by Ron Paul

Congressional hearings, White House damage control, endless op-eds, accusations, and defensive denials. Controversy over the events in Benghazi last September took center stage in Washington and elsewhere last week. However, the whole discussion is again more of a sideshow. Each side seeks to score political points instead of asking the real questions about the attack on the US facility, which resulted in the death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Republicans smell a political opportunity over evidence that the Administration heavily edited initial intelligence community talking points about the attack to remove or soften anything that might reflect badly on the president or the State Department.

Are we are supposed to be shocked by such behavior? Are we supposed to forget that this kind of whitewashing of facts is standard operating procedure when it comes to the US government?

Democrats in Congress have offered the even less convincing explanation for Benghazi, that somehow the attack occurred due to Republican sponsored cuts in the security budget at facilities overseas. With a one trillion dollar military budget, it is hard to take this seriously.

It appears that the Administration scrubbed initial intelligence reports of references to extremist Islamist involvement in the attacks, preferring to craft a lie that the demonstrations were a spontaneous response to an anti-Islamic video that developed into a full-out attack on the US outpost.

Who can blame the administration for wanting to shift the focus? The Islamic radicals who attacked Benghazi were the same people let loose by the US-led attack on Libya. They were the rebels on whose behalf the US overthrew the Libyan government. Ambassador Stevens was slain by the same Islamic radicals he personally assisted just over one year earlier.

But the Republicans in Congress also want to shift the blame. They supported the Obama Administration’s policy of bombing Libya and overthrowing its government. They also repeated the same manufactured claims that Gaddafi was “killing his own people” and was about to commit mass genocide if he were not stopped. Republicans want to draw attention to the President’s editing talking points in hopes no one will notice that if the attack on Libya they supported had not taken place, Ambassador Stevens would be alive today.

Neither side wants to talk about the real lesson of Benghazi: interventionism always carries with it unintended consequences. The US attack on Libya led to the unleashing of Islamist radicals in Libya. These radicals have destroyed the country, murdered thousands, and killed the US ambassador. Some of these then turned their attention to Mali which required another intervention by the US and France.

Previously secure weapons in Libya flooded the region after the US attack, with many of them going to Islamist radicals who make up the majority of those fighting to overthrow the government in Syria. The US government has intervened in the Syrian conflict on behalf of the same rebels it assisted in the Libya conflict, likely helping with the weapons transfers. With word out that these rebels are mostly affiliated with al Qaeda, the US is now intervening to persuade some factions of the Syrian rebels to kill other factions before completing the task of ousting the Syrian government. It is the dizzying cycle of interventionism.

The real lesson of Benghazi will not be learned because neither Republicans nor Democrats want to hear it. But it is our interventionist foreign policy and its unintended consequences that have created these problems, including the attack and murder of Ambassador Stevens. The disputed talking points and White House whitewashing are just a sideshow.

Transcript

Neil Cavuto: This is Neil Cavuto, and whether President Obama ends up sending troops or just some well-placed tomahawks, the President is in a very tough placed now. He’s already warned Syria that if he ever got proof it used chemical weapons on its people, there would be hell to pay, even if we can’t pay for that hell. Dr. Ron Paul says, the truth is, consequences costs, so quit offering ultimatums we can’t pay for, even if we did have the money to pay for them. The Congressman and former presidential candidate joins us right now. Congressman, you would just say, “Don’t even get involved, let the Syrians do whatever they want”?

Ron Paul: Yes, pretty much that way, because it’s not our business, our national security isn’t threatened, and it smells a little bit like the argument going into Iraq: weapons of mass destruction, poisonous gasses, and all that. He drew the line in the sand, or whatever he called it, but for him to worry about going over that line, I don’t know where the evidence is. No, they don’t have evidence, I think he overstated that in the first place, and he shouldn’t be in a dilemma, he should just stay out of it.

Neil Cavuto: What if they did have unequivocal evidence that Bashar al-Assad is using these weapons routinely against his own people, Congressman, more than the former President Bush had on the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

Ron Paul: Well, look how many hundreds of millions of people were killed in the 20th century by bad regimes? I would say that the likelihood of that happening is slim, so I would still argue the case for staying out of it, unless they were using it against us and affecting our national security. But they couldn’t possibly use it against us if we weren’t in their backyard. I mean, we’re in Jordan, and I’m sure we have plenty of CIA agents already in Syria. We support the Syrian rebels, so we’re already very much involved. So whether you’re machine-gunned, or you’re gassed or a drone missile kills you, it’s still very, very dangerous. But I think we’re looking for trouble by being there. And to answer your questions, no, just because there’s evidence that they do have a weapon, I would say that is not a justification to send our young people over there to get killed.

