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Is Congress Declaring War on ISIS…or on You? – Article by Ron Paul

Is Congress Declaring War on ISIS…or on You? – Article by Ron Paul

The New Renaissance HatRon Paul
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Passage of Senator Mitch McConnell’s authorization for war against ISIS will not only lead to perpetual US wars across the globe, it will also endanger our civil and economic liberties. The measure allows the president to place troops anywhere he determines ISIS is operating. Therefore, it could be used to justify using military force against United States citizens on US territory. It may even be used to justify imposing martial law in America.

The President does not have to deploy the US military to turn America into a militarized police state, however. He can use his unlimited authority to expand programs that turn local police forces into adjuncts of the US military, and send them increasing amounts of military equipment. Using the threat of ISIS to justify increased police militarization will be enthusiastically supported by police unions, local officials, and, of course, politically-powerful defense contractors. The only opposition will come from citizens whose rights have been violated by a militarized police force that views the people as the enemy.

Even though there is no evidence that the federal government’s mass surveillance programs have prevented even a single terrorist attack, we are still continuously lectured about how we must sacrifice our liberty for security. The cries for the federal government to take more of our privacy will grow louder as the war party and its allies in the media continue to hype the threat of terrorism. A president armed with the authority to do whatever it takes to stop ISIS will no doubt heed these calls for new restrictions on our privacy.

Following last year’s mass shooting in California, President Obama called for restricting the Second Amendment rights of any American on the “terrorist watch list.” The president also used the attacks to expand the unconstitutional gun background check system via executive action. Can anyone doubt that President Obama — or a future anti-gun president — will use the absolute power to do whatever is necessary to stop terrorism as a justification for imposing new gun control measures? Using the war on ISIS to justify more gun control will be particularly attractive since even many pro-gun politicians will support gun control measures if they are marketed as part of the war on terror.

As the American economy faces continued stagnation, and as challenges to the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency mount, an increasingly authoritarian government will impose new restrictions on our economic activities and new limits on our financial privacy. In particular, our ability to move assets out of the country will be limited, and new reporting and other requirements will limit our ability to use cash without being treated as criminals or terrorists. Those who carry large amounts of cash will find themselves at increased risk of having the cash confiscated by police under civil asset forfeiture laws.

If Senator McConnell’s declaration of perpetual war passes, presidents could use the war on ISIS as a justification to impose new restrictions on our use of cash and our financial privacy via executive action. After all, they will say, the government needs to make sure cash is not being used to support ISIS.

The only way to protect both liberty and security is to stop trying to impose our will on other countries by military force. The resentment created by America’s militaristic foreign policy is ISIS’s most effective recruiting tool. Adopting a non-interventionist foreign policy that seeks peace and free trade with all would enable the government to counter legitimate threats to our safety without creating an authoritarian police state.

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 is Writing the President a Blank Check for War – Article by Ron Paul

Congress is Writing the President a Blank Check for War – Article by Ron Paul

The New Renaissance HatRon Paul
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While the Washington snowstorm dominated news coverage this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was operating behind the scenes to rush through the Senate what may be the most massive transfer of power from the Legislative to the Executive branch in our history. The senior Senator from Kentucky is scheming, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, to bypass normal Senate procedure to fast-track legislation to grant the president the authority to wage unlimited war for as long as he or his successors may wish.

The legislation makes the unconstitutional Iraq War authorization of 2002 look like a walk in the park. It will allow this president and future presidents to wage war against ISIS without restrictions on time, geographic scope, or the use of ground troops. It is a completely open-ended authorization for the president to use the military as he wishes for as long as he (or she) wishes. Even President Obama has expressed concern over how willing Congress is to hand him unlimited power to wage war.

President Obama has already far surpassed even his predecessor, George W. Bush, in taking the country to war without even the fig leaf of an authorization. In 2011 the president invaded Libya, overthrew its government, and oversaw the assassination of its leader, without even bothering to ask for Congressional approval. Instead of impeachment, which he deserved for the disastrous Libya invasion, Congress said nothing. House Republicans only managed to bring the subject up when they thought they might gain political points exploiting the killing of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi.

It is becoming more clear that Washington plans to expand its war in the Middle East. Last week the media reported that the US military had taken over an air base in eastern Syria, and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that the US would send in the 101st Airborne Division to retake Mosul in Iraq and to attack ISIS headquarters in Raqqa, Syria. Then on Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden said that if the upcoming peace talks in Geneva are not successful, the US is prepared for a massive military intervention in Syria. Such an action would likely place the US military face to face with the Russian military, whose assistance was requested by the Syrian government. In contrast, we must remember that the US military is operating in Syria in violation of international law.

