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The War Crimes That Don’t Get Punished – Article by Ron Paul

The War Crimes That Don’t Get Punished – Article by Ron Paul

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Ron Paul

July 11, 2019

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Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) found himself in hot water recently over comments he made in defense of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, who faces war crimes charges over his alleged conduct while serving in combat overseas. Gallagher is charged with stabbing a 15-year-old ISIS member while in custody, of taking photos posing with the corpse of the teen, and with killing several civilians.

Defending Gallagher recently, Hunter put his own record up next to the SEAL to suggest that he’s an elected Congressman who has done worse things in battle than Gallagher.

That’s where Hunter’s defense earned him some perhaps unwanted attention. While participating in the first “Battle of Fallujah” in early 2007, by Hunter’s own account he and his fellow soldiers killed hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and children. They fired mortars into the city and killed at random.

In the sanitized world of US mainstream media reporting on US wars overseas, we do not hear about non-combatants being killed by Americans. How many times has there been any reporting on the birth defects that Iraqis continue to suffer in the aftermath of US attacks with horrific weapons like depleted uranium and white phosphorus?

Rep. Hunter described his philosophy when fighting in Iraq:

“You go in fast and hard, you kill people, you hit them in the face and then you get out…We’re going to hurt you and then we’re going to leave. And if you want to be nice to America, we’ll be nice to you. If you don’t want to be nice to us, we’re going to slap you again.”

This shows how much Duncan Hunter does not understand about war. When he speaks of hitting people in the face until they are nice to America, he doesn’t seem to realize that the people of Fallujah – and all of Iraq – never did a thing to the US to deserve that hit in the face. The war was launched on the basis of lies and cooked-up intelligence by many of the people who are serving in the current Administration.

And that brings us to the real war criminals. Rep. Duncan Hunter and his fellow soldiers may have killed hundreds of innocent civilians and even felt justified. Their superior officers, after all, established the rules of engagement. Above those superior officers, going up and beyond to the policymakers, the lie was sold to the American people to justify a war of choice against a country that could not have threatened us if it wanted to.

Vice President Dick Cheney knew what he was doing when he kept returning to the CIA headquarters, strong-arming analysts to make the intelligence fit the chosen policy. John Bolton and the other neocons knew what they were doing when they made claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction they knew were false. The Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans played its role in selling the lie. So did the media.

Edward Gallagher will face trial and possibly jail for his actions. Rep. Duncan Hunter may even face punishment – though perhaps only at the ballot box – for his admitted crimes. But until those at the top who continue to lie and manipulate us into war for their own gain face justice, the real criminals will continue to go free and we will continue pursuing a suicidal neocon foreign policy.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Stellar Infrastructure – Fractal Art by Gennady Stolyarov II

Stellar Infrastructure – Fractal Art by Gennady Stolyarov II

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Stellar Infrastructure – by Gennady Stolyarov II

Note: Left-click on this image to get a full view of this digital work of fractal art.

“Stellar Infrastructure” anticipates an era when civilization will extend to multiple star systems, which will be regularly traversed and connected by means of technological orders far exceeding humankind’s current abilities.

This digital artwork was created by Mr. Stolyarov in Apophysis, a free program that facilitates deliberate manipulation of randomly generated fractals into intelligible shapes.

This fractal is an extension of Mr. Stolyarov’s artistic style of Abstract Orderism, whose goal is the creation of abstract objects that are appealing by virtue of their geometric intricacy — a demonstration of the order that man can both discover in the universe and bring into existence through his own actions and applications of the laws of nature.

Fractal art is based on the idea of the spontaneous order – which is pivotal in economics, culture, and human civilization itself. Now, using computer technology, spontaneous orders can be harnessed in individual art works as well.

See the index of Mr. Stolyarov’s art works.

Pentagon Pushes Plan for Female Draft Registration – Article by Ryan McMaken

Pentagon Pushes Plan for Female Draft Registration – Article by Ryan McMaken

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ryan McMaken
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The Pentagon is moving forward with pressuring Congress to add women to the Selective Service program, which will make virtually all young people eligible for the military draft. The Washington Times reports:

The Pentagon says the country should stick with mandatory registration for a military draft, and it advocates a requirement for women to sign up for the first time in the nation’s history.

