2002 Ron Paul 45:1
Mr. PAUL. Madam Chairman, I move
to strike the requisite number of
words.
2002 Ron Paul 45:2
Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition
to the amendment. The President
has not been interested in this legislation.
I do not see a good reason to give
him the burden of reporting back to us
in 45 days to explain how he is going to
provide for Afghan security for the
long term. How long is long term? We
have been in Korea now for 50 years.
Are we planning to send troops that
provide national security for Afghanistan?
I think we should be more concerned
about the security of this country
and not wondering how we are
going to provide the troops for longterm
security in Afghanistan. We
should be more concerned about the security
of our ports.
2002 Ron Paul 45:3
Madam Chairman, over the last several
days and almost continuously, as a
matter of fact, many Members get up
and talk about any expenditure or any
tax cut as an attack on Social Security,
but we do not hear this today because
there is a coalition, well built, to
support this intervention and presumed
occupation of Afghanistan. But the
truth is, there are monetary and budget
consequences for this.
2002 Ron Paul 45:4
After this bill is passed, if this bill is
to pass, we will be close to $2 billion in
aid to Afghanistan, not counting the
military. Now, that is an astounding
amount of money, but it seems like it
is irrelevant here. Twelve months ago,
the national debt was $365 billion less
than it is today, and people say we are
just getting away from having surpluses.
Well, $365 billion is a huge deficit,
and the national debt is going up
at that rate. April revenues were down
30 percent from 1 year ago. The only
way we pay for programs like this is either
we rob Social Security or we print
the money, but both are very harmful
to poor people and people living on a
limited income. Our funds are not unlimited.
2002 Ron Paul 45:5
I know there is a lot of good intention;
nobody in this body is saying we
are going over there to cause mischief,
but let me tell my colleagues, there is
a lot of reasons not to be all that optimistic
about these wonderful results
and what we are going to accomplish
over there.
2002 Ron Paul 45:6
Madam Chairman, earlier the gentleman
from California (Mr. ROHRABACHER)
came up with an astounding
reason for us to do this. He said that
we owe this to Afghanistan. Now, I
have heard all kinds of arguments for
foreign aid and foreign intervention,
but the fact that we owe this to Afghanistan?
Do we know what we owe?
We owe responsibility to the American
taxpayer. We owe responsibility to the
security of this country.
2002 Ron Paul 45:7
One provision of this bill takes a $300
million line of credit from our DOD and
just gives the President the authority
to take $300 million of weapons away
from us and give it to somebody in Afghanistan.
Well, that dilutes our defense,
that does not help our defense.
This is not beneficial. We do not need
to have an occupation of Afghanistan
for security of this country. There is
no evidence for that.
2002 Ron Paul 45:8
The occupation of Afghanistan is unnecessary.
It is going to be very costly,
and it is very dangerous.
2002 Ron Paul 45:9
My colleagues might say, well, this is
all for democracy. For democracy?
Well, did we care about democracy in
Venezuela? It seemed like we tried to
undermine that just recently. Do we
care about the democracy in Pakistan?
A military dictator takes over and he
becomes our best ally, and we use his
land, and yet he has been a friend to
the Taliban, and who knows, bin Laden
may even be in Pakistan. Here we are
saying we are doing it all for democracy.
Now, that is just pulling our leg
a little bit too much. This is not the
reason that we are over there. We are
over there for a lot of other reasons
and, hopefully, things will be improved.
2002 Ron Paul 45:10
But I am terribly concerned that we
will spend a lot of money, we will become
deeply mired in Afghanistan, and
we will not do a lot better than the Soviets
did.
2002 Ron Paul 45:11
Now, that is a real possibility that
we should not ignore. We say, oh, no,
everything sounds rosy and we are
going to do this, we are going to do it
differently, and this time it is going to
be okay. Well, if we look at the history
of that land and that country, I would
think that we should have second
thoughts.
2002 Ron Paul 45:12
It has been said that one of the reasons
why we need this legislation is to
help pay for drug eradication. Now,
that is a good idea. That would be nice
if we could do that. But the drug production
has exploded since we have
been there. In the last year, it is just
going wild. Well, that is even more reason
we have to spend money because
we contributed to the explosion of the
drug production. There is money in
this bill, and maybe some good will
come of this; there is money in this bill
that is going to be used to teach the
Afghan citizens not to use drugs.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. PAUL) has
expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. PAUL
was allowed to proceed for 2 additional
minutes.)
2002 Ron Paul 45:13
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, if this is
successful, if we teach the Afghan
people
not to use drugs, that would be
wonderful. Maybe then we can do something
about the ravenous appetite of
our people for drugs which is the basic
cause of so much drug production.
2002 Ron Paul 45:14
So to spend money on these kinds of
programs I think is just a little bit of
a stretch. Already there have been 33
tribal leaders that have said they will
not attend this Loya Jirga, that they
are not going to attend. The fact that
we are going to spend millions of dollars
trying to gather these people together
and tell them what to do with
their country, I think the odds of producing
a secure country are slim.
2002 Ron Paul 45:15
Already in the papers just a few
weeks ago it was reported in The Washington
Post that our CIA made an attempt
to assassinate a former prime
minister of Afghanistan. He may have
been a bum for all I know, but do Members
think that sits well? He was not
an ally of bin Laden, he was not a
Taliban member, yet our CIA is over
there getting involved. As a matter of
fact, that is against our law, if that report
is true. Yet, that is what the papers
have reported.
2002 Ron Paul 45:16
So I would say that we should move
cautiously. I think this is very dangerous.
I know nobody else has spoken
out against this bill, but I do not see
much benefit coming from this. I know
it is well motivated, but it is going to
cost a lot of money, we are going to get
further engaged, more troops are going
to go over there; and now that we are
a close ally of Pakistan, we do know
that Pakistan and India both have nuclear
weapons, and we are sitting right
next to them. So I would hardly think
this is advantageous for our security,
nor advantageous for the American
people, nor advantageous to the American
taxpayer.
2002 Ron Paul 45:17
I see this as a threat to our security.
It does not reassure me one bit. This is
what scares me. It scares me when we
send troops into places like Vietnam
and Korea and other places, because it
ultimately comes back to haunt us.