The prospects of such an escalation are not all that far-fetched. At the insistence of Saudi Arabia and with US backing, the representatives of the Syrian opposition at the Geneva peace talks will include members of the Army of Islam, which has fought with al-Qaeda in Syria. Does anyone expect these kinds of people to compromise? Isn’t al-Qaeda supposed to be our enemy?

The purpose of the Legislative branch of our government is to restrict the Executive branch’s power. The Founders understood that an all-powerful king who could wage war at will was the greatest threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is why they created a people’s branch, the Congress, to prevent the emergence of an all-powerful autocrat to drag the country to endless war. Sadly, Congress is surrendering its power to declare war.

Let’s be clear: If Senate Majority Leader McConnell succeeds in passing this open-ended war authorization, the US Constitution will be all but a dead letter.

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.

When Peace Breaks Out With Iran… – Article by Ron Paul

When Peace Breaks Out With Iran… – Article by Ron Paul

The New Renaissance HatRon Paul
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This has been the most dramatic week in US/Iranian relations since 1979.

Last weekend ten US Navy personnel were caught in Iranian waters, as the Pentagon kept changing its story on how they got there. It could have been a disaster for President Obama’s big gamble on diplomacy over conflict with Iran. But after several rounds of telephone diplomacy between Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif, the Iranian leadership – which we are told by the neocons is too irrational to even talk to – did a most rational thing: weighing the costs and benefits they decided it made more sense not to belabor the question of what an armed US Naval vessel was doing just miles from an Iranian military base. Instead of escalating, the Iranian government fed the sailors and sent them back to their base in Bahrain.

Then on Saturday, the Iranians released four Iranian-Americans from prison, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. On the US side, seven Iranians held in US prisons, including six who were dual citizens, were granted clemency. The seven were in prison for seeking to trade with Iran in violation of the decades-old US economic sanctions.

This mutual release came just hours before the United Nations certified that Iran had met its obligations under the nuclear treaty signed last summer and that, accordingly, US and international sanctions would be lifted against the country.

How did the “irrational” Iranians celebrate being allowed back into the international community? They immediately announced a massive purchase of more than 100 passenger planes from the European Airbus company, and that they would also purchase spare parts from Seattle-based Boeing. Additionally, US oil executives have been in Tehran negotiating trade deals to be finalized as soon as it is legal to do so. The jobs created by this peaceful trade will be beneficial to all parties concerned. The only jobs that should be lost are those of the Washington advocates of re-introducing sanctions on Iran.

Events this week have dealt a harsh blow to Washington’s neocons, who for decades have been warning against any engagement with Iran. These true isolationists were determined that only regime change and a puppet government in Tehran could produce peaceful relations between the US and Iran. Instead, engagement has worked to the benefit of the US and Iran.

Even though they are proven wrong, however, we should not expect the neocons to apologize or even pause to reflect on their failed ideology. Instead, they will continue to call for new sanctions on any pretext. They even found a way to complain about the release of the US sailors – they should have never been confronted in the first place even if they were in Iranian waters. And they even found a way to complain about the return of the four Iranian-Americans to their families and loved ones – the US should have never negotiated with the Iranians to coordinate the release of prisoners, they grumbled. It was a show of weakness to negotiate! Tell that to the families on both sides who can now enjoy the company of their loved ones once again!

I have often said that the neocons’ greatest fear is for peace to break out. Their well-paid jobs are dependent on conflict, sanctions, and pre-emptive war. They grow wealthy on conflict, which only drains our economy. Let’s hope that this new opening with Iran will allow many other productive Americans to grow wealthy through trade and business ties. Let’s hope many new productive jobs will be created on both sides. Peace is prosperous!

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 Are The Chances For Peace in 2016? – Article by Ron Paul

What Are The Chances For Peace in 2016? – Article by Ron Paul

The New Renaissance HatRon Paul
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Each year more than one trillion dollars goes up in smoke. More accurately, it is stolen from the middle and working classes and shipped off to the one percent. I am talking about the massive yearly bill to maintain the US empire. Washington’s warmongers have sold the lie that the military budget has been gutted under President Obama, but even when the “Sequester” was in effect, military spending continued to increase. Only the pace of increase was reduced, not actual spending.