The recommendations are contained in a Defense Department report to Congress that serves as a starting point for a commission examining military, national and public service.

Congress ordered the Pentagon report, and the office of the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness completed it in the early months of the Trump administration.

Currently, only male citizens and residents age 18-25 are required to register, for a pace of about 2 million each year.

Women, whom the government has never ordered to sign up, would add 11 million to the Selective Service System database “in short order,” the report says.

Not surprisingly, the Pentagon, the report reminds us, wants the Service Program to continue indefinitely. No surprise there. But now, the Pentagon wants to expand draft registration so it can include millions of young people who had not previously been eligible.

This proposed change will be couched in a variety of irrelevant issues like “gender equality” and “women in combat.” At the heart of the matter, however, is the fact that the Pentagon wants an even larger list of potential forced laborers who can be paid below-market wages. In other words, draft registration offers — and has always offered — a list of people who can be forced to pay higher taxes in the form of mandatory “service”:  

“Conscription is slavery,” Murray Rothbard wrote in 1973, and while temporary conscription is obviously much less bad — assuming one outlives the term of conscription — than many other forms of slavery, conscription is nevertheless a nearly-100-percent tax on the production of one’s mind and body. If one attempts to escape his confinement in his open-air military jail, he faces imprisonment or even execution in many cases.

Conscription remains popular among [nation-]states because it is an easy way to directly extract resources from the population. Just as regular taxes partially extract the savings, productivity, and labor of the general population, conscription extracts virtually all of the labor and effort of the conscripts. The burden falls disproportionately on the young males in most cases, and they are at risk of a much higher tax burden if killed or given a permanent disability in battle. If he’s lucky enough to survive the conflict, the conscript may find himself living out the rest of his life as disfigured or missing his eyesight and limbs. He may be rendered permanently undesirable to the opposite sex. Such costs imposed on the conscript are a form of lifelong taxation.

Fortunately for those who escape such a fate, the term of slavery ends at a specified time, but for the duration, the only freedom the conscript enjoys is that granted to him by his jailers.

But, Modern Conscription Won’t be About Combat Duty

The irrelevance of gender issues here is made clear by the fact that the Pentagon’s report is part of a larger effort which is, as the Times describes it, “a commission examining military, national and public service.” We’ve moved well beyond the issue of strictly military or combat service when we’re talking about forced labor through conscription.

Should the American federal government decide that it’s necessary to finally make use of the Selective Service lists, the new draftees won’t be people sent to carry rifles on the front lines. The military doesn’t want poorly trained conscripts in combat, anyway. But this fact by no means precludes the potential usefulness of conscription to the federal government.

What the US federal government does want — especially in case of dropping revenues due to economic crisis — is cheap labor to build military bases, drive trucks, prepare food, load cargo, mop floors, and perform the countless non-combat tasks that are required to further expand military prerogatives both at home and abroad. Yes, the US government can pay people to do all those things now. But conscripts could be much cheaper.

After all, even in the military, few soldiers ever are in combat situations. In active war zones in recent decades (i.e., Iraq and Afghanistan) there have been seven support personnel for every infantryman. In other words, for every rifle-carrying soldier in a combat zone, there are seven computer programmers, cooks, and mechanics keeping that combat soldier well supplied.

But why stop with military-related issues? “National service” can encompass a wide variety of duties. These can include any of the tasks currently performed by civilian contractors who do government work now on all sorts of domestic infrastructure and social benefits programs.

In the future, if young Americans are drafted, they’re going to be fixing vehicles in a garage or sitting at a desk in an office. And they’ll be doing those tasks for the low, low wages that involuntary servitude makes possible.

The issue of whether or not women should be in combat roles is a totally separate issue and beside the point of whether or not draft registration should be expanded further.

