Ron Paul on CNN: This is Obama’s War! End it now!

129 Responses

By RonPaul.com on July 5, 2010




Channel: CNN
Date: 7/4/2010

Transcript

Don Lemon: So other conservatives have called on Steele to step down, like Dick Cheney and Weekly Standard editor Senator Bill Kristol. But you won’t hear Texas Congressman Ron Paul joining that drumbeat. He is coming out in support of Steel’s comments and he is joining us live via Skype. Happy 4th of July to you, Congressman. And before we misconstrue anything, you are coming out in support of these comments, right?

Ron Paul: Well, not in the entirety but I come out in support of Chairman Steele because I think it was overkill. He made a very casual comment. He wasn’t setting policy. And all of a sudden people jump on him like we’re not allowed to have a discussion. As a matter of fact, I did like what he said. So I enjoyed the fact that we’re willing to have a discussion about the popularity of this war. And truly it is Obama’s war, even though it was started during the last administration. Obama said this is the Good War, he’s expanding the war and the American people aren’t with him. The majority of the American people are tired of the war and they’d like to see an end. They’d like to see our troops come home. I mean, this idea that as soon as somebody has a discussion, even if it’s an off-hand discussion, people are clamoring for him to resign… I don’t think that’s quite fair.

Don Lemon: Congressman, you have to let me get in on this, because it seems like, you know, I understand what you’re saying; you want people to talk about the war. But it seems like he wasn’t factually correct. Very little of what he said, if anything, was correct factually in those comments. And he came back himself and clarified them, so why are you supporting him for comments that he had to clarify?

Ron Paul: Well, I didn’t hear his clarification. But if he clarified his statement… because he wasn’t making a policy statement. He came back and said, “I’m not stating policy, that’s not exactly my position as you interpreted it”.

Don Lemon: But he wasn’t telling the truth.

Ron Paul: Pardon me?

Don Lemon: He wasn’t telling the truth.

Ron Paul: Well, I think you’re not telling the truth right now yourself.

Don Lemon: He said that this war was started by the Obama administration that no one wanted to go into this war. In fact, when we went into this war, most of the country supported it and it was started, again, under President Bush. So most of what he said, if not all of it, was not factually correct.

Ron Paul: When he saying politically this is Obama’s war. Even in the last campaign, matter of fact, I thought Obama was more hawkish on this war than McCain was, because he was calling for increasing troops in Afghanistan before the Republicans were. So I think, in many ways, at least politically, this is Obama’s war and it is a political issue. The Republicans really suffered from the fact that the Iraq war continued for so long and it hurt us at the polls. So I think that Republicans ought to have a right to at least say that maybe this war isn’t going well and not blindly support every single thing that is being done. And then all of a sudden if an individual does, you know, people accuse you, “Oh, you’re un-American, you’re unpatriotic.” And they pile on and then they pressure somebody like Chairman Steele that he has to back off. But he didn’t have a policy statement, he was merely making a casual statement. And when he said that for over a thousand years, and even longer, nobody has been successful in invading Afghanistan, he is telling the truth. That is not a lie.

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Ron Paul gets 1 write-in vote in Poland election

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By RonPaul.com on July 5, 2010





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Big Government and the Fed: A Sinister Alliance

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By RonPaul.com on July 4, 2010




More Power for the Fed

by Ron Paul

Last week I was pleased to see my Republican colleagues take up the cause to fully and completely audit the Federal Reserve by including my language from the Federal Reserve Transparency Act in a Motion to Recommit the financial regulation reform bill. Although this effort was defeated by the Democrat majority, there were many good reasons to support it.

The Federal Reserve Transparency Act would eliminate restrictions on GAO audits of the Federal Reserve and open Fed operations to Congressional oversight. Additionally, audits could include discount window operations, open market operations, and agreements with foreign central banks, such as the ongoing dollar swap operations with European central banks.