None of this trillion dollars taken from us is spent to keep us safe, despite what politicians say. In fact, this great rip-off actually makes us less safe and more vulnerable to a terrorist attack, thanks to resentment overseas at our interventions and to the blowback they produce.

The money is spent to maintain existing conflicts and to create new areas of conflict overseas that in turn feed the demands for more military spending. It is an endless cycle of theft and deceit.

Billions were spent not long ago overthrowing an elected government in Ukraine and provoking Russia. A new Cold War is a bonanza for the military-industrial complex, the pro-war think tanks, and the politicians. NATO is on the move in eastern Europe, placing heavy weapons right on Russia’s border and then blaming the Russians when they complain about the rising militarism. NATO military exercises on Russia’s border have increased and become more confrontational.

In the Middle East, more billions have been spent attempting to overthrow the secular government of Syria over the past five years. The big winners in this grand scheme have been the Islamist extremists, who are funded directly and indirectly by the US and its allies. NATO is planning to go back into Libya, an admission that its 2011 “liberation” of that country has been a disaster.

In Asia, the US empire challenges and provokes China, sending military ships and aircraft into territory China claims in the South China Sea. How much will the US continue to escalate before China gets fed up?

The more money sent to the Pentagon and other parts of the Washington war apparatus, the more danger we are in.

Meanwhile, almost all of the presidential candidates promise more military spending and more war if they are elected. Did no one tell them we are broke and making enemies fast with our interventions? Do they think Fed-created money will really continue to fuel the US empire indefinitely?

What are the prospects for a U-turn toward peace and prosperity in 2016? We must be realistic. Presently the numbers are not on our side. But the good news is we do not need a majority to succeed in our fight for peace and liberty. We need only a dedicated and uncompromising critical mass to make great headway.

What can we do to work for peace in 2016? First we must tune out the lying propaganda served up by the US mainstream media. We must educate ourselves so that we can help educate others. We can be sure to tune in and support alternative sources of news and analysis like the Ron Paul Liberty Report, LewRockwell.com, Antiwar.com, and many others. We can tell others about the wealth of truth available to those who seek and question. We must not compromise and never accept the lesser of two evils.

If the people demand peace, the politicians will follow. Let’s demand peace in 2016!

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.

More Mission Creep in an Illegal War – Article by Gene Healy

More Mission Creep in an Illegal War – Article by Gene Healy

The New Renaissance HatGene Healy
November 4, 2015
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In the 15 months since the president unilaterally launched our latest war in the Middle East, he’s repeatedly pledged that he wouldn’t put U.S. “boots on the ground” in Syria. As he told congressional leaders on September 3, 2014, “the military plan that has been developed” is limited, and doesn’t require ground forces.

Alas, if you liked that plan, you can’t keep it. Earlier today, the Obama administration announced the deployment of U.S. Special Forces to Northern Syria to assist Kurdish troops in the fight against ISIS. U.S. forces will number “fewer than 50,” in an “advise and assist” capacity; they “do not have a combat mission,” according to White House press secretary Josh Earnest. Granted, when “advise and assist” missions look like this, it can be hard for us civilians to tell the difference.

Asked about the legal authorization for the deployment, Earnest insisted: “Congress in 2001 did give the executive branch the authority to take this action. There’s no debating that.”

It’s true that there hasn’t been anything resembling a genuine congressional debate over America’s war against ISIS. But the administration’s legal claim is eminently debatable. It’s based on the 2001 authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF, the Congress passed three days after 9/11, targeting those who “planned, authorized, [or] committed” the attacks (Al Qaeda) and those who “aided” or “harbored” them (the Taliban).

In 2013, Obama administration officials told the Washington Post that they were “increasingly concerned the law is being stretched to its legal breaking point.” That was before they’d stretched it still further, 15 months later, to justify war against ISIS, a group that’s been denounced and excommunicated by Al Qaeda and is engaged in open warfare with them. Headlines like “ISIS Beheads Leader of Al Qaeda Offshoot Nusra Front,” or “Petraeus: Use Al Qaeda Fighters to Beat ISIS” might give you cause to wonder–or even debate!–whether this is the same enemy Congress authorized President Bush to wage war against, back before Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPod.

