So Much for Sovereignty...
What Does Regime Change Mean?
by Rep. Ron Paul
The buzzwords in Washington concerning Iraq
these days are "regime change," which in a
sense is surprisingly honest. It means the
upcoming Gulf War II will not be about
protecting Kuwait or stemming Iraqi aggression.
The pretenses have been discarded, and now
we've simply decided Saddam must go. We
seem to have very little idea, however, what a
post-Saddam Iraq will look like. We should
expect another lesson in nation-building, with
American troops remaining in the country
indefinitely while billions of our tax dollars
attempt to prop up a new government.
With this goal of regime change in mind, the
administration recently announced plans to
spend nearly $100 million training an Iraqi
militia force to help overthrow Hussein. A NATO
airbase in southern Hungary will be used for
military training. The problem, however, will be
choosing individuals from at least five different
factions vying for power in Iraq, including the
fundamentalist Kurds in the north. Given the
religious, ethnic, and social complexities that
make up the Middle East, do we really believe
that somehow we can choose the "good guys"
who deserve to rule Iraq?
Of course any of these groups will be happy to
use American military power to remove Hussein,
and will form a short-term alliance with the
Pentagon accordingly. Their opposition to the
current government, however, should not be
mistaken for support for America or its policies.
As we've seen so many times in the past, the
groups we support in foreign conflicts rarely
remain grateful for long.
Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are
perfect examples of our onetime "allies" who
accepted our help yet failed to do our bidding
for long. Both gladly welcomed American
money, weapons, and military training during
the 1980s. With bin Laden we sought to
frustrate the Soviet advance into Afghanistan,
and many Pentagon hawks undoubtedly felt
vindicated when the Russian army retreated.
Yet twenty years later, bin Laden is a rabid
American-hating madman whose operatives are
armed with our own Stinger missiles. Similarly,
we supported the relatively moderate Hussein
in the hopes of neutralizing a radically
fundamentalist Iran. Yet this military
strengthening of Iraq led to its invasion of
Kuwait and our subsequent military involvement
in the gulf. Today the Hussein regime is
belligerently anti-American, and any biological
or chemical weapons he possesses were
supplied by our own government.
We've seen this time and time again. We
support a military or political group based on
our short-term objectives, only to have them
turn against us later. Ultimately, our money,
weapons, and interventionist policies never buy
us friends for long, and more often we simply
arm our future enemies. The politicians
responsible for the mess are usually long gone
when the trouble starts, and voters with a short
attention span don't connect the foreign policy
blunders of twenty years ago with today's
problems. But wouldn't our long-term interests
be better served by not creating the problems
in the first place?
The practical consequences of meddling in the
domestic politics of foreign nations are clearly
disastrous. We should remember, however, that
it is also wrong in principle to interfere with the
self-determination rights of foreign peoples.
Consider how angry Americans become when
Europeans or Mexicans merely comment on our
elections, or show a decided preference for one
candidate. We rightfully feel that our politics
are simply none of the world's business, yet we
seem blind to the anger created when we use
military force to install governments in places
like Iraq. The unspoken question is this: What
gives us the right to decide who governs Iraq or
any other foreign country? Apparently our own
loss of national sovereignty, as we surrender
more and more authority to organizations like
the UN and WTO, mirrors our lack of respect for
the sovereignty of foreign nations.
Ron Paul, M.D., represents the 14th
Congressional District of Texas in the United
States House of Representatives.
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