[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 15 (Wednesday, February 25, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H620-H624]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[[Page H620]]
THE FOLLY OF FOREIGN INTERVENTION
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul) is recognized for
50 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, if I had a chance to pick a topic for my
special order today, I would call it the folly of foreign intervention.
We have heard very much in the last few weeks about the possibility
of a war being started in the Persian Gulf. It looks like this has at
least been delayed a bit. There is a temporary victory brought about by
Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations in agreement with
the government of Iraq.
This, I think, is beneficial. At least it gives both sides more time
to stop and think and talk before more bombs are dropped.
Before we left about 10 days ago from the Congress, I think many
Members and much of the Nation thought that within a short period of
time, within a week or so, there would be additional bombing by the
Americans over Baghdad.
{time} 1645
There were polls out at that time that said 70 percent of the
American people endorsed this move, something that I questioned and of
course I question the legitimacy of dealing with policy by measuring
polls, anyway. I think we should do what is right, not try to decide
what is right by the polls. But in this circumstance, I think the polls
must have been very, very misleading.
We heard a gentleman earlier this evening from North Dakota mention
when he was at home essentially nobody was telling him that they were
in favor of the war. I think most Members of Congress on this past week
on visiting home had the same message. Certainly there was a very loud
message in Columbus at a town hall meeting. It was written off by those
who wanted to go to war and wanted to drop the bombs by saying, well,
no, this was just a very noisy bunch of hippies who are opposed to the
war. There are a lot of people in this country who are opposed to the
war and they are not hippies. I think to discredit people who oppose
going and participating in an act of war and try to discredit them by
saying that they belong to a hippie generation, I think they are going
to lose out in the credibility argument in this regards.
This debate has been going on for quite a few months. It looks like
it is not resolved. Although there has been an agreement, it is far
from a victory for either side. It is somewhat ironic about how this
has come about, because it seems that those of us who have been urging
great caution have been satisfied with at least a temporary solution,
yet we are not entirely satisfied at all with the dependency on the
effort by the United States enforcing U.N. resolutions. In this case I
think what we must do is reassess the entire policy because it is
policy that gets us into trouble.
It is in this one instance. We did not just invent foreign
interventionism in foreign policy. This has been going on for a long
time. The worst and the first egregious example, of course, was in
Korea where we went to war under the U.N. banner and was the first war
we did not win. Yet we continue with this same policy throughout the
world. Hardly can we be proud of what happened in Vietnam. It seems
like we are having a lot more success getting along with the Vietnamese
people as we trade with them rather than fight with them.
There is a lot of argument against this whole principle of foreign
interventionism, involvement in the internal affairs of other nations,
picking leaders of other countries. We were warned rather clearly by
our first President, George Washington, that it would be best that we
not get involved in entangling alliances and that we instead should
talk with people and be friendly with people and trade with people. Of
course the first reaction would be, yes, but the person that we are
dealing with as leader of Iraq is a monster and therefore we cannot
trust him and we should not talk to him. There have been a lot of
monsters in the world and we have not treated them all the same way.
Just think of the tremendous number of deaths to the tune of millions
under Pol Pot. At that time we were even an ally of his. Even the
inconsistency of our policy where in the 1980s we actually encouraged
Saddam Hussein. We sold him weapons. We actually had participated in
the delivery of biological weapons to Hussein. At that time we
encouraged him to cross the border into Iran. We closed our eyes when
poison gases were used.
So all of a sudden it is hard to understand why our policy changes.
But once we embark on a policy of intervention and it is arbitrary, we
intervene when we please or when it seems to help, it seems then that
we can be on either side of any issue anytime, and so often we are on
both sides of many wars. This does not serve us well. A policy design
that is said to be pro-American and in defense of this country where we
follow the rules and follow the laws and we do not get involved in war
without a declaration by the Congress, I think it would be very healthy
not only for us as Americans but it would be very healthy for the world
as a whole.
I am very pleased that there has been at least a pause here, although
our troops will be maintained there and they are waiting to see if
there is some other excuse that we can go in there and resume the
bombing. But the whole notion that we are going to bring Hussein to his
knees without the cost of many American lives I think is naive, because
nobody has proposed that we go in and invade the country. There have
been proposals that we just assassinate Hussein, which is illegal. At
least that is acknowledged that this is an illegal act, to go in and
kill another leader, although we have been involved in that too. But
many people have argued that this should be our policy now, and that is
to topple Hussein.
