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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (117051)	10/17/2003 9:47:22 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

This Republican Congressman may be one of the few people in all of CONgress that has any clues whatsoever... house.gov HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS BEFORE THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES October 17, 2003 Can We Afford to Spend $87 Billion in Iraq? Mr. Speaker: I rise in opposition to this request for nearly $87 billion to continue the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan. This is money we do not have being shipped away on a foreign welfare program. The burden on our already weakened economy could well be crippling. Those who argue that we must vote for this appropriation because “we must succeed” in Iraq are misguided. Those who say this have yet to define what it means - in concrete terms - to have “success” in Iraq. What is success in Iraq? How will we achieve success in Iraq? How will we know when we have succeeded in Iraq? About how long will “success” take to achieve and about how much will it cost? These are reasonable questions to have when we are asked to spend billions of taxpayers' dollars, but thus far we have heard little more than nice-sounding platitudes. We have established a troubling precedent that no matter how ill-conceived an intervention, we must continue to become more deeply involved because “we must succeed.” That is one reason we see unrelated funding in this supplemental for places like Liberia and Sudan. Mr. Speaker this reconstruction of Iraq -- that we are making but a down-payment on today -- is at its core just another foreign policy boondoggle. The $20 billion plan to “rebuild” Iraq tilts heavily toward creating a statist economy and is filled with very liberal social-engineering programs. Much of the money in this reconstruction plan will be wasted - as foreign aid most often is. Much will be wasted as corporate welfare to politically connected corporations; much will be thrown away at all the various “non-government organizations” that aim to teach the Iraqis everything from the latest American political correctness to the “right” way to vote. The bill includes $900 million to import petroleum products into Iraq (a country with the second largest oil reserves in the world); $793 million for healthcare in Iraq when we're in the midst of our own crisis and about to raise Medicare premiums of our seniors; $10 million for "women's leadership programs" (more social engineering); $200 million in loan guarantees to Pakistan (a military dictatorship that likely is the home of Osama bin Laden); $245 million for the "U.S. share" of U.N. peacekeeping in Liberia and Sudan; $95 million for education in Afghanistan; $600 million for repair and modernization of roads and bridges in Iraq (while our own infrastructure crumbles). There has been some discontent among conservatives about the $20 billion reconstruction price tag. They fail to realize that this is just the other side of the coin of military interventionism. It is the same coin, which is why I have consistently opposed foreign interventionism. There is a lesson here that those who call themselves fiscal conservatives seem to not have learned. There is no separation between the military intervention and the post-military intervention, otherwise known as “nation-building.” Fiscal conservatives are uneasy about nation building and foreign aid. The president himself swore off nation building as a candidate. But anyone concerned about sending American tax dollars to foreign countries must look directly at military interventionism abroad. If there is one thing the history of our interventionism teaches, it is that the best way for a foreign country to become a financial dependent of the United States is to first be attacked by the United States. This request - which was not the first and will not be the last - demonstrates in the most concrete terms that there is a real and concrete cost of our policy of interventionism. The American taxpayer paid to bomb Baghdad and now will pay to rebuild Iraq -- its schools, hospitals, prisons, roads, and more. Many Americans cannot afford to send their own children to college, but with the money in this bill they will be sending Iraqi kids to college. Is this really what the American people want? The real point is that the billions we are told we must spend to rebuild Iraq is indeed the natural outcome of our policy of pre-emptive military intervention. All those who voted for the resolution authorizing the president to attack Iraq have really already voted for this supplemental. There is no military intervention without a “Marshall Plan” afterward, regardless of our ability to pay. And the American people will be expected to pay for far more. This current request is only perhaps step four in what will likely be a 10 or more step program to remake Iraq and the rest of the Middle East in the image of Washington, D.C. social engineers and “global planners.” What will be steps five, six, seven, eight? Long-term occupation, micro-managing Iraq's economy, organizing and managing elections, writing an Iraqi constitution. And so on. When will it end? There is also much said about how we must support this supplemental because to do otherwise would mean not supporting the troops. I resent this dishonest accusation. It is nothing but a red herring. I wonder if an American currently serving an open-ended occupation in Iraq would think that bringing him home next week would be a good show of support for our troops. Maintaining an increasingly deadly occupation of Iraq and bankrupting many of our reservists and National Guard troops by unilaterally extending their contracts to serve in an active deployment is hardly “supporting the troops.” Perhaps that is why a Stars and Stripes newspaper survey of the troops in Iraq this week found that a majority had very low morale. And according to the same Stars and Stripes survey, an increasing number are not planning to re-enlist. Conservatives often proclaim that they are opposed to providing American welfare to the rest of the world. I agree. The only way to do that, however, is to stop supporting a policy of military interventionism. You cannot have one without the other. If a military intervention against Syria and Iran are next, it will be the same thing: we will pay to bomb the country and we will pay even more to rebuild it - and as we see with the plan for Iraq, this rebuilding will not be done on the cheap. The key fallacy in the argument of the militarists is that there is some way to fight a war without associated costs - the costs of occupation, reconstruction, “institution-building,” “democracy programs.” I opposed our action against Iraq for two main reasons. I sincerely believed that our national security was not threatened and I did not believe that Saddam Hussein's regime was involved in the attack on the United States on 9/11. I believe what we have learned since the intervention has supported my view. Meanwhile, while our troops are trying to police the border between Syria and Iraq our own borders remain as porous as ever. Terrorists who entered our country could easily do so again through our largely un-patrolled borders. While we expend American blood and treasure occupying a country that was not involved in the attack on the US, those who were responsible for the attack most likely are hiding out in Pakistan - a military dictatorship we are now allied with and to which this supplemental sends some $200 million in loan guarantees. Our continued occupation of Iraq is not producing the promised results, despite efforts to paint a brighter picture of the current situation. What once was a secular dictatorship appears to be moving toward being a fundamentalist Islamic regime -- not the democracy we were promised. As repulsive as Saddam's regime was, the prospect of an Iraq run by Islamic clerics, aligned with Iranian radicals and hostile to the United States, is no more palatable. There are signs that this is the trend. The press reports regularly on attacks against Iraq's one million Christians. Those hand-picked by the United States to run Iraq have found themselves targets for assassination. Clerics are forming their own militias. The thousands of non-combatants killed in the US intervention are seeking revenge against the unwanted American occupiers. Mr. Speaker, throwing billions of dollars after a failed policy will not produce favorable results. We are heading full-speed toward bankruptcy, yet we continue to spend like there is no tomorrow. There will be a tomorrow, however. The money we are spending today is real. The bill will be paid, whether through raising taxes or printing more money. Either way, the American people will become poorer in pursuit of a policy that cannot and will not work. We cannot re-make the world in our own image. The stated aim was to remove Saddam Hussein. That mission is accomplished. The best policy now for Iraq is to declare victory and bring our troops home. We should let the people of Iraq rebuild their own country. I urge my colleagues to vote against this supplemental request.

