[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 10392]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2145
                     INTERVENTIONIST FOREIGN POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, no country has ever done as much for another 
country as the United States has done for Iraq. We have spent hundreds 
of billions rebuilding their infrastructure, providing police 
protection, building hospitals and clinics, schools, and water and 
power plants, giving free medical care, hiring hundreds of thousands of 
Iraqis and on and on. All of this in a country that had a total GDP of 
only $65 billion the year before the war was started.
  In spite of all this generosity, a huge majority of Iraqis, 78 to 80 
percent by almost every poll, wants us to leave. They want our money, 
of course, but not our presence, except those who are working for us. 
But there needs to be some limit to our generosity.
  We need to start putting our own people first. If we do not, we are 
soon not going to be able to pay all the Social Security and military 
pensions, and all the other things we have promised our own people with 
money that will buy very much.
  Governments all over the world have gotten in this situation. They 
then start printing more money, and people do not realize what is going 
on. All they see is each year their pensions buy less than the year 
before.
  Today we have a national debt approaching $9 trillion. Even worse, 
according to the GAO, we have unfunded future pension liabilities of 
$50 trillion.
  We all love and respect our military, but there is waste in any 
gigantic bureaucracy, and there is huge waste even in the military. A 
year and a half ago, it was reported by the Defense Department's own 
inspector general that $35 billion had been misspent in Iraq due to 
waste, fraud and abuse, and another $9 billion had simply been lost and 
could not be accounted for at all.
  Not only has the U.S. done more for Iraq, we do more for every other 
country, by far, than does any other Nation. Almost every Federal 
department and agency has operations around the world.
  Liberals will tell you that our foreign aid is only a little over 1 
percent of our budget. This is very misleading. We are spending 
megabillions in other countries when you add up not only the Defense 
Department but all the other departments' spending, too.
  We all love and appreciate our country, but all of this spending is 
not helping. There is more resentment than ever toward the U.S. because 
of our interventionist foreign policies.
  President Bush campaigned in 2000, saying that we needed a more 
humble foreign policy, and that we should not be doing nation-building. 
Interventionist foreign policies and nation-building are not only 
causing resentment toward us, but we simply cannot afford them if we 
are going to pay our Social Security and other promises a few years 
from now. You can still love this country and be a very patriotic 
American and oppose interventionist foreign policies.
  We cannot afford perpetual war just because defense contractors and 
people at the top levels of the Pentagon always want more and more 
money. All of this is stated more articulately by two conservative 
writers, Jacob Hornberger, president of the Future of Freedom 
Foundation, and Richard Ebeling of the Foundation for Economic 
Education.
  Mr. Hornberger wrote: ``If Americans come to realize that the Federal 
Government's philosophy on foreign aid, foreign intervention and empire 
lies at the heart of foreign anger, resentment, and hatred for America, 
then they will see that another option is available to them: End the 
motivation for terrorism by putting an end to the U.S. Government's 
role as international welfare provider, intervenor, and meddler.
  ``The interventionist and imperial vision will inevitably lead to 
more terrorism against Americans, less freedom for the American people, 
and more power for the Federal Government. It is a vision that will 
inevitably lead us away from the principles on which our Nation was 
founded.''
  He continued, ``The contrary vision, a vision based on liberty, free 
markets and limited government, is the key to peace, prosperity and 
harmony for the American people. That vision entails ending the U.S. 
Government's interventionist and imperial role in the world and 
limiting it to protecting our Nation from attack or invasion.''
  Mr. Ebeling wrote: ``Two wrongs do not make a right. That America 
does things abroad it should not is not an excuse or rationale for what 
happened on September 11. But the United States will continue to create 
desperate and fanatical men who will view it as the enemy for as long 
as it interferes into the affairs of other people in other nations. 
That means there is no end to this 'war on terrorism' as long as the 
United States follows the foreign policy'' of recent years. ``Ending 
U.S. foreign political and military interventionism is the only way to 
reduce the creation of enemies of America in other lands.''
  He continues, ``Ending the policy of foreign internventionism is also 
crucial to protecting our freedoms at home.
  ``Who will guard us from the guardians is the perennial dilemma. When 
the crisis has passed there will be new government agencies and bureaus 
with new government employees who will look around for new 
justifications and rationales to keep their jobs and expand their 
budgets. They will have powers to intrude into our lives that they will 
want to use in ways not originally intended. And even more of our 
freedoms will then be at risk.''

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