But we used the CIA in Cuba a few decades ago. Now it has just been
revealed that our CIA botched the job. Also, those individuals who were
trying to restore freedom to Cuba, we let them down by them assuming we
would do more and then we did less. We were very much involved in
overthrowing a leader in South Vietnam right before the rampant
escalation of the war there. That did not serve us well. And then there
is another example of our CIA putting a government in charge over in
Iran. That is when we put the Shah in. But this did not bring peace and
stability to the region. It brought us hostage takings and hostility
and hatred and threats of terrorism in this country. So although many
will make the moral cause for doing good around the world, there is no
moral justification if we are going to follow the laws of this land and
try to stick to the rules of providing a national defense for us and a
strong foreign policy.
I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan).
Mr. DUNCAN. I wanted to take just a moment to say how much I
appreciate many of the points that the gentleman is making,
particularly in regard to the folly of much or many of our foreign
interventions in recent years.
I remember about 3 years ago reading on the front page of the
Washington Post that we had our troops in Haiti picking up garbage and
settling domestic disputes. Picking up garbage for Haitians and
settling their domestic disputes should not be a mission of the
American military. The Haitians should pick up their own garbage.
Then a few weeks ago, I heard that we had our troops in Bosnia giving
rabies shots to dogs. The Bosnians should give their own rabies shots
to their dogs. That should not be a mission of the American military.
This business of turning our American military into international
social workers is something I think the overwhelming majority of
Americans are strongly opposed to.
The really sad thing is that we have spent many, many billions of
hard-earned tax dollars in recent years in Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia,
Bosnia, now in Iraq, and I said on the floor of this House a couple of
weeks ago, why the rush to war in Iraq, why the rush to war, why the
eagerness to send young American men and women into harm's way. The
American people were not clamoring for war then. They are even more so
not clamoring for war now.
Going to war should be the most reluctant decision that we make. We
should go to war only when there is no
[[Page H621]]
other reasonable alternative. I saw George Stephanopoulos on television
a few days ago and he said that even in World War II, we had some
people who were opposed to World War II. But I can tell you the day
after Pearl Harbor, the Senate voted 82-0 and the House voted 388-1 to
go to war against Japan. But Japan had attacked us at that time. It was
a totally different situation from the one we face in Iraq. You can say
any bad thing that you want to about Saddam Hussein and I would agree
with you. But I can also tell you that he was greatly weakened by the
first Gulf War, he has been weakened even more by the sanctions since
then. I heard one commentator say that even the Italian army could beat
Saddam Hussein at this time. The threat is not there. For us to spend
all these hundreds of millions of dollars deploying all our troops over
there in the Middle East is a tremendous waste of money. It is not
something that should be done. We should try to be friends with all
nations in the world that will let us be friends. But that does not
mean we need to keep sending billions and billions of dollars overseas.
Much of this money and many of these interventions are creating great
resentment toward us.
I read recently that in regard to the International Monetary Fund
that many of these countries, they feel like we are behind the
International Monetary Fund interventions in Southeast Asia, and they
are requiring some of these countries and peoples to do things that
they do not want to do and really all they are doing is bailing out big
banks and big multinational companies, and it is creating great
resentment toward us.
I will stop with just two other points. One is that Tony Snow said in
a column a few days ago in regard to the situation in Iraq, we are
about to achieve the worst of all possible worlds. We are about to
alienate our European allies and our Arab allies and achieve nothing of
military significance.
President Kennedy in 1961 said: We must face the fact that the U.S.
is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, that we are only 6 percent of the
world's population, that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94
percent, that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity,
and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world
problem.
That was President Kennedy in 1961. The only change is that now we
are slightly less than 5 percent of the population of the world instead
of the 6 percent that we were then. I think President Kennedy was
exactly right. There cannot be an American solution to every world
problem. Let us be friends with every country, but let us not try and
impose our will and create great resentment toward this country. Let us
have a foreign policy, a trade policy, an economic policy that puts
this country and its taxpayers and its workers first, even if that is
not politically correct or fashionable to say at any particular given
time in history.
Mr. PAUL. I would like to ask the gentleman one question. He was just
home in his district, he traveled and talked to quite a few of his
constituents. Did he get a sentiment from his district on what they
want?
