PoliticalAction.com Blog

Texas Straight Talk
Rep. Ron Paul (R) – TX 14

Last week the National Bureau of Economic Research published a report on the effect of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq that confirmed what critics of our foreign policy had been saying for years. The killing of civilians, although unintentional, angers other civilians and prompts them to seek revenge. This should be self-evident. The Central Intelligence Agency has long acknowledged and analyzed the concept blowback in our foreign policy.

It still amazes me that so many think that attacks against our soldiers occupying hostile foreign lands are motivated by hatred toward our system of government at home, or by the religion of the attackers. In fact, most of the anger toward us is rooted in reactions towards seeing their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and other loved ones, being killed by a foreign army. No matter our intention, the violence of our militarism in foreign lands causes those residents to seek revenge if innocents are killed. One does not have to be a Muslim to react this way – just human.

Our battle in Afghanistan resembles the battle against the many-headed Hydra monster in Greek mythology. According to former General Stanley McChrystal’s so-called insurgent math, for every insurgent killed, ten more insurgents are created by the collateral damage to civilians. Every coalition attack leads to six retaliatory attacks against our troops within the following six weeks, according to the NBER report. These retaliatory attacks must then be acted on by our troops, leading to still more attacks, and so it goes. Violence begets more violence. Eventually more and more Afghanis will view American troops with hostility and seek revenge for the deaths of a loved one. Meanwhile we are bleeding ourselves dry militarily and economically.

Some say if we leave, the Taliban will be strengthened. However, those who make that claim ignore the numerous ways our interventionist foreign policy has strengthened groups like the Taliban over the years. I have already pointed out how we serve as excellent recruiters for them by killing civilians. Last week I pointed out how our foreign aid to Pakistan specifically makes it into the Taliban’s coffers. And of course we provided the Taliban with aid and resources in the 1980s when they were our strategic allies against the Soviet Union.

For example, our CIA supplied them with stinger missiles to use against the Soviets, which are strikingly similar to the ones now allegedly used against us on the same battlefield according to the Wikileaks documents. As usual, our friends have a funny way of turning against us. Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein are also prime examples. Yet Congress never seems to acknowledge the blowback that results from our interventionism of the past.

Our war against the Taliban is going about as well as our War on Drugs or our War on Poverty, or any of our government’s wars. They all tend to create more of the thing they purport to eradicate, thereby dodging any excuse to draw down and come to an end. It is hard to image even winning anything this way. We have done enough damage in Afghanistan, both to the Afghan people and to ourselves. It’s time to reevaluate the situation. It’s time to come home.

Ron’s Right Again, As Usual:

Congressman Ron Paul | December 15, 2009
United States House of Representatives

I rise in strongest opposition to this new round of sanctions on Iran, which is another significant step toward a US war on that country. I find it shocking that legislation this serious and consequential is brought up in such a cavalier manner. Suspending the normal rules of the House to pass legislation is a process generally reserved for “non-controversial” business such as the naming of post offices. Are we to believe that this House takes matters of war and peace as lightly as naming post offices?

This legislation seeks to bar from doing business in the United States any foreign entity that sells refined petroleum to Iran or otherwise enhances Iran’s ability to import refined petroleum such as financing, brokering, underwriting, or providing ships for such. Such sanctions also apply to any entity that provides goods or services that enhance Iran’s ability to maintain or expand its domestic production of refined petroleum. This casts the sanctions net worldwide, with enormous international economic implications.

Recently, the Financial Times reported that, “[i]n recent months, Chinese companies have greatly expanded their presence in Iran’s oil sector. In the coming months, Sinopec, the state-owned Chinese oil company, is scheduled to complete the expansion of the Tabriz and Shazand refineries — adding 3.3 million gallons of gasoline per day.”

Are we to conclude, with this in mind, that China or its major state-owned corporations will be forbidden by this legislation from doing business with the United States? What of our other trading partners who currently do business in Iran’s petroleum sector or insure those who do so? Has anyone seen an estimate of how this sanctions act will affect the US economy if it is actually enforced?

