Chapter 16. 2005

Asking “what if” is an approach from which our overall foreign policy and our current war effort could benefit. A properly functioning Congress would constantly take this approach.

January 26, 2005
WHAT IF IT WAS ALL A BIG MISTAKE?
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS IN
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

America’s policy of foreign intervention, while still debated in the early 20th Century, is today accepted as conventional wisdom by both political parties. But what if the overall policy is a colossal mistake, a major error in judgment? Not just bad judgment regarding when and where to impose ourselves, but the entire premise that we have a moral right to meddle in the affairs of others? Think of the untold harm done by years of fighting—hundreds of thousands of American casualties, hundreds of thousands of foreign civilian casualties, and unbelievable human and economic costs. What if it was all needlessly borne by the American people? If we do conclude that grave foreign policy errors have been made, a very serious question must be asked: What would it take to change our policy to one more compatible with a true republic’s goal of peace, commerce, and friendship with all nations? Is it not possible that Washington’s admonition to avoid entangling alliances is sound advice, even today?

In medicine mistakes are made—man is fallible. Misdiagnoses are made, incorrect treatments are given, and experimental trials of medicines are advocated. A good physician understands the imperfections in medical care, advises close follow-ups, and double-checks the diagnosis, treatment, and medication. Adjustments are made to assure the best results. But what if a doctor never checks the success or failure of a treatment, or ignores bad results and assumes his omnipotence—refusing to concede that the initial course of treatment was a mistake? Let me assure you, the results would not be good. Litigation and the loss of reputation in the medical community place restraints on this type of bullheaded behavior.

Sadly, though, when governments, politicians, and bureaucrats make mistakes and refuse to reexamine them, there is little the victims can do to correct things. Since the bully pulpit and the media propaganda machine are instrumental in government cover-ups and deception, the final truth emerges slowly, and only after much suffering. The arrogance of some politicians, regulators, and diplomats actually causes them to become even more aggressive and more determined to prove themselves right, to prove their power is not to be messed with by never admitting a mistake. Truly, power corrupts!

The unwillingness to ever reconsider our policy of foreign intervention, despite obvious failures and shortcomings over the last 50 years, has brought great harm to our country and our liberty. Historically, financial realities are the ultimate check on nations bent on empire. Economic laws ultimately prevail over bad judgment. But tragically, the greater the wealth of a country, the longer the flawed policy lasts. We’ll probably not be any different.

We are still a wealthy nation, and our currency is still trusted by the world, yet we are vulnerable to some harsh realities about our true wealth and the burden of our future commitments. Overwhelming debt and the precarious nature of the dollar should serve to restrain our determined leaders, yet they show little concern for deficits. Rest assured, though, the limitations of our endless foreign adventurism and spending will become apparent to everyone at some point in time.

Since 9/11, a lot of energy and money have gone into efforts ostensibly designed to make us safer. Many laws have been passed and many dollars have been spent. Whether or not we’re better off is another question.

Today we occupy two countries in the Middle East. We have suffered over 20,000 casualties, and caused possibly 100,000 civilian casualties in Iraq. We have spent over $200 billion in these occupations, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars here at home hoping to be safer. We’ve created the Department of Homeland Security, passed the Patriot Act, and created a new super CIA agency.

Our government now is permitted to monitor the Internet, to read our mail, to search us without proper search warrants, to develop a national ID card, and to investigate what people are reading in libraries. Ironically, illegal aliens flow into our country and qualify for driving licenses and welfare benefits with little restraint.

These issues are discussed, but nothing has been as highly visible to us as the authoritarianism we accept at the airport. The creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has intruded on the privacy of all airline travelers, and there is little evidence that we are safer for it. Driven by fear, we have succumbed to the age-old temptation to sacrifice liberty on the pretense of obtaining security. Love of security, unfortunately, all too often vanquishes love of liberty.

Unchecked fear of another 9/11-type attack constantly preoccupies our leaders and most of our citizens, and drives the legislative attack on our civil liberties. It’s frightening to see us doing to ourselves what even bin Laden never dreamed he could accomplish with his suicide bombers.

We don’t understand the difference between a vague threat of terrorism and the danger of a guerilla war. One prompts us to expand and nationalize domestic law enforcement while limiting the freedoms of all Americans. The other deals with understanding terrorists like bin Laden, who declared war against us in 1998. Not understanding the difference makes it virtually impossible to deal with the real threats. We are obsessed with passing new laws to make our country safe from a terrorist attack. This confusion about the cause of the 9/11 attacks, the fear they engendered, and the willingness to sacrifice liberty prompts many to declare their satisfaction with the inconveniences and even humiliation at our nation’s airports.

There are always those in government who are anxious to increase its power and authority over the people. Strict adherence to personal privacy annoys those who promote a centralized state.

It’s no surprise to learn that many of the new laws passed in the aftermath of 9/11 had been proposed long before that date. The attacks merely provided an excuse to do many things previously proposed by dedicated statists.

All too often, government acts perversely, professing to advance liberty while actually doing the opposite. Dozens of new bills passed since 9/11 promise to protect our freedoms and our security. In time we will realize there is little chance our security will be enhanced or our liberties protected.

The powerful and intrusive TSA certainly will not solve our problems. Without a full discussion, greater understanding, and ultimately a change in the foreign policy that incites those who declared war against us, no amount of pat-downs at airports will suffice. Imagine the harm done, the staggering costs, and the loss of liberty if the next 20 years pass and airplanes are never employed by terrorists. Even if there is a possibility that airplanes will be used to terrorize us, TSA’s bullying will do little to prevent it. Patting down old women and little kids in airports cannot possibly make us safer!

TSA cannot protect us from another attack and it is not the solution. It serves only to make us all more obedient and complacent toward government intrusions into our lives.

The airport mess has been compounded by other problems, which we fail to recognize. Most assume the government has the greatest responsibility for making private aircraft travel safe. But this assumption only ignores mistakes made before 9/11, when the government taught us to not resist, taught us that airline personnel could not carry guns, and that the government would be in charge of security. Airline owners became complacent and dependent upon the government.

After 9/11 we moved in the wrong direction by allowing total government control and a political takeover by the TSA—which was completely contrary to the proposition that private owners have the ultimate responsibility to protect their customers.

Discrimination laws passed during the last 40 years ostensibly fuel the Transportation Secretary’s near obsession with avoiding the appearance of discrimination toward young Muslim males. Instead TSA seemingly targets white children and old women. We have failed to recognize that a safety policy by a private airline is quite a different thing from government agents blindly obeying anti-discrimination laws.

Governments do not have a right to use blanket discrimination, such as that which led to incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II. However, local law-enforcement agencies should be able to target their searches if the description of a suspect is narrowed by sex, race, or religion.

We are dealing with an entirely different matter when it comes to safety on airplanes. The federal government should not be involved in local law enforcement, and has no right to discriminate. Airlines, on the other hand, should be permitted to do whatever is necessary to provide safety. Private firms—long denied the right—should have a right to discriminate. Fine restaurants, for example, can require that shoes and shirts be worn for service in their establishments. The logic of this remaining property right should permit more sensible security checks at airports. The airlines should be responsible for the safety of their property, and liable for it as well. This is not only the responsibility of the airlines, but it is a civil right that has long been denied them and other private companies.

The present situation requires the government to punish some by targeting those individuals who clearly offer no threat. Any airline that tries to make travel safer and happens to question a larger number of young Muslim males than the government deems appropriate can be assessed huge fines. To add insult to injury, the fines collected from airlines are used for forced sensitivity training of pilots who do their very best, under the circumstances, to make flying safer by restricting the travel of some individuals. We have embarked on a process that serves no logical purpose. While airline safety suffers, personal liberty is diminished and costs skyrocket.

If we’re willing to consider a different foreign policy, we should ask ourselves a few questions:

1. What if the policies of foreign intervention, entangling alliances, policing the world, nation building, and spreading our values through force are deeply flawed?

2. What if it is true that Saddam Hussein never had weapons of mass destruction?

3. What if it is true that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were never allies?

4. What if it is true that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein did nothing to enhance our national security?

5. What if our current policy in the Middle East leads to the overthrow of our client oil states in the region?

6. What if the American people really knew that more than 20,000 American troops have suffered serious casualties or died in the Iraq war, and 9% of our forces already have been made incapable of returning to battle?

7. What if it turns out there are many more guerrilla fighters in Iraq than our government admits?

8. What if there really have been 100,000 civilian Iraqi casualties, as some claim, and what is an acceptable price for “doing good?”

9. What if Rumsfeld is replaced for the wrong reasons, and things become worse under a Defense Secretary who demands more troops and an expansion of the war?

10. What if we discover that, when they do vote, the overwhelming majority of Iraqis support Islamic (Sharia) law over Western secular law, and want our troops removed?

11. What if those who correctly warned of the disaster awaiting us in Iraq are never asked for their opinion of what should be done now?

12. What if the only solution for Iraq is to divide the country into three separate regions, recognizing the principle of self-determination while rejecting the artificial boundaries created in 1918 by non-Iraqis?

13. What if it turns out radical Muslims don’t hate us for our freedoms, but rather for our policies in the Middle East that directly affected Arabs and Muslims?

14. What if the invasion and occupation of Iraq actually distracted from pursuing and capturing Osama bin Laden?

15. What if we discover that democracy can’t be spread with force of arms?

16. What if democracy is deeply flawed, and instead we should be talking about liberty, property rights, free markets, the rule of law, localized government, weak centralized government, and self-determination promoted through persuasion, not force?