Mr. DUNCAN. I spoke many places in my district. I represent east
Tennessee, which is a very conservative, patriotic, pro-military
district. I have said before that I think a strong national defense is
one of the most legitimate functions of our national government. But we
should not try to turn the Department of Defense into the department of
offense and do things like that. When I spoke, and I told the people of
my district what I had said on the floor just a few days before, that
we should not rush into war, I told them some of the things that I had
said on the floor that I have said here today, I got nothing but
applause, nothing but support. All of my calls and letters that I have
gotten have been totally against us attacking what Tom Aspell, the CNN
correspondent, said now is a defenseless country.
I am not trying to get any sympathy for Saddam Hussein. I will say
once again, you can say bad things against him. He is a megalomaniac.
But the truth is even if we put every single person in this country in
a military uniform, we could not 100 percent guarantee that there would
not be some kook do something with a chemical or biological weapon of
some sort. But we need to be a little more thoughtful in the way we
handle some of these situations in the future and I think not be so
eager to show that we are a macho nation and be so eager to go around
and attack other countries. I do not think that is what the American
people want us to do. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
Mr. PAUL. I thank the gentleman for his remarks. He made some very
good points. I would like to follow up on the one point with regards to
the military. That is one of the most essential functions of the
Federal Government, is to provide for a strong national defense. But if
we intervene carelessly around the world, that serves to weaken us.
I have always lamented the fact that we so often are anxious to close
down our bases here within the United States because we are always
looking for the next monster to slay outside of the country, so we
build air bases in places like Saudi Arabia. Then when the time comes
that our leaders think that it is necessary to pursue a war policy in
the region, they do not even allow us to use the bases. I think that is
so often money down the drain. It is estimated now that we have
probably pumped in $7 billion into Bosnia and that is continuing. Our
President is saying now that that is open-ended, there is no date to
bring those troops back. We have already spent probably a half a
billion additional dollars these last several weeks just beefing up the
troops in the Persian Gulf.
The funds will not be endless. I have too many calls from so many in
my district who serve in the military, and their complaint is that they
do not have enough funds to adequately train. We are wasting money in
the wrong places, getting ourselves into more trouble than we need to.
At the same time we detract from spending the money where we should in
training our personnel the way they should be. I think this is not so
much a tactical decision made by management as much as it is a policy
decision on what our foreign policy ought to be.
{time} 1700
If we continue to believe that we can police the whole world and
provide security and right every wrong, I think it will lead us to our
bankruptcy, and just as was mentioned earlier, we receive the same kind
of grief when we pretend that we can impose economic conditions on
other countries.
We, as a wealthy Nation, are expected to bail out other countries who
have overextended themselves and they get into trouble. At the same
time, we put economic rules and regulations on them and resentments are
turned back toward us. The Arabs in the Middle East do not understand
our foreign policy because there have been numerous U.N. resolutions,
but it is only this one particular resolution that we have felt so
compelled to enforce.
And the real irony of all this is that first we use the United
Nations as the excuse to go in. Then, the United Nations gets a little
weak on their mandates, and they themselves do not want to go in. So it
is a U.N. resolution that we try to enforce, and then when it is shown
that it is not a good resolution, the U.N. then backs away from it. So
there is no unanimous opinion in the U.N., I think further proving that
this is a poor way to do foreign policy.
And those who would like to do more bombing and pursue this even more
aggressively tend to agree with that. They do not like the idea that we
have turned over our foreign policy making to an international body
like the United Nations.
So this, to me, is a really good time to make us stop and think
should we do this? I certainly think that our foreign policy in the
interests of the United States should be determined by us here in the
Congress, and then some will argue, well, it is not up to Congress to
deal in foreign policy. That is up to a President. But that is not what
is in the Constitution.
As a matter of fact, foreign policy, those words do not even exist in
the Constitution, and the Congress has all the responsibility of
raising funds, spending funds, raising an army, declaring war, so the
responsibilities are on us.
And this is the reason why I have introduced a resolution that would
say that we do have the authority to withdraw the funds from pursuing
this
[[Page H622]]
bombing, and there is another resolution that the gentleman from
Maryland will mention here shortly dealing with that same subject,
because we do have the responsibility, and we, especially in the House,
are closest to the people.
We have to be up for reelection every 2 years, and if we listen to
the polls that say that 70 percent of the American people want this
war, at the same time if we fail to go home and talk to our people and
find out that most Americans do not want this war and there is no good
argument for it.