As we have learned with US sanctions on Iraq, and indeed with US sanctions on Cuba and elsewhere, it is citizens rather than governments who suffer most. The purpose of these sanctions is to change the regime in Iran, but past practice has demonstrated time and again that sanctions only strengthen regimes they target and marginalize any opposition. As would be the case were we in the US targeted for regime change by a foreign government, people in Iran will tend to put aside political and other differences to oppose that threatening external force. Thus this legislation will likely serve to strengthen the popularity of the current Iranian government. Any opposition continuing to function in Iran would be seen as operating in concert with the foreign entity seeking to overthrow the regime.

This legislation seeks to bring Iran in line with international demands regarding its nuclear materials enrichment programs, but what is ironic is that Section 2 of HR 2194 itself violates the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which both the United States and Iran are signatories. This section states that “[i]t shall be the policy of the United States…to prevent Iran from achieving the capability to make nuclear weapons, including by supporting international diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s uranium enrichment program.” Article V of the NPT states clearly that, “[n]othing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this Treaty.” As Iran has never been found in violation of the NPT — has never been found to have diverted nuclear materials for non-peaceful purposes — this legislation seeking to deny Iran the right to enrichment even for peaceful purposes itself violates the NPT.

Mr. Speaker, I am concerned that many of my colleagues opposing war on Iran will vote in favor of this legislation, seeing it as a step short of war to bring Iran into line with US demands. I would remind them that sanctions and the blockades that are required to enforce them are themselves acts of war according to international law. I urge my colleagues to reject this saber-rattling but ultimately counterproductive legislation.

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul
United States House of Representatives

Statement Before Foreign Affairs Committee

December 10, 2009

Mr. Speaker thank you for holding these important hearings on US policy in Afghanistan. I would like to welcome the witnesses, Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry and General Stanley A. McChrystal, and thank them for appearing before this Committee.
I have serious concerns, however, about the president’s decision to add some 30,000 troops and an as yet undisclosed number of civilian personnel to escalate our Afghan operation. This “surge” will bring US troop levels to approximately those of the Soviets when they occupied Afghanistan with disastrous result back in the 1980s. I fear the US military occupation of Afghanistan may end up similarly unsuccessful.
In late 1986 Soviet armed forces commander, Marshal Sergei Akhromeev, told then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, “Military actions in Afghanistan will soon be seven years old. There is no single piece of land in this country which has not been occupied by a Soviet soldier. Nonetheless, the majority of the territory remains in the hands of rebels.” Soon Gorbachev began the Soviet withdrawal from its Afghan misadventure. Thousands were dead on both sides, yet the occupation failed to produce a stable national Afghan government.
Eight years into our own war in Afghanistan the Soviet commander’s words ring eerily familiar. Part of the problem stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. It is our presence as occupiers that feeds the insurgency. As would be the case if we were invaded and occupied, diverse groups have put aside their disagreements to unify against foreign occupation. Adding more US troops will only assist those who recruit fighters to attack our soldiers and who use the US occupation to convince villages to side with the Taliban.
Proponents of the president’s Afghanistan escalation cite the successful “surge” in Iraq as evidence that this second surge will have similar results. I fear they might be correct about the similar result, but I dispute the success propaganda about Iraq. In fact, the violence in Iraq only temporarily subsided with the completion of the ethnic cleansing of Shi’ites from Sunni neighborhoods and vice versa – and all neighborhoods of Christians. Those Sunni fighters who remained were easily turned against the foreign al-Qaeda presence when offered US money and weapons. We are increasingly seeing this “success” breaking down: sectarian violence is flaring up and this time the various groups are better armed with US-provided weapons. Similarly, the insurgents paid by the US to stop their attacks are increasingly restive now that the Iraqi government is no longer paying bribes on a regular basis. So I am skeptical about reports on the success of the Iraqi surge.
Likewise, we are told that we have to “win” in Afghanistan so that al-Qaeda cannot use Afghan territory to plan further attacks against the US. We need to remember that the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 was, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, largely planned in the United States (and Germany) by terrorists who were in our country legally. According to the logic of those who endorse military action against Afghanistan because al-Qaeda was physically present, one could argue in favor of US airstrikes against several US states and Germany! It makes no sense. The Taliban allowed al-Qaeda to remain in Afghanistan because both had been engaged, with US assistance, in the insurgency against the Soviet occupation.
Nevertheless, the president’s National Security Advisor, Gen. James Jones, USMC (Ret.), said in a recent interview that less than 100 al-Qaeda remain in Afghanistan and that the chance they would reconstitute a significant presence there was slim. Are we to believe that 30,000 more troops are needed to defeat 100 al-Qaeda fighters? I fear that there will be increasing pressure for the US to invade Pakistan, to where many Taliban and al-Qaeda have escaped. Already CIA drone attacks on Pakistan have destabilized that country and have killed scores of innocents, producing strong anti-American feelings and calls for revenge. I do not see how that contributes to our national security.
The president’s top advisor for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said recently, “I would say this about defining success in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the simplest sense, the Supreme Court test for another issue, we’ll know it when we see it.” That does not inspire much confidence.
Supporters of this surge argue that we must train an Afghan national army to take over and strengthen the rule and authority of Kabul. But experts have noted that the ranks of the Afghan national army are increasingly being filled by the Tajik minority at the expense of the Pashtun plurality. US diplomat Matthew Hoh, who resigned as Senior Civilian Representative for the U.S. Government in Zabul Province, noted in his resignation letter that he “fail[s] to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.” Mr. Hoh went on to write that “[L]ike the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by [the Afghan] people.”
I have always opposed nation-building as unconstitutional and ineffective. Afghanistan is no different. Without a real strategy in Afghanistan, without a vision of what victory will look like, we are left with the empty rhetoric of the last administration that “when the Afghan people stand up, the US will stand down.” I am afraid the only solution to the Afghanistan quagmire is a rapid and complete US withdrawal from that country and the region. We cannot afford to maintain this empire and our occupation of these foreign lands is not making us any safer. It is time to leave Afghanistan.