17. What if Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda actually welcomed our invasion and occupation of Arab/Muslim Iraq as proof of their accusations against us, and it served as a magnificent recruiting tool for them?

18. What if our policy greatly increased and prolonged our vulnerability to terrorists and guerilla attacks both at home and abroad?

19. What if the Pentagon, as reported by its Defense Science Board, actually recognized the dangers of our policy before the invasion, and their warnings were ignored or denied?

20. What if the argument that by fighting over there, we won’t have to fight here, is wrong, and the opposite is true?

21. What if we can never be safer by giving up some of our freedoms?

22. What if the principle of pre-emptive war is adopted by Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and others, “justified” by current U.S. policy?

23. What if pre-emptive war and pre-emptive guilt stem from the same flawed policy of authoritarianism, though we fail to recognize it?

24. What if Pakistan is not a trustworthy ally, and turns on us when conditions deteriorate?

25. What if plans are being laid to provoke Syria and/or Iran into actions that would be used to justify a military response and pre-emptive war against them?

26. What if our policy of democratization of the Middle East fails, and ends up fueling a Russian-Chinese alliance that we regret—an alliance not achieved even at the height of the Cold War?

27. What if the policy forbidding profiling at our borders and airports is deeply flawed?

28. What if presuming the guilt of a suspected terrorist without a trial leads to the total undermining of constitutional protections for American citizens when arrested?

29. What if we discover the army is too small to continue policies of pre-emption and nation-building? What if a military draft is the only way to mobilize enough troops?

30. What if the “stop-loss” program is actually an egregious violation of trust and a breach of contract between the government and soldiers? What if it actually is a backdoor draft, leading to unbridled cynicism and rebellion against a voluntary army and generating support for a draft of both men and women? Will lying to troops lead to rebellion and anger toward the political leadership running the war?

31. What if the Pentagon’s legal task-force opinion that the president is not bound by international or federal law regarding torture stands unchallenged, and sets a precedent which ultimately harms Americans, while totally disregarding the moral, practical, and legal arguments against such a policy?

32. What if the intelligence reform legislation—which gives us bigger, more expensive bureaucracy—doesn’t bolster our security, and distracts us from the real problem of revamping our interventionist foreign policy?

33. What if we suddenly discover we are the aggressors, and we are losing an unwinnable guerrilla war?

34. What if we discover, too late, that we can’t afford this war—and that our policies have led to a dollar collapse, rampant inflation, high interest rates, and a severe economic downturn?

Why do I believe these are such important questions? Because the #1 function of the federal government—to provide for national security—has been severely undermined. On 9/11 we had a grand total of 14 aircraft in place to protect the entire U.S. mainland, all of which proved useless that day. We have an annual DOD budget of over $400 billion, most of which is spent overseas in over 100 different countries. On 9/11 our Air Force was better positioned to protect Seoul, Tokyo, Berlin, and London than it was to protect Washington D.C. and New York City.

Moreover, our ill-advised presence in the Middle East and our decade-long bombing of Iraq served only to incite the suicidal attacks of 9/11.

Before 9/11, our CIA ineptly pursued bin Laden, whom the Taliban was protecting. At the same time, the Taliban was receiving significant support from Pakistan—our “trusted ally” that received millions of dollars from the United States. We allied ourselves with both bin Laden and Hussein in the 1980s, only to regret it in the 1990s. And it’s safe to say we have used billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in the last 50 years pursuing this contradictory, irrational, foolish, costly, and very dangerous foreign policy.

Policing the world, spreading democracy by force, nation building, and frequent bombing of countries that pose no threat to us—while leaving the homeland and our borders unprotected—result from a foreign policy that is contradictory and not in our self interest.

I hardly expect anyone in Washington to pay much attention to these concerns. If I’m completely wrong in my criticisms, nothing is lost except my time and energy expended in efforts to get others to reconsider our foreign policy.

But the bigger question is:

What if I’m right, or even partially right, and we urgently need to change course in our foreign policy for the sake of our national and economic security, yet no one pays attention?

For that a price will be paid. Is it not worth talking about?

March 19, 2005
NOTES FROM A PERSONAL DIARY

It is now two years since the president, unilaterally and without a congressional declaration, started a war by arbitrarily invading Iraq. The lies told convinced the American people that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and that he was a grave threat to us. It was implied that he was responsible for 9/11. Congress, instead of exerting restraint and exercising its constitutional responsibility regarding war, mostly condoned the war and encouraged the president.

On that day two years ago I wrote: “According to our president, this will be done in the name of peace and liberation. More likely, this will unleash a war of gigantic proportions—even if the actual battle to eliminate Saddam Hussein and seize Iraq’s oil goes well and ends quickly. To claim this pre-emptive strike will bring greater peace for both the U.S. and the world is the height of naiveté and arrogance…This strike is a major event. It has implications for far beyond anything the promoters can imagine.”

With that, it seems nothing that has happened should surprise me. The ongoing distortions are convincing fewer and fewer Americans every day, as the people begin to realize the cost and uselessness of Bush’s war. Though I was prepared for the worst, and anticipated much tragedy from our policy, certain events over the past two years shock, disappoint, and scare me as I look toward the future. A few points follow:

• The Republic is long dead, and few care or understand the significance. The incessant call by the president for spreading democracy, dutifully reported and never challenged by the media, helps bury any remnants of thought regarding the nature of a true republic. Randolph Bourne, who coined, “War is the health of the state,” had it right. That peace is the foundation of liberty means little today.

• As bad as it is to see Bush and his neoconservative cronies get away with needless killing and mayhem, the more disheartening and disgusting spectacle is the pro-war position of Christian leaders with their TV-financed empires. They cannot help but force all Christians to reassess their theological moorings and spiritual beliefs. Translating the bible to support aggression against a defenseless country should concern all thoughtful Christians.

• The government propaganda machine, though I recognize its long history of achievement in promoting war, was amazingly successful once again. Television, radio, newspapers, and talk show hosts lapped up the official line and regurgitated the news without seriously challenging anything the administration said. This is especially true of the “imbedded” reporters who are totally controlled by the military and government censors. No body bags, no walking wounded, only a sterile war where great things are achieved for world peace and democracy. Even the opposition party served as nothing more than a rubber stamp—just as Kerry’s candidacy did in the 2004 election. According to the state propagandists, everyone was happy. No interviews with the families of the 1500 plus killed, the 15 or 20 thousand wounded, or the 100,000 Iraqi civilians slaughtered in our “humanitarian” pursuits.

We have yet to see any serious concern shown for our guns and butter policy. Congress doesn’t even blink as it passes a $2.6 trillion budget, with $82 billion more in off-budget emergency spending for the war. The only argument is about how much to increase food stamps and Medicare.

The fake election in March in Iraq, and the false propaganda and arrogance of the neoconservatives—from Cheney to Perle—has been nauseating. They seem to care little about human or economic costs, as long as their empire moves forward.

Denying the truth, however, won’t work forever. Soon the U.S. will become the dispensable nation, instead of the indispensable economic and military power that the neocons use to promote ugly and dangerous ideals first promoted by Lincoln and later by Wilson.

As long as we deny the truth regarding real costs, the more rapidly we move toward a dollar crisis that all the neocons put together will be powerless to stop. The real tragedy here is that all Americans will suffer, as the standard of living plunges and liberty is further threatened.

Either from total ignorance or just wishful thinking, the neoconservatives totally deny that our invasion of Iraq benefited Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Yet nothing could have galvanized their efforts against the West more than our occupation of two more Muslim countries. Still, no thought is given to changing our approach in the Middle East. This will go down in history as one of the greatest errors in judgment of all time.

Today, the feeding tube was removed from Terri Schiavo after 15 years in a semi-vegetative state. Virtually all “decent” Christian warmongers enjoyed the political feeding frenzy surrounding efforts to save her life. I share their concern about life, but recognize that (as usual) Congress has no authority to decide such state matters. But the most disgusting thing is their sheer hypocrisy. They show tremendous concern for Ms. Schiavo (and unborn victims of abortion), while promoting an aggressive war that kills hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

The neoconservatives and their fellow travelers have turned our country into a nation of torturers, a champion of aggression, and the world’s bully. As one would predict, the world is less safe and we’re less free. Over 20,000 American families have suffered tragic losses from this war.

The general acceptance of the dictatorial policies of the Bush administration is astounding, but it helps explain how the German people allowed Hitler’s rise to power. The propagandists have made “support the troops” synonymous with support for evil policies. Those who object are easily smeared as un-American and unpatriotic. Irrational and excessive nationalism—a tool of the neo-cons—is winning out over common sense, commerce, and concern for peace. It certainly would be in bad taste to suggest that our obsession with satisfying Israel’s every demand, and the desire to protect “our” oil, has something to do with the insane sacrifice of our young soldiers, the hundreds of billions of dollars spent, and the loss of freedoms here at home. It still remains a mystery why reasonably intelligent people succumb to such evil and malevolent policies of war and hate.

It is impossible to analyze if a nation is better off “in general” without considering the various affects on specific individuals.

April 6, 2005
WHO’S BETTER OFF?
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Whenever the administration is challenged regarding the success of the Iraq war, or regarding the false information used to justify the war, the retort is: “Aren’t the people of Iraq better off?” The insinuation is that anyone who expresses any reservations about supporting the war is an apologist for Saddam Hussein and every ruthless act he ever committed. The short answer to the question of whether the Iraqis are better off is that it’s too early to declare, “Mission Accomplished.” But more importantly, we should be asking if the mission was ever justified or legitimate. Is it legitimate to justify an action that some claim have yielded good results, if the means used to achieve them are illegitimate? Do the ends justify the means?

