Not linked on Ron Paul’s Congressional Website.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a
previous order of the House, the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. PAUL) is recognized
for 5 minutes.
2009 Ron Paul 101:1
Mr. PAUL. Certainly, in the last 24
hours, we’ve had a lot of discussion
about Afghanistan and whether or not
we should send more troops. As a matter
of fact, that debate has been going
on for a long time. The whole debate
about Afghanistan is something that
makes me think that we are bogged
down, considering the fact that it has
been going on for 8 years.
2009 Ron Paul 101:2
This is not new for us. This is more
or less the rule rather than the exception,
and I believe this comes about because
of the way we go to war. In the
last 60-some years, we have never had a
declaration of war, but we have been
involved in plenty. We’ve been involved
in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf,
and the Iraq War, and now Afghanistan,
and it looks like it’s going to be
Pakistan as well.
2009 Ron Paul 101:3
So I think the reason we get here is
because we don’t declare war and we
slip into war, and then it becomes political.
There are two sides. There is
one side of the argument that says,
Let’s just come home. And the other
side says, Fight it all out. And people
say, No, you can’t be an extremist on
this. You have to have a balance. And
the balance is chaotic. There’s no way
of measuring victory, and nobody
wants to give up, claiming it would be
humiliating to give up.
2009 Ron Paul 101:4
But just think of the tragedy of Vietnam,
all those years and all those
deaths and all that money spent. Eventually
we left, and South Vietnam is
now a unified country, but we still
have troops in Korea, in Europe, and in
Japan. And we are bankrupt. So some
day we are going to have to wake up
and look at the type of foreign policy
that the Founders advised us to have,
and that is nonintervention: don’t get
involved in the internal affairs of other
nations, have free and open trade and
accept friendship with other countries
who offer it, and that we shouldn’t be
the policemen of the world and we
shouldn’t be telling other people what
to do. We cannot be the policemen of
the world and pay for all those bills because
we are literally bankrupt.
2009 Ron Paul 101:5
In thinking about the dilemma that
we have, I think back, even back in the
1960s when I was an Air Force flight
surgeon for 5 years, and that was the
first time I heard the term “quagmire.”
And thinking about that for
many, many years, that’s all I can
think about right now is to evaluate
what we have. There are a few phrases
that have been around for a long time,
and I believe they more or less describe
what is happening here. Quagmire. Certainly
that is what we are doing. We
are digging a hole for ourselves. “Perpetual
war for perpetual peace.” We
have all heard that term, and it sounds
like we are in perpetual war. “War is
the health of the state.” We all know
the government size and sacrifice of
civil liberties always occurs much
more so in the midst of a war.
2009 Ron Paul 101:6
A book was written many years ago
by one of the most, if not the most
decorated soldier we ever had, Smedley
Butler. He wrote a book called “War is
a Racket.” And I have come to this belief
that war literally is a racket for
the people who push these wars, whether
it’s the military industrial complex
or the special interests and the various
factions, but it’s never, it’s never for
the people.
2009 Ron Paul 101:7
Today it is said that we’re over there
to protect our national security to go
into Afghanistan. Well, it’s down to 100
al Qaedas in Afghanistan, and, quite
frankly, the Afghan Government had
nothing to do – they said they harbored
the al Qaeda, and that is true, but do
you think those 19 guys needed to do
pushups in Afghanistan to come over
here and do what they did? The real
planning wasn’t in Afghanistan. It was
in Spain. It was in Germany. Where
was the real training? The real training
was in Florida. The training was in
Florida, and the FBI had evidence at
the time that they were being trained,
and it’s totally ignored. And yet we are
concentrating, we are still back to 9/11,
fear of nuclear war. We have to go in,
scare the people.
2009 Ron Paul 101:8
Yet what is the motivation for individuals
to become radical against us,
whether it’s in the Taliban or al
Qaeda? There is one single factor that
is the most influential in motivating
somebody to commit suicide terrorism
against anybody or us, and that is occupation
by a foreign nation. And now,
where have we occupied? We have occupied
Iraq and Afghanistan. We are
bombing Pakistan. But not only the
literal occupation, but also, we have
this threat on Pakistan.
2009 Ron Paul 101:9
So I would say it’s time for us to reassess
ourselves and look at a noninterventionist
foreign policy.
