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Of all the candidates running for the Republican
nomination, only one was right – if not prescient – about the big
foreign policy issue of the day, namely, the war in Iraq. I speak of course
of Congressman Ron Paul. The whole world now knows, as even the CIA has
admitted, that the war was based on a lie; there never were any "weapons
of mass destruction" that threatened the U.S.; Saddam Hussein, as evil
as he was, posed no threat to America; and he had nothing whatsoever to do
with 9/11. Bin Laden in fact hated Hussein because Iraq was a secular
society.
Nor does the neocon chant that the terrorists
attacked on 9/11 because "they hate our freedoms" make any sense at
all. America was much freer decades ago before it became the fascist police
state that it is today, and there were no terrorist attacks back then. The
truth is that it is the neocons, with their PATRIOT Act, threats to suspend
Habeas Corpus (and even the internet), warrantless wiretaps, internet
censorship and spying, and their chant that "9/11 changed
everything!" (translation: the hell with the
Constitution) who are the real enemies of American freedom.
All of the bought-and-paid-for neocon chickenhawks who are running for
the Republican nomination, from Newt Gingrich to Mitt Romney and Rick
Santorum, were and are cheerleaders for endless unconstitutional war in the
Middle East. They never, ever, seem to get enough of it. Only Ron Paul has
expressed learned intelligence grounded in history and constitutionalism on
the issue. Anyone who is interested should read his 2007 book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom:
Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship.
The book is a collection of Congressman Paul’s
speeches in the U.S. House of Representatives on the topic of foreign policy.
On September 14, 2001, Congressman Paul made perhaps his most important point
about the then-threatened wars in Iraq and Afghanistan when he said, "it
is crucial to understand why we were attacked, which then will tell us by
whom we were attacked." The neocon establishment ignored him, the result
of which was the senseless war in Iraq that led to needless death of
thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
While Congressman Paul warned against
"inadvertent or casual acceptance of civilian deaths as part of this
war," the neocon establishment ignored him and proceeded to demonize all
Muslims everywhere to "justify" the indiscriminate murder of
civilians. By contrast, the bloodthirsty and quite insane-sounding New
Gingrich, who is now said to be "rising in the polls," once wrote a
Wall Street Journal article arguing for the military invasion and
occupation of Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and North Korea all at once. Such an
endeavor could never occur without the resurrection of military conscription.
In 2001 Congressman Paul warned against
"finding ourselves needlessly entrenched in conflicts unrelated to our
national security," which of course is exactly what has occurred over
the past decade, repeating the American foreign policy record of the past
several decades. The latest gambit is military invention in Central Africa of
all places, where the Obama administration has sent "military
advisors," Vietnam style.
On September 25, 2001 Congressman Paul warned his congressional
colleagues that it is "no easy task to destroy an almost invisible,
ubiquitous enemy spread throughout the world, without expanding the war or
infringing on our liberties here at home . . . above all else . . . our
mandate and our key constitutional responsibility [is] protecting liberty and
providing for national security." The neocon wars of aggression in the
Middle East have made Americans less secure by creating more enemies
in the Muslim world while turning America into a fascist police state, the
symbols of which are the jack-booted thugs (and quite a few perverts) known
as TSA bureaucrats, with their naked x-ray porno-tron
machines and their rubber-gloved groping of thousands of travelers every day,
including small children and the elderly wearing adult diapers.
In the same speech Congressman Paul pointed out the
absurdity of "rewarding" government failures with bigger budgets
and more bureaucrats. (I call this DiLorenzo’s
first law of politics: In government, failure is success).
"Bureaucracies by nature are ineffiecient,"
he wrote. "The FBI and CIA records [about terrorists] come up short. The
FBI loses computers and guns and is careless with records. The CIA rarely
provides timely intelligence. The FAA’s idea of security against
hijackers is asking all passengers who packed their bag."
Despite these obvious truths "the clamor
now," the congressman wrote in 2011, was "to give more authority
and money to these agencies," which of course was done. In government,
failure is success. The alternative proposed by Congressman Paul at the time
was to privatize the FAA and allow the airlines to handle their own security.
He pointed out the obvious fact that, had the FAA allowed pilots to arm
themselves, 9/11 would never have happened.
Congressman Paul also provided a precise definition
of a war in Afghanistan in his September 25, 2001 speech: "a foolish
invasion of a remote country with a forbidding terrain . . . a country that
no foreign power has ever conquered throughout history." This, too, was
ignored completely by the neocon establishment. Instead of an endless
quagmire in a country like Afghanistan, Congressman Paul recommended the
targeting of "Osama bin Laden and his key supporters" instead. The
neocon establishment was not the least bit interested in this either, for
their main objective was (and is) to militarily occupy the entire Middle Ease
to protect "American interests," which essentially means the
interests of a relatively small handful of corporations who rake in billions
while financially supporting the careers of the Washington political
establishment. It is not the "interest" of the average American
taxpayer that is of any concern to them.
"Maintaining an overseas empire is incompatible
with the American tradition of liberty and prosperity," Congressman Paul
said on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on September 5, 2002,
echoing the foreign policy views of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
He predicted that "the financial drain and the antagonism that it causes
with our enemies, and even our friends, will finally force the American
people to reject that policy outright." As the dollar continues to be
devalued by the Fed’s legalized counterfeiting machine, creating new
financial bubbles that are bound to burst eventually, Congressman
Paul’s prediction is bound to become reality. His opponents in the race
for the Republican nomination, by contrast, behave like so many
finely-groomed, expensive suit-wearing ostriches with their heads firmly
implanted in the sand.
Thomas DiLorenzo
Article originally published on www.LewRockwell.com.
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