The information Congress was given prior to the war was false. There were no weapons of mass destruction; the Iraqis did not participate in the 9/11 attacks; Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were enemies and did not conspire against the United States; our security was not threatened; we were not welcomed by cheering Iraqi crowds as we were told; and Iraqi oil has not paid any of the bills. Congress failed to declare war, but instead passed a wishy-washy resolution citing UN resolutions as justification for our invasion. After the fact we’re now told the real reason for the Iraq invasion was to spread democracy, and that the Iraqis are better off. Anyone who questions the war risks being accused of supporting Saddam Hussein, disapproving of democracy, or “supporting terrorists.” It’s implied that lack of enthusiasm for the war means one is not patriotic and doesn’t support the troops. In other words, one must march lock step with the consensus or be ostracized.

However, conceding that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein is a far cry from endorsing the foreign policy of our own government that led to the regime change. In time it will become clear to everyone that support for the policies of pre-emptive war and interventionist nation-building will have much greater significance than the removal of Saddam Hussein itself. The interventionist policy should be scrutinized more carefully than the purported benefits of Saddam Hussein’s removal from power. The real question ought to be: “Are we better off with a foreign policy that promotes regime change while justifying war with false information?” Shifting the stated goals as events unravel should not satisfy those who believe war must be a last resort used only when our national security is threatened.

How much better off are the Iraqi people? Hundreds of thousands of former inhabitants of Falluah are not better off with their city flattened and their homes destroyed. Hundreds of thousands are not better off living with foreign soldiers patrolling their street, curfews, and the loss of basic utilities. One hundred thousand dead Iraqis, as estimated by the Lancet Medical Journal, certainly are not better off. Better to be alive under Saddam Hussein than lying in some cold grave.

Praise for the recent election in Iraq has silenced many critics of the war. Yet the election was held under martial law implemented by a foreign power, mirroring conditions we rightfully condemned as a farce when carried out in the old Soviet system and more recently in Lebanon. Why is it that what is good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander?

Our government fails to recognize that legitimate elections are the consequence of freedom, and that an artificial election does not create freedom. In our own history we note that freedom was achieved first and elections followed—not the other way around.

One news report claimed that the Shiites actually received 56% of the vote, but such an outcome couldn’t be allowed for it would preclude a coalition of the Kurds and Shiites from controlling the Sunnis and preventing a theocracy from forming. This reminds us of the statement made months ago by Secretary Rumsfeld when asked about a Shiite theocracy emerging from a majority democratic vote; he assured us that would not happen. Democracy, we know, is messy and needs tidying up a bit when we don’t like the results.

Some have described Baghdad and especially the green zone, as being surrounded by unmanageable territory. The highways in and out of Baghdad are not yet secured. Many anticipate a civil war will break out sometime soon in Iraq; some claim it’s already underway.

We have seen none of the promised oil production that was supposed to provide grateful Iraqis with the means to repay us for the hundreds of billions that American taxpayers have spent on the war. Some have justified our continuous presence in the Persian Gulf since 1990 because of a need to protect “our” oil. Yet now that Saddam Hussein is gone, and the occupation supposedly is a great success, gasoline at the pumps is reaching record highs approaching $3 per gallon.

Though the Iraqi election has come and gone, there still is no government in place and the next election—supposedly the real one—is not likely to take place on time. Do the American people have any idea who really won the dubious election at all?

The oil-for-food scandal under Saddam Hussein has been replaced by corruption in the distribution of U.S. funds to rebuild Iraq. Already there is an admitted $9 billion discrepancy in the accounting of these funds. The over-billing by Halliburton is no secret, but the process has not changed.

The whole process is corrupt. It just doesn’t make sense to most Americans to see their tax dollars used to fight an unnecessary and unjustified war. First they see American bombs destroying a country, and then American taxpayers are required to rebuild it. Today it’s easier to get funding to rebuild infrastructure in Iraq than to build a bridge in the United States. Indeed, we cut the Army Corps of Engineers’ budget and operate on the cheap with our veterans as the expenditures in Iraq skyrocket.

One question the war promoters don’t want to hear asked, because they don’t want to face up to the answer, is this: “Are Christian Iraqis better off today since we decided to build a new Iraq through force of arms?” The answer is plainly “No.”

Sure, there are only 800,000 Christians living in Iraq, but under Saddam Hussein they were free to practice their religion. Tariq Aziz, a Christian, served in Saddam Hussein’s cabinet as Foreign Minister—something that would never happen in Saudi Arabia, Israel, or any other Middle Eastern country. Today, the Christian churches in Iraq are under attack and Christians are no longer safe. Many Christians have been forced to flee Iraq and migrate to Syria. It’s strange that the human rights advocates in the U.S. Congress have expressed no concern for the persecution now going on against Christians in Iraq. Both the Sunni and the Shiite Muslims support the attacks on Christians. In fact, persecuting Christians is one of the few areas in which they agree—the other being the removal of all foreign forces from Iraqi soil.

Considering the death, destruction, and continual chaos in Iraq, it’s difficult to accept the blanket statement that the Iraqis all feel much better off with the U.S. in control rather than Saddam Hussein. Security in the streets and criminal violence are not anywhere near being under control.

But there’s another question that is equally important: “Are the American people better off because of the Iraq war?”

One thing for sure, the 1,500-plus dead American soldiers aren’t better off. The nearly 20,000 severely injured or sickened American troops are not better off. The families, the wives, the husbands, children, parents, and friends of those who lost so much are not better off.

The families and the 40,000 troops who were forced to re-enlist against their will—a de facto draft—are not feeling better off. They believe they have been deceived by their enlistment agreements.

The American taxpayers are not better off having spent over $200 billion to pursue this war, with billions yet to be spent. The victims of the inflation that always accompanies a guns-and-butter policy are already getting a dose of what will become much worse.

Are our relationships with the rest of the world better off? I’d say no. Because of the war, our alliances with the Europeans are weaker than ever. The anti-American hatred among a growing number of Muslims around the world is greater than ever. This makes terrorist attacks more likely than they were before the invasion. Al Qaeda recruiting has accelerated. Iraq is being used as a training ground for al Qaeda terrorists, which it never was under Hussein’s rule. So as our military recruitment efforts suffer, Osama bin Laden benefits by attracting more terrorist volunteers.

Oil was approximately $27 a barrel before the war, now it’s more than twice that. I wonder who benefits from this?

Because of the war, fewer dollars are available for real national security and defense of this country. Military spending is up, but the way the money is spent distracts from true national defense and further undermines our credibility around the world.

The ongoing war’s lack of success has played a key role in diminishing morale in our military services. Recruitment is sharply down, and most branches face shortages of troops. Many young Americans rightly fear a coming draft—which will be required if we do not reassess and change the unrealistic goals of our foreign policy.

The appropriations for the war are essentially off-budget and obscured, but contribute nonetheless to the runaway deficit and increase in the national debt. If these trends persist, inflation with economic stagnation will be the inevitable consequences of a misdirected policy.

One of the most significant consequences in times of war that we ought to be concerned about is the inevitable loss of personal liberty. Too often in the patriotic nationalism that accompanies armed conflict, regardless of the cause, there is a willingness to sacrifice personal freedoms in pursuit of victory. The real irony is that we are told we go hither and yon to fight for freedom and our Constitution, while carelessly sacrificing the very freedoms here at home we’re supposed to be fighting for. It makes no sense.

This willingness to give up hard-fought personal liberties has been especially noticeable in the atmosphere of the post-September 11th war on terrorism. Security has replaced liberty as our main political goal, damaging the American spirit. Sadly, the whole process is done in the name of patriotism and in a spirit of growing militant nationalism.

These attitudes and fears surrounding the 9/11 tragedy, and our eagerness to go to war in the Middle East against countries not responsible for the attacks, have allowed a callousness to develop in our national psyche that justifies torture and rejects due process of law for those who are suspects and not convicted criminals.

We have come to accept pre-emptive war as necessary, constitutional, and morally justifiable. Starting a war without a proper declaration is now of no concern to most Americans or the U.S. Congress. Let’s hope and pray the rumors of an attack on Iran in June by U.S. Armed Forces are wrong.

A large segment of the Christian community and its leadership think nothing of rationalizing war in the name of a religion that prides itself on the teachings of the Prince of Peace, who instructed us that blessed are the peacemakers—not the warmongers.

We casually accept our role as world policeman, and believe we have a moral obligation to practice nation building in our image regardless of the number of people who die in the process.

We have lost our way by rejecting the beliefs that made our country great. We no longer trust in trade, friendship, peace, the Constitution, and the principle of neutrality while avoiding entangling alliances with the rest of the world. Spreading the message of hope and freedom by setting an example for the world has been replaced by a belief that use of armed might is the only practical tool to influence the world—and we have accepted, as the only superpower, the principle of initiating war against others.

In the process, Congress and the people have endorsed a usurpation of their own authority, generously delivered to the executive and judicial branches—not to mention international government bodies. The concept of national sovereignty is now seen as an issue that concerns only the fringe in our society.

Protection of life and liberty must once again become the issue that drives political thought in this country. If this goal is replaced by an effort to promote world government, use force to plan the economy, regulate the people, and police the world, against the voluntary desires of the people, it can be done only with the establishment of a totalitarian state. There’s no need for that. It’s up to Congress and the American people to decide our fate, and there is still time to correct our mistakes.

The costs of war, all the costs of war, are seldom considered, yet nothing is more important than giving such consideration.