An Open Letter to The Norwegian Nobel Committee.

On December 10, you will award the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama, citing “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.” We the undersigned are distressed that President Obama, so close upon his receipt of this honor, has opted to escalate the U.S. war in Afghanistan with the deployment of 30,000 additional troops. We regret that he could not be guided by the example of a previous Nobel Peace Laureate, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who identified his peace prize as “profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time — the need for man [sic] to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.”

President Obama has insisted that his troop escalation is a necessary response to dangerous instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but we reject the notion that military action will advance the region’s stability, or our own national security. In his peace prize acceptance speech, Dr. King observed that “Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts…man [sic] must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation.” As people committed to end the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, we are filled with remorse by this new decision of our president, for it will not bring peace.

Declaring his opposition to the Vietnam War, Dr. King insisted that “no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war…We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways… We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man [sic] of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”

We pledge ourselves to mobilize our constituencies in the spirit of Dr. King’s nonviolent and committed example. His prophetic words will guide us as we assemble in the halls of Congress, in local offices of elected representatives, and in the streets of our cities and towns, protesting every proposal that will continue funding war. We will actively and publicly oppose the war funding which President Obama will soon seek from Congress and re-commit ourselves to the protracted struggle against U.S. war-making in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We assume that the Nobel Committee chose to award President Obama the peace prize in full awareness of the vision offered by Dr. King’s acceptance speech. We also understand that the Nobel committee may now regret that decision in light of recent developments, as we believe that the committee should be reluctant to present an Orwellian message equating peace with war. When introducing the President, the Committee should, at the very least, exhibit a level of compassion and humility by drawing attention to this distressing ambiguity.

We will do all we can to ensure that popular pressure will soon bring President Obama to an acceptance of the duties which this prize, and even more his electoral mandate to be a figure of change, impose upon him.  He must end the catastrophic policies of occupation and war that have caused so much destruction, so many deaths and displacements, and so much injury to our own democratic traditions.

This prize is not a meaningless honor.  We pledge, ourselves obeying its call to nonviolent action, to make our President worthy of it.

