[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 163 (Saturday, December 17, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H12157-H12159]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             FOREIGN POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Dent). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, our country faces major problems. No longer 
can they remain hidden from the American people. Most Americans are 
aware the Federal budget is in dismal shape. Whether it is Social 
Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or even the private pension system, most 
Americans realize we are in debt over our heads. The welfare state is 
unmanageable and severely overextended.
  In spite of hopes that supposed reform would restore sound financing 
and provide for all the needs of the people, it is becoming more 
apparent every day that the entire system of entitlements is in a 
precarious state and may well collapse. It does not take a genius to 
realize that increasing the national debt by over $600 billion per year 
is not sustainable. Raising taxes to make up the shortfall is 
unacceptable, while continuing to print the money needed will only 
accelerate the erosion of the dollar's value.
  Our foreign policy is no less of a threat to us. Our worldwide 
military presence and our obsession with remaking the entire Middle 
East frighten a lot of people both here and abroad. Our role as world 
policeman and nation-builder places undue burdens on the American 
taxpayer. Our enormous overseas military expenditures, literally 
hundreds of billions of dollars, are a huge drain on the American 
economy.
  All wars invite abuses of civil liberties at home, and this vague 
declaration of war against terrorism is worse than most in this regard. 
As our liberties here at home are diminished by the PATRIOT Act and 
national ID card legislation, we succumb to the temptation of all 
empires to spy on American citizens, neglect habeas corpus, employ 
torture tactics, and use secret imprisonments. These domestic and 
foreign policy trends reflect a morally bankrupt philosophy devoid of 
any concern for liberty and the rule of law.
  The American people are becoming more aware of the serious crisis 
this country faces. Their deep concern is reflected in the current mood 
in Congress. The recent debate over Iraq shows the parties are now 
looking for someone to blame for the mess we are in. It is a high-
stakes political game. The fact that a majority of both parties and 
their leadership endorsed the war and accept the same approach towards 
Syria and Iran does nothing to tone down the accusatory nature of the 
current blame game.
  The argument in Washington is over tactics, quality of intelligence, 
war management, and diplomacy, except for the few who admit that tragic 
mistakes were made and now sincerely want to establish a new course for 
Iraq. Thank goodness for those who are willing to reassess and admit to 
those mistakes. Those of us who have opposed the war all along welcome 
them to the cause of peace.
  If we hope to pursue a more sensible foreign policy, it is imperative 
that Congress face up to its explicit constitutional responsibility to 
declare war. It is easy to condemn the management of a war, one 
endorsed, while deferring to the final decision about whether to deploy 
the troops to the President. When Congress accepts and assumes its 
awesome responsibility to declare or not declare war as directed by the 
Constitution, fewer wars will be fought.
  Sadly, the acrimonious blame game is motivated by the leadership of 
both parties for the purpose of gaining or retaining political power. 
It does not approach a true debate over the wisdom or lack thereof of 
foreign military interventionism and preemptive war.
  Polls indicate ordinary Americans are becoming uneasy with our 
prolonged war in Iraq which has no end in sight. The fact that no one 
can define victory precisely, and most Americans see us staying in Iraq 
for years to come, contributes to the erosion of support for this war. 
Currently, 63 percent of Americans disapprove of the handling of the 
war, and 52 percent say it is time to come home. Forty-two percent say 
we need a foreign policy of minding our own business. This is very 
encouraging. The percentages are even higher for the Iraqis. Eighty-two 
percent want us to leave, and 67 percent claim they are less secure 
with our troops there.
  Ironically, our involvement has produced an unusual agreement among 
the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis, the three factions at odds with each 
other. At the recent 22-member Arab League meeting in Cairo, the three 
groups agreed on one issue. They all want foreign troops to leave. At 
the end of the meeting, an explicit communique was released: ``We 
demand the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with a timetable 
and the establishment of a national and immediate program for 
rebuilding the armed forces that will allow them to guard Iraq's 
borders and get control of the security situation.''
  Since the administration is so enamored of democracy, why not have a 
national referendum in Iraq to see if the people want us to leave? 
After we left Lebanon in the 1980s, the Arab League was instrumental in 
brokering an end to that country's 15-year civil war. Its chances of 
helping to stop the fighting in Iraq are far better than depending on 
the United Nations, NATO, or the United States.
  This is a regional dispute that we stirred up, but cannot settle. The 
Arab League needs to assume a lot more responsibility for the mess that 
our invasion has caused. We need to get out of the way and let them 
solve their own problems. Remember, once we left Lebanon, suicide 
terrorism stopped and peace finally came. The same could happen in 
Iraq.
  Everyone is talking about the downside of us leaving and the civil 
war that might erupt. Possibly so. But no one knows with certainty what 
will happen. There was no downside when we left Vietnam. But one thing 
for sure, after a painful decade of the 1960s, the killing stopped and 
no more Americans died once we left. We now trade with Vietnam and 
enjoy friendly relations with them. This was achieved through peaceful 
means, not military force.
  The real question is how many more Americans must be sacrificed for a 
policy that is not working. Are we going to fight until we go broke and 
the American people are impoverished? Common sense tells us it is time 
to reassess the politics of military intervention and not just look for 
someone to blame for falling once again into the trap of a military 
quagmire.