Neil Cavuto: In other words, killing people is killing people, whether you’re doing it with chemical weapons or shooting them on the streets.

Ron Paul: Yes, you want to minimize that. The responsibility for an American public official should be to make sure Americans don’t get involved needlessly, don’t get involved in the internal affairs of other nations, and don’t set the stage for a lot of Americans being killed. So there’s a lot of responsibility there. But I think going in is the worst thing to do, especially under these circumstances, especially because it would take a lot of convincing to have the American people actually believe that Assad is a threat to us and he actually has weapons that we’re threatened by. They’ve been through those lies before, and they’re not going to buy into it this time, I think they’re healthily skeptical of this right now.

Neil Cavuto: And we’re a lot poor than we were when prior threats were made, right, so we don’t have the money. But we could put it, as we do with so much else, on the credit card, I guess. But your point is that whether we can afford this or not, we just dig a deeper whole every time we do it?

Ron Paul: Yes, and that’s part of the reason. But the first reason is we don’t have the moral imperative to go there, we don’t the legal authority to do it, it never works and it backfires on us. And to climax the whole argument, we don’t have any money. And this is what brings great nations down, they think they own the world and they spread themselves around too much. It brought the Soviets down and it’s going to bring us down. Because this is one place I think the American people from the Left and Right could come together and say, “Let’s not close down the airports, and let’s not take away child healthcare, but let’s quit fighting these wars. These wars overseas are costing us trillions of dollars a year, and we have nothing to show for it except more enemies. So to me, the logical place to cut is overseas. But we keep expanding it, and it’s a sacred cow and we can’t cut a nickel out of the military. This proposal, which was all fictitious about cutting FAA funds and closing some of the airports and causing great problems for the American people, why didn’t they just save twice that much from some of this nonsense overseas? But no, they never suggest that, it’s a sacred cow, the military-industrial complex controls things, and you’re not even allowed to criticize it and say too much money is being spent.

Neil Cavuto: And, bottom line, we haven’t found replacement cuts for the workers, so points well taken. Ron Paul, thank you very, very much.

Ron Paul: Sure thing.

by Ron Paul

William Kristol knows what is wrong with the United States. As he wrote recently in the flagship magazine of the neo-conservatives, the Weekly Standard, the problem with the US is that we seem to have lost our appetite for war. According to Kristol, the troubles that have befallen us in the 20th century have all been the result of these periodic bouts of war-weariness, a kind of virus that we catch from time to time.

He claims because of the US “drawdown” in Europe after World War II, Stalin subjugated Eastern Europe. Because of war weariness the United States stopped bombing Southeast Asia in the 1970s, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. War weariness through the 1990s led to Rwanda, Milosevic, and the rise of the Taliban. It was our fault for not fighting on! According to Kristol, our failure to act as the policeman of the world is why we were attacked on September 11, 2001. Of the 1990s, he wrote, “[t]hat decade of not policing the world ended with 9/11.”

That revisionism is too much even for fellow neo-conservatives like Paul Wolfowitz to swallow. In a 2003 interview, Wolfowitz admitted that it was the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia that led to the growth of al-Qaeda:

“(W)e can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It’s been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina.”

But for Kristol and his allies there is never enough war. According to a new study by Brown University, the US invasion of Iraq cost some 190,000 lives, most of them non-combatants. It has cost more than $1.7 trillion, and when all is said and done including interest the cost may well be $6 trillion. Some $212 billion was spent on Iraqi reconstruction with nothing to show for it. Total deaths from US war on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have been at least 329, 000. None of this is enough for Kristol.

The neo-con ideology promotes endless war, but neo-cons fight their battles with the blood of others. From the comfortable, subsidized offices of magazines like the Weekly Standard, the neo-conservatives urge the United States to engage in endless war – to be fought by the victims of the “poverty draft” from states where there are few jobs. Ironically, these young people cannot find more productive work because the Federal Reserve’s endless money printing to keep the war machine turning has destroyed our economy. The six trillion dollars that will be spent on the Iraq war are merely pieces of printed paper that further erode the dollar’s purchasing power now and well into the future. It is the inflation tax, which is the most regressive and cruel of all.