A Huge Repudiation of Property Rights

Ultimately, the only aspect of the women-as-draftees debate that is important is the issue of whether it is morally acceptable to force young people into temporary slavery. Precious few conservatives, of course, have a problem with this, which is why they ultimately can only oppose the expansion of draft registration to women on the grounds of gender politics. For the conservatives, it’s simply a given that forced government labor is entirely justified.

But, even outside the hard-core of the pro-military right-wing regime, it’s hard to find anyone in Washington who seriously opposes draft registration. It’s now been decades since the 1970s when there had a been a movement to abolish both the draft and draft registration. Ron Paul, not surprisingly, was among the supporters of that plan. Not even the end of the Cold War could end mandatory draft registration.

Now we’re talking about expanding the program. But make no mistake about it. Expanding Selective Service from 50 percent of young adults to 100 percent is not about equality, or progress, or patriotism. While these notions will no doubt be used to bully people into supporting such a move, the real-world effect will be a massive expansion in government power over the lives of the population.

Even if modern conscripts avoid all combat, the idea of conscription will always be nothing more than a wholesale repudiation of property rights. The argument that the draft is a necessary “insurance policy” in case of military crisis is no different than saying that nationalization of private industry should always be on the table as an important “insurance policy” in case of economic crisis. Or perhaps the abolition of freedom of speech should be an option as an “insurance policy” in case of social and ideological upheaval.

If young Americans can’t be convinced to fight in the federal government’s wars, then that’s an indication that the federal government doesn’t quite command the respect it thinks it deserves. Often, this is an indication that young people don’t believe the federal government’s propaganda that a war is necessary to “defend freedom,” “fight global communism,” or “end all wars.”  If Americans would rather take their chances not taking up arms for the federal government, that’s a serious problem for the federal government, indeed. But what’s a problem for the federal government is by no means necessarily a problem for the taxpayers who pay the bills. Nor is it a problem the federal government is morally entitled to “rectify” by forcing millions of Americans into involuntary servitude.

Ryan W. McMaken is the editor of Mises Daily and The Free Market. He has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado, and was the economist for the Colorado Division of Housing from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre. 

This article was published on Mises.org and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution United States License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

This article has been edited in accordance with TRA’s Statement of Policy.

Big Military Spending Boost Threatens Our Economy and Security – Article by Ron Paul

Big Military Spending Boost Threatens Our Economy and Security – Article by Ron Paul

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Ron Paul
July 27, 2017
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On Friday, July 14, 2017, the House overwhelmingly approved a massive increase in military spending, passing a $696 billion National Defense Authorization bill for 2018. President Trump’s request already included a huge fifty or so billion dollar spending increase, but the Republican-led House found even that to be far too small. They added another $30 billion to the bill for good measure. Even President Trump, in his official statement, expressed some concern over spending in the House-passed bill.

According to the already weak limitations on military spending increases in the 2011 “sequestration” law, the base military budget for 2018 would be $72 billion more than allowed.

Don’t worry, they’ll find a way to get around that!

The big explosion in military spending comes as the US is planning to dramatically increase its military actions overseas. The president is expected to send thousands more troops back to Afghanistan, the longest war in US history. After nearly 16 years, the Taliban controls more territory than at anytime since the initial US invasion and ISIS is seeping into the cracks created by constant US military action in the country.

The Pentagon and Defense Secretary James Mattis are already telling us that even when ISIS is finally defeated in Iraq, the US military doesn’t dare end its occupation of the country again. Look for a very expensive array of permanent US military bases throughout the country. So much for our 2003 invasion creating a stable democracy, as the neocons promised.

In Syria, the United States has currently established at least eight military bases even though it has no permission to do so from the Syrian government nor does it have a UN resolution authorizing the US military presence there. Pentagon officials have made it clear they will continue to occupy Syrian territory even after ISIS is defeated, to “stabilize” the region.

And let’s not forget that Washington is planning to send the US military back to Libya, another US intervention we were promised would be stabilizing but that turned out to be a disaster.

Also, the drone wars continue in Somalia and elsewhere, as does the US participation in Saudi Arabia’s horrific two year war on impoverished Yemen.