Since its inception, the Federal Reserve has always operated in the shadows, without sufficient scrutiny or oversight, while Congress has kept its hands off and its eyes closed. The Federal Reserve has presided over the near-complete destruction of the United States dollar. Since 1913 the dollar has lost over 95% its purchasing power, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Transparency Act would achieve much-needed transparency of the Federal Reserve System.

However, House and Senate negotiators failed to include the full language of my legislation in the conference report for the financial reform bill, and the full Congress missed yet another opportunity to demand accountability from the Federal Reserve by defeating the Republicans’ motion to recommit. Over 320 members of Congress from both parties cosponsored my original bill, which was incorporated into that motion to recommit. Almost 200 members of Congress who care about Federal Reserve transparency voted for this motion to recommit. Unfortunately, they found themselves in the minority.

Any legitimate objections to the audit proposal were addressed in the language of the motion to recommit. Thus, it is clear that the real reasons for opposing it are unstated and indefensible. The real reasons are that politicians like to spend money far exceeding income and it is convenient to have an enabler of this in the Federal Reserve. The easier it is for the Fed to create money, hidden from public view and accountability, the easier it is for politicians to spend that money and make sure their friends and interests are taken care of through shady political processes.

The broader reasons for supporting this entire financial regulatory reform bill are just as sinister. This is not about cracking down on big banks as some claim. Rather, this is about not wasting a crisis. This is about using a traumatic event to increase government power and control over the economy. If it was really about addressing the causes of this recession, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would have been dealt with, or abolished. Failed companies would just fail, rather than being bailed out. Instead, a permanent bailout mechanism is being established. The Fed, and its ability to control interest rates and create cheap money, would be reformed or better yet, abolished. But instead its power is being increased and this Congress refuses to even fully audit it!

So yet again in the midst of a crisis, government insists on acting, and in ways far outside the scope of the Constitution, hoping that the crisis gives them cover. The truth is that in crises is when we need Constitutional limitations the most.

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Ron Paul Congratulates Michael Steele

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By RonPaul.com on July 3, 2010





Congressman Ron Paul today issued the following statement on Michael Steele’s recent comments that Afghanistan is a war of President Obama’s choosing:

“I would like to congratulate Michael Steele for his leadership on one of the most important issues of today. He is absolutely right: Afghanistan is now Obama’s war. During the 2008 campaign, Obama was out in front in insisting that more troops be sent to Afghanistan. Obama called for expanding the war even as he pretended to be a peace candidate.

“Michael Steele should not resign. Smart policies make smart politics. He is guiding the party in the right direction and we are on the verge of victory this fall. Chairman Steele should not back off. He is giving the country, especially young people, hope as he speaks truth about this war.

“I have to ask myself, what is the agenda of the harsh critics demanding this resignation? Why do they support Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama’s war?

“The American people are sick and tired spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year, draining our economy and straining our military. Michael Steele has it right and Republicans should stick by him.”

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Ron Paul: The War That’s Not a War

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By RonPaul.com on July 2, 2010




Statement of Congressman Ron Paul
United States House of Representatives

The War That’s Not a War

July 1, 2010

In January 1991, we went to war in the Middle East against Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s dictator who was our ally during the Iran-Iraq war. A border dispute between Kuwait and Iraq broke out after our State Department gave a green light for Hussein’s invasion.

After Iraq’s successful invasion of Kuwait we reacted with gusto and have been militarily involved in the entire region, six thousand miles from our shores, ever since. This has included Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. After twenty years of killing and a couple trillion dollars wasted, not only does the fighting continue with no end in sight, but our leaders threaten to spread our bombs of benevolence on Iran.

For most Americans, we are at war — at war against a tactic called terrorism, not a country.

This allows our military to go any place in the world without limits as to time or place.

But how can we be at war? Congress has not declared war as required by the Constitution.

That is true, but our presidents have and Congress and the people have not objected. Congress obediently provides all the money requested for the “war.”

People are dying, bombs are dropped, our soldiers are shot at and killed.

Our soldiers wear uniforms; our enemies do not. They are not part of any government. They have no planes, no tanks, no ships, no missiles, and no modern technology.