In the Obama theory of constitutional war powers, Congress gets a vote, but it’s one Congress, one vote, one time. This is not how constitutional democracies are supposed to go to war. But it’s how we’ve drifted into a war that the Army chief of staff has said will last “10 to 20 years.” Sooner or later, we’ll have cause to regret the normalization of perpetual presidential war, but any congressional debate we get will occur only after the damage has already been done.

Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute. His research interests include executive power and the role of the presidency, as well as federalism and overcriminalization. He is the author of False Idol: Barack Obama and the Continuing Cult of the Presidency; The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power; and editor of Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything.

Healy has appeared on PBS’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer and NPR’s Talk of the Nation, and his work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Legal Times, and elsewhere.

Healy holds a BA from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.

This work by Cato Institute is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

What War and Terror Do to Principles – Article by Abdo Roumani

What War and Terror Do to Principles – Article by Abdo Roumani

The New Renaissance Hat
Abdo Roumani
September 25, 2015
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A Young Syrian Recounts the Years in His Smoldering Homeland

Editor’s Note from the Foundation for Economic Education: War is hell. And for those living in Syria, hell is currently a way of life. Armchair statesmen and foreign policy mavens have a lot to say about these matters. Here at FEE, we advocate “anything peaceful,” but often in distant, theoretical terms.

In this article, we present the unique opportunity to hear from someone who has lived the Syrian conflict. We cannot verify all of the author’s claims, but we can offer a glimpse into the mind of someone who, though he desperately wants to cling to his ideals, struggles to maintain them as he witnesses his homeland being torn apart.

I lived in Syria for three out of the four and half years of war. I’ve never been physically harmed, even though there were several close calls. In another sense, though, I’ve come to realize this war has killed so much in me that I’ve turned into something completely unfamiliar; something that often works like a calculator.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither.”

Not a long time ago, he used to be my example. I often repeated that line to those who defended the Assad rule, to those who said that his reign was better than the chaos the country had endured from 1958 to 1970. After a catastrophic union with Egypt between 1958 and 1961, Syria had to deal with the aftermath of its failures until 1970, when the late Hafez al-Assad stabilized the country. Until 2011, Syria was very secure socially, economically, and militarily. Damascus was one of the safest cities in the world — but that was irrelevant to me. I believed in certain principles and demonized the regime that failed to live by them.

I would soon change my mind.

Over the last five years, the Syrian establishment has grown more brutal. Those reforms that were foreseeable in 2011, such as limiting the secret service’s influence and empowering political pluralism, now seem impossible. Corruption has reached unprecedented levels. The establishment’s values and propaganda have never been as exposed. And yet, my opposition to this regime has faded so much that I no longer know whether I’m learning to be pragmatic or if I’ve resigned myself, given up my former convictions, and, in the end, traded everything for temporary safety.

Last August was one of the most violent months of the war in Damascus. Once the negotiations collapsed and a ceasefire expired in the strategic border town of al-Zabadani, the rebels controlling the part of the Barada Valley that was home to Damascus’s main source of fresh water cut off water supplies to the capital. That was August 14. The next day, the Syrian military retaliated by bombarding the area, forcing those rebels to turn on the taps again.

As I browsed opposition websites, reading reports of the destruction and the number of casualties, I paused at a photograph of the bodies of three children. The picture didn’t specify whether the children were killed in the August attacks or if this was yet another horrifying image pulled from the seemingly endless archives of carnage caught on film.

They were two little boys, about seven years old, with a slightly older girl lying between them. They were dressed in vibrant colors: navy blue, pink, and yellow. Their outfits were very neat, as though they had just decided to rest for a few moments. There were no signs of trauma. They looked peaceful.

I was thinking of how their parents, if indeed they had survived the bombing, would feel about seeing their children lying dead in those clothes. Would they remember the day they bought the fabrics? Would they remember how they felt picking out something special for their children, excited to see the look of joy on their children’s faces when they brought home the surprise of a new outfit? Or were the children themselves there, carefully selecting just the right shade of yellow for a dress for the first day of ‘Eid — for a future that once seemed certain?

These children died because rebels in a small town with a tiny population cut off water supplies to millions of people in Damascus, the capital whose community embraces the patchwork of Syria’s ethnoreligious diversity, in the peak of the Middle Eastern summer, where temperatures exceed 104 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s difficult to blame the army for striking the town where they happened to live. The rebels who cut off the water supplies may have done so out of frustration, but the flow still had to return, no matter the cost. The children paid with their lives.