June 14, 2005
THE HIDDEN COST OF WAR
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

The cost of war is always more than anticipated. If all the costs were known prior to the beginning of a war, fewer wars would be fought. At the beginning, optimism prevails. Denial and deception override the concern for the pain and penalties yet to come. Jingoistic patriotism and misplaced militarism too easily silence those who are cautious about the unforeseen expenses and hardships brought on by war. Conveniently forgotten are the goals never achieved by armed conflict, and the negative consequences that linger for years. Even some who recognize that the coming war will be costly easily rationalize that the cost will be worth it Others claim it’s unmanly or weak to pursue a negotiated settlement of a political dispute, which helps drive the march toward armed conflict.

It has been argued by proponents of modern technological warfare in recent decades that sophisticated weapons greatly reduce the human costs by using a smaller number of troops equipped with smart weapons that minimize battle deaths and collateral damage. This belief has led some to be more willing to enter an armed conflict. The challenge will be deciding whether or not modern weapons actually make war more acceptable and less costly. So far the use of sanctions, the misjudgments of resistance to occupation, and unintended consequences reveal that fancy weapons do not guarantee fancy and painless outcomes. Some old-fashioned rules relating to armed conflicts cannot be easily repealed despite the optimism of the “shock and awe” crowd. It seems that primitive explosive weapons can compete quite effectively with modern technology when the determination exists and guerrilla tactics are used. The promised efficiency and the reduced casualties cannot yet be estimated.

Costs are measured differently depending on whether or not a war is defensive or offensive in nature. Costs in each situation may be similar but are tolerated quite differently. The determination of those defending their homeland frequently is underestimated, making it difficult to calculate costs. Consider how long the Vietnamese fought and suffered before routing all foreign armies. For 85 years the Iraqis steadfastly have resisted all foreign occupation, and even their previous history indicates that meddling by Western and Christian outsiders in their country would not be tolerated. Those who fight a defensive war see the cost of the conflict differently. Defenders have the goal of surviving and preserving their homeland, religious culture, and their way of life—despite the shortcomings their prior leaders. Foreigners are seen as a threat. This willingness to defend to the last is especially strong if the society they fight for affords more stability than a war-torn country.

Hardships can be justified in defensive wars, and use of resources is more easily justified than in an unpopular far-away conflict. Motivations are stronger, especially when the cause seems to be truly just and the people are willing to sacrifice for the common goal of survival. Defensive war provides a higher moral goal, and this idealism exceeds material concerns. In all wars, however, there are profiteers and special interests looking after their own selfish interests.

Truly defensive wars never need a draft to recruit troops to fight. Large numbers voluntarily join to face the foreign threat.

In a truly defensive war, huge costs in terms of money, lives, and property are endured because so much is at stake. Total loss of one’s country is the alternative.

The freer a country, where the love of liberty is alive and well, the greater the resistance. A free society provides greater economic means to fight than a tyrannical society. For this reason, truly free societies are less likely to be attacked by tyrants.

But societies that do not enjoy maximum freedom and economic prosperity still pull together to resist invaders. A spirit of nationalism brings people together when attacked, as do extreme religious beliefs. The cause of liberty or a “divine” emperor or radical Islam can inspire those willing to fight to the death to stop a foreign occupation. These motivations make the costs and risks necessary and justifiable, where a less popular offensive war will not be tolerated as long. Idealism inspires a strong defense; cynicism eventually curtails offensive wars.

The cost of offensive war over time is viewed quite differently by the people who actually pay. Offensive wars include those that are initiated by one country to seek some advantage over another without provocation. This includes needless intervention in the internal affairs of others and efforts at nation building, even when well intentioned. Offensive war never achieves the high moral ground in spite of proclamations made by the initiators of the hostilities. Offensive wars eventually fail, but tragically only after much pain and suffering. The cost is great, and not well accepted by the people who suffer and have nothing to gain. The early calls for patriotism and false claims generate initial support, but the people eventually tire.

At the beginning of an offensive war the people are supportive because of the justifications given by government authorities, who want the war for ulterior reasons. But the demands to sacrifice liberty at home to promote freedom and democracy abroad ring hollow after the cost and policy shortcomings become evident. Initially, the positive propaganda easily overshadows the pain of the small number who must fight and suffer injury.

Offensive wars are fought without as much determination as defensive wars. They tend to be less efficient and more political, causing them to linger and drift into stalemate or worse.

In almost all wars, governments use deception about the enemy that needs to be vanquished to gain the support of the people. In our recent history, just since 1941, our government has entirely ignored the requirement that war be fought only after a formal congressional declaration—further setting the stage for disenchantment once the war progresses poorly. Respect for the truth is easily sacrificed in order to rally the people for the war effort. Professional propagandists, by a coalition of the media and government officials, beat the war drums. The people follow out of fear of being labeled unpatriotic and weak in the defense of our nation—even when there is no national security threat at all.

Joining in support for the war are the special-interest groups that have other agendas to pursue: profits, religious beliefs, and partisan political obligations.

Ideologues use war to pursue personal ambitions unrelated to national defense, and convert the hesitant with promises of spreading democracy, freedom, and prosperity. The tools they use are unrestrained state power to force their ideals on others, no matter how unjust it seems to the unfortunate recipients of the preemptive war. For some, the more chaos the greater the opportunity to jump in and remake a country or an entire region. At times in history the opening salvo has been deliberately carried out by the ones anxious to get the war underway while blaming the opposition for the incident. The deceptions must stir passion for the war through an appeal to patriotism, nationalism, machismo, and jingoistic manliness of proving oneself in great feats of battle.

This early support, before the first costs are felt, is easily achieved. Since total victory may not come quickly, however, support by the people is gradually lost. When the war is questioned, the ill-conceived justifications for getting involved are reexamined and found to have been distorted. Frequently, the people discover they were lied to, so that politicians could gain support for a war that had nothing to do with national security.

These discoveries and disenchantments come first to those directly exposed to danger in the front lines, where soldiers die or lose their limbs. Military families and friends bear the burden of grief, while the majority of citizens still hope the war will end or never affect them directly in any way. But as the casualties grow the message of suffering spreads, and questions remain unanswered concerning the real reason an offensive war was necessary in the first place.

Just when the human tragedy becomes evident to a majority of the citizens, other costs become noticeable. Taxes are raised, deficits explode, inflation raises its ugly head and the standard of living for the average citizen is threatened. Funds for the war, even if immediate direct taxes are not levied, must come from the domestic economy and everyone suffers. The economic consequences of the Vietnam War were felt throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s.

As the problems mount, the falsehoods and distortions on which the war was based become less believable and collectively resented. The government and the politicians who pursued the policy lose credibility. The tragedy, however, is that once even the majority discovers the truth, much more time is needed to change the course of events. This is the sad part.

Political leaders who needlessly dragged us into the war cannot and will not admit an error in judgment. In fact they do the opposite to prove they were right all along. Instead of winding down, the war gets a boost to prove the policy was correct and to bring the war to a victorious conclusion. This only motivates the resistance of those fighting the defensive side of the war. More money and more troops must be sacrificed before the policy changes. Using surrogate foreign troops may seem to cut domestic troop loses in the country starting the war, but will only prolong the agony, suffering, and costs and increase the need for even more troops.

Withdrawing financial support for the effort is seen as being even more unpatriotic than not having supported the war in the first place. Support for the troops becomes equivalent to supporting the flawed policy that led to the mess.

No matter how unwise the policy and how inevitable the results, changing course becomes almost impossible for those individuals who promoted the war. This fear of being labeled unpatriotic and not supportive of the troops on the battlefield ironically drives apolicy that is more harmful to the troops and costly to the folks at home. Sometimes it requires a new group of politicians, removed from the original decision makers who initiated the war, to bring about a shift in policy. Johnson couldn’t do it in Vietnam, and Nixon did it slowly, awkwardly and not without first expanding the war before agreeing enough was enough.

With the seemingly inevitable delays in altering policy, the results are quite predictable. Costs escalate and the division between supporters and non-supporters widens. This adds to economic problems while further eroding domestic freedoms, as with all wars. On occasion, as we’ve seen in our own country, dissent invites harsh social and legal repercussions. Those who speak out in opposition will not only be ostracized, but may feel the full force of the law coming down on them. Errors in foreign affairs leading to war are hard to reverse. But even if deliberate action doesn’t change the course of events, flawed policies eventually will fail as economic laws will assert themselves.

The more people have faith in and depend upon the state, the more difficult it is to keep the state from initiating wars. If the state is seen as primarily responsible for providing personal and economic security, obedience and dependency become pervasive problems. If the state is limited to protecting liberty, and encourages self-reliance and personal responsibility, there’s a much better chance for limiting pro-war attitudes. The great danger of war, especially unnecessary war, is that it breeds more dependency while threatening liberty—always allowing the state to grow regardless of existing attitudes before the war. War unfortunately allows the enemies of liberty to justify the sacrifice of personal freedoms, and the people all too often carelessly sacrifice precisely what they are supposed to be fighting for: freedom. Our Revolution was a rare exception. It was one war where the people ended up with more freedom not less.

ECONOMICS AND WAR

Almost every war has an economic component, some more obvious than others. Our own Civil War dealt with slavery, but tariffs and economic oppression by the North were also major factors. Remember, only a small number of Southern soldiers personally owned slaves, yet they were enthusiastic in their opposition to the northern invasion. The battles fought in the Middle East since WWI had a lot to do with securing Arab oil fields for the benefit of Western nations. Not only are wars fought for economic reasons, wars have profound economic consequences for the countries involved, even if one side is spared massive property damage. The economic consequences of war play a major role in bringing hostilities to an end. The consequences are less tolerated by the citizens of countries whose leaders drag them into offensive and unnecessary wars. The determination to fight on can’t compete with those who see their homeland threatened by foreign invaders.

