Texas Congressman and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul doesn't mince words. The paper money issued by the United States, he says, is "counterfeit," since the Constitution authorizes the minting of coins but not the printing of money. The United States is "broke," and can only pay its bills by printing money or borrowing it. The downgrading of U.S. bonds by the rating agency Standard & Poor's was "irrelevant." Cap-and-trade programs to reduce carbon dioxide emissions simply "legalize pollution." The world is in "shambles," because all currency is backed by paper money.

Paul, who met with the Monitor editorial board yesterday, speaks with a candor unheard of in a presidential candidate. But unlike so many of his Republican rivals in the primary, he doesn't speak meanly and he doesn't personalize disagreements. Such qualities make him a delight to be around, but they won't make him president, nor - if elected - would Paul be able to govern. His fidelity to his many deeply held principles allow him to build coalitions with people who share his beliefs but forbid him from making the compromises that are necessary to achieve a majority.

Paul's role in the race is that of a truth teller and provocateur. While we don't share many of his beliefs, we applaud him for raising some serious questions. Perhaps the most serious of those pertains to America's military policy. Like Paul, we believe that the war in Iraq was unnecessary, that while the effort to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and oust al Qaida from Afghanistan was the right thing to do, the decision to expand the war into a fight against the Taliban and to create an Afghan government was misguided and almost certainly doomed.

The United States, according to the Pentagon, has 865 military bases in more than 150 nations, and that doesn't count secret bases and the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some are unnecessary. Some are resented by the people in our host nations and make the United States less rather than more secure. Paul would close all of them and bring the more than 350,000 troops stationed abroad home. That goes way too far. But does the United States really need, and can it afford, to have 227 bases in Germany? Many of the bases should be closed and the billions of dollars spent to staff and maintain them used to reduce the deficit and rebuild this nation.

Paul, in a belief shared by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, believes that the national debt is the biggest threat to national security. That debt was increased dramatically by wars that didn't need to be fought and by foreign bases that outlived their justification decades ago.

Asked whether the troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan will be seen as having died in vain, Paul said, "Yes, if we don't learn something from it. Yes, if we don't wake up and realize that it was a useless war."

We suspect that Paul is right. The lesson that will be learned, yet again, from the twin wars is that there are limits to the use of American money and power to settle disputes, police the world and build nations.