Securing and occupying strategic locations around Damascus — especially those isolated pockets of rebel control where the only aim is to destabilize the capital, not to achieve any strategic goal — is certainly an objective I support. Darayya, which lies on the southwestern gate of the heavily populated capital and faces its most important airbase, is one example.

On August 6, the Islam’s Martyrs Brigade declared Operation Darayya’s Flames, claiming to have killed 70 soldiers on the first day, and capturing strategic buildings near Mezza Airbase. In retaliation, according to Al Jazeera, by August 17, the Syrian military bombed Darayya with 325 barrel bombs, 4 vacuum bombs, 130 surface-to-surface missiles, 375 “hell” shells, 5 naval mines, 585 artillery shells, and 75 napalms. The city’s death toll reached 33 casualties in 11 days, including a woman and 3 children. Another 60 had been injured.

The violence is unspeakable, but when we look at the big picture again, we’ll see how Damascus was subjected to rocket and mortar attacks throughout August as well. On August 12 alone, activists counted 67 mortars fired against Damascus, killing 14 civilians and wounding 70. Saving Damascus, which is also where the majority of Darayya’s citizens took shelter after their city became a war zone, takes priority.

I had to experience that personally in April 2014, when the major battle for my mother’s hometown, Mleha, began. Until 2012, I lived in and owned an apartment in Mleha, which also houses the Air Defense Administration and lies on the road linking Damascus with its international airport. Our town had a population of 25,000 at the time, most of whom fled to Damascus or to the government-held town of Jaramana after the rebels captured the larger part of Mleha and the army began to lay siege by the end of 2012. Nearly 3,000 people lived there under siege until the last week before the battle began, when most of them headed for either the capital or the neighboring towns and cities.

Shortly before the town fell to the army, on the 112th day of the battle, the pro-rebel activists in the town documented 677 airstrikes; 701 surface-to-surface missiles; 6,000 tank and artillery shells, mortars, and rockets; and 12 barrel bombs. They documented 335 rebel deaths and 50 civilian casualties. We don’t know how many soldiers were killed, but it’s usually at least double the number of rebel casualties. By the time the battle ended, the commander of the Air Defense Administration had been killed. He was the second ADA commander to be killed in one year.

We, as citizens, longed for the earlier reconciliation efforts held between the government and the rebels in Mleha. Many failed negotiations had taken place in the past two years. Once the negotiations completely collapsed, however, we had to take sides. I now had to live with the idea of supporting an army that was leveling my town. I lost relatives, friends, and my own home, yet that seemed to be a smaller cost than risking Damascus, where the people of Mleha now live.

It’s not easy to live between the details and the big picture. Sometimes it can be soul-wrenching to support the army, an institution that holds my country together but that also contains villains capable of unspeakable inhumanity. There are soldiers who torture your recently drafted brother. Sometimes drunk soldiers will abduct a minibus with your girlfriend in it, and direct the driver to a battle zone. One of them will sit next to her, with one hand holding an AK-47 and another between her inner thighs. You have to live with the story she tells you about how she was so afraid that she was sticking her face on the window, crying, trying to get away from him. You have to ignore these details in the big picture of an army that has lost twice as many soldiers as America lost in Vietnam, just to defend your country.

The biggest challenge of all is to be able to make any sense out of the concept of retaliation. It is one thing to bomb a ghost town, where just a few unlucky civilians remain; it’s a whole different thing to target the heart of an enemy stronghold just to deter them from crossing a line in the sand.

On August 15, Zahran Alloush, the head of the Islam Army, launched an offensive against strategic Harasta, which is very close to the M5 highway route linking Damascus with what’s left of Syria. The army reportedly retaliated by targeting the marketplace in Duma, Alloush’s stronghold, killing 110 people. It was a massacre in every sense of the word.

It wasn’t the use of “illegal” and “indiscriminate” barrel bombs, which tend to be the focus of reporters and diplomats even though barrel bombs don’t kill nearly as many as shells and bullets do. Rather than barrel bombs, reports indicate the regime deployed guided bombs against a location known to be crowded with civilians. If these reports are true, this would mean the attack was the worst kind of retaliation: deliberately targeting civilians just to place pressure on those who rule them.

We may never know for sure what happened in Duma, except that 110 people were killed within seconds. But if the army did deliberately target civilians, how should I react? Should I condemn the army now? And what does it mean to condemn the army or the establishment? Does it mean to take measures against them, at a time when there has been already too much pressure undermining the whole country?

