[Peace-discuss] A republican congressman from Texas has some
questions.
Morton K.Brussel
brussel4 at insightbb.com
Sat Jan 29 23:28:31 CST 2005
A voice in the wilderness--Texas? mkb
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012905B.shtml
What If (It Was All a Big Mistake)?
By Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)
Wednesday 26 January 2005
Delivered to the U.S. House of Representatives.
America's policy of foreign intervention, while still debated in
the early 20th century, is today accepted as conventional wisdom by
both political parties. But what if the overall policy is a colossal
mistake, a major error in judgment? Not just bad judgment regarding
when and where to impose ourselves, but the entire premise that we
have
a moral right to meddle in the affairs of others? Think of the untold
harm done by years of fighting - hundreds of thousands of American
casualties, hundreds of thousands of foreign civilian casualties, and
unbelievable human and economic costs. What if it was all needlessly
borne by the American people? If we do conclude that grave foreign
policy errors have been made, a very serious question must be asked:
What would it take to change our policy to one more compatible with a
true republic's goal of peace, commerce, and friendship with all
nations? Is it not possible that Washington's admonition to avoid
entangling alliances is sound advice even today?
In medicine mistakes are made - man is fallible. Misdiagnoses are
made, incorrect treatments are given, and experimental trials of
medicines are advocated. A good physician understands the
imperfections
in medical care, advises close follow-ups, and double-checks the
diagnosis, treatment, and medication. Adjustments are made to assure
the best results. But what if a doctor never checks the success or
failure of a treatment, or ignores bad results and assumes his
omnipotence - refusing to concede that the initial course of treatment
was a mistake? Let me assure you, the results would not be good.
Litigation and the loss of reputation in the medical community place
restraints on this type of bullheaded behavior.
Sadly, though, when governments, politicians, and bureaucrats
make
mistakes and refuse to reexamine them, there is little the victims can
do to correct things. Since the bully pulpit and the media propaganda
machine are instrumental in government cover-ups and deception, the
final truth emerges slowly, and only after much suffering. The
arrogance of some politicians, regulators, and diplomats actually
causes them to become even more aggressive and more determined to
prove
themselves right, to prove their power is not to be messed with by
never admitting a mistake. Truly, power corrupts!
The unwillingness to ever reconsider our policy of foreign
intervention, despite obvious failures and shortcomings over the last
50 years, has brought great harm to our country and our liberty.
Historically, financial realities are the ultimate check on nations
bent on empire. Economic laws ultimately prevail over bad judgment.
But
tragically, the greater the wealth of a country, the longer the flawed
policy lasts. We'll probably not be any different.
We are still a wealthy nation, and our currency is still trusted
by
the world, yet we are vulnerable to some harsh realities about our
true
wealth and the burden of our future commitments. Overwhelming debt and
the precarious nature of the dollar should serve to restrain our
determined leaders, yet they show little concern for deficits. Rest
assured, though, the limitations of our endless foreign adventurism
and
spending will become apparent to everyone at some point in time.
Since 9/11, a lot of energy and money have gone into efforts
ostensibly designed to make us safer. Many laws have been passed and
many dollars have been spent. Whether or not we're better off is
another question.
Today we occupy two countries in the Middle East. We have
suffered
over 20,000 casualties, and caused possibly 100,000 civilian
casualties
in Iraq. We have spent over $200 billion in these occupations, as well
as hundreds of billions of dollars here at home hoping to be safer.
We've created the Department of Homeland Security, passed the Patriot
Act, and created a new super CIA agency.
Our government now is permitted to monitor the Internet, to read
our mail, to search us without proper search warrants, to develop a
national ID card, and to investigate what people are reading in
libraries. Ironically, illegal aliens flow into our country and
qualify
for driving licenses and welfare benefits with little restraint.
These issues are discussed, but nothing has been as highly
visible
to us as the authoritarianism we accept at the airport. The creation
of
the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has intruded on the
privacy of all airline travelers, and there is little evidence that we
are safer for it. Driven by fear, we have succumbed to the age-old
temptation to sacrifice liberty on the pretense of obtaining security.
Love of security, unfortunately, all too often vanquishes love of
liberty.
Unchecked fear of another 9/11-type attack constantly preoccupies
our leaders and most of our citizens, and drives the legislative
attack
on our civil liberties. It's frightening to see us doing to ourselves
what even bin Laden never dreamed he could accomplish with his suicide
bombers.
We don't understand the difference between a vague threat of
terrorism and the danger of a guerilla war. One prompts us to expand
and nationalize domestic law enforcement while limiting the freedoms
of
all Americans. The other deals with understanding terrorists like bin
Laden, who declared war against us in 1998. Not understanding the
difference makes it virtually impossible to deal with the real
threats.