President Trump often makes encouraging statements suggesting that he shares some of our non-interventionist views. For example while Congress was shoveling billions into an already bloated military budget last week, President Trump said that he did not want to spent trillions more dollars in the Middle East where we get “nothing” for our efforts. He’d rather fix roads here in the US, he said. The only reason we are there, he said, was to “get rid of terrorists,” after which we can focus on our problems at home.

Unfortunately President Trump seems to be incapable of understanding that it is US intervention and occupation of foreign countries that creates instability and feeds terrorism. Continuing to do the same thing for more than 17 years – more US bombs to “stabilize” the Middle East – and expecting different results is hardly a sensible foreign policy. It is insanity. Until he realizes that our military empire is the source of rather than the solution to our problems, we will continue to wildly spend on our military empire until the dollar collapses and we are brought to our knees. Then what?

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

What Everyone is Missing About Trump Literally Going Nuclear on Twitter – Article by Carey Wedler

What Everyone is Missing About Trump Literally Going Nuclear on Twitter – Article by Carey Wedler

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The New Renaissance HatCarey Wedler
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Trump critics have long cautioned that the president-elect’s impending administration will be a disaster, often referencing the potential for nuclear war. Trump can’t be trusted with his hand on the nuclear button, many warn.

On Friday, President-elect Donald Trump confirmed these fears when he tweeted in favor of expanding America’s nuclear arsenal.

His statement drew widespread criticism, with Twitter users sounding the end of the world as we know it. Few people outside Trump’s loyal fan base would deny the severe risks Trump poses by vowing to expand America’s nuclear arsenal. But as the media launches a barrage of condescending condemnations of Trump’s nuclear fantasies, many outlets are ignoring vital context.

Trump appears to represent chaos and danger and would undoubtedly hamper U.S.  and global interests by bloating the country’s nuclear weapons systems. His recklessness contrasts starkly with Obama’s seemingly reasoned approach.

Earlier this year, Obama asserted that “Of all the threats to global security and peace, the most dangerous is the proliferation and potential use of nuclear weapons.”

But when Obama made those comments, he had already directly contradicted his own rhetoric against the destructive weaponry. During his presidency, he ensured the country’s nuclear triad would be modernized, a massive project that includes “sweeping nuclear modernizations that include improved weapons, bombers, missiles and submarines.” This endeavor is slated to cost over one trillion dollars over the next three decades — an indicator the U.S. government, under the guidance of Obama, seeks to establish a long-term commitment to nuclear arms.

This is hardly evidence of a president committed to reducing the influence and dangers of nuclear weapons, even as he preaches to other nations about the need to dispose of them. Though he deserves a modicum of credit for committing $5 billion to efforts to better secure nuclear weapons, this accounts for less than one percent of the United States’ total military budget. He ultimately scaled back his original goals on this endeavor.

Further, according to figures from the Pentagon, “the current administration has reduced the nuclear stockpile less than any other post-Cold War presidency,” the New York Times reported in May. President Obama “reduced the size of the nation’s nuclear stockpile at a far slower rate than did any of his three immediate predecessors, including George Bush and George W. Bush.”

According to Hans M. Kristensen of the anti-armament Nuclear Information Project, though Obama’s progress has been disappointing on some fronts, he deserves credit for dismantling some nuclear warheads over the years. Kristensen also cited Russia as a justification for Obama’s less-than-impressive record on disarmament.

“His vision of significant reductions and putting an end to Cold War thinking has been undercut by opposition ranging from Congress to the Kremlin,” Mr. Kristensen wrote in a blog. “An entrenched and almost ideologically-opposed Congress has fought his arms reduction vision every step of the way.”

Though Kristensen lays some of the blame on tensions with Russia, the president’s own policies have exacerbated this very rift with a country that has more nuclear weapons than the United States, which comes in second place. Amid Obama’s resistance to finding common ground with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the fight against the Islamic State and other radical factions in Syria, he has escalated hostilities between the two countries, offering few ill-fated efforts to cooperate.