I have always thought of Damascus as the Middle East’s most conservative yet most libertarian city. The question that puzzles me the most now is: How much of Damascus is worth saving?

On the one hand, some will find no problem justifying the Duma attack, or any other like it. We live in a world where “the leader of the free world,” after suffering the attacks of 9/11, reacts by signing the PATRIOT Act and invading two countries, one of which had nothing to do with 9/11.

The problem in Damascus isn’t only that it’s surrounded by radical Islamic rebels. The problem is that the frontline is inside the city, in the south, where we have the presence of the Islamic State, and in the east, where the Islam Army and its Eastern Ghouta allies operate. Not that I think these people are evil, but they certainly pose an enormous threat to Damascus’s diverse community. I don’t think any government, no matter how democratic or civil, would tolerate such a presence that close.

Yet in Damascus, I met the kind of people who tolerated the Islamists operating around us, even though their neighborhoods, just like mine, were targeted with rebel mortars. Ammar, an IT worker who helped me set up my Internet connection, detested the regime so much that he said he would prefer that the Duma rebels take over Damascus. Before he moved to Damascus for a job, he lived in Duma under the radical Islamists and didn’t seem to have any difficulties with them that he wouldn’t have had with the Syrian authorities. He was a conservative Sunni Muslim — there was nothing that they wanted him to do that he didn’t want to do himself.

As an atheist and a secularist, I find it unimaginable to live under Islamic rule. The Syrian semisecular state itself is already too religious to me. Half of my friends are Christians and half the people in my family are Shiites; I fear they will be automatically doomed once ruled by the Islam Army, Jabhat al-Nusra, or Ahrar al-Sham. It’s not only the Libya-style chaos that scares me, but also an alternative religious establishment similar to that in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps my big picture is nothing more than my own political agenda. Perhaps Ammar, coming from a religious majority, has a different big picture in mind, in which people like me are insignificant.

There are few things I know for certain now. As much as I try to balance what’s personal with what’s political, the cost is that I completely detach myself from the situation. I can’t understand how some foreign governments fail to be pragmatic when it comes to dealing with my country, as if it were personal to them. First they feel sorry for us, then they demonize us, and then they sanction us and call us terrorists — and eventually, our refugees become their biggest problem.

Abdo Roumani studied English literature at Damascus University.

This article was originally published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

Blame America? No, Blame Neocons! – Article by Ron Paul

Blame America? No, Blame Neocons! – Article by Ron Paul

The New Renaissance HatRon Paul
September 21, 2015
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Is the current refugee crisis gripping the European Union “all America’s fault”? That is how my critique of US foreign policy was characterized in a recent interview on the Fox Business Channel. I do not blame the host for making this claim, but I think it is important to clarify the point.

It has become common to discount any criticism of US foreign policy as “blaming America first.” It is a convenient way of avoiding a real discussion. If aggressive US policy in the Middle East – for example in Iraq – results in the creation of terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda in Iraq, is pointing out the unintended consequences of bad policy blaming America? Is it “blaming America” to point out that blowback – like we saw on 9/11 – can be the result of unwise US foreign policy actions like stationing US troops in Saudi Arabia?

In the Fox interview I pointed out that the current refugee crisis is largely caused by bad US foreign policy actions. The US government decides on regime change for a particular country – in this case, Syria – destabilizes the government, causes social chaos, and destroys the economy, and we are supposed to be surprised that so many people are desperate to leave? Is pointing this out blaming America, or is it blaming that part of the US government that makes such foolish policies?

Accusing those who criticize US foreign policy of “blaming America” is pretty selective, however. Such accusations are never leveled at those who criticize a US pullback. For example, most neocons argue that the current crisis in Iraq is all Obama’s fault for pulling US troops out of the country. Are they “blaming America first” for the mess? No one ever says that. Just like they never explain why the troops were removed from Iraq: the US demanded complete immunity for troops and contractors and the Iraqi government refused.

Iraq was not a stable country when the US withdrew its troops anyway. As soon as the US stopped paying the Sunnis not to attack the Iraqi government, they started attacking the Iraqi government. Why? Because the US attack on Iraq led to a government that was closely allied to Iran and the Sunnis could not live with that! It was not the US withdrawal from Iraq that created the current instability, but the invasion. The same is true with US regime-change policy toward Syria. How many Syrians were streaming out of Syria before US support for Islamist rebels there made the country unlivable? Is pointing out this consequence of bad US policy also blaming America first?

