And an increased role for families and churches:

  • YES on responsible fatherhood via faith-based organizations
  • YES on treating religious organizations equally for tax breaks
  • NO on instituting National Service as a new social invention

So definitely not just a fiscal conservative. He’s conservative across the board. And STRONGLY so.

Female readers of the Wintery Knight blog may now swoon.

News

Obama vows to continue prosecuting counter-terrorism experts

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Consider this Wall Street Journal article by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

Excerpt:

Consider how the intelligence that led to bin Laden came to hand. It began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information — including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden. That regimen of harsh interrogation was used on KSM after another detainee, Abu Zubaydeh, was subjected to the same techniques. When he broke, he said that he and other members of al-Qaeda were obligated to resist only until they could no longer do so, at which point it became permissible for them to yield. “Do this for all the brothers,” he advised his interrogators. . . .

The harsh techniques themselves were used selectively against only a small number of hard-core prisoners who successfully resisted other forms of interrogation, and then only with the explicit authorization of the director of the CIA. Of the thousands of unlawful combatants captured by the U.S., fewer than 100 were detained and questioned in the CIA program. Of those, fewer than one-third were subjected to any of these techniques.

[…]President Obama ran for election on the promise to do away with these techniques even before he became aware, if he ever did, of what they were. Days after taking office, he directed that the CIA interrogation program be done away with entirely and that interrogation be limited to the techniques set forth in the Army Field Manual, a document designed for use by even the least experienced troops. It’s available on the Internet and used by terrorists as a training manual for resisting interrogation.

Jennifer Rubin, writing in the left-wing Washington Post comments on the Mukasey column.

Excerpt:

In addition to eliminating the very techniques that allowed us to track down and kill bin Laden, Obama has permitted the Justice Department to reopen investigation of previously cleared CIA operatives. Mukasey explains: “ I say ‘reopening’ advisedly because those investigations had all been formally closed by the end of 2007, with detailed memoranda prepared by career Justice Department prosecutors explaining why no charges were warranted. Attorney General Eric Holder conceded that he had ordered the investigations reopened in September 2009 without reading those memoranda. The investigations have now dragged on for years with prosecutors chasing allegations down rabbit holes, with the CIA along with the rest of the intelligence community left demoralized.”

That’s right – Barack Obama has intimidated the entire intelligence community with his prosecution of CIA operatives who were judged innocent. Does his decision to prosecute CIA counter-terrorism experts make us safer from terrorist attacks?

And just look at how he treated the 9/11 widow Debra Burlingame. He literally turned his back on her just because she asked him why he is continuing to prosecute the CIA interrogators for doing their jobs. That’s the real Barack Obama. He can’t take a question, he can’t handle criticism. He has no civility for people who disagree with him.

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News

CIA Director Leon Panetta confirms that waterboarding led to Osama Bin Laden

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CIA Director Leon Panetta confirms that waterboarding / enhanced interrogation techniques led to Osama Bin Laden, in this MSNBC interview by Brian Williams.

Excerpt:

Brian Williams: I’d like to ask you about the sourcing on the intel that ultimately led to this successful attack. Can you confirm that it was as a result of waterboarding that we learned what we needed to learn to go after Bin Laden?

Leon Panetta: You know, Brian, in the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information, and that was true here. We had a multiple series of sources that provided information with regards to this situation. Clearly, some of it came from detainees and the interrogation of detainees, but we also had information from other sources as well. So it’s a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got.

Williams: Turned around the other way, are you denying that waterboarding was in part among the tactics used to extract the intelligence that led to this successful mission?

Panetta: No, I think some of the detainees clearly were — you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I’m also saying that the debate about whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always going to be an open question.

Williams: So, final point, one final time: enhanced interrogation techniques, which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years, that includes waterboarding.

Panetta: That’s correct.

This is the waterboarding that Obama opposed. Obama opposed enhanced interrogations. Obama opposed military tribunals. Obama opposed CIA prisons. Obama opposed Guantanamo Bay. Obama opposed counter-terrorism. I would not be surprised if the decision to kill Bin Laden was made in order to keep Obama from reading him his rights, giving him a civilian trial, bowing to him, etc.

Notice that the left-wing New York Times is in denial about the facts.

And don’t forget how waterboarding prevented a similar 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles.

Excerpt:

The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) — including the use of waterboarding — caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.

Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”

According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack — which KSM called the “Second Wave”– planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.”

KSM was the mastermind of the first “hijacked-airliner” attacks on the United States, which struck the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia on Sept. 11, 2001.

After KSM was captured by the United States, he was not initially cooperative with CIA interrogators.  Nor was another top al Qaeda leader named Zubaydah.  KSM, Zubaydah, and a third terrorist named Nashiri were the only three persons ever subjected to waterboarding by the CIA.

I actually asked one person who thought waterboarding was “torture” who KSM was. She didn’t know! But this is like asking “who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” when it comes to intelligence matters. You can’t decide what to believe based on your feelings or the need to please others or to strike a pose with your peers to earn their approval. You have to have access to the facts, or you get taken in by conspiracy theories and sloganeering. You have to understand WHY Americans will use an Apache helicopter to attack a force of infantry armed with RPGs when a convoy of Hummers comes into their line of fire. It does no good to try to participate in debates on national security and foreign policy without knowing the facts. Feelings of envy and hatred for the United States are not arguments.

Let me be very very clear. To oppose the waterboarding of a terrorist like KSM is to favor the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans, thousands of innocent civilians in wars, and millions or even billions of dollars of financial losses. That is the “moral superiority” of the left. They would rather protect a guilty terrorist from a little discomfort than save huge numbers of innocent lives and protect the assets of huge numbers of innocent people. And they expect you to hold them in high regard for protecting evil, and punishing good. Apparently, this is considered as being the height of morality on the secular left, as Evan Sayet has pointed out. Despite what leftists believe, it is morally good for American soldiers kill a terrorist who has harmed innocent people or who is plotting an attack that will kill innocent people.

Thank you, President George W. Bush, for having a clear moral vision, and for making the hard, unpopular decisions that kept us safe.

Thank you, Central Intelligence Agency, for doing hard, unpopular things in order to protect us from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

Thank you, United States Armed Forces, for taking on the thankless task of protecting the people of the United States.

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

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