RON PAUL: End the War in Afghanistan!

Archiviato in Circolo Socialista Giuseppe Saragat

END THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN!

by Ron Paul

This past week various news events once again made it abundantly clear that our foreign policy is an abject failure. Unfortunately in spite of this the administration is determined to stay on this destructive course despite any past promises to change it. For Afghanistan especially, if ever there was an opportunity to admit shortcomings and change strategies, this past week was it.

There really is nothing for us to win in Afghanistan. Our mission has morphed from apprehending those who attacked us to apprehending those who threaten or dislike us for invading their country, to remaking an entire political system and even a culture. I remain highly skeptical that as foreign occupiers we can ever impose Western-style democracy on another country. Our troops have debilitating restrictions on defending themselves against enemies which are so often indistinguishable from civilians. They also face dire setbacks in winning hearts and minds when innocents are mistakenly harmed, which happens all the time. We can never make friends this way, and yet the tactic never works.

This is an expensive, bloody, endless exercise in futility, though few are willing to admit this just yet. But every second they spend in denial has real cost in lives and livelihoods. Many of us can agree on one thing, however: our military spending in general has grown way out of control. This is largely because fiscal accountability and military budgeting is seen by many as “weak on defense.” This is absolutely wrong in a dangerous way to think. It is certainly possible for the military to waste money, or to spend money counter-productively, and indeed it has. But out of political correctness the military has been getting blank checks from the administrations and Congress for far too long.

It is important to defend our soil, but let us defend us our own soil instead of defending Europe’s soil. Our willingness to defend Europe enables their lavish social spending at our expense while they criticize our model of capitalism. It’s time they allocated the money for their own defense. The same goes for Korea, Japan and other countries like Egypt and Israel. It is also important that while our troops are in combat, our soldiers have what they need to do the best they can even if we disagree with why they are there. It’s an embarrassment that some soldiers and families have had to buy body armor at their own expense when billions are awarded to politically well-connected defense contractors for weapons systems that don’t work, are over budget and past deadlines.

This is the kind of waste that needs to end. I firmly believe that there is enough waste in the military budget that we can both save money overall and at the same time make us safer. Of course, the obvious way to save money and be safer is to stop meddling in the affairs of foreign countries and just bring our troops home. This will happen eventually if our empire, like every other fallen empire, insists on spending itself into collapse. If we want to avoid this we must look into ways to bring our costs under control. The military budget must be on the chopping block along with everything else.

THE WAR THAT’S NOT A WAR

by Ron Paul

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 for Hussein’s invasion.

After Iraq’s successful invasion of Kuwait we reacted with gusto and have been militarily involved in the entire region, six thousand miles from our shores, ever since. This has included Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. After twenty 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 any place 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 soldiers wear uniforms; 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’s still really no al Qaeda in Iraq and only a hundred or so in Afghanistan, yet there is no end in sight to the “war.” Could there have been other reasons for this war that is not a war?

Military victory in Afghanistan is illusive. Does anyone really know whom 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 1960’s to keep us in Vietnam?

We own the Iraq government as we do Afghanistan’s. 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 Osama bin Laden, in the fight to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980’s.

In that effort our CIA funded radical jihad against those nasty foreign occupiers-the Russians.

What gratitude? Those same people now resent our benevolent occupation-with a little violence thrown in.

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 resist 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 policy makers 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 are going, it is going to end badly. What we need are honest leaders with character and a new foreign policy.

(Saranno fra poco dieci anni di guerra in Afghanistan: tanti, troppi. La Seconda Guerra Mondiale durò tre anni in Sicilia, quattro in Oriente, cinque complessivamente in Europa. I laburisti olandesi sono usciti dal governo e portato il loro paese alle elezioni anticipate per ottenere il ritiro delle truppe dall’Afghanistan. Anche la Danimarca e la Spagna stanno considerando il ritiro. In questi due articoli - intitolati BASTA CON LA GUERRA IN AFGHANISTAN e LA GUERRA CHE NON E’ UNA GUERRA - il popolare parlamentare del Texas Ron Paul sostiene che è tempo di finirla con guerre insostenibili ed inutili spese militari e chiede l’immediato ritiro delle truppe americane dall’Afghanistan, definito un conflitto impossibile da vincere, accusando al contempo l’amministrazione democratica di non star rispettando gli impegni elettorali. Ron Paul è stato uno dei candidati alla Presidenza degli Stati Uniti nel 2008 per il Partito Repubblicano e potrebbe ricandidarsi nel 2012 contro Obama, che i sondaggi danno per sicuramente non rieletto indipendentemente da chi sarà il candidato presidenziale scelto dai Repubblicani.)