What kind of a war is this anyway? If it really is one. If it was a real war we would have won it by now.

Our stated goal since 9/11 has been to destroy al Qaeda. Was al Qaeda in Iraq? Not under Saddam Hussein. Our leaders lied us into invading Iraq and deceived us into occupying Afghanistan.

There’s still really no al Qaeda in Iraq and only a hundred or so in Afghanistan, yet there is no end in sight to the “war.” Could there have been other reasons for this war that is not a war?

Military victory in Afghanistan is illusive. Does anyone really know whom we are fighting and why?

Why has the war not ended? Nine years and it continues to spread. Some claim it is to keep America safe, that our soldiers are fighting and dying for our freedom, defending our Constitution. Are we being lied to in order to keep us in this spreading war, just as we were lied to in the 1960′s to keep us in Vietnam?

We own the Iraq government as we do Afghanistan’s. In Afghanistan we are fighting the Taliban-those dangerous people with guns, defending their homeland.

Once they were called the Mujahideen, our old allies, along with Osama bin Laden, in the fight to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980′s.

In that effort our CIA funded radical jihad against those nasty foreign occupiers-the Russians.

What gratitude? Those same people now resent our benevolent occupation-with a little violence thrown in.

The resistance to our presence grows as our perseverance wanes.

Our people are waking up but our officials refuse to recognize the longer we stay the greater is the support for those dedicated to the principle that Afghanistan is for Afghans, who resent all foreign occupation.

The harder we fight a war that is not a war, the weaker we get and the stronger becomes our enemy.

When an enemy without weapons can resist an army of great strength, the most powerful of all history, one should ask, who has the moral high ground?

Military failure in Afghanistan is to be our destiny. Changing generals without changing our policies or our policy makers perpetuates our agony and delays the inevitable.

This is not a war that our generals have been trained for. Nation building, police work, social engineering is never a job for foreign occupiers and never an appropriate job for soldiers trained to win wars.

A military victory is no longer even a stated goal of our military leaders or our politicians, as they know that type of victory is impossible.

The sad story is:

This war is against ourselves, our values, our Constitution, our financial well being and common sense, and at the rate we are going, it is going to end badly. What we need are honest leaders with character and a new foreign policy.

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Ron Paul: Most Powerful Army Fighting War Against People Who Have NO Tanks! NO Planes! NO Ships!

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By RonPaul.com on July 2, 2010




Date: 07/01/2010

Transcript

Ron Paul: Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule. It’s been described rather vividly on this side of the aisle how messy this process is, so I strongly oppose this. Of course, I also strongly oppose the funding, especially the funding for the war. This is a war that I’ve objected to for a very long time, this war is going badly, it’s not a declared war. We don’t have a precise enemy. The Taliban is the spoken enemy, and yet the Taliban are individuals who have never committed terrorism outside their homeland. The Taliban is an outgrowth of the Mujahedeen who we were at one time allies with, along with Osama Bin Laden.

So it isn’t a very neat little war. Here we are, we are the most powerful nation in the world, the most powerful army ever organized in the history of the world. And yet we are fighting a war that essentially is not a war. We’re fighting a war against individuals that have no tanks, no planes, no ships, no modern technology, and we’re not doing well. There is something wrong. If it were truly a war, a declared war, and we knew who the enemy was, the war would be over. The fact that the war is not over after 9 years, it’s draining us, it’s draining us of life and limb, it’s draining us of funding. The wars in the Middle East have drained trillions of dollars, and we are suffering from a severe financial crisis here at home.

So it’s time that we start looking abroad and looking at what we’re trying to maintain. We’re in over 130 countries, 900 bases. It’s unsustainable. It was brought to attention this past week that we were having problems. If we were doing well in Afghanistan, we wouldn’t be firing our generals. We want to put the blame on the generals, “if we changed the generals, then everything is going to be okay.” But our generals are trained to fight wars, they’re not trained to be nation builders and social workers and policemen. So this is a war that I see is going to be very difficult, if not impossible to win until we change our policy.

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