IRAQ

There’s essentially no one, not even among the neo-con crowd, claiming that the Iraqi war is defensive in nature for America. Early on there was an attempt to do so, and it was successful to a large degree in convincing the American people that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was connected to al Qaeda. Now the justification for the war is completely different and far less impressive. If the current justification had been used to rally the American people and Congress from the beginning, the war would have been rejected. The fact that we are bogged down in an offensive war makes it quite difficult to extricate ourselves from the mess. Without the enthusiasm that a defensive war generates, prolonging the Iraq war will play havoc with our economy. The insult of paying for the war in addition to the fact that the war was not truly necessary makes the hardship less tolerable. This leads to domestic turmoil, as proponents become more vocal in demanding patriotic support and opponents become angrier for the burden they must bear.

So far the American people have not yet felt the true burden of the costs of this war. Even with 1,700 deaths and 13,000 wounded, only a small percentage of Americans have suffered directly—but their pain and suffering are growing and are more noticeable every day. Taxes have not been raised to pay the bills for the current war, so annual deficits and national debt continue to grow. This helps delay the pain of paying the bills, but the consequences of this process are starting to be felt. Direct tax increases, a more honest way to finance foreign interventionism, would serve to restrain those who so cavalierly take us to war. The borrowing authority of government permits wars to be started and prolonged which otherwise would be resisted if the true cost were known to the people from the beginning.

Americans have an especially unique ability to finance our war efforts while minimizing the immediate effect. As the issuer of the world’s reserve currency, we are able to finance our extravagance through inflating our dollars. We have the special privilege of printing that which the world accepts as money in lieu of gold. This is an invitation to economic disaster, permitting an ill-founded foreign policy that sets the stage for problems for years to come. A system of money that politicians and central bankers could not manipulate would restrain those with grandiose ideas of empire.

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913, and shortly thereafter the Fed accommodated the Wilsonians bent on entering WWI by inflating and deficit financing that ill-begotten involvement. Though it produced the 1921 depression and many other problems since, the process subsequently has become institutionalized in financing our militarism in the 20th Century and already in the 21st. Without the Fed’s ability to create money out of thin air, our government would be severely handicapped in waging wars that do not serve our interests. The money issue and the ability of our government to wage war are intricately related. Anyone interested in curtailing wartime spending and our militarism abroad is obligated to study the monetary system, through which our government seductively and surreptitiously finances foreign adventurism without the responsibility of informing the public of its cost or collecting the revenues required to finance the effort.

Being the issuer of the world’s premier currency allows for a lot more abuse than a country would have otherwise. World businesses, governments, and central banks accept our dollars as if they are as good as gold. This is a remnant of a time when the dollar was as good as gold. That is no longer the case. The trust is still there, but it’s a misplaced trust. Since the dollar is simply a paper currency without real value, someday confidence will be lost and our goose will no longer be able to lay the golden egg. That’s when reality will set in and the real cost of our extravagance, both domestic and foreign, will be felt by all Americans. We will no longer be able to finance our war machine through willing foreigners, who now gladly take our newly printed dollars for their newly produced goods and then loan them back to us at below-market interest rates to support our standard of living and our war effort.

The payment by American citizens will come as the dollar loses value, interest rates rise, and prices increase. The higher prices become the tax that a more honest government would have levied directly to pay for the war effort. An unpopular war especially needs this deception as a method of payment, hiding the true costs which are dispersed and delayed through this neat little monetary trick. The real tragedy is that this “inflation tax” is not evenly distributed among all the people, and more often than not is borne disproportionately by the poor and the middle class as a truly regressive tax in the worst sense. Politicians in Washington do not see inflation as an unfair seductive tax. Our monetary policy unfortunately is never challenged even by the proponents of low taxes who care so little about deficits, but eventually it all comes to an end because economic law overrides the politicians’ deceit.

Already we are seeing signs on the horizon that this free ride for us is coming to an end. Price inflation is alive and well and much worse than government statistics show. The sluggish economy suggests that the super stimulation of easy credit over the last decades is no longer sufficient to keep the economy strong. Our personal consumption and government spending are dependent on borrowing from foreign lenders. Artificially high standards of living can mask the debt accumulation that it requires, while needed savings remain essentially nil.

This ability to print the reserve currency of the world, and the willingness of foreigners to take it, causes gross distortions in our current account deficits and total foreign indebtedness. It plays a major role in the erosion of our manufacturing base, and causes the exporting of our jobs along with our dollars. Bashing foreigners, in particularly the Chinese and the Japanese, as the cause of our dwindling manufacturing and job base is misplaced. It prevents the evaluation of our own policies—policies that undermine and increase the price of our own manufacturing goods while distorting the trade balance. Though we continue to benefit from the current circumstances, through cheap imports on borrowed money, the shaky fundamentals make our economy and financial system vulnerable to sudden and severe adjustments. Foreigners will not finance our excessive standard of living and our expensive war overseas indefinitely. It will end! What we do in the meantime to prepare for that day will make all the difference in the world for the future of freedom in this country. It’s the future of freedom in this country that is truly the legitimate responsibility of us as Members of Congress.

Centuries ago the notion of money introduced the world to trade and the principle of division of labor, ushering in for the first time a level of economic existence above mere subsistence. Modern fiat money with electronic transactions has given an additional boost to that prosperity. But unlike sound commodity money, fiat money—with easy credit and artificially low interest rates—causes distortions and mal-investments that require corrections. The modernization of electronic global transfers, which with sound money would be beneficial, has allowed for greater distortion and debt to be accumulated—setting the stage for a much more serious period of adjustment requiring an economic downturn, liquidation of debt, and reallocation of resources that must come from savings rather than a central bank printing press.

These economic laws will limit our ability to pursue our foreign interventions, no matter how well intentioned and “successful” they may seem. The Soviet system collapsed of its own weakness. I fear an economic collapse here at home much more than an attack by a foreign country. Above all, the greatest concern should be for the systematic undermining of our personal liberties since 9/11, which will worsen with an ongoing foreign war and the severe economic problems that are coming.

Since we are not fighting the war to defend our homeland and we abuse so many of our professed principles, we face great difficulties in resolving the growing predicament in which we find ourselves. Our options are few, and admitting errors in judgment is not likely to occur. Moral forces are against us as we find ourselves imposing our will on a people six thousand miles from our shores. How would the American people respond if a foreign country, with people of a different color, religion, and language imposed itself on us to make us conform to their notions of justice and goodness? None of us would sit idly by. This is why those who see themselves as defenders of their homeland and their way of life have the upper hand, regardless of the shock and awe of military power available to us. At this point, our power works perversely. The stronger and more violent we are, the greater the resistance becomes.

The neoconservatives who took us to war under false pretenses either didn’t know or didn’t care about the history and traditions of the Iraqi people. Surely they must have heard of an Islamic defensive jihad that is easy to promote when one’s country is being attacked by foreign forces. Family members have religious obligations to avenge all killings by foreign forces, which explains why killing insurgents only causes their numbers to multiply. This family obligation to seek revenge is closely tied to achieving instant eternal martyrdom through vengeful suicide attacks. Parents of martyrs do not weep as the parents of our soldiers do; they believe the suicide bombers and their families are glorified. These religious beliefs cannot simply be changed during the war. The only thing we can do is remove the incentives we give to the religious leaders of the jihad by leaving them alone. Without our presence in the Middle East, whether on the Arabian Peninsula or in Iraq, the rallying cry for suicidal jihadists would ring hollow. Was there any fear for our national security from a domestic terrorist attack by Islamists before we put a base in Saudi Arabia?

Our freedoms here at home have served the interests of those who are hell-bent on pursuing an American empire, though this too will be limited by economic costs and the undermining of our personal liberties.

A free society produces more wealth for more people than any other. That wealth for many years can be confiscated to pay for the militarism advocated by those who promote preemptive war. But militarism and its costs undermine the very market system that provided the necessary resources to begin with. As this happens, productivity and wealth are diminished, putting pressure on authorities to ruthlessly extract even more funds from the people. For what they cannot collect through taxes, they take through currency inflation—eventually leading to an inability to finance unnecessary and questionable warfare and bringing the process to an end. It happened to the Soviets and their military machine collapsed. Hitler destroyed Germany’s economy, but he financed his aggression for several years by immediately stealing the gold reserves of every country he occupied. That, too, was self-limited and he met his military defeat. For us it’s less difficult since we can confiscate the wealth of American citizens and the savers of the world merely by printing more dollars to support our militarism. Though different in detail, we too must face the prospect that this system of financing is seriously flawed, and our expensive policy of worldwide interventionism will collapse. Only a profound change in attitudes regarding our foreign policy, our fiscal policy, and our monetary policy will save us from ourselves.

If we did make these changes, we would not need to become isolationists, despite what many claim. Isolationism is not the only alternative to intervention in other nations’ affairs. Freedom works! Free markets supported by sound money, private property, and respect for all voluntary contracts can set an example for the world—since the resulting prosperity would be significant and distributed more widely than any socialist system. Instead of using force to make others do it our way, our influence could be through the example we set that would motivate others to emulate us. Trade, travel, exchange of ideas, and friendly relationships with all those who seek friendship are a far cry from a protectionist closed border nation that would serve no one’s interest.