In one such example, Secretary of State John Kerry insisted Russia must be held accountable for bombing hospitals in Syria. This a noble goal — and the Russian military has inexcusably killed civilians — but the secretary failed to acknowledge that the United States military bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan in 2015 and that the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led assault on Yemen has destroyed multiple hospitals in the last year and killed thousands of civilians. He also failed to note that the United States has killed one million Iraqis.

Obama has also publicly adopted the Democratic narrative that Russia hacked the U.S. election and vowed retaliation in spite of the fact no evidence has been presented. These accusations led Putin to intimate that the U.S. needs to present proof of or, essentially, shut up (interestingly, a Clinton presidency, which, according to establishment figures was thwarted by Russia, would have increased the risk of a nuclear confrontation due to her interventionist approach to the Syrian conflict).

Before these developments, the consistent deterioration of U.S.-Russia ties inspired scientists who operate a “Doomsday Clock” to keep the time at three minutes to midnight. Midnight represents doomsday. They wrote:

“That decision is not good news, but an expression of dismay that world leaders continue to fail to focus their efforts and the world’s attention on reducing the extreme danger posed by nuclear weapons and climate change.”

(Indeed, scientists have warned that nuclear weapons are a major threat to the environment, a reality apparently overlooked by President Obama.)

The ongoing hypocrisy on the part of the Obama administration is exactly why it’s difficult to take outrage about Donald Trump’s nuclear designs seriously.

There is no doubt Trump is advocating dangerous policies on nuclear weapons, but like many other issues currently terrifying Americans fearful of The Donald, Obama set the stage for Trump to implement his aggressive goals. Obama’s expansion of presidential powers, such as setting the precedent that presidents may kill American citizens without trial, will make it that much easier for President Trump to impose ill-advised, risky policies.

The same is to be expected once Trump takes control of a nuclear arsenal Obama dutifully expanded.

Carey Wedler joined Anti-Media as an independent journalist in September of 2014. Her topics of interest include the police and warfare states, the Drug War, the relevance of history to current problems and solutions, and positive developments that drive humanity forward. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where she was born and raised.

This article (What Everyone is Missing About Trump Literally Going Nuclear on Twitter) is free and open-source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific.

Drafting Women Means Equality in Slavery – Article by Ron Paul

Drafting Women Means Equality in Slavery – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance HatRon Paul
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Last week the House Armed Services Committee approved an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act requiring women to register with Selective Service. This means that if Congress ever brings back the draft, women will be forcibly sent to war.

The amendment is a response to the Pentagon’s decision to allow women to serve in combat. Supporters of drafting women point out that the ban on women in combat was the reason the Supreme Court upheld a male-only draft. Therefore, they argue, it is only logical to now force women to register for Selective Service. Besides, supporters of extending the draft point out, not all draftees are sent into combat.

Most of those who opposed drafting women did so because they disagreed with women being eligible for combat positions, not because they opposed the military draft. Few, if any, in Congress are questioning the morality, constitutionality, and necessity of Selective Service registration. Thus, this debate is just another example of how few of our so-called “representatives” actually care about our liberty.

Some proponents of a military draft justify it as “payback” for the freedom the government provides its citizens. Those who make this argument are embracing the collectivist premise that since our rights come from government, the government can take away those rights whether it suits their purposes. Thus supporters of the draft are turning their backs on the Declaration of Independence.

While opposition to the draft is seen as a progressive or libertarian position, many conservatives, including Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, and Robert Taft, where outspoken opponents of conscription. Unfortunately, the militarism that has led so many conservatives astray in foreign policy has also turned many of them into supporters of mandatory Selective Service registration. Yet many of these same conservatives strongly and correctly oppose mandatory gun registration. In a free society you should never have to register your child or your gun.

Sadly, some opponents of the warfare state, including some libertarians, support the draft on the grounds that a draft would cause a mass uprising against the warfare state. Proponents of this view point to the draft’s role in galvanizing opposition to the Vietnam War. This argument ignores that fact that it took several years and the deaths of thousands of American draftees for the anti-Vietnam War movement to succeed.

A variation on this argument is that drafting women will cause an antiwar backlash as Americans recoil form the idea of forcing mothers into combat. But does anyone think the government would draft mothers with young children?

