, I diaried much of the recent House floor debate on H.Res. 921, a resolution condemning Hezbollah & Hamas and reaffirming Israel's right to self-defense. The resolution passed 410-8. Paul, the lone Republican no vote, joined Reps. Abercrombie, Conyers, Dingell, Kilpatrick, McDermott, Rahall and Stark in voting against the bill. Reps. Kaptur, Kucinich, Lee and Waters voted present, with both Kucinich and Lee stating that the bill didn't provide any tangible strategy for a way forward towards peace. (A similar resolution passed in the Senate by voice vote.)
Join me in extended for Paul's long-term outlook. (It isn't pretty.)
The back-and-forth between Paul and Lantos (D-CA), which is included in yesterday's diary, is well worth the read. Paul spoke of neutrality while Lantos dismissed the mere possibility of neutrality in such a situation.
Mainly, I want to focus on Paul's broader remarks on the topic.
Our administration talks about it all the time; taking out Iran, taking out the nuclear sites. But to do that, the theory is that these missiles had to be removed and, in a practical military sense, that seems very reasonable. So there could be the deliberateness of Hamas and Hezbollah precipitating the crisis from whatever gain they think, or deliberately precipitated by both the United States and Israel with the intent to follow up with bombing in Iran. And I am frightened about that. I think that may well occur.
I have talked to a lot of military people, a lot of CIA people, who actually believe this is a possibility within months. And this is the reason I have such great concern about what is happening in this area of the country, because if us going into Iraq didn't go so well, can anybody imagine what id going to happen when the bombs start to fall on Iran? I think it is going to be catastrophic. And there has been talk on television this past weekend, the beginning of World War III. And this war is about to spread, and this is the reason that I oppose this resolution, because, deep down in my heart, I believe that what we do here helps to provoke things and agitate things and bring us closer to a greater conflict. And I am just arguing that there is an alternative other than violence to settle some of these problems.
Now, a lot of the bombs have fallen on both sides, and of course, if they are coming from Lebanon, Syria and Iran are blamed, and they may well deserve the blame. But we haven't talked about who gets the blame for the other side. More people are getting killed on the other side. And as we mentioned before, innocent people are killed, and a lot of nonmilitary targets have been hit, farms and buildings and electric plants and airports that have nothing to do with the military.
And yet the reason I believe this is going to be worse is because we see it in this country the way we want to see it. And we have no willingness to think about how it might be seen elsewhere, like how is it going to be seen by 1 billion Muslims around the world? And you know, quite frankly, every single bomb that is dropped by Israel, by their calculation, and they have reason to believe so, those are US bombs. Those are our airplanes. We paid for them. And they get the money to buy these weapons. So whether it is deliberate or whatever, it doesn't matter. It is the perception by the Muslims who are radicalized by this.
You can't deny it. There are more radicals today than there were 2 or 3 years ago. And the reason why I am worried about this is we are now getting the information about the reaction to 9/11. 9/11 occured, and the immediate response by many of our leaders and the administration said, let's go to Iraq. People would say, well, why Iraq? Well, we have been planning on it all along. This is the opportunity.
As soon as this crisis built, we heard very similar comments. Let's go to Iran, you know, to go forward.
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So we go to war and our men and women die. We spend all this money, and we have elections. And then sometimes we don't like the results of the elections, so we ignore them.
What if we had elections in Saudi Arabia? What if we had elections in Egypt? And then what if their radicals were elected?
So we are fighting and dying to spread democracy. And it is probably one of the most dangerous things for us with our current foreign policy, is that when they do vote and elect Hezbollah and Hamas, then we have to reject the principle of democracy.
Self-determination is a great principle, and we should permit it and encourage self-determination. But encouraging elections under these circumstances, and by force, in hopes that we get our man in charge just doesn't work.
I think we are going to have regime changes, a lot more regime changes than most people want around here. I think the regime changes are coming in Saubi Arabia, and I think there will be a regime change maybe in Egypt. Who knows? In Libya. And you are going to be very unhappy with those regime changes.
So, yes, it was well intended to have regime change in Iraq. But what has it gotten us?
And now we want to spread that philosophy and have more regime changes, and who knows what the results are going to be? They are not going to be good. They are going to backfire on us.
You know, when Osama bin Laden responded to why, he had a list of reasons on why he encouraged or directed the attack on 9/11. And the one thing that he listed we shouldn't ignore, because as bad as that individual is, and as violent as he is, nobody has ever proven he tells lies....
And one of the reasons that he listed for this was back in 1982, back to the problems we had in Lebanon, there were 18,000 Lebanese and Palestinians killed. And who knows whose bombs and who was doing it? But you know, we were in there, although our troops weren't fighting and we left, but Israel was involved, 18,000. But regardless of whether or not we directed it or wanted it is irrelevant. The conclusion was that we were participants, and it rallied his troops and helped him organize to get people so hateful that they were willing to commit suicide terrorism and come here.
Now, we can ignore it and say, well, he is a lair. That is not the reason they did it. But we do that at our own peril.
Now, one of the reasons why I believe that it wouldn't be difficult to put the label USA on these weapons, obviously the airplanes have been built here. But what about the money? How much money have we given for weapons?
Between 1997 and 2004, and that doesn't even count the last 2 years, we gave over $7 billion in weapons grants. It wasn't a loan. It was a weapons grant.
Now, the neat thing about this, this was an economic deal because it was beneficial because under the foreign military financing program that we have, Israel is required to spend 74 percent of that back here. So you are talking about a military-industrial complex, a pretty good deal. You know, we subsidize them, send the money over here, it comes over here, and our arms manufacturers make even more money and then dig a bigger hole for us in foreign policy and contribute to the many problems that we have. And that amount of money, they get $2.3 billion of these military grants, and they automatically increase it $60 million per year. So it is locked in place.
Now, you say, well, that is money for our ally. And fine, if it was used for defense, maybe. But if it is used to antagonize 1 billion Muslims and there is no willingness to even consider the fact that we should look at it in a balanced way, and instead it is ridiculed and said, oh, this is ridiculous to think of neutrality or balance and think about both sides, and the innocent people dying on both sides should be considered.
So we are moving toward a major crisis, a major crisis financially and a major crisis in foreign policy. I don't believe we can maintain this.
So even if you totally disagree with our aggressive empire building and policing the world, let me tell you, I am going to win this argument, because we are running out of money. We are in big debt, and we are borrowing it. We borrowed $3 billion a day from countries like China and Japan and Saudi Arabia to finance this horrendous debt. And it