This type of society would be greatly enhanced with a worldwide commodity standard of money. This would prevent the imbalances that are a great burden to today’s economy. Our current account deficits and total foreign indebtedness would not occur under honest non-political commodity money. Competitive devaluations and abnormally fixed exchanged rates would not be possible as tools of protectionism. We can be certain that the distortions in trade balance and the WTO trade wars that are multiplying will eventually lead to a serious challenge to worldwide trade. The tragedy of trade wars is that they frequently lead to military wars between nations, and until the wealth is consumed and young men are no longer available to fight and die, the process will cost plenty.

We must not forget that real peace and prosperity are available to us. America has a grand tradition in this regard despite her shortcomings. It’s just that in recent decades, the excessive unearned wealth available to us to run our welfare/warfare state has distracted us from our important traditions—honoring liberty and emphasizing self-reliance and responsibility. Up until the 20th Century, we were much less eager to go around the world searching for dragons to slay. That tradition is a good one, and one that we must soon reconsider before the ideal of personal liberty is completely destroyed.

SUMMARY

1. The costs of war are always much more than anticipated, while the benefits are much less.

2. The cost of war is more than just the dollars spent; it includes deaths, injuries, and destruction along with the unintended consequences that go on for decades.

3. Support for offensive wars wears thin; especially when they are not ended quickly.

4. The Iraq war now has been going on for 15 years with no end in sight.

5. Ulterior motives too often preempt national security in offensive wars.

6. Powerful nations too often forget humility in their relationships to other countries.

7. World history and religious dogmatism are too often ignored and misunderstood.

8. World government is no panacea for limiting war.

9. Most wars could be avoided with better diplomacy, a mutual understanding of minding one’s own business, and respect for the right of self-determination.

To figure out what is wrong with the basis of a particular policy requires that we first look beyond the justifications and see the real causes motivating government action.

September 8, 2005
WHY WE FIGHT
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Many reasons have been given for why we fight and our youth must die in Iraq. The reasons now given for why we must continue this war bear no resemblance to the reasons given to gain the support of the American people and the United States Congress prior to our invasion in March of 2003. Before the war, we were told we faced an imminent threat to our national security from Saddam Hussein. This rationale, now proven grossly mistaken, has been changed. Now we’re told we must honor the fallen by “completing the mission.” To do otherwise would demean the sacrifice of those who have died or been wounded. Any lack of support for “completing the mission” is said, by the promoters of the war, to be unpatriotic, un-American, and detrimental to the troops. They insist the only way one can support the troops is to never waver on the policy of nation building, no matter how ill-founded that policy may be. The obvious flaw in this argument is that the mission, of which they so reverently speak, has changed constantly from the very beginning.

Though most people think this war started in March of 2003, the seeds were sown many years before. The actual military conflict, involving U.S. troops against Iraq, began in January 1991. The prelude to this actually dates back over a hundred years, when the value of Middle East oil was recognized by the industrialized West.

Our use of troops to eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait was the beginning of the current conflict with Muslim fundamentalists who have been, for the last decade, determined to force the removal of American troops from all Muslim countries—especially the entire Arabian Peninsula, which they consider holy. Though the strategic and historic reasons for our involvement in the Middle East are complex, the immediate reasons given in 2002 and 2003 for our invasion of Iraq were precise. The only problem is they were not based on facts.

The desire by American policymakers to engineer regime change in Iraq had been smoldering since the first Persian Gulf conflict in 1991. This reflected a dramatic shift in our policy, since in the 1980s we maintained a friendly alliance with Saddam Hussein as we assisted him in his war against our arch nemesis, the Iranian Ayatollah. Most Americans ignore that we provided assistance to this ruthless dictator with biological and chemical weapons technology. We heard no complaints in the 1980s about his treatment of the Kurds and Shiites, or the ruthless war he waged against Iran. Our policy toward Iraq played a major role in convincing Saddam Hussein he had free reign in the Middle East, and the results demonstrate the serious shortcomings of our foreign policy of interventionism that we have followed now for over a hundred years.

In 1998 Congress capitulated to the desires of the Clinton administration and overwhelmingly passed the Iraq Liberation Act, which stated quite clearly that our policy was to get rid of Saddam Hussein. This act made it official: “The policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein.” This resolution has been cited on numerous occasions by neoconservatives as justification for the pre-emptive, deliberate invasion of Iraq. When the resolution was debated, I saw it as a significant step toward a war that would bear no good fruit. No legitimate national security concerns were cited for this dramatic and serious shift in policy.

Shortly after the new administration took office in January 2001, this goal of eliminating Saddam Hussein quickly morphed into a policy of remaking the entire Middle East, starting with regime change in Iraq. This aggressive interventionist policy surprised some people, since the victorious 2000 campaign indicated we should pursue a foreign policy of humility, no nation building, reduced deployment of our forces overseas, and a rejection of the notion that we serve as world policemen. The 9/11 disaster proved a catalyst to push for invading Iraq and restructuring the entire Middle East. Though the plan had existed for years, it quickly was recognized that the fear engendered by the 9/11 attacks could be used to mobilize the American people and Congress to support this war. Nevertheless, supposedly legitimate reasons had to be given for the already planned pre-emptive war, and as we now know the “intelligence had to be fixed to the policy.”

Immediately after 9/11 the American people were led to believe that Saddam Hussein somehow was responsible for the attacks. The fact that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were enemies, not friends, was kept from the public by a compliant media and a lazy Congress. Even today many Americans still are convinced of an alliance between the two. The truth is Saddam Hussein never permitted al Qaeda into Iraq out of fear that his secular government would be challenged. And yet today we find that al Qaeda is now very much present in Iraq, and causing chaos there.

The administration repeatedly pumped out alarming propaganda that Saddam Hussein was a threat to us with his weapons of mass destruction, meaning nuclear, biological, and chemical. Since we helped Saddam Hussein obtain biological and chemical weapons in the 1980s, we assumed that he had maintained a large supply—which of course turned out not to be true. The people, frightened by 9/11, easily accepted these fear-mongering charges.

Behind the scenes many were quite aware that Israel’s influence on our foreign policy played a role. She had argued for years, along with the neoconservatives, for an Iraqi regime change. This support was nicely coordinated with the Christian Zionists’ enthusiasm for the war.

As these reasons for the war lost credibility and support, other reasons were found for why we had to fight. As the lone superpower, we were told we had a greater responsibility to settle the problems of the world lest someone else gets involved. Maintaining and expanding our empire is a key element of the neoconservative philosophy. This notion that we must fight to spread American goodness was well received by these neo-Jacobins. They saw the war as a legitimate moral crusade, arguing that no one should be allowed to stand in our way! In their minds using force to spread democracy is legitimate and necessary.

We also were told the war was necessary for national security purposes because of the threat Saddam Hussein presented, although the evidence was fabricated. Saddam Hussein’s ability to attack us was nonexistent, but the American people were ripe for alarming predictions by those who wanted this war.

Of course the routine canard for our need to fight, finance, and meddle around the world ever since the Korean War was repeated incessantly: UN Resolutions had to be enforced lest the United Nations be discredited. The odd thing was that on this occasion the United Nations itself did everything possible to stop our pre-emptive attack. And as it turned out, Saddam Hussein was a lot closer to compliance than anyone dreamed. It wasn’t long before concern for the threat of Saddam Hussein became nearly hysterical, drowning out any reasoned opposition to the planned war.

The one argument that was not publicly used by those who propagandized for the war may well be the most important—oil. Though the administration in 1990 hinted briefly that we had to eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait because of oil, the stated reasons for that conflict soon transformed into stopping a potential Hitler and enforcing UN resolutions.

Publicly oil is not talked about very much, but behind the scenes many acknowledge this is the real reason we fight. Not only the politicians say this. American consumers have always enjoyed cheap gasoline and want it kept that way. The real irony is that the war has reduced Iraqi oil production by one-half million barrels per day and prices are soaring—demonstrating another unintended economic consequence of war.

Oil in the Middle East has been a big issue since the industrial revolution, when it was realized that the black substance bubbling out of the ground in places like Iraq had great value. It’s interesting to note that in the early 20th century Germany, fully aware of oil’s importance, allied itself with the Turkish Ottoman Empire and secured the earliest rights to drill Iraqi oil. They built the Anatalia railroad between Baghdad and Basra, and obtained oil and mineral rights on twenty kilometers on each side of this right-of-way. World War I changed all this, allowing the French and the British to divide the oil wealth of the entire Middle East.

The Versailles Treaty created the artificial nation of Iraq, and it wasn’t long before American oil companies were drilling and struggling to participate in the control of Middle East oil. But it was never smooth sailing for any occupying force in Iraq. After WWI, the British generals upon arriving to secure “their” oil said: “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.” Not long afterward, a jihad was declared against Britain and eventually they were forced to leave. The more things change, the more they stay the same! Too bad we are not better at studying history.

After World War II, the U.S. emerged as the #1 world power, and moved to assume what some believed was our responsibility to control Middle East oil in competition with the Soviets. This role prompted us to use our CIA, along with the help of the British, to oust democratically elected Mohammed Mosadeh from power in Iran and install the Shah as a U.S. puppet.

We not only supported Saddam Hussein against Iran, we also supported Osama bin Laden in the 1980s—aggravating the situation in the Middle East and causing unintended consequences. With CIA assistance, we helped develop the educational program to radicalize Islamic youth in many Arab nations, especially in Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviets. We even provided a nuclear reactor to Iran in 1967—which today leads us to threaten another war. All of this has come back to haunt us. Meddling in the affairs of others has consequences.