Yes, Americans are war weary, concedes Kristol. But he does not blame the average American. The real problem is that the president has dropped the ball on terrifying Americans with the lies and imaginary threats that led to the invasion of Iraq. Writes Kristol: “One can’t, for example, be surprised at the ebbing support of the American public for the war in Afghanistan years after the president stopped trying to mobilize their support, stopped heralding the successes of the troops he’d sent there, and stopped explaining the importance of their mission.”

If only we had more war propaganda from the highest levels of government we could be cured of this war-weariness. Ten years ago the US invaded Iraq under the influence of neo-conservative lies. Those lies continued to promote US military action in places like Libya, and next on their agenda is Syria and then on to Iran. It is time for the American people to shout “enough!”

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have again reached a flashpoint, as the US and South Korea trade threats with the government of North Korea. North Korea has threatened retaliation for US/South Korean provocations and has, it claims, abrogated the armistice that ended the Korean War some 60 years ago.

On the other side, the US and South Korea held a three day naval exercise last month that included, among many other warships, an American nuclear-powered submarine. This month, the US and South Korea are conducting another joint military exercise, this time with the US flying nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over the Korean peninsula.

Much of the current escalation came after the US drew up yet another set of sanctions for the UN Security Council to impose on North Korea. US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, who drafted the language, promised that this round of sanctions “will bite and bite hard.” That is unlikely, as sanctions have a pretty lousy track record. However, the North Korean government retaliated against the new sanctions with bellicose threats to launch a nuclear first strike against the US.

The US response to the threats has been entirely predictable. Rather than seek a way to tone down the rhetoric, newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that the Pentagon, which just weeks ago claimed the “sequestration” would leave the US defenseless, would spend another billion dollars to deploy additional missile interceptors along the Pacific. This means money and jobs for a military-industrial complex that never really faced any threat of belt-tightening, as both parties continue to view the military as essentially a jobs program.

Secretary Hagel, when announcing the additional $1 billion spending spree, sounded far more hawkish than his recent dovish defenders probably hoped, stating, “We will strengthen our homeland defense, maintain our commitments to our allies and partners, and make clear to the world that the United States stands firm against aggression.” Obviously, monthly US-South Korean joint military exercises near North Korean borders are not considered aggression. Only North Korean bellicosity. I wonder how the Obama Administration would view a Chinese-Mexican joint military exercise on the Texas border.

Where will it all end? From the look of it, not well. The US foreign policy playbook has only one page: do the same thing over and over that has not worked in the past and hope it begins to work in the future.

The real question is why are we still in Korea at all. Why, after 60 years, is the United States military still occupying South Korea, patrolling its borders, inserting itself into the dispute between North and South? What might have happened if the US had not maintained such a force in Korea, enforcing the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) and keeping families on either side from having contacts with each other?

The popular view is that because North Korea is an isolated dictatorship run by irrationals, the only possible US response is to keep the situation militarized. To maintain the military threat. To continue to provoke. And always, impose more US-authored sanctions. However, one reason North Korea is isolated is the isolationist policies of the US government. It is isolationist to impose sanctions, to prohibit Americans from doing business, to impede or forbid travel by US citizens to countries with which the US government disagrees. North Korea is isolated in part because our government has isolated it. North Korea threatens to attack South Korea and the United States partly because South Korea and the United States continue to mount very provocative military exercises on North Korea’s border. That does not mean that I am in favor of the North Korean government. Far from it. Nor do I believe they are necessarily in favor of peace. But I do recognize when a policy is counter-productive.

I am the opposite of an isolationist. I believe we must engage the rest of the world, not with force or arms or hectoring about internal political developments. We must engage the rest of the world with our ideas, bringing people together rather than building walls or DMZs to keep them apart. A change in our policy may not produce an instant opening or improvement, but haven’t we tried the old, failed approach long enough? Does continuing to provoke North Korea show any real hope of diffusing the gathering storm?

What is the real Korean threat? The real “Korea threat” is the threat to the US economy by over-reacting to saber rattling by a third world country with another billion dollars in military spending. We cannot afford this empire, and sooner or later it will end.

Source

Much of our attention lately has been focused on the use of drone strikes against US citizens on US soil. The Administration recently affirmed that it does not have the right to kill Americans on US soil by drone…unless it deems them “combatants” first. This should not make us feel any better – that was the same technique used to send so many to Guantanamo even though it was known they had not committed a crime against the US. Call someone “combatant” and they lose all right to life and liberty without trial. It seems like a bad dream.

Unfortunately, less attention has been paid to another very disturbing and dangerous aspect of the US use of drones to kill. As the UK Guardian newspaper reported yesterday, the United States has been using its military to attack the sovereign territory of Pakistan without the consent of the government of Pakistan. Over continued objections of the government of Pakistan, including regularly delivered strong notes of protest, the US government continues to use its drones to attack Pakistani citizens on Pakistani soil.