Last year I was asked by another Fox program whether I was not “blaming America” when I criticized the increasingly confrontational US stand toward Russia. Here’s how I put it then:

I don’t blame America. I am America, you are America. I don’t blame you. I blame bad policy. I blame the interventionists. I blame the neoconservatives who preach this stuff, who believe in it like a religion — that they have to promote American goodness even if you have to bomb and kill people.

In short, I don’t blame America; I blame neocons.

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.

The Real Refugee Problem – And How To Solve It – Article by Ron Paul

The Real Refugee Problem – And How To Solve It – Article by Ron Paul

The New Renaissance HatRon Paul
September 7, 2015
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Last week Europe saw one of its worst crises in decades. Tens of thousands of migrants entered the European Union via Hungary, demanding passage to their hoped-for final destination, Germany.

While the media focuses on the human tragedy of so many people uprooted and traveling in dangerous circumstances, there is very little attention given to the events that led them to leave their countries. Certainly we all feel for the displaced people, especially the children, but let’s not forget that this is a man-made crisis and it is a government-made crisis.

The reason so many are fleeing places like Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq is that US and European interventionist foreign policy has left these countries destabilized with no hopes of economic recovery. This mass migration from the Middle East and beyond is a direct result of the neocon foreign policy of regime change, invasion, and pushing “democracy” at the barrel of a gun.

Even when they successfully change the regime, as in Iraq, what is left behind is an almost uninhabitable country. It reminds me of the saying attributed to a US major in the Vietnam War, discussing the bombing of Ben Tre: “It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.”

The Europeans share a good deal of blame as well. France and the UK were enthusiastic supporters of the attack on Libya and they were early backers of the “Assad must go” policy. Assad may not be a nice guy, but the forces that have been unleashed to overthrow him seem to be much worse and far more dangerous. No wonder people are so desperate to leave Syria.

Most of us have seen the heartbreaking photo of the young Syrian boy lying drowned on a Turkish beach. While the interventionists are exploiting this tragedy to call for direct US attacks on the Syrian government, in fact the little boy was from a Kurdish family fleeing ISIS in Kobane. And as we know there was no ISIS in either Iraq or Syria before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

As often happens when there is blowback from bad foreign policy, the same people who created the problem think they have a right to tell us how to fix it – while never admitting their fault in the first place.

Thus we see the disgraced General David Petraeus in the news last week offering his solution to the problem in Syria: make an alliance with al-Qaeda against ISIS! Petraeus was head of the CIA when the US launched its covert regime-change policy in Syria, and he was in charge of the “surge” in Iraq that contributed to the creation of al-Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The idea that the US can salvage its disastrous Syria policy by making an alliance with al-Qaeda is horrific. Does anyone think the refugee problem in Syria will not be worse if either al-Qaeda or ISIS takes over the country?

Here is the real solution to the refugee problem: stop meddling in the affairs of other countries. Embrace the prosperity that comes with a peaceful foreign policy, not the poverty that goes with running an empire. End the Empire!

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.

Iran Agreement Boosts Peace, Defeats Neocons – Article by Ron Paul

Iran Agreement Boosts Peace, Defeats Neocons – Article by Ron Paul

The New Renaissance HatRon Paul
July 20, 2015
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Last week’s successfully concluded Iran agreement is one of the two most important achievements of an otherwise pretty dismal Obama presidency. Along with the ongoing process of normalizing relations with Cuba, this move shows that diplomacy can produce peaceful, positive changes. It also shows that sometimes taking a principled position means facing down overwhelming opposition from all sides and not backing down. The president should be commended for both of these achievements.

The agreement has reduced the chance of a US attack on Iran, which is a great development. But the interventionists will not give up so easily. Already they are organizing media and lobbying efforts to defeat the agreement in Congress. Will they have enough votes to over-ride a presidential veto of their rejection of the deal? It is unlikely, but at this point if the neocons can force the US out of the deal it may not make much difference. Which of our allies, who are now facing the prospect of mutually-beneficial trade with Iran, will be enthusiastic about going back to the days of a trade embargo? Which will support an attack on an Iran that has proven to be an important trading partner and has also proven reasonable in allowing intrusive inspections of its nuclear energy program?

However, what is most important about this agreement is not that US government officials have conducted talks with Iranian government officials. It is that the elimination of sanctions, which are an act of war, will open up opportunities for trade with Iran. Government-to-government relations are one thing, but real diplomacy is people-to-people: business ventures, tourism, and student exchanges.