Finally, after years of plotting and maneuvering, the neoconservative plan to invade Iraq came before the U.S. House in October 2002 to be rubber-stamped. Though the plan was hatched years before, and the official policy of the United States government was to remove Saddam Hussein ever since 1998, various events delayed the vote until this time. By October the vote was deemed urgent, so as to embarrass anyone who opposed it. This would make them politically vulnerable in the November election. The ploy worked. The resolution passed easily, and it served the interests of proponents of war in the November election.

The resolution, HJ RES 114, explicitly cited the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998 as one of the reasons we had to go to war. The authorization granted the president to use force against Iraq cited two precise reasons:

1. “To defend the national security of the U.S. against the continuing threat posed by Iraq and”

2. “Enforce all relevant United Nations Council resolutions regarding Iraq.”

Many other reasons were given to stir the emotions of the American public and the U.S. Congress, reasons that were grossly misleading and found not to be true. The pretense of a legal justification was a sham.

The fact that Congress is not permitted under the Constitution to transfer the war power to a president was ignored. Only Congress can declare war, if we were inclined to follow the rule of law. To add insult to injury, HJ RES 114 cited United Nations resolutions as justifications for the war. Ignoring the Constitution, while using the UN to justify the war, showed callous disregard for the restraints carefully written in the Constitution. The authors deliberately wanted to make war difficult to enter without legislative debate, and they purposely kept the responsibility out of the hands of the executive branch. Surely they never dreamed an international government would have influence over our foreign policy or tell us when we should enter into armed conflict.

The legal maneuvering to permit this war was tragic to watch, but the notion that Saddam Hussein—a third world punk without an air force, navy, and hardly an army or any anti-aircraft weaponry—was an outright threat to the United States six thousand miles away, tells you how hysterical fear can be used to pursue a policy of needless war for quite different reasons.

Today, though, all the old reasons for going to war have been discredited, and are no longer used to justify continuing the war. Now we are told we must “complete the mission,” and yet no one seems to know exactly what the mission is or when it can be achieved. By contrast, when war is properly declared against a country we can expect an all-out effort until the country surrenders. Without a declaration of war as the Constitution requires, it’s left to the president to decide when to start the war and when the war is over. We had sad experiences with this process in Korea, and especially in Vietnam.

Pursuing this war merely to save face, or claim it’s a way to honor those who already have died or been wounded, is hardly a reason that more people should die. We’re told that we can’t leave until we have a democratic Iraq. But what if Iraq votes to have a Shiite theocracy, which it looks like the majority wants as their form of government—and women, Christians, and Sunnis are made second-class citizens? It’s a preposterous notion and it points out the severe shortcomings of a democracy where a majority rules and minorities suffer.

Thankfully, our Founding Fathers understood the great dangers of a democracy. They insisted on a constitutional Republic with a weak central government and an executive branch beholden to the legislative branch in foreign affairs. The sooner we realize we can’t afford this war the better. We’ve gotten ourselves into a civil war within the Islamic community.

But could it be, as it had been for over a hundred years prior to our invasion, that oil really is the driving issue behind a foreign presence in the Middle East? It’s rather ironic that the consequence of our intervention has been skyrocketing oil prices, with Iraqi oil production still significantly below pre-war levels.

If democracy is not all it’s cracked up to be, and a war for oil is blatantly immoral and unproductive, the question still remains—why do we fight? More precisely, why should we fight? When is enough killing enough? Why does man so casually accept war, which brings so much suffering to so many, when so little is achieved? Why do those who suffer and die so willingly accept the excuses for the wars that need not be fought? Why do so many defer to those who are enthused about war, and who claim it’s a solution to a problem, without asking them why they themselves do not fight? It’s always other men and other men’s children who must sacrifice life and limb for the reasons that make no sense, reasons that are said to be our patriotic duty to fight and die for. How many useless wars have been fought for lies that deserved no hearing? When will it all end?

WHY WE SHOULD NOT FIGHT

Since no logical answers can be given for why we fight, it might be better to talk about why we should not fight. A case can be made that if this war does not end soon it will spread and engulf the entire region. We’ve already been warned that war against Iran is an option that remains on the table for reasons no more reliable than those given for the preemptive strike against Iraq. Let me give you a few reasons why this war in Iraq should not be fought.

It is not in our national interest. Pursuing this war endangers our security, increases the chances of a domestic terrorist attack, weakens our defenses, and motivates our enemies to join together in opposition to our domineering presence around the world. Does anyone believe that Russia, China, and Iran will give us free reign over the entire Middle East and its oil? Tragically, we’re setting the stage for a much bigger conflict. It’s possible that this war could evolve into something much worse than Vietnam.

This war has never been declared. It’s not a constitutional war, and without a proper beginning there can be no proper ending. The vagueness instills doubts in all Americans, both supporters and non-supporters, as to what will be accomplished. Supporters of the war want total victory, which is not achievable with a vague mission. Now the majority of Americans are demanding an end to this dragged-out war that many fear will spread before it’s over.

It’s virtually impossible to beat a determined guerrilla resistance to a foreign occupying force. After 30 years, the Vietnam guerillas, following unbelievable suffering, succeeded in forcing all foreign troops from their homeland. History shows that Iraqi Muslims have always been determined to resist any foreign power on their soil. We ignored that history and learned nothing from Vietnam. How many lives, theirs and ours, are worth losing to prove the tenacity of guerilla fighters supported by a large number of local citizens?

Those who argue that it’s legitimate to protect “our oil” someday must realize that it’s not our oil, no matter how strong and sophisticated our military is. We know the war so far has played havoc with oil prices, and the market continues to discount problems in the region for years to come. No end is in sight regarding the uncertainty of Middle East oil production caused by this conflict.

So far our policies inadvertently have encouraged the development of an Islamic state, with Iranian-allied Shiites in charge. This has led to Iranian support for the insurgents, and has placed Iran in a position of becoming the true victor in this war as its alliance with Iraq grows. This could place Iran and its allies in the enviable position of becoming the oil powerhouse in the region, if not the world, once it has control over the oil fields near Basra.

This unintended alliance with Iran, plus the benefit to Osama bin Laden’s recruiting efforts, will in the end increase the danger to Israel by rallying the Arab and Muslim people against us.

One of the original stated justifications for the war has been accomplished. Since 1998 the stated policy of the United States government was to bring about regime change and get rid of Saddam Hussein. This has been done, but instead of peace and stability we have sown the seeds of chaos. Nevertheless, the goal of removing Saddam Hussein has been achieved and is a reason to stop the fighting.

There were no weapons of mass destruction, no biological or chemical or nuclear weapons, so we can be assured the Iraqis pose no threat to anyone, certainly not to the United States.

No evidence existed to show an alliance between Iraq and al Qaeda before the war, and ironically our presence there is now encouraging al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to move in to fill the vacuum we created. The only relationship between Iraq and 9/11 is that our policy in the Middle East continues to increase the likelihood of another terrorist attack on our homeland.

We should not fight because it’s simply not worth it. What are we going to get for nearly 2,000 soldier deaths and 20 thousand severe casualties? Was the $350 billion worth it? This is a cost that will be passed on to future generations through an expanded national debt. I’ll bet most Americans can think of a lot better ways to have spent this money. Today’s program of guns and butter will be more damaging to our economy than a similar program was in the 1960s, which gave us the stagflation of the 1970s. The economic imbalances today are much greater than they were in those decades.

Eventually, we will come to realize that the Wilsonian idealism of using America’s resources to promote democracy around the world through force is a seriously flawed policy. Wilson pretended to be spreading democracy worldwide, and yet women in the U.S. at that time were not allowed to vote. Democracy, where the majority dictates the rules, cannot protect minorities and individual rights. And in addition, using force to impose our will on others almost always backfires. There’s no reason that our efforts in the 21st Century to impose a Western-style government in Iraq will be any more successful than the British were after World War I. This especially can’t work if democracy is only an excuse for our occupation and the real reasons are left unrecognized.

It boils down to the fact that we don’t really have any sound reasons for continuing this fight. The original reasons for the war never existed, and the new reasons aren’t credible. We hear only that we must carry on so those who have already suffered death and injury didn’t do so in vain. If the original reasons for starting the war were false, simply continuing in the name of those fallen makes no sense. More loss of life can never justify earlier loss of life if they died for false reasons. This being the case, it’s time to reassess the policies that have gotten us into this mess.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?

The mess we face in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and the threat of terrorism within our own borders, are not a result of the policies of this administration alone. Problems have been building for many years, and have only gotten much worse with our most recent policy of forcibly imposing regime change in Iraq. We must recognize that the stalemate in Korea, the loss in Vietnam, and the quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan all result from the same flawed foreign policy of interventionism that our government has pursued for over 100 years. It would be overly simplistic to say the current administration alone is responsible for the mess in Iraq.

By rejecting the advice of the Founders and our early presidents, our leaders have drifted away from the admonitions against entangling alliances and nation building. Policing the world is not our calling or our mandate. Besides, the Constitution doesn’t permit it. Undeclared wars have not enhanced our national security.

The consensus on foreign interventionism has been pervasive. Both major parties have come to accept our role as the world’s policeman, despite periodic campaign rhetoric stating otherwise. The media in particular, especially in the early stages, propagandize in favor of war. It’s only when the costs become prohibitive and the war loses popular support that the media criticize the effort.

It isn’t only our presidents that deserve the blame when they overstep their authority and lead the country into inappropriate wars. Congress deserves equally severe criticism for acquiescing to the demands of the executive to go needlessly to war. It has been known throughout history that kings, dictators, and the executive branch of governments are always overly eager to go to war. This is precisely why our Founders tried desperately to keep decisions about going to war in the hands of the legislature. But this process has failed us for the last 65 years. Congress routinely has rubber stamped the plans of our presidents and even the United Nations to enter into war through the back door.