Reinstating the draft will not diminish the war party’s influence as long as the people continue to believe the war propaganda fed to them by the military-industrial complex’s media echo chamber. Changing the people’s attitude toward the warfare state and its propaganda organs is the only way to return to a foreign policy of peace and commerce with all.

Even if the draft could serve as a check on the warfare state, those who support individual liberty should still oppose it. Libertarians who support violating individual rights to achieve a political goal, even a goal as noble as peace, undermine their arguments against non-aggression and thus discredit both our movement, and, more importantly, our philosophy.

A military draft is one of – if not the – worst violations of individual rights committed by modern governments. The draft can also facilitate the growth of the warfare state by lowing the cost of militarism. All those who value peace, prosperity, and liberty must place opposition to the draft at the top of their agenda.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Congress Votes for More War in the Middle East – Article by Ron Paul

Congress Votes for More War in the Middle East – Article by Ron Paul

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Ron Paul
September 21, 2014
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Last week, the House and Senate voted to rubber-stamp President Obama’s war plans for the Middle East. Both bodies, on a bipartisan basis, authorized the US to begin openly training and arming the rebels who have been fighting for three years to overthrow the Assad government in Syria.

Although the Syrian government has also been fighting ISIS and related extremist groups for three years, the US refuses to speak to the Syrians and has warned Assad not to interfere with the coming US attack on sovereign Syrian territory

President Obama promised that airstrikes alone would “degrade and destroy” ISIS, telling the US military in a speech last week that:

“The American forces that have been deployed to Iraq do not and will not have a combat mission… I will not commit you and the rest of our armed forces to fighting another ground war in Iraq.”

But of course any US troops sent into a war zone are “combat” troops. And more are on their way.

While the president was swearing that there would be no boots on the ground, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, was in open disagreement. General Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that US forces would need to embed with Iraqi or Kurdish troops in combat situations under certain circumstances.

The limited mission the president promised just weeks ago has already greatly escalated, and now threatens to become another major regional war. In reality, however, this is just a continuation of the 24-year US war on Iraq that President George Bush began in 1990 and candidate Obama promised to end as President.

Under last week’s authorization bill, the president would have authority to train 5,000 fighters in Saudi Arabia for insertion into the civil war in Syria. This is in effect a re-arrangement of the deck chairs. To this point the training was carried out by the CIA in Jordan and Turkey. Now, the program will be moved to the Pentagon and to Saudi Arabia.

The CIA training of the rebels thus far has resulted in a direct pipeline of weapons from “vetted moderates” to the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front and to the very ISIS that the administration claims to be fighting. In July, a full brigade of 1,000 fighters affiiated with the US-backed Free Syrian Army joined ISIS! Of course they took their US-provided weapons and training with them, some of which will certainly be used against the rapidly increasing US military personnel in the region.

That Saudi Arabia is considered a suitable place to train Syria’s future leaders must be some kind of sick joke. While ISIS was beheading two American journalists – as horrific as that is – the repressive Saudi theocracy was beheading dozens of its own citizens, often for relatively minor or religious crimes.

If we want to stop radical terrorists from operating in Syria and Iraq, how about telling our ally Saudi Arabia to stop funding and training them? For that matter, how about the US government stops arming and training the various rebel groups in Syria and finally ends its 24-year US war on Iraq?

There are 200 million people bordering the countries where ISIS is currently operating. They are the ones facing the threat of ISIS activity and expansion. Let them fight their own war, rather than turning the US military into the mercenary army of wealthy Gulf states. Remember, they come over here because we are over there. So let’s not be over there any longer.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Expanding Covert Warfare Makes Us Less Safe – Article by Ron Paul

Expanding Covert Warfare Makes Us Less Safe – Article by Ron Paul

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Ron Paul
December 18, 2012
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Earlier this month we learned that the Obama Administration is significantly expanding the number of covert Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) agents overseas. From just a few hundred DIA agents overseas today, the administration intends to eventually deploy some 1,600 covert agents. The nature of their work will also shift, away from intelligence collection and more toward covert actions. This move signals a major change in how the administration intends to conduct military and paramilitary operations overseas. Unfortunately it is not a shift toward peace, but rather to an even more deadly and disturbing phase in the “war on terror.”