Much of those attacks are what is called “signature strikes,” which means the US targets individuals exhibiting certain kinds of behaviors or wearing certain types of clothing rather than any evidence of actual wrongdoing or violent acts in progress. Former US ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter had this to say last year about these strikes, when asked to define who can be targeted: “The definition is a male between the ages of 20 and 40.”

According to the Guardian article, the UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights Ben Emmerson returned from a three day trip to Pakistan and concluded:

“The position of the government of Pakistan is quite clear. It does not consent to the use of drones by the United States on its territory and it considers this to be a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“As a matter of international law the US drone campaign in Pakistan is therefore being conducted without the consent of the elected representatives of the people, or the legitimate government of the state. It involves the use of force on the territory of another state without its consent and is therefore a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.”

To date, Pakistan estimates that 2,200 deaths had been caused by drone strikes and a further 600 people had suffered serious injuries. Hundreds of the dead are non-combatants, including scores of women and children.

The US claims its attacks on Pakistan are authorized by the initial Authorization for the Use of Force granted to the president to retaliate against those who attacked or assisted in the attack on the US on 9/11. The targets in Pakistan are neither of those. The operation is therefore an attack on a sovereign nation in total absence of any legal Congressional authority. In other words, the US is illegally at war with Pakistan. Is this reckless droning of sovereign nations making us all more vulnerable to retaliation? After all, wars are often two-way streets.

The US government touts the rule of law as it lectures the rest of the world on how it should be governed. When it comes to actually observing the rule of law, it seems the US view is “do what we say, not what we do.” How much longer can we have any credibility with the rest of the world with this kind of arrogant imperialism?

Source

Transcript

Bill Gates: I’m a little bit concerned about the uncertainty, and am speaking up so that as we make tradeoffs, hopefully we don’t cut things that really have great humanitarian and security benefits.

Neil Cavuto: Alright, billionaire Bill Gates is all out for foreign aid, and not-so-billionaire Ron Paul is all out on stopping foreign aid. The good Congressman and former presidential candidate is joining us on the phone right now. Congressman, Bill Gates, maybe for all the right and good reasons, wants to continue it because he says it does more to feed the poor and help those who really need it, even outweighing some of the abuse and waste that comes with that. What do you say?

Ron Paul: Well, I would say, instead of what? If you cut out the warmongering and cut some of the deficit down and gave some away with humanitarian reasons, I’m not going to fight it, even though I don’t have any confidence in that. Because I think foreign aid too often gets in the hands of the politicians and they get into warring factions and they fight over it. And I don’t think the record is very good that it helps people. But we spent a lot of time on how this money is being spent, but we never talk about where the money comes from. If you take Bill Gates, he has a lot of money in his foundation, but he doesn’t get taxed on that. But poor people get taxed, whether it’s the inflation tax or the income tax or whatever, so they end up paying. And my argument for foreign aid is that you take money from poor people in this country and it ends up in the pockets of the rich people in poor countries.

Neil Cavuto: I guess he’s getting beyond all that, and this is the issue I want to raise with you … and I’m paraphrasing and I hope I’ve got it right, Congressman, bear with me … for all of the waste and abuse and sometimes getting in the wrong hands and sometimes getting into no hands, we still have, since foreign aid started in this country, fewer starving people, more educated people across the globe. And that, he says, is a testament to generous Americans over the years whose money has been put to more good than it has harm. What say you?

Ron Paul: Well, that’s an opinion, I don’t happen to agree with it, because there are other things that happened around the world. Economies do change, and the breakdown of the Soviet System had a lot to do with increasing prosperity. But if it was prosperity that we had to concentrate on, we might think of what’s happening in New York City right now. There are 50,000 people sleeping out on the streets every night while the rich get richer. If you worry about education, I can’t even believe this statistic, but it says that 80% of those graduating from high school in New York City can’t read. So why do we have to gamble on taking money from people and going overseas. Although I did put it in prospective when we started by saying “instead of what”. If you can save some money by cutting out drone missiles, looking for trouble bombing people and invading countries and fighting useless wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, I would say yes, save some money, cut back on the deficit, and try the humanitarian thing. That would be much better. But I still don’t endorse it morally, and I don’t believe it’s practical. But since I’m such a practical guy, and I’m willing to bend a little bit, I would say do that. But just by taking more money from poor people or inflating the currency, you’re undermining production and you’re going to have more people sleeping on the streets in New York, and their education will not get any better.

