[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6390]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          THE END IS NOT NEAR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, the end of the war is not near. I might ask, 
are the troops coming home from Iraq as promised? Not quite. Sixteen 
months is too quick, so the plan now is to do it in 34 months. The 
administration claims all the troops will be out of Iraq by the end of 
2011. Sure they will.
  We're told that 50,000 U.S. troops will still be in Iraq in August of 
2010, and we're supposed to cheer. We're told that they won't be combat 
troops, so we're to believe that means they won't be exposed to any 
danger. If they are non-combat troops, does that mean they are 
bureaucrats, policemen, teachers or soldiers without weapons? This will 
hardly satisfy the Iraqis, who resent any foreign troops at all in 
their country. A U.S. puppet government protected by 50,000 American 
soldiers is not the road to peace.
  Will the Iranian-friendly Shiite majority not be motivated to take 
advantage of the instability we have created?
  Will the 100,000 Sunni militants we arm and subsidize continue to 
obey our wishes? It sounds to me like a powder keg exists with the 
indecisiveness of our Iraqi policy.
  There is no intention to close the dozens of military bases that now 
exist. The world's biggest embassy will remain in Baghdad and incite 
continued resentment toward the American occupation. Our soldiers will 
remain easy targets of the rightfully angry nationalists.
  Our presence will serve as an incentive for al Qaeda to grow in 
numbers and motivate more suicide bombers. An indefinite presence, 
whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, will continue to drain our 
financial resources, undermine our national defense, demoralize our 
military and exacerbate our financial crisis. All this will be welcomed 
by Osama Bin Laden, just as he planned it. It's actually more than he 
had hoped for.
  More likely the outcome will be that greater than 50,000 Americans 
will be in Iraq in August of 2010, especially when the contractors are 
counted. Violence will accelerate. We will be an occupier at the end of 
2011, and we will remain a pariah in the Middle East.
  The war in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be much bigger, unless the 
dollar follows the path of the dollar-based world financial system and 
collapses into runaway inflation. In this case, the laws of economics 
and the realities of history will prove superior to the madness of 
maintaining a world empire financed by scraps of paper.
  Our military prowess, backed by a nuclear arsenal, will not suffice 
in overcoming the tragedy of a currency crisis. Soviet nukes did not 
preserve its empire or the communist economy.
  This crisis demands that we quickly come to our senses and reject the 
foreign policy of interventionism. Neither credit coming from a Federal 
Reserve computer nor dollars coming from a printing press can bail us 
out of this mess. Only the rule of law, commodity money and liberty can 
do that.
  Mr. Speaker, let's consider reinstating the Constitution before it's 
too late.

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