1998 Ron Paul 26:3
Mr. PAUL.
Mr. Speaker, I would like
to draw to the attention of my colleagues
two House concurrent resolutions
that we’ll be voting on, one
today and one tomorrow.
1998 Ron Paul 26:4
The one tomorrow is offered by the
gentleman from California (Mr. CAMPBELL),
which I think we should pay
close attention to and, hopefully, support. This is H. Con. Res. 227. It’s a
concurrent resolution directing the
President, pursuant to section 5(c) of
the War Powers Resolution, to remove
United States Armed Forces from the
Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1998 Ron Paul 26:5
The troops should never have been
sent there in the first place. There was
a lot of controversy. It was far from
unanimous consent from the Congress
to send the troops there. They were
sent there in 1995, and they were to be
there for 18 months, and each time we
came upon a date for removing the
troops, they were extended.
1998 Ron Paul 26:6
Currently, it’s the President’s position
that the troops will stay indefinitely. He has not set a date, although
the Congress has set a date for this
June for all funding to be removed as
of June and the troops should come
home. This resolution more or less
states that same position. I strongly
favor this, and I believe that the Congress
should send a strong message
that we should not casually and carelessly
send troops around the world to
police the world. This is a good way for
us to get into trouble.
1998 Ron Paul 26:7
Our national security is not threatened. There was no justification for our
troops to be sent there. There are always
good reasons, though, given because
there are problems. Well, there
are problems every place in the world. If we try to solve all the problems of
the world, we wouldn’t have troops in
a hundred countries like we have now,
we would have them in three or four
hundred countries. But it is true that
we send troops where the most amount
of pressure put upon us to do it.
1998 Ron Paul 26:8
There are certain countries, like in
Rwanda, Africa, we certainly did not
apply the same rules to that country as
we do to Bosnia and the Persian Gulf
and Iraq. We didn’t do this when we
saw the mass killings in the Far East
under Pol Pot.
1998 Ron Paul 26:9
So, under certain circumstances
where there’s political pressure made
by certain allies or by interests of oil,
then we are more likely to get involved. But
the principle of a noninterventionism
foreign policy should make certain
that we, the Congress, never condone,
never endorse, never promote the
placement of troops around the world
in harm’s way, because it’s a good way
for men to get killed and, for most purposes,
the lives of our American soldiers
are too valuable to be put into a
situation where there is so much harm
and danger.
1998 Ron Paul 26:10
Fortunately, there has been no
American deaths in this region, but
there is a good reason for those troops
to come out. The peace has not been
settled over there. It’s not going
to be. And our 16,000 or 20,000 troops
that we’ve had there will not be able
to maintain the peace as long as these
warring factions exist. They’ve existed
not for months, not for a few
years, but literally for hundreds of
years if not thousands of years people
in this region have been fighting
among themselves.
1998 Ron Paul 26:11
So it is not our responsibility. Yes,
we can condemn the violence; and who
would not? But does that justify the
taxing of American citizens and imposing
a threat to American lives by imposing
and sending our troops to all
these hot spots around the region?
1998 Ron Paul 26:12
So I strongly urge my fellow colleagues
to look carefully at this resolution
tomorrow and assume Congressional
responsibility. It is not the responsibility
of the President to wage
war, to put troops around the world. That is a Congressional responsibility.
1998 Ron Paul 26:13
So although there’s been no declaration
of war, we are sitting ducks
for a war to be started. So let’s stop
the war before it gets started.
1998 Ron Paul 26:14
I think we should strongly endorse
this resolution and make sure these
troops come home. You know, it’s interesting
that there’s a fair amount of support
for this, and we obviously won the vote
on this last year to say the troops
should come home in June of this year. And I suspect and hope that this will be restated, and there will be no excuse to
extend their stay in this region.
1998 Ron Paul 26:15
But at the same time we win those
kind of votes, and there is a strong sentiment
here in the Congress when we
are required to vote and there is certainly
a strong sentiment among the
American people that we ought to be
dealing with our problems here at
home, we ought not to assume the role
of world policemen, and we ought to
mind our own business, and we ought
to be concerned about the sovereignty
of the United States, rather than sending
our troops around the world under
the auspices of the United Nations and
NATO and literally giving up our sovereignty
to international bodies. Quite recently, we
were very confused as to who was really
running foreign policy in Iraq,
whether it was Kofi Annan or whether
it was our President.
1998 Ron Paul 26:16
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman’s time is expired.
Notes:
1998 Ron Paul Chapter 26
Notice that the House of Representatives held so-called morning hour debates, starting at 12:30 in the afternoon.
1998 Ron Paul 26:6
Ron Paul seems to say troops where the most and CongressionalRecord quotes him as saying troops with the most. The webmaster judged that Ron Paul said where. Check the C-Span video at 12:37:01 local time.
1998 Ron Paul 26:7
Here, noninterventionism foreign policy probably should be,
noninterventionist foreign policy.
1998 Ron Paul 26:8
Ungrammatical Fortunately, there has been no American deaths in this region
probably should be Fortunately, there have been no American deaths in this region.
1998 Ron Paul 26:13
Ungrammatical But at the same time we win those kind of votes
probably should be But at the same time we win those kinds of votes.