We are obsessed with passing new laws to make our country safe from a
terrorist attack. This confusion about the cause of the 9/11 attacks,
the fear they engendered, and the willingness to sacrifice liberty
prompts many to declare their satisfaction with the inconveniences and
even humiliation at our nation's airports.
There are always those in government who are anxious to increase
its power and authority over the people. Strict adherence to personal
privacy annoys those who promote a centralized state.
It's no surprise to learn that many of the new laws passed in the
aftermath of 9/11 had been proposed long before that date. The attacks
merely provided an excuse to do many things previously proposed by
dedicated statists.
All too often government acts perversely, professing to advance
liberty while actually doing the opposite. Dozens of new bills passed
since 9/11 promise to protect our freedoms and our security. In time
we
will realize there is little chance our security will be enhanced or
our liberties protected.
The powerful and intrusive TSA certainly will not solve our
problems. Without a full discussion, greater understanding, and
ultimately a change in the foreign policy that incites those who
declared war against us, no amount of pat-downs at airports will
suffice. Imagine the harm done, the staggering costs, and the loss of
liberty if the next 20 years pass and airplanes are never employed by
terrorists. Even if there is a possibility that airplanes will be used
to terrorize us, TSA's bullying will do little to prevent it. Patting
down old women and little kids in airports cannot possibly make us
safer!
TSA cannot protect us from another attack and it is not the
solution. It serves only to make us all more obedient and complacent
toward government intrusions into our lives.
The airport mess has been compounded by other problems, which we
fail to recognize. Most assume the government has the greatest
responsibility for making private aircraft travel safe. But this
assumption only ignores mistakes made before 9/11, when the government
taught us to not resist, taught us that airline personnel could not
carry guns, and that the government would be in charge of security.
Airline owners became complacent and dependent upon the government.
After 9/11 we moved in the wrong direction by allowing total
government control and a political takeover by the TSA - which was
completely contrary to the proposition that private owners have the
ultimate responsibility to protect their customers.
Discrimination laws passed during the last 40 years ostensibly
fuel
the Transportation Secretary's near obsession with avoiding the
appearance of discrimination toward young Muslim males. Instead TSA
seemingly targets white children and old women. We have failed to
recognize that a safety policy by a private airline is quite a
different thing from government agents blindly obeying
anti-discrimination laws.
Governments do not have a right to use blanket discrimination,
such
as that which led to incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War
II. However, local law-enforcement agencies should be able to target
their searches if the description of a suspect is narrowed by sex,
race, or religion.
We are dealing with an entirely different matter when it comes to
safety on airplanes. The federal government should not be involved in
local law enforcement, and has no right to discriminate. Airlines, on
the other hand, should be permitted to do whatever is necessary to
provide safety. Private firms - long denied the right - should have a
right to discriminate. Fine restaurants, for example, can require that
shoes and shirts be worn for service in their establishments. The
logic
of this remaining property right should permit more sensible security
checks at airports. The airlines should be responsible for the safety
of their property, and liable for it as well. This is not only the
responsibility of the airlines, but it is a civil right that has long
been denied them and other private companies.
The present situation requires the government to punish some by
targeting those individuals who clearly offer no threat. Any airline
that tries to make travel safer and happens to question a larger
number
of young Muslim males than the government deems appropriate can be
assessed huge fines. To add insult to injury, the fines collected from
airlines are used for forced sensitivity training of pilots who do
their very best, under the circumstances, to make flying safer by
restricting the travel of some individuals. We have embarked on a
process that serves no logical purpose. While airline safety suffers,
personal liberty is diminished and costs skyrocket.
If we're willing to consider a different foreign policy, we
should
ask ourselves a few questions:
1. What if the policies of foreign intervention, entangling
alliances, policing the world, nation building, and spreading our
values through force are deeply flawed?
2. What if it is true that Saddam Hussein never had weapons of
mass
destruction?
3. What if it is true that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were
never allies?
4. What if it is true that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein did
nothing to enhance our national security?
5. What if our current policy in the Middle East leads to the
overthrow of our client oil states in the region?
6. What if the American people really knew that more than 20,000
American troops have suffered serious casualties or died in the Iraq
war, and 9% of our forces already have been made incapable of
returning
to battle?
7. What if it turns out there are many more guerrilla fighters in
Iraq than our government admits?
8. What if there really have been 100,000 civilian Iraqi
casualties,
as some claim, and what is an acceptable price for "doing good?"
9. What if Rumsfeld is replaced for the wrong reasons, and things
become worse under a Defense Secretary who demands more troops and an
expansion of the war?
10. What if we discover that, when they do vote, the overwhelming
majority of Iraqis support Islamic (Sharia) law over western secular
law, and want our troops removed?
11. What if those who correctly warned of the disaster awaiting us
in
Iraq are never asked for their opinion of what should be done now?
12. What if the only solution for Iraq is to divide the country
into
three separate regions, recognizing the principle of
self-determination
while rejecting the artificial boundaries created in 1918 by
non-Iraqis?