Sincerely,
Jack Amoureux – Board of Directors
Military Families Speak Out

Medea Benjamin – Co-Founder,
Global Exchange

Frida Berrigan – Witness Against Torture

Elaine Brower – World Can’t Wait

Leslie Cagan – Co-Founder
United for Peace and Justice

Bob Cooke – Regional Coordinator
Pax Christi USA, Pax Christi Metro, DC and Baltimore

Tom Cornell – Catholic Peace Fellowship

Matt Daloisio – War Resisters League

Marie Dennis – Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns

Laurie Dobson – Director,
End US Wars

Mike Ferner – National President
Veterans For Peace

Joy First- Convener
National Campaign for Non-Violent Resistance

Sara Flounders – International Action Center

Diana Gibson – Christian Peace Witness

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb – Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence

David Hartsough – Peaceworkers, San Francisco

Mike Hearington – Georgia Peace & Justice Coalition

Kimber J. Heinz – Organizing Coordinator
War Resisters League

Mark Johnson – Director
Fellowship of Reconciliation

Kathy Kelly – Co-coordinator
Voices for Creative Non-Violence

Leslie Kielson – Co-Chair
United for Peace and Justice

Malachy Kilbride – National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance

Kevin Martin – Executive Director
Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund

Linda LeTendre – Saratoga [New York] Peace Alliance

Michael T. McPhearson – National Executive Director,
Veterans For Peace

Gael Murphy – Co-Founder,
Code Pink

Sheila Musaji – The American Muslim

Michael Nagler – Founder
Metta Center for Nonviolence

Max Obuszewski – Pledge of Resistance Baltimore and Baltimore Nonviolence Center

Pete Perry – Peace of the Action

Dave Robinson, Executive Director
Pax Christi

David Swanson – AfterDowningStreet.org

Terry Rockefeller – Families for Peaceful Tomorrows

Samina Sundas – Founding Executive Director
The American Muslim Voice

Nancy Tsou – Coordinator,
Rockland Coalition for Peace and Justice

Diane Turco – Cape Codders for Peace and Justice

Marge Van Cleef – Womens International League for Peace and Freedom

Jose Vasquez – Executive Director
Iraq Veterans Against the War

Craig Wiesner
Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice

Scott Wright – Pax Christi Metro DC – Baltimore

Kevin Zeese – Executive Director
Voters for Peace

In a videotape released around September of 2007, Osama bin Laden said, “If you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing of your war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer.”

Michael F. Scheuer is the former Chief of the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at the Counterterrorist Center with the CIA. He had a 22 year career with the CIA and served in this position in the latter half of the nineties. In the wake of the WTC bombing he reenlisted his expertise with the bin Laden unit as a Special Advisor to the Chief. He held this position from September 2001 to November 2004. In 2004, Scheuer resigned his position with the CIA and released his New York Times bestselling book Imperial Hubris. It criticizes the western worlds tunnel visioned assumptions about the motivating factors for Islamic terrorism. According to Scheuer, “the greatest danger for Americans confronting the Islamist threat is to believe-at the urging of U.S. leaders-that Muslims attack us for what we are and what we think rather than for what we do.”

As far as conventional warfare is concerned, we have won every battle of our war with “terror.” We have the training, equipment, and production capacity to fight a multi-front war against the toughest of enemies. We have a volunteer force of both fulltime and reserve service personnel. The idea that we are losing this war is very peculiar to many of us, especially those that are part of the establishment. But how can we use military might to defeat an idea? The truth is that we are not fighting a sovereign body in this conflict. Although there are plenty of sovereign nations in this world that are just as jilted by our world affairs as the extremist that attack us, there has been no formal declarations against us by any of them. We are not being attacked by Islam, any particular ethnicity, because of our acceptance of different belief structures, or because of our varied ethnicities. We are being attacked because of our federal government’s aggressive foreign policy.

All that has been asked of us by our enemy is to stop meddling in their affairs. It is as simple as that.

