[Peace-discuss] The single most accurate comment on the war in theHouse

[unionyes]

An excellent and accurate speech by a politician who I may not agree with on 
some issues, in particular Social Security and Medicare, but who has 
steadfastly and honestly shown that he is a man of principle and " walks it 
like he talks it " when it comes to opposing the U.S. government's ( under 
both dem and republican rule ) wars of corporate imperial aggression.

David J.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Sent: Saturday, July 03, 2010 10:02 PM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] The single most accurate comment on the war in 
theHouse


The War That’s Not a War
by Rep. Ron Paul, July 03, 2010
Statement in the House by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas
on funding the war in Afghanistan.

In January 1991, we went to war in the Middle East against Saddam Hussein,
Iraq’s dictator who was our ally during the Iran-Iraq war. A border dispute
between Kuwait and Iraq broke out after our State Department gave a green 
light
to Hussein’s invasion.

After Iraq’s successful invasion of Kuwait, we reacted with gusto and have 
been
militarily involved in the entire region 6,000 miles from our shores ever 
since.
This has included Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. After 20
years of killing and a couple trillion dollars wasted, not only does the
fighting continue with no end in sight, but our leaders threaten to spread 
our
bombs of benevolence on Iran.

For most Americans, we are at war, at war against a tactic called terrorism, 
not
a country. This allows our military to go any place in the world without 
limits
as to time or place. But how can we be at war? Congress has not declared 
war, as
required by the Constitution, that is true. But our Presidents have, and
Congress and the people have not objected. Congress obediently provides all 
the
money requested for the war.

People are dying. Bombs are dropped. Our soldiers are shot at and killed. 
Our
soldiers wear a uniform; our enemies do not. They are not part of any
government. They have no planes, no tanks, no ships, no missiles, and no 
modern
technology. What kind of a war is this anyway, if it really is one? If it 
was a
real war, we would have won it by now. Our stated goal since 9/11 has been 
to
destroy al Qaeda.

Was al Qaeda in Iraq? Not under Saddam Hussein. Our leaders lied us into
invading Iraq and deceived us into occupying Afghanistan. There is still 
really
no al Qaeda in Iraq and only 100 or so in Afghanistan, and yet there is no 
end
in sight to the war. Could there have been other reasons for this war that 
is
not a war? A military victory in Afghanistan is illusive. Does anyone really
know who we are fighting and why?

Why has the war not ended? Nine years, and it continues to spread. Some 
claim it
is to keep America safe, that our soldiers are fighting and dying for our
freedom, defending our Constitution. Are we being lied to in order to keep 
us in
this spreading war, just as we were lied to in the 1960s to keep us in 
Vietnam?

We own the Iraq Government, as we do Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, we are
fighting the Taliban, those dangerous people with guns defending their 
homeland.
Once they were called the Mujahideen, our old allies, along with bin Laden, 
in
the fight to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s. In that effort, 
our
CIA funded radical jihad against that nasty foreign occupier, the Russians. 
What
gratitude. Those same people now resent our benevolent occupation, with a 
little
violence thrown in.

The resistance to our presence grows as our perseverance wanes. Our people 
are
waking up, but our officials refuse to recognize the longer we stay, the 
greater
is the support for those dedicated to the principle that Afghanistan is for
Afghans who resent all foreign occupation.

The harder we fight a war that is not a war, the weaker we get and the 
stronger
becomes our enemy. When an enemy without weapons can respect an army of 
great
strength, the most powerful of all history, one should ask, who has the 
moral
high ground?

Military failure in Afghanistan is to be our destiny. Changing generals 
without
changing our policies or our policymakers perpetuates our agony and delays 
the
inevitable.

This is not a war that our generals have been trained for. Nation building,
police work, social engineering is never a job for foreign occupiers and 
never
an appropriate job for soldiers trained to win wars.

A military victory is no longer even a stated goal of our military leaders 
or
our politicians, as they know that type of victory is impossible.

The sad story is, this war is against ourselves, our values, our 
Constitution,
our financial well-being and common sense. And at the rate we’re going, it’s
going to end badly.

What we need are honest leaders with character and a new foreign policy.

http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2010/07/02/the-war-thats-not-a-war/
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