The whole idea that we can immediately go over there and make sure
there are no weapons of mass destruction when we helped build the
weapons up in the first place, and if we are really concerned about
weapons of mass destruction, why are we not more concerned about the
25,000 nuclear warheads that have fallen into unknown hands since the
breakup of the Soviet Union? Our allies in the Middle East have nuclear
weapons, and we have China to worry about. What did we do with China?
We give them more foreign aid.
So there is no consistent argument that we can put up that all of a
sudden Saddam Hussein is the only threat to world peace and it is in
our interest to go in there and take him out. It just does not add up.
If he really was a threat, you would think his neighbors would be the
most frightened about this, and yet the neighbors are urging us not to
do it. They are urging us to take our time, back off and wait and see
what happens.
We, in the United States, so often are involved in conflicts around
the world, and one of the things that we urge so many to do is sit down
and talk to each other. We ask the Catholics and the Protestants in
Ireland to talk, we ask the Croats and the Serbs to talk, we ask the
Jews and the Arabs to talk; why is it that we cannot do more talking
with Saddam Hussein? Instead, we impose sanctions on him which does
nothing to him, solidifies his support, rallies the Islamic
fundamentalists while we kill babies. There is now a U.N. report that
shows that since the sanctions, well over a half a million children
died from starvation and lack of medicines that we denied them.
So I think that there is every reason in the world for us to reassess
this policy. There is a much more sensible policy. What we need is more
time right now. There is no urgency about this. We did the bombing in
the early 1990s, and by the way, I can see this as a continuation of
that single war. But since that time with inspections, even the
President claims that they have gotten rid of more weapons since the
war ended than occurred with the war.
So if there is no military victory in sight by bombing and only great
danger, what is the purpose? Why can we not continue with more
negotiations and more inspections? And they say, well, we cannot trust
Hussein. Well, that may be true. But looking at it objectively when we
finished in 1991 our policy was to encourage the Kurds and the Shiites
to rebel, and we implied that we would be there, and what happened? We
were not there. Thousands and thousands of Shiites and Kurds were just
wiped out because we misled them, similar to our promises that we made
to the Cubans in the early 1960s.
So we do not gain the respect of the world by, one, saying, well, we
cannot trust anything he says. Of course not, we cannot trust it. But
we have to be realistic, and can they trust us, as well, because our
record is not perfectly clean.
I now yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett).
Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, I am sorry I could not join
the discussion before this, but I have just come from a Members-only
briefing on Iraq, where we are now in the Iraq situation.
I would like to start my discussion by referring to something that
Congressman Paul has just referred to, and that is there really is not
just one, but two constitutional issues involved here. The first of
those constitutional issues is Article 1, section 8 of the
Constitution, and it is a little document, a very important one; I
carry it in my pocket.
Article 1, section 8 says that one of the responsibilities of the
Congress is to declare war. There is no hint of that in the
responsibilities of the President, who is Commander in Chief, who
commands the troops after they are committed by the Congress.
Yeltsin said that if we bomb, that could start World War III. By our
President's own admission we were going to take casualties. I think it
is very difficult to argue that this bombing would not have been the
equivalent of what our Forefathers were talking about when they
mentioned declaration of war.
And that is not the only part of the Constitution that would have
been violated by this. Article 1, section 9 says that no moneys shall
be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made
by law. There has been no appropriation for this activity over in Iraq,
so I think that clearly two parts of the Constitution are involved
here, the part that says that the President, as you know, we do not
elect in our democratic republic, we do not elect an emperor. We elect
a President, and the President is bound by the Constitution. And the
Constitution says that the Congress declares war; that he is the
Commander in Chief after war has been declared.
The Constitution also says that moneys cannot be taken from the
Treasury except by appropriations. We have made no appropriation for
this. So he clearly needs to come to the Congress.
I have a resolution that Congressman Paul was on and a great many
others, and by the way, this has wide support across the aisle. We have
Members from the most conservative to the most liberal on this. It is a
very simple resolution. All it says is that, Mr. President, if you want
to bomb Iraq, you have got to come to the Congress first.
We do not mention this resolution, the constitutional issues because
one may debate those, but one cannot debate the common sense position
that the President, if he is going to do this, has got to have the
support of the American people.
The way to get the support of the American people is to have the
Congress debate it. I would hope that debate would be long enough that
the American people would have a chance to weigh in on that debate
because we cannot do this kind of thing without involving the American
people.