To: Win Smith who wrote (117051)	10/28/2003 6:38:35 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Free Advice to G.O.P. nytimes.com [ From last week, in which the sometimes locally popular Friedman goes all skeptical. For some reason, he just won't get with the PR offensive du jour. Any resemblance between the Republicans Friedman describes in the first paragraph and the local W fan club is purely coincidental. ] By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Republicans seem to think they don't have to think when it comes to Iraq. They only have to applaud the president and whack the press for not reporting more good news from Baghdad — and everything will be fine. Well, think again. I've often pointed out the good we have done in Iraq and unabashedly hoped for more. No regrets. But some recent trends leave me worried. Unfortunately, there are few Democrats to press my worries on the administration. Most Democrats either opposed the war (a perfectly legitimate position) or supported it and are now trying to disown it. That means the only serious opposition can come from Republicans, so they'd better get focused — because there is nothing about the Bush team's performance in Iraq up to now that justifies a free pass. If Republicans don't get serious on Iraq, they will wake up a year from now and find all their candidates facing the same question: "How did your party lose Iraq?" If I were a Republican senator, here's what I'd tell the Bush team: • What in God's name are you doing forcing Iraqis to accept Turkish peacekeeping troops? Are you nuts? Not only will Turkish troops in Iraq alienate the Kurds, our best friends, but they will rile the Shiites and Sunnis as well. Honor is hugely important in Iraqi society, and bringing in Turkish soldiers — Iraq's former colonizers — to order around Iraqis would be a disaster. "If we bring in the Turks, it will bring back bad memories," notes Yitzhak Nakash, a Brandeis University professor and author of one of the best Iraq books, "The Shi'is of Iraq." "Worse, a Turkish presence in Iraq will only prompt the Iranians, Syrians and Saudis to try to increase their influence. That is no recipe for a stable country." It's time for the Bush team to admit it made a grievous error in disbanding Iraq's Army — which didn't even fight us — and declare: "We thank all the nations who offered troops, but we think the Iraqi people can and must secure their own country. So we're inviting all former Iraqi Army soldiers (not Republican Guards) to report back to duty. For every two Iraqi battalions that return to duty (they can weed out their own bad apples), we will withdraw an American one. So Iraqis can liberate themselves. Our motto is Iraq for the Iraqis." • Attacks on our forces are getting more deadly, not less. Besides those killed, we've had 900 wounded or maimed. We need to take this much more seriously. We're not facing some ragtag insurrection. We're facing an enemy with a command and control center who is cleverly picking off our troops and those Iraqi leaders and foreigners cooperating with us. Either we put in the troops needed to finish the war, and project our authority, or we get the Iraqi Army to do the job — but pretending that we're just "mopping up" is a dangerous illusion. • The neocons need a neo-Baath. I'm glad we banned the Baath Party, but the ban was not done right. It needed to be accompanied by a clear process for people who simply joined the Baath to secure government jobs, like school directors, to recant and be rehabilitated. Just tossing these people out has purged thousands of technocrats, weakened the secular middle class and left a power vacuum filled by religious groups. Also, Iraq needs a party that can express the aspirations of Iraq's Sunni minority and give them a stake in the new state. Right now, the Sunni mainstream in Iraq isn't sure how it fits into any new order, so the worst elements are opposing us and the best are apprehensively sitting on the fence. • "There is now a struggle for power emerging within the Shiite community," says Mr. Nakash, "between those clerics and secular leaders who are ready to give the Americans a chance and a grass-roots leadership that wants to challenge both the Americans and the traditional Shia hierarchy. This grass-roots leadership is seeking control of mosques, followers, religious authority and income from religious taxes. Iraq is rapidly moving toward the politics of militias and arms. This trend has to be stopped." Bottom line: We still haven't established a moderate political center in Iraq ready to openly embrace the progressive U.S. agenda for Iraq and openly defend it. That center is potentially there, but because, so far, we have failed to provide a secure enough environment, or a framework for Iraqis to have the national dialogue they need to build a better Iraq, it has not emerged. We need to fix this situation fast. Instead of applauding without thinking, Republicans should be telling that to the president.