13. What if it turns out radical Muslims don't hate us for our
freedoms, but rather for our policies in the Middle East that directly
affected Arabs and Muslims?
14. What if the invasion and occupation of Iraq actually distracted
from pursuing and capturing Osama bin Laden?
15. What if we discover that democracy can't be spread with force
of
arms?
16. What if democracy is deeply flawed, and instead we should be
talking about liberty, property rights, free markets, the rule of law,
localized government, weak centralized government, and
self-determination promoted through persuasion, not force?
17. What if Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda actually welcomed our
invasion and occupation of Arab/Muslim Iraq as proof of their
accusations against us, and it served as a magnificent recruiting tool
for them?
18. What if our policy greatly increased and prolonged our
vulnerability to terrorists and guerilla attacks both at home and
abroad?
19. What if the Pentagon, as reported by its Defense Science Board,
actually recognized the dangers of our policy before the invasion, and
their warnings were ignored or denied?
20. What if the argument that by fighting over there, we won't have
to fight here, is wrong, and the opposite is true?
21. What if we can never be safer by giving up some of our
freedoms?
22. What if the principle of pre-emptive war is adopted by Russia,
China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and others, "justified" by current
U.S.
policy?
23. What if pre-emptive war and pre-emptive guilt stem from the
same
flawed policy of authoritarianism, though we fail to recognize it?
24. What if Pakistan is not a trustworthy ally, and turns on us
when
conditions deteriorate?
25. What if plans are being laid to provoke Syria and/or Iran into
actions that would be used to justify a military response and
pre-emptive war against them?
26. What if our policy of democratization of the Middle East fails,
and ends up fueling a Russian-Chinese alliance that we regret -- an
alliance not achieved even at the height of the Cold War?
27. What if the policy forbidding profiling at our borders and
airports is deeply flawed?
28. What if presuming the guilt of a suspected terrorist without a
trial leads to the total undermining of constitutional protections for
American citizens when arrested?
29. What if we discover the army is too small to continue policies
of
pre-emption and nation-building? What if a military draft is the only
way to mobilize enough troops?
30. What if the "stop-loss" program is actually an egregious
violation of trust and a breach of contract between the government and
soldiers? What if it actually is a backdoor draft, leading to
unbridled
cynicism and rebellion against a voluntary army and generating support
for a draft of both men and women? Will lying to troops lead to
rebellion and anger toward the political leadership running the war?
31. What if the Pentagon's legal task-force opinion that the
President is not bound by international or federal law regarding
torture stands unchallenged, and sets a precedent which ultimately
harms Americans, while totally disregarding the moral, practical, and
legal arguments against such a policy?
32. What if the intelligence reform legislation - which gives us
bigger, more expensive bureaucracy -- doesn't bolster our security,
and
distracts us from the real problem of revamping our interventionist
foreign policy?
33. What if we suddenly discover we are the aggressors, and we are
losing an unwinnable guerrilla war?
34. What if we discover, too late, that we can't afford this war -
and that our policies have led to a dollar collapse, rampant
inflation,
high interest rates, and a severe economic downturn?
Why do I believe these are such important questions? Because the
#1
function of the federal government -- to provide for national
security --
has been severely undermined. On 9/11 we had a grand total of 14
aircraft in place to protect the entire U.S. mainland, all of which
proved useless that day. We have an annual DOD budget of over $400
billion, most of which is spent overseas in over 100 different
countries. On 9/11 our Air Force was better positioned to protect
Seoul, Tokyo, Berlin, and London than it was to protect Washington
D.C.
and New York City.
Moreover, our ill-advised presence in the Middle East and our
decade-long bombing of Iraq served only to incite the suicidal attacks
of 9/11.
Before 9/11 our CIA ineptly pursued bin Laden, whom the Taliban
was
protecting. At the same time, the Taliban was receiving significant
support from Pakistan -- our "trusted ally" that received millions of
dollars from the United States. We allied ourselves with both bin
Laden
and Hussein in the 1980s, only to regret it in the 1990s. And it's
safe
to say we have used billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in the last 50
years pursuing this contradictory, irrational, foolish, costly, and
very dangerous foreign policy.
Policing the world, spreading democracy by force, nation
building,
and frequent bombing of countries that pose no threat to us -- while
leaving the homeland and our borders unprotected -- result from a
foreign policy that is contradictory and not in our self interest.
I hardly expect anyone in Washington to pay much attention to
these
concerns. If I'm completely wrong in my criticisms, nothing is lost
except my time and energy expended in efforts to get others to
reconsider our foreign policy.
But the bigger question is:
What if I'm right, or even partially right, and we urgently need
to
change course in our foreign policy for the sake of our national and
economic security, yet no one pays attention?
For that a price will be paid. Is it not worth talking about?
Ron Paul is a Republican Congressman from Texas.
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