[[Page H12158]]

  The blame game is a political event designed to avoid the serious 
philosophic debate over our foreign policy of interventionism. The 
mistakes made by both parties in dragging us into an unwise war are 
obvious, but the effort to blame one group over the other confuses the 
real issue. Obviously, Congress failed to meet its constitutional 
obligation regarding war. Debate over prewar intelligence elicits 
charges of errors, lies, and complicity.
  It is argued that those who are now critical of the outcome are just 
as much at fault since they too accepted flawed intelligence when in 
deciding to support the war. This charge is leveled at previous 
administrations, foreign governments, Members of Congress, and the 
United Nations, all who made the same mistake of blindly accepting the 
pre-war intelligence.
  But complicity, errors of judgment, and malice are hardly an excuse 
for such a serious commitment as a preemptive war against a nonexistent 
enemy. Both sides accepted the evidence supposedly justifying the war, 
evidence that was not credible. No weapons of mass destruction were 
found. Iraq had no military capabilities. Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein 
were not allies. Remember, we were once allies of both Saddam Hussein 
and Osama bin Laden. And Saddam Hussein posed no threat whatsoever to 
the United States or his neighbors.
  We hear constantly that we must continue the fight in Iraq and 
possibly in Iran and Syria because it is better to fight the terrorists 
over there than here. Merely repeating this justification, if it is 
based on a major analytical error, cannot make it so. All evidence 
shows that our presence in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim 
countries benefits al Qaeda in its recruiting efforts, especially in 
its search for suicide terrorists.
  This one fact prompts a rare agreement among all religious and 
secular Muslim factions, namely, that the U.S. should leave all Arab 
lands. Denying this will not keep terrorists from attacking us. It will 
do the opposite. The fighting and terrorist attacks are happening 
overseas because of a publicly stated al Qaeda policy that they will go 
for soft targets: our allies, whose citizens object to the war, like 
Spain and Italy. They will attack Americans who are more exposed in 
Iraq.
  It is a serious error to conclude that fighting them over there keeps 
them from fighting us over here or that we are winning the war against 
terrorism. As long as our occupation continues and American forces 
continue killing Muslims, the incentive to attack us will grow. It 
should not be hard to understand that the responsibility for violence 
in Iraq, even violence between Iraqis, is blamed on our occupation. It 
is more accurate to say the longer we fight them over there, the longer 
we will be threatened over here.

