[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12724-12725]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        THE WAR THAT'S NOT A WAR

  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, in January 1991, we went to war in the Middle 
East against Saddam Hussein, Iraq's dictator who was our ally during 
the Iran-Iraq war. A border dispute between Kuwait and Iraq broke out 
after our State Department gave a green light to Hussein's invasion.
  After Iraq's successful invasion of Kuwait, we reacted with gusto and 
have been militarily involved in the entire region 6,000 miles from our 
shores ever since. This has included Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, 
Yemen, and Somalia. After 20 years of killing and a couple trillion 
dollars wasted, not only does the fighting continue with no end in 
sight, but our leaders threaten to spread our bombs of benevolence on 
Iran.
  For most Americans, we are at war, at war against a tactic called 
terrorism, not a country. This allows our military to go anyplace in 
the world without limits as to time or place. But how can we be at war? 
Congress has not declared war, as required by the Constitution, that is 
true. But our Presidents have, and Congress and the people have not 
objected. Congress obediently provides all the money requested for the 
war.
  People are dying. Bombs are dropped. Our soldiers are shot at and 
killed. Our

[[Page 12725]]

soldiers wear a uniform; our enemies do not. They are not part of any 
government. They have no planes, no tanks, no ships, no missiles, and 
no modern technology. What kind of a war is this anyway, if it really 
is one? If it was a real war, we would have won it by now. Our stated 
goal since 9/11 has been to destroy al Qaeda.
  Was al Qaeda in Iraq? Not under Saddam Hussein. Our leaders lied us 
into invading Iraq and deceived us into occupying Afghanistan. There is 
still really no al Qaeda in Iraq and only 100 or so in Afghanistan, and 
yet there is no end in sight to the war. Could there have been other 
reasons for this war that is not a war? A military victory in 
Afghanistan is illusive. Does anyone really know who we are fighting 
and why?
  Why has the war not ended? Nine years, and it continues to spread. 
Some claim it is to keep America safe, that our soldiers are fighting 
and dying for our freedom, defending our Constitution. Are we being 
lied to in order to keep us in this spreading war, just as we were lied 
to in the 1960s to keep us in Vietnam?
  We own the Iraq Government, as we do Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, we 
are fighting the Taliban, those dangerous people with guns defending 
their homeland. Once they were called the Mujahideen, our old allies, 
along with bin Laden, in the fight to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan 
in the 1980s. In that effort, our CIA funded radical jihad against that 
nasty foreign occupier, the Russians. What gratitude. Those same people 
now resent our benevolent occupation, with a little violence thrown in.

                              {time}  2310

  The resistance to our presence grows as our perseverance wanes. Our 
people are waking up, but our officials refuse to recognize the longer 
we stay, the greater is the support for those dedicated to the 
principle that Afghanistan is for Afghans who resent all foreign 
occupation.
  The harder we fight a war that is not a war, the weaker we get and 
the stronger becomes our enemy. When an enemy without weapons can 
respect an army of great strength, the most powerful of all history, 
one should ask, who has the moral high ground?
  Military failure in Afghanistan is to be our destiny. Changing 
generals without changing our policies or our policymakers perpetuates 
our agony and delays the inevitable.
  This is not a war that our generals have been trained for. Nation 
building, police work, social engineering is never a job for foreign 
occupiers and never an appropriate job for soldiers trained to win 
wars.
  A military victory is no longer even a stated goal of our military 
leaders or our politicians, as they know that type of victory is 
impossible.
  The sad story is, this war is against ourselves, our values, our 
Constitution, our financial well-being and common sense. And at the 
rate we're going, it's going to end badly.
  What we need are honest leaders with character and a new foreign 
policy.

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