Neil Cavuto: Ron Paul, thank you very much.

Ron Paul: Thank you.

by Ron Paul

Last week the US Senate took a break from debating the phony cuts known as “sequestration,” for Senator Rand Paul to hold a 13-hour filibuster to force the Obama administration to state whether it believes the President has the right to kill American citizens with drones on US soil. I find it tragic that there has to be a discussion on an issue that should be so self-evident.

However, feeling the pressure, the administration finally said “no,” but in language so twisted that no one should feel in the slightest bit reassured. According to Attorney General Eric Holder, the president does not believe he has the right to use the military to kill an American who is “not engaged in combat on American soil.” Left undefined is how the administration defines “combat.” As constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley wrote last week, “one can easily foresee this or a future president insisting that an alleged terrorism conspiracy is a form of ‘combat’.”

The administration’s outrageous response to the most serious Constitutional question of all — when a government can kill its own citizens — is clear evidence of an executive branch out of control.

Many of the drafters of the Constitution envisioned the presidency as an office with very limited powers, but even the most dedicated proponents of a strong presidency at the time would be shocked to see the concentration of power in the modern presidency.

Today the presidency is viewed as the center of the federal government, with each successive administration expanding the power of the executive at the expense of Congress and the people.

Ironically, some of the worst offenders are those who campaigned promising to reverse the power grabs of their predecessors. For example, candidate George W. Bush campaigned on a “humble foreign policy,” but as president he attacked Iraq based on his own administration’s lies and claimed the right to indefinitely detain anyone he deemed an “enemy combatant.”

Candidate Barack Obama promised he would reverse his predecessor’s constitutional abuses. Yet not only has President Obama not closed Guantanamo Bay, he reportedly holds weekly meetings in the oval office to draw up “kills lists,” uses drones against American citizens, and routinely sends the US military into combat abroad without even consulting Congress!

The modern use of “executive orders” also usurps the lawmaking function of Congress. The most notable recent example was President Obama’s January series of executive orders on gun control, but unfortunately there are countless other examples over the last several administrations.

Ultimately, the fault for the expansion of presidential power lies with Congress. Too many members of Congress are all too eager to avoid responsibility for controversial actions, preferring to “pass the buck” to the president. For example, Congress no longer declares war, but instead passes an “authorization of force” telling the president he can go to war when or if he wants!

On domestic policy, Congress passes large, vaguely-worded pieces of legislation and leaves it to the president and the bureaucrats to fill in the details. Many members of Congress score points with their constituents railing against “the faceless D.C. bureaucrats” while never mentioning that they voted for the law that gave the bureaucrats their power!

Last week, a group of “fiscally conservative” senators even tried to give President Obama more authority over spending as a part of sequester replacement that would have “required” Obama to decide where to reduce spending and where to increase it. They want to restrain the president by giving him more authority?

Growth of executive power is a threat to liberty. Fortunately, Congress can restrain the executive simply by exercising its constitutional powers. The American people must demand that Congress stop passing the buck on its foreign and domestic policy responsibilities. If the people care about liberty, they will demand their representative stand up to the imperial president. Let us hope last week’s filibuster will give Congress the backbone it needs to do its job.

When John Kerry was confirmed as Secretary of State last week his first promise was to bring “new ideas” to the job. Particularly, he promised a new approach to the two-year long civil war in Syria. He immediately set out on a “listening tour” of Europe and the Middle East, presumably to help formulate those new ideas.

So what was Kerry’s big “new idea” on Syria? Drag the United States further into the conflict by promising to send the rebels an additional $60 million in aid. Only among the Washington foreign policy establishment could a promise to redouble efforts on an old idea be repackaged as a “new idea.” New ideas, old ideas, new approaches, improved approaches – they always seem to be the same thing: calls for more US intervention in conflicts thousands of miles away that have nothing to do with us.

The Kerry plan is to overtly provide more medical and food aid to armed insurgents seeking to overthrow the Syrian government. In directly assisting rebels with material that will help them fight more effectively, the US is signaling its new role as an open participant in the conflict. Can US weapons and troops be too far behind? The administration hopes that none of the aid it provides to US-backed rebels falls into the hands of other groups like the radical Islamist al-Nusra Front, which the US has designated a terrorist group. Yet according to press reports there is little separation on the ground between the various groups. It seems unreasonable to believe that assistance provided to one group will not wind up in the hands of another group.