                              {time}  2145

  The final rhetorical refuge for those who defend the war not yet 
refuted is the dismissive statement that the world is better off 
without Saddam Hussein. It implies no one can question anything we have 
done because of this fact. Instead of an automatic concession, it 
should be legitimate, even if politically incorrect, to challenge this 
disarming assumption. No one has to like or defend Saddam Hussein to 
point out, we will not know whether the world is better off until we 
know exactly what will take Saddam Hussein's place. This argument was 
never used to justify removing murderous dictators with much more 
notoriety than Saddam Hussein such as our ally Stalin, Pol Pot whom we 
helped to get into power, or Mao Tse Tung. Certainly the Soviets, with 
their bloody history and thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at us, were 
many times over greater a threat to us than Saddam Hussein ever was. If 
containment worked with the Soviets and the Chinese, why is it assumed 
without question that deposing Saddam Hussein is obviously and without 
question a better approach for us than containment?
  The ``we are all better off without Saddam Hussein'' cliche does not 
address the question of whether the 2,100-plus American troops killed 
or the 20,000 wounded and sick troops are better off. We refuse to 
acknowledge the hatred generated by the deaths of tens of thousands of 
Iraqi citizens who are written off as collateral damage. Are the Middle 
East and Israel better off with the turmoil our occupation has 
generated? Hardly. Honesty would have us conclude that conditions in 
the Middle East are worse since the war started. The killing never 
stops, and the cost is more than we can bear both in lives and limbs 
lost and dollars spent. In spite of the potential problems that may or 
may not come from our withdrawal, the greater mistake was going in in 
the first place.
  We need to think more about how to avoid these military encounters 
rather than dwelling on the complications that result when we meddle in 
the affairs of others with no moral or legal authority to do so. We 
need less blame game and more reflection about the root cause of our 
aggressive foreign policy. By limiting the debate to technical points 
over intelligence, strategy, the number of troops and how to get out of 
the mess, we ignore our continued policy of sanctions, threats and 
intimidation of Iraqi neighbors, Iran and Syria. Even as Congress 
pretends to argue about how or when we might come home, leaders from 
both parties continue to support the policy of spreading the war by 
precipitating a crisis with these two countries. The likelihood of 
agreeing about who deliberately or innocently misled Congress, the 
media and the American people is virtually nil. Maybe historians at a 
later date will sort out the whole mess. The debate over tactics and 
diplomacy will go on, but that only serves to distract from the 
important issue of policy. Few today in Congress are interested in 
changing from our current accepted policy of intervention to one of 
strategic independence. No nation building, no policing the world, no 
dangerous alliances. But the result of this latest military incursion 
into a foreign country should not be ignored. Those who dwell on 
pragmatic matters should pay close attention to the result so far.
  Since March 2003, we have seen death and destruction, 2,100-plus 
Americans killed and nearly 20,000 sick and wounded, plus tens of 
thousands of Iraqis caught in the crossfire. A Shiite theocracy has 
been planted. A civil war has erupted. Iran's arch nemesis, Saddam 
Hussein, has been removed. Osama bin Laden's arch nemesis, Saddam 
Hussein, has been removed. Al Qaeda now operates freely in Iraq, 
enjoying a fertile training field not previously available to them. 
Suicide terrorism spurred on by our occupation has significantly 
increased. Our military-industrial complex thrives in Iraq without 
competitive bids. True national defense and the voluntary Army have 
been undermined.
  Personal liberty at home is under attack; assaults on free speech and 
privacy, national ID cards, the PATRIOT Act, National Security Letters, 
and challenges to habeas corpus all have been promoted.
  Values have changed, with more Americans supporting torture and 
secret prisons. Domestic strife, as recently reflected in arguments 
over the war on the House floor, is on the upswing. Preemptive war has 
been codified and accepted as legitimate and necessary, a bleak policy 
for our future.
  The Middle East is far more unstable, and oil supplies are less 
secure, not more. Historic relics of civilization protected for 
thousands of years were lost in the flash while oil wells were secured. 
U.S. credibility in the world has been severely damaged, and the 
national debt has increased enormously, and our dependence on China has 
increased significantly as our Federal Government borrows more and more 
money.
  How many more years will it take for civilized people to realize that 
war has no economic or political value for the people who fight and pay 
for it? Wars are always started by governments, and individual soldiers 
on each side are conditioned to take up arms and travel great distances 
to shoot and kill individuals that never meant them harm. Both sides 
drive their people into a hysterical frenzy to overcome the natural 
instinct to live and let live. False patriotism is used to embarrass 
the good-hearted into succumbing to the wishes of the financial and 
other special interests who agitate for war. War reflects the weakness 
of a civilization that refuses to offer peace as an alternative.

[[Page H12159]]

  This does not mean we should isolate ourselves from the world. On the 
contrary, we need more rather than less interaction with our world 
neighbors. We should encourage travel, foreign commerce, friendship and 
exchange of ideas. This would far surpass our misplaced effort to make 
the world like us through armed force. This can be achieved without 
increasing the power of the state or accepting the notion that some 
world government is needed to enforce the rules of exchange. 
Governments should get out of the way and let the individuals make 
their own decisions about how they want to relate to the world.
  Defending our country against aggression is a very limited and proper 
function of government. Our military involvement in the world over the 
past 60 years has not met this test, and we are paying the price.
  A policy that endorses peace over war, trade over sanctions, courtesy 
over arrogance and liberty over coercion is in the tradition of the 
American Constitution and American idealism. It deserves consideration.

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