Former Republican Rep. Ron Paul, the father of potential presidential candidate Rand Paul and a former presidential candidate himself, said the Congressional Black Caucus does not support war because they want that money 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 told Lew Rockwell in early February during a discussion on sanctions.
"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."
Paul also said he doesn't think sanctions on Iran are effective.
"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."
Paul pointed to the Islamic State's ability to sell oil as further proof that sanctions do not work.
"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."