Both Iraq and Libya have turned out to be far more radical and dangerous after their “liberation” that was supposed to usher in governments friendly to the United States. Does it make any sense to believe that Syria will be any different?

Kerry’s new ideas are actually old ideas, and they have over and over been proven to be bad ideas. Just as President Obama has shown that his foreign policy is more aggressive and warmongering than that of his predecessor, the new more “moderate” secretary of state shows us that he has every intention of furthering the notion that diplomacy flows from the barrel of a gun. Our interventionist foreign policy is bankrupting the country and turning the world against us. It must come to an end.

Source

Last year more US troops died by suicide than died in combat in Afghanistan. More than 20 percent of military personnel deployed to combat will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some 32 percent of US soldiers reported depression after deployments. More than 20 percent of active-duty military are on potentially dangerous psychotropic drugs; many are on multiple types. Violent crime among active duty military members increased 31 percent between 2006-2011.

The statistics, compiled by the military last year, are as telling as they are disturbing. The Defense Department scrambles to implement new programs to better treat the symptoms. They implement new substance abuse and psychological counseling programs while they continue to prescribe more dangerous psychotropic drugs. Unfortunately, most often ignored are the real causes of these alarming statistics.

The sharp rise in military suicides, drug and alcohol abuse, and domestic and other violence, is the unintended consequence of a violent foreign policy — of an endless and indefinable “global war on terrorism.”

Particularly in the past decade or so, we have lived in a society increasingly marked by belief in the use of force as a first and only option. We have seen wars of preemption and aggression, everywhere from Iraq to Pakistan to Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere. We have seen an unprecedented increase in the use of drones to kill overseas, often resulting in civilian deaths, which we call “collateral damage.” We have seen torture and assassination (even of American citizens) become official US policy. When asked by Senator Ron Wyden last week if the president has the right to assassinate American citizens on US soil, President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, John Brennan, could not even give a straight answer.

The warning that “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword” goes not only for individuals but for entire societies. It is a warning to all of us. A country or a society that lives with the violence of pre-emptive war in fact self-destructs.

Let us not forget that this endless war is brought to us primarily by the neo-conservatives who dominate foreign policy in both political parties and who never cease agitating for US military deployments overseas. Of course with very few exceptions they have declined to serve in the military themselves. These endless wars would not be possible, we should also remember, without the Federal Reserve printing the money out of thin air to finance our overseas empire. We are speeding toward national bankruptcy while at the same time turning the rest of the world against us with our aggressive foreign policy. Does anyone really believe this will make us safer and more secure?

Many who claim to support the military look the other way when the service-members return home broken in mind and body after years of deployments abroad. I served five years as a US military doctor in the difficult 1960s and even then saw some of this first-hand. During the 1960s the consequence of an unwise prolonged war tragically resulted in violence in our streets, and even students being shot by our military at Kent State University.

The truth is, killing strangers in unconstitutional and senseless wars causes guilt to the participant no matter what kind of military indoctrination is attempted. Those afflicted may attempt to bury the pain in alcohol or drugs or other destructive behaviors, but we see that only leads to more problems. It may not be popular to point this out, but it goes against human nature to kill a fellow human being for retaliating against those who initiate a war of aggression on their soil.

Who cares most for those in military service, those who agitate for more of what is destroying their lives and weakening our national defense, or the many of us who are urging a foreign policy of non-intervention and peace? If we are to survive, we must beware the seen and unseen consequences of pre-emptive war.

Chris Kyle’s death seems to confirm that “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” Treating PTSD at a firing range doesn’t make sense

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) February 4, 2013

Update: Ron Paul posted the following clarification on Facebook:

As a veteran, I certainly recognize that this weekend’s violence and killing of Chris Kyle were a tragic and sad event. My condolences and prayers go out to Mr. Kyle’s family. Unconstitutional and unnecessary wars have endless unintended consequences. A policy of non-violence, as Christ preached, would have prevented this and similar tragedies. -REP

From Wikipedia:

Live by the sword, die by the sword

The phrase is found in the Christian Book of Revelation, 13:10: “He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.” (Rev.13:10 KJV)

Commonly, the expression is understood to mean, “You can expect to become a victim of whatever means you use to get what you want.”

A proverb in the Gospel of Matthew, verse 26:52, describes a disciple (identified in the Gospel of John as Simon Peter) drawing a sword to defend against the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, but is rebuked by Jesus, who tells him to sheath the weapon:

Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword (Matthew 26:52, King James Version)

This exchange looms large in progressive Christian theories of violence and power.