I was so impressed when travel personality Rick Steves traveled to Iran in 2009 to show that the US media and government demonization of Iranians was a lie, and that travel and human contact can help defeat the warmongers because it humanizes those who are supposed to be dehumanized.

As I write in my new book, Swords into Plowshares:

Our unwise policy with Iran is a perfect example of what the interventionists have given us—60 years of needless conflict and fear for no justifiable reason. This obsession with Iran is bewildering. If the people knew the truth, they would strongly favor a different way to interact with Iran.

Let’s not forget that the Iran crisis started not 31 years ago when the Iran Sanctions Act was signed into law, not 35 years ago when Iranians overthrew the US-installed Shah, but rather 52 years ago when the US CIA overthrew the democratically-elected Iranian leader Mossadegh and put a brutal dictator into power. Our relations with the Iranians are marked by nearly six decades of blowback.

When the Cold War was winding down and the military-industrial complex needed a new enemy to justify enormous military spending, it was decided that Iran should be the latest “threat” to the US. That’s when sanctions really picked up steam. But as we know from our own CIA National Intelligence Estimate of 2007, the stories about Iran building a nuclear weapon were all lies. Though those lies continue to be repeated to this day.

It is unfortunate that Iran was forced to give up some of its sovereignty to allow restrictions on a nuclear energy program that was never found to be in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But if the net result is the end of sanctions and at least a temporary reprieve from the constant neocon demands for attack, there is much to cheer in the agreement. Peace and prosperity arise from friendly relations and trade – and especially when governments get out of the way.

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.

After a Twelve-Year Mistake in Iraq, We Must Just March Home – Article by Ron Paul

After a Twelve-Year Mistake in Iraq, We Must Just March Home – Article by Ron Paul

The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
March 23, 2015
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Twelve years ago last week, the US launched its invasion of Iraq, an act the late General William Odom predicted would turn out to be “the greatest strategic disaster in US history.”

Before the attack I was accused of exaggerating the potential costs of the war when I warned that it could end up costing as much as $100 billion. One trillion dollars later, with not one but two “mission accomplished” moments, we are still not done intervening in Iraq.

President Obama last year ordered the US military back into Iraq for the third time. It seems the Iraq “surge” and the Sunni “Awakening,” for which General David Petraeus had been given much credit, were not as successful as was claimed at the time. From the sectarian violence unleashed by the US invasion of Iraq emerged al-Qaeda and then its more radical spin-off, ISIS. So Obama sent the US military back.

We recently gained even more evidence that the initial war was sold on lies and fabrications. The CIA finally declassified much of its 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was the chief document used by the Bush Administration to justify the US attack. According to the Estimate, the US Intelligence Community concluded that:

‘[W]e are unable to determine whether [biological weapons] agent research has resumed…’ And: ‘the information we have on Iraqi nuclear personnel does not appear consistent with a coherent effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program.’

But even as the US Intelligence Community had reached this conclusion, President Bush told the American people that Iraq, “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons” and “the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.”

Likewise, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “bulletproof” evidence that Saddam Hussein had ties with al-Qaeda was contradicted by the National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that there was no operational tie between Hussein’s government and al-Qaeda.

Even National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s famous statement that the aluminum tubes that Iraq was purchasing “are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs,” and “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” was based on evidence she must have known at the time was false. According to the NIE, the Energy Department had already concluded that the tubes were “consistent with applications to rocket motors” and “this is the more likely end use.”

It is hard to believe that in a society supposedly governed by the rule of law, US leaders can escape any penalty for using blatantly false information – that they had to know at the time was false – to launch a pre-emptive attack on a country that posed no threat to the United States. The fact that they got away with it simply makes it all the easier for Washington’s interventionists to try the same tricks again. They already did with Libya and Syria. It is likely they are also doing the same with claims of a Russian “invasion” of Ukraine.

Last week President Obama correctly blamed the current chaos in Iraq on the Bush Administration’s decision to invade. He said, “… ISIL is a direct outgrowth of al Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion. Which is an example of unintended consequences. Which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.”

However, if the US intervention in Iraq created the “unintended consequences” of ISIS and al-Qaeda, how is it that more US intervention can solve the problem?

A war based on lies cannot be fixed by launching another war. We must just march home. And stay home.

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.