Congress at any time can prevent or stop all undue foreign entanglements pursued by the executive branch merely by refusing to finance them. The current Iraq war, now going on for 15 years, spans the administration of three presidents and many congresses controlled by both parties. This makes Congress every bit as responsible for the current quagmire as the president. But the real problem is the acceptance by our country as a whole of the principle of meddling in the internal affairs of other nations when unrelated to our national security. Intervention, no matter how well intended, inevitably boomerangs and comes back to haunt us. Minding our own business is not only economical; it’s the only policy that serves our national security interests and the cause of peace.

The neoconservatives who want to remake the entire Middle East are not interested in the pertinent history of this region. Creating an artificial Iraq after World War I as a unified country was like mixing water and oil. It has only led to frustration, anger, and hostilities—with the resulting instability creating conditions ripe for dictatorships. The occupying forces will not permit any of the three regions of Iraq to govern themselves. This is strictly motivated by a desire to exert control over the oil. Self-determination and independence for each region, or even a true republican form of government with a minimalist central authority is never considered—yet it is the only answer to the difficult political problems this area faces. The relative and accidental independence of the Kurds and the Shiites in the 1990s served those regions well, and no suicide terrorism existed during that decade.

The claim that our immediate withdrawal from Iraq would cause chaos is not proven. It didn’t happen in Vietnam or even Somalia. Even today, the militias of the Kurds and the Shiites may well be able to maintain order in their regions much better than we can currently. Certainly the Sunnis can take care of themselves, and it might be in their best interests for all three groups not to fight each other when we leave. One thing for sure: if we left no more young Americans would have to die for an indefinable cause.

Instead, we have been forcing on the people of Iraq a type of democracy that, if implemented, will mean an Islamic state under Sharia law. Already we read stories of barbers no longer being safe shaving beards; Christians are threatened and forced to leave the country; and burqas are returning out of fear. Unemployment is over 50%, and oil production is still significantly below pre-war levels. These results are not worth fighting and dying for.

In this war, like all others, the propagandists and promoters themselves don’t fight, nor do their children. It’s always worth the effort to wage war when others must suffer and die. Many of those who today pump the nation up with war fever were nowhere to be found when their numbers were called in the 1960s—when previous presidents and Congresses thought so little about sending young men off to war. Then it was in their best interests to find more important things to do—despite the so-called equalizing draft.

The inability of taxpayers to fund both guns and butter has not deterred those who smell the glory of war. Notoriously, great nations fall once their appetite for foreign domination outstrips their citizens’ ability or willingness to pay. We tried the “guns and butter” approach in the 1960s with bad results, and the same will happen again as a consequence of the current political decision not to cut back on any expenditure, domestic or foreign. Veto nothing is current policy! Tax, borrow, and print to pay the bills is today’s conventional wisdom. The problem is that all the bills eventually must be paid. There’s no free lunch, and no free war. The economic consequences of such a policy are well known and documented. Excessive spending leads to excessive deficits, higher taxes, and more borrowing and inflation—which spell economic problems that always clobber the middle class and the poor.

Already the suffering has begun. A lackluster recovery, low-paying jobs, outsourcing, and social unrest already are apparent. This economic price we pay, along with the human suffering, is an extravagant price for a war that was started with false information and now is prolonged for reasons unrelated to our national security.

This policy has led to excessive spending overseas and neglect at home. It invites enemies to attack us, and drains the resources needed to defend our homeland and care for our own people. We are obligated to learn something from the tragedy of Katrina about the misallocation of funds away from our infrastructure to the rebuilding of Iraq after first destroying it. If ever there was a time for us to reassess our policy of foreign interventionism, it is today. It’s time to look inward and attend to the constitutional needs of our people, and forget about the grandiose schemes to remake the world in our image through the use of force. These efforts not only are doomed to fail, as they have for the past one hundred years, but they invite economic and strategic military problems that are harmful to our national security interests.

We’ve been told that we must fight to protect our freedoms here at home. These reasons are given to make the sacrifices more tolerable and noble. Without an honorable cause, the suffering becomes intolerable. Hiding from the truth, though, in the end is no panacea for a war that promises no peace.

The most important misjudgment regarding Iraq that must be dealt with is the charge that Muslim terrorists attack us out of envy for our freedoms, our prosperity, and our way of life. There is no evidence this is the case. On the contrary, those who have extensively researched this issue conclude that the #1 reason suicide terrorists attack anywhere in the world is because their land is occupied by a foreign military power. Pretending otherwise and constantly expanding our military presence in more Arab and Muslim countries, as we have since 1990, has only increased the danger of more attacks on our soil, as well as in those countries that have allied themselves with us. If we deny this truth we do so at our own peril.

It’s not unusual for the war crusaders to condemn those who speak the truth in an effort to end an unnecessary war. They claim those who want honest reasons for the enormous sacrifice are unpatriotic and un-American, but these charges only serve to exacerbate the social unrest. Any criticism of policy, no matter how flawed the policy, is said to be motivated by a lack of support for the troops. Yet it is preposterous to suggest that a policy that would have spared the lives of 1,900 servicemen and women lacks concern for the well being of our troops. The absence of good reasoning to pursue this war prompts the supporters of the war to demonize the skeptics and critics. They have no other defense.

Those who want to continue this war accuse those who lost loved ones in Iraq, and oppose the war, of using the dead for personal political gain. But what do the war proponents do when they claim the reason we must fight on is to honor the sacrifice of the military personnel we lost by completing the mission? The big difference is that one group argues for saving lives, while the other justifies more killing. And by that logic, the additional deaths will require even more killing to make sure they too have not died in vain. Therefore, the greater number who have died, the greater is the motivation to complete the mission. This defies logic. This argument to persevere has been used throughout history to continue wars that could and should have ended much sooner. This was true for World War I and Vietnam.

A sad realism struck me recently reading how our Marines in Afghanistan must now rely on donkey transportation in their efforts at nation building and military occupation. Evidently the Taliban is alive and well, as Osama bin Laden remains in this region. But doesn’t this tell us something about our naïve assumption that our economic advantages and technical knowledge can subdue and control anybody? We’re traversing Afghan mountains on donkeys, and losing lives daily in Baghdad with homemade primitive bombs. Our power and dominance clearly are limited by the determination of those who see us as occupiers, proving that just more money and sophisticated weapons won’t bring us victory. Sophisticated weapons and the use of unlimited military power is no substitute for diplomacy designed to promote peace while reserving force only for defending our national interests.

Changing our policy of meddling in the affairs of others won’t come quickly or easily. But a few signals to indicate a change in our attitude would go a long way to bringing peace to a troubled land.

1. We must soon (and Congress can do this through the budget process) stop the construction of all permanent bases in Iraq and any other Muslim country in the region. Think of how we would react if the Chinese had the military edge on us and laid claims to the Gulf of Mexico, building bases within the U.S. in order to promote their superior way of life. Isn’t it ironic that we close down bases here at home while building new ones overseas? Domestic bases might well promote security, while bases in Muslim nations only elicit more hatred toward us.

2. The plans for the biggest U.S. embassy in the world, costing nearly $1 billion, must be canceled. This structure in Baghdad sends a message, like the military bases being built, that we expect to be in Iraq and running Iraq for a long time to come.

3. All military forces, especially on the Arabian Peninsula, must be moved offshore at the earliest time possible. All responsibility for security and control of the oil must be transferred to the Iraqis from the United States as soon as possible, within months not years.

The time will come when our policies dealing with foreign affairs will change for the better. But that will be because we can no longer afford the extravagance of war. This will occur when the American people realize that war causes too much suffering here at home, and the benefits of peace again become attractive to us all. Part of this recognition will involve a big drop in the value of the dollar, higher interest rates, and rampant price inflation.

Though these problems are serious and threaten our freedoms and way of life, there’s every reason to work for the traditional constitutional foreign policy that promotes peace over war, while not being tempted to mold the world in our image through force. We should not forget that what we did not achieve by military force in Vietnam was essentially achieved with the peace that came from our military failure and withdrawal of our armed forces. Today, through trade and peace, U.S. investment and economic cooperation have Westernized Vietnam far more than our military efforts.

We must remember initiating force to impose our will on others negates all the goodness for which we profess to stand. We cannot be fighting to secure our freedom if we impose laws like the Patriot Act and a national ID card on the American people.

Unfortunately, we have lost faith and confidence in the system of government with which we have been blessed. Today too many Americans support, at least in the early stages, the use of force to spread our message of hope and freedom. They too often are confused by the rhetoric that our armies are needed to spread American goodness. Using force injudiciously, instead of spreading the worthy message of American freedom through peaceful means, antagonizes our enemies, alienates our allies, and threatens personal liberties here at home while burdening our economy.

If confidence can be restored in our American traditions of peace and trade, our influence throughout the world would be enhanced just as it was once we rejected the military approach in Vietnam.

This change in policy can come easily once the people of this country decide that there is a better way to conduct ourselves throughout the world. Whenever the people turn against war as a tool to promote certain beliefs, the war ceases. That’s what we need today. Then we can get down to the business of setting an example of how peace and freedom bring prosperity in an atmosphere that allows for excellence and virtue to thrive.

A powerful bureaucratic military state negates all efforts to preserve these conditions that have served America so well up until recent times. That is not what the American dream is all about. Without a change in attitude, the American dream dies: a simple change that restates the principles of liberty enshrined in our Constitution will serve us well in solving all the problems we face. The American people are up to the task; I hope Congress is as well.