Let me just mention the two objectives of these strikes. The first
was to destroy the weapons of mass destruction. This has to be the most
telegraphed military strike in the history of mankind. If those weapons
of mass destruction were where we thought they were when we said we
were going to bomb him, you can bet that they are not there now, and we
would have no way of knowing when you see some barrels moved on an ox
cart or in the back of a truck whether they were barrels of molasses or
chicken feed or anthrax. Our satellites are very good, but they cannot
see inside the barrel.
The other objective was to diminish significantly his capability to
produce weapons. If you have a brewery, you can produce biological
weapons. That is why we call them the poor man's atomic bomb because
they are so easy to make.
So we were not going to accomplish either one of those objectives.
Let me tell you what we would have accomplished. We would have
galvanized the Islamic world against us. We sit on 2 percent of the
known reserves of oil. We use 25 percent of the world's energy. The
Islamic world, the Middle East, controls 70 percent of the world's oil,
and I cannot understand how it is in our vital national interest to
alienate that part of the world, which controls 70 percent of the
world's oil.
Let me tell you something else it would have done. I can see it now.
Peter Arnett is holding up on CNN the shredded body of a baby. It would
have been an absolute P.R. disaster, killing innocent civilians over
there, and they are innocent. This is a tyrannical regime that does not
represent, I think, the Iraqi people. But, you know, what are we going
to accomplish by killing these innocent citizens? And we call that
collateral damage, and there was an admission trying to steel us so
that we could endure those TV pictures that were going to come. We were
told we are going to have significant collateral damage.
{time} 1715
As a matter of fact, they were all pleased that there had been a
level of
[[Page H623]]
constraint; and they were all raising their voices to President Clinton
and to Madeleine Albright, saying let's keep talking. Let's keep
negotiating. Let's continue to look and see if there is not a way to
avert this crisis. That as long as there is a sliver of hope, let us
find that hope and let us have the alternative and let us not put the
American people in the predicament where we would have to know that
because some innocent child lived down the road from Saddam Hussein, or
some elderly citizen, who had no interest in moving towards war, had to
be maimed, hurt or killed because of our inability to find a peaceful
solution.
I think people like yourself, who talk about peace and who talk about
alternatives, we know it is difficult.
Peace has never been easy. I grew up sort of in the traditional
Christian experience, and we were led to believe that at one time there
were only four people on the earth: Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel. And
it seems as though they had some difficulty. One thought that the other
one had something that was his or that he ought to have. And only four
people, yet some friction.
I think if we try and live in movement towards peace, it can be
obtained.
I am reminded of something I believe John Kennedy was supposed to
have said, that peace is not really found in treaties, covenants and
charters but in the hearts and souls of men and women; and if we
actually look for a way, if people all over the world can believe that
there is the opportunity to peacefully coexist and if we can use our
resources to find solutions to the major problems that plague our
earth, rather than using those to create and develop weapons of war,
then, perhaps, we can find a cure for cancer. Perhaps we can indeed
find a way to eradicate hunger or we can find a way to make people
healthy, to create the kind of quality of life that we are looking for.
So, again, I commend the gentleman for taking out the time, for
giving the rest of us an opportunity to share and participate; and I
believe that if people continue to pursue, as the gentleman is doing,
as difficult as it might be, we can ultimately find a peaceful solution
to the world's problem.
Mr. PAUL. I thank the gentleman very much for participating.
Early on, I talked about a policy of nonintervention; and I would
like to talk a little bit more about that. Because some might construe
that if you have a policy of nonintervention, it means you do not care;
and that is not the case. Because we can care a whole lot.
There are two very important reasons why one who espouses the
constitutional viewpoint of nonintervention, they do it. One, we
believe in the rule of law and we should do it very cautiously, and
that is what we are bound by here in the Congress. So that is very
important.
The other one is a practical reason, and that is that there is not
very good evidence that our intervention does much good. We do not see
that intervention in Somalia has really solved the problems there, and
we left there in a hurry.
We have spent a lot of money in Bosnia and the other places. So the
evidence is not very good that intervention is involved, certainly the
most abhorrent type of intervention, which is the eager and aggressive
and not-well-thought-out military intervention. That is obviously the
very worst.
I would argue that even the policy of neutrality and friendship and
trade with people, regardless of the enemy, would be the best.
Of course, if you are involved in a war or there is an avowed enemy,
declared enemy, that is a different story. For the most part, since
World War II, we have not used those terms, we have not had declared
words, we have only had ``police actions,'' and, therefore, we are
working in a never-never limbo that nobody can well define.