In October of 2001 in an interview with Tayseer Allouni, a Kabul correspondent of Al-Jazeera, Tayseer asked bin Laden about the killing of innocent civilians. He responded by saying,

“Killing innocent civilians like Americans and other educated people say, is something very weird to be said. I mean, who is the one that said that our children and our civilians are not innocents, and that their blood is permissible [mubaah] ? In the case we kill their civilians, the whole world yells at us from east to west, and America would start pushing its allies and puppets. Who is the one that said that our blood isn’t blood and their blood is blood? Who is the one that declared this? What about the people that have been killed in our lands for decades? More than 1,000,000 children died in Iraq and are still dying, so why don’t we hear people that cry or protest or anyone who reassures or anyone who gives condolences??!?”

In March of 1997 in an interview with Peter Arnett, a 1966 Pulitzer Prize winning Reporter, bin Laden was asked about what it would require to end his jihad against us.

ARNETT: Mr. Bin Ladin, will the end of the United States’ presence in Saudi Arabia, their withdrawal, will that end your call for jihad against the United States and against the US?

BIN LADIN: The cause of the reaction must be sought and the act that has triggered this reaction must be eliminated. The reaction came as a result of the US aggressive policy towards the entire Muslim world and not just towards the Arabian Peninsula. So if the cause that has called for this act comes to an end, this act, in turn, will come to an end. So, the driving-away jihad against the US does not stop with its withdrawal from the Arabian Peninsula, but rather it must desist from aggressive intervention against Muslims in the whole world.

There is nothing that can be said to justify the terrorist attacks being committed by these extremist groups. They are murdering innocent civilians all across the globe and will be brought to justice. However, despite the fact that they are wrong to commit such acts, that doesn’t change the fact that we have been committing atrocities against them for decades. We should not change our aggressive foreign policy out of fear; we should change our foreign policy because it is the right thing to do. When we fund the aggressions of one nation against another we are essentially acting as the aggressor. When we impose naval blockades on trade we are committing acts of war. We have bombed, starved, and politicized the people of the Middle East for too long. Our government may not want to admit it because of pride, but I will proudly say that it is time to see some real change from the establishment!

It is time to return to our roots and start respecting the constitution.

By Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-Tenn.)

There is nothing conservative about the war in Afghanistan. The Center for Defense Information said a few months ago that we had spent over $400 billion on the war and war-related costs there. Now, the Pentagon says it will cost about $1 billion for each 1,000 additional troops we send to Afghanistan. One Republican Member from California told me recently that we could buy off every warlord in Afghanistan for $1 billion.

Fiscal conservatives should be the ones most horrified by all this spending. Conservatives who oppose big government and huge deficit spending at home should not support it in foreign countries just because it is being done by our biggest bureaucracy, the Defense Department.

We have now spent $1.5 trillion that we did not have–that we had to borrow–in Iraq and Afghanistan. Eight years is long enough. In fact, it is too long. Let’s bring our troops home and start putting Americans first once again.

by Ron Paul

Statement before the US House of Representatives opposing resolution on Iran, June 19, 2009

I rise in reluctant opposition to H Res 560, which condemns the Iranian government for its recent actions during the unrest in that country. While I never condone violence, much less the violence that governments are only too willing to mete out to their own citizens, I am always very cautious about “condemning” the actions of governments overseas. As an elected member of the United States House of Representatives, I have always questioned our constitutional authority to sit in judgment of the actions of foreign governments of which we are not representatives. I have always hesitated when my colleagues rush to pronounce final judgment on events thousands of miles away about which we know very little. And we know very little beyond limited press reports about what is happening in Iran.

Of course I do not support attempts by foreign governments to suppress the democratic aspirations of their people, but when is the last time we condemned Saudi Arabia or Egypt or the many other countries where unlike in Iran there is no opportunity to exercise any substantial vote on political leadership? It seems our criticism is selective and applied when there are political points to be made. I have admired President Obama’s cautious approach to the situation in Iran and I would have preferred that we in the House had acted similarly.

I adhere to the foreign policy of our Founders, who advised that we not interfere in the internal affairs of countries overseas. I believe that is the best policy for the United States, for our national security and for our prosperity. I urge my colleagues to reject this and all similar meddling resolutions.