Surely attacks on foreign countries will increase as a result of this move, but more and more the strikes will take place under cover of darkness and outside the knowledge of Congress or the American people. The move also represents a further blurring of the lines between the military and intelligence services, with the CIA becoming more like a secret military unto itself. This is a very troubling development.In 2010, I said in a speech that there had been a CIA coup in this country. The CIA runs the military, the drone program, and they are in drug trafficking. The CIA is a secretive government all on its own. With this new expanded Defense Intelligence Agency presence overseas it will be even worse. Because the DIA is operationally under control of the Pentagon, direct Congressional oversight of the program will be more difficult. Perhaps this is as intended. The CIA will be training the DIA in its facilities to conduct operations overseas. Much of this will include developing targeting data for the president’s expanding drone warfare program.

Already the president has demonstrated his preference for ever more drone attacks overseas. In Pakistan, for example, President Obama has in his first four years authorized six times more drone strikes than under all eight years of the Bush Administration. Nearly three thousand individuals have been killed by these drones, many of those non-combatants.

President Obama said recently of Israel’s strikes against the Palestinians in Gaza, “No country on Earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.” This announcement by the administration amounts to precisely that: the US intends to rain down ever more missiles on citizens overseas. I believe what the president says about Israel is true everywhere, so what about those overseas who live in fear of our raining missiles? How will they feel about the United States? Is it not possible that we may be inviting more blowback by expanding the covert war overseas? Does that make us safer?

An exhaustive study earlier this year by Stanford and New York University law schools found that US drone strikes on Pakistan are “damaging and counterproductive,” potentially creating more terrorists than they kill. Its recommendations of a radical re-appraisal of the program obviously fell on deaf ears in the administration.

Thousands of new DIA spies are to be hired and placed undercover alongside their CIA counterparts to help foment ever more covert wars and coups in foreign lands. Congress is silent. Where will it all end?

Representative Ron Paul (R – TX), MD, was a three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President. See his Congressional webpage and his official campaign website. 

This article has been released by Dr. Paul into the public domain and may be republished by anyone in any manner.

Headed Toward the 11th-Hour Compromise – Article by Ron Paul

Headed Toward the 11th-Hour Compromise – Article by Ron Paul

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Ron Paul
December 14, 2012
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As the year draws to an end, America faces yet another Congressionally manufactured crisis which will likely end in yet another 11th hour compromise, resulting in more federal-government growth touted as “saving” the economy.  While cutting taxes is always a good idea, setting up a ticking time bomb with a sunset provision, as the Bush tax cuts did, is terrible policy.  Congress should have just cut taxes.  But instead, we have a crisis that is sure not to go to waste.

The hysteria surrounding the January 1 deadline for the Budget Control Act’s spending cuts and expiration of the Bush tax cuts seems all too familiar.  Even the language is predictably hysterical: if the federal government reduces planned spending increases by even a tiny amount, the economy will go over a “fiscal cliff.”  This is nonsense.

This rhetoric is based on the belief that federal spending sustains the economy, when in fact the opposite is true.  Every dollar the federal government spends is a dollar taken from consumers, businessmen, or investors. Reducing spending can only help the economy by putting money back in the hands of ordinary Americans.  Politicians who claim to support the free market and the lower and middle class should take this to heart.

The reality is, however, that neither Republicans nor Democrats are serious about cutting spending. Even though U.S. military spending is exponentially larger than any other country and is notorious for its inefficiency and cost overruns, Republicans cannot seem to stomach even one penny of cuts to the Pentagon’s budget.  This is unfortunate, because this is the easiest, most obvious place to start getting spending under control.  The military-industrial complex and unconstitutional overseas military interventions should be the first place we look for budget cuts.

Similarly, Democrats are digging in their heels on not cutting any welfare or entitlement spending and instead propose to fix the deficit by raising taxes on the rich, even though the U.S. Government already has a progressive tax code and the rich already pay more than their fair share. Furthermore, these higher taxes would fall on small-business owners, investors, and entrepreneurs—in other words, the source of economic growth and new jobs!

The truth is that there is no excuse for federal spending being as high as it is, nor for taxes being as high as they are.  Even the God of the Old Testament only asked for 10% as a tithe and offering, and Americans revolted against the King of England for taxes that amounted to less than five percent.  Yet so many people today complain about “loopholes” for the rich that lower their actual tax rate to “only” 13% in some instances.  Even that is a criminal amount to pay for a wasteful, abusive, unconstitutional government.

We are indeed headed to a fiscal cliff and have been long before this latest hysteria cropped up.  But it is not cuts to spending or reduced federal-government “revenue” that will send us over the cliff, it is continued federal-government spending that will.  Until the federal government limits itself to its Constitutionally-mandated role, spending and taxation will remain out of control.

Look for a “bipartisan” compromise in late December, with Republicans giving in to tax increases and settling for phony spending cuts that actually grow the federal government, and Democrats caving on defense cuts in exchange for tax increases.  This is how the federal government has always grown: both sides will sacrifice their pro-liberty, small-government stances in certain areas in order to grow the federal government where they prefer.

Liberty always loses in the 11th hour.

Representative Ron Paul (R – TX), MD, was a three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President. See his Congressional webpage and his official campaign website. 

This article has been released by Dr. Paul into the public domain and may be republished by anyone in any manner.

Military “Cuts”: Don’t Believe the Hype – Article by Ron Paul

Military “Cuts”: Don’t Believe the Hype – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
August 23, 2012
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Grover Norquist, the influential conservative activist, recently made some very frank and sobering remarks about the U.S. military budget.  Unlike many conservatives, Mr. Norquist understands that American national security interests are not served by the interventionist foreign policy mindset that has dominated both political parties in recent decades.  He also understands that there is nothing “conservative” about incurring trillions of dollars in debt to engage in hopeless nation building exercises overseas.

Speaking at the Center for the National interest last week, Norquist stated that “We can afford to have an adequate national defense which keeps us free and safe and keeps everybody afraid to throw a punch at us, as long as we don’t make some of the decisions that previous administrations have, which is to over extend ourselves overseas and think we can run foreign governments.”

He continued: “Bush decided to be the mayor of Baghdad rather than the president of the United States. He decided to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan rather than reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That had tremendous consequences… Richard Nixon said that America’s national defense needs are set in Moscow, meaning that we wouldn’t have to spend so much if they weren’t shooting at us.  The guys who followed didn’t notice that the Soviet Union disappeared.”

When a prominent DC conservative like Grover Norquist makes such bold statements, it shows that public support for a truly conservative foreign policy is growing.  The American people simply cannot stomach more wars and more debt, especially with our domestic economy in tatters.

The American people should reject the hype about so called defense “cuts” from both side of the political spectrum.  When the Obama administration calls for an 18% increase in 2013 military spending, those who propose a 20% increase portray this as a reduction!

Even the supposedly draconian cuts called for in the “sequestration” budget bill would keep military spending at 2006 levels when adjusted for inflation, which is about as high in terms of GDP as during World War II.  It’s also more than the top 13 foreign countries spend on defense combined.  Furthermore, sequestration only cuts military spending for one year after taking effect.  In future years Congress is free to reinstate higher military spending levels– so under sequestration the most drastic case would mean spending $5.2 trillion instead of $5.7 trillion over the next decade.

Is there any amount of money that would satisfy the Pentagon hawks? Even if we were to slash our military budget in half, America easily would remain the world’s dominant military power.  Our problems don’t result from a lack of spending. They result from a lack of vision and a profound misunderstanding of the single biggest threat to every American man, woman, and child: the federal debt.

Representative Ron Paul (R – TX), MD, is a Republican candidate for U. S. President. See his Congressional webpage and his official campaign website. 

This article has been released by Dr. Paul into the public domain and may be republished by anyone in any manner.