I think it is much better that we define the process and that
everybody understands it.
I would like to go ahead and close with a brief summary of what we
have been trying to do here today.
It was mentioned earlier, and I want to reemphasize it, something
that has not been talked about a whole lot over this issue, has been
the issue of oil. It is oil interests, money involved.
As I stated earlier, we were allies with Hussein when we encouraged
him to cross the border into Iran, and yet, at the same time, the
taking over of the Kuwait oil fields was something that we could not
stand, even though there has not been a full debate over that argument.
We have heard only the one side of that, who drew the lines and for
what reason the lines were drawn there and whose oil was being drilled.
There is a major debate there that should be fully aired before we say
that it is the fault of only one.
But it is not so much that it was the crossing of borders. I do
believe that oil interests and the huge very, very important oil fields
of Iraq and what it might mean to the price of oil if they came on has
a whole lot to do with this.
We did not worry about the Hutus and the Tutus in Africa. A lot of
killing was going on there; 1 million people were being killed. Where
was our compassion? Where was our compassion in the killing fields of
Cambodia? We did not express the same compassion that we seem to
express as soon as oil is involved.
We cannot let them get away with the repetition of ``we got to get
the weapons of mass destruction.'' Of course. But are they mostly in
Iraq? I would say we have done rather well getting rid of the weapons
there. They are a much weaker nation militarily than they were 10 years
ago, and those kind of weapons are around the world, so that, as far as
I am concerned, is a weak argument.
Another subject that is not mentioned very often, but the prime
minister of Israel just recently implied that, hopefully, we will
pursue this policy of going in there and trying to topple this regime.
I can understand their concerns, but I also understand the concerns of
the American taxpayers and the expense of the American lives that might
be involved. So I can argue my case.
But even taking it from an Israeli point of view, I do not know how
they can be sure it is in their best interests to go over there and
stir things up. They are more likely to be bombed with a terrorist bomb
if we go in there and start bombing Iraq. If we do, Israel will not
stand by as they did once before. They told us so.
So if we bomb first and then the goal of Saddam Hussein is to expand
the war, what does he do? He lobs one over into Israel, and Israel
comes in, and then the whole procedure has been to solidify the Islamic
fundamentalists. Then there is no reason not to expect maybe Iran and
Syria coming in.
Right now Iraq is on closer ties with Syria and Iran than they have
been in 18 years. This is the achievement of our policy. We are driving
the unity of those who really hate America, and will do
almost anything. So we further expose ourselves to the threat of
terrorism. So if they are attacked and they have no way to defend
themselves against this great Nation of ours, they will strike out.
Therefore, I think in the practical argument, we have very little to
gain by pursuing this policy.
It is not difficult for me to come down on the side of arguing for
peace. Peace is what we should be for. That does not mean you give up
your military, but you use your military more wisely than we have over
the past 30 or 40 years. You use it for national defense.
Today we have a powerful military force, but a lot of people do not
think we are as strong in defense as we used to be. So, yes, we are
stronger than others, but if we have a failed and a flawed policy and a
military that has been weakened, then we are looking for trouble.
So even the practical arguments call for restraint and a sensible
approach, for debate and negotiations. It is for this reason I think
for the moment we can be pleased that Mr. Annan went to Iraq and came
back with something that is at least negotiable, and that the American
people will think about and talk about. Hopefully this will lead not
only to peace immediately in this area, but hopefully it will lead to a
full discussion about the wisdom of a foreign policy of continued
perpetual interventionism and involvement in the internal affairs of
other nations.
If we argue our case correctly, if we argue the more argument, the
constitutional argument, and the argument for peace as well, I cannot
see how the American people cannot endorse a policy like that, and I
challenge those who think that we should
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go carelessly and rapidly into battle, killing those who are not
responsible, further enhancing the power and the authority of those who
would be the dictators. They do not get killed. Sanctions do not hurt
them. The innocent people suffer. Just as the economic sanctions that
will be put on Southeast Asia as we give them more money, who suffers
from the devaluations? The American taxpayer, as well as the poor
people, whether they are in Mexico or Southeast Asia, in order to prop
up the very special interests. Whether it is the banking interests
involved in the loans to the Southeast Asians, or our military-
industrial complex who tends to benefit from building more and more
weapons so they can go off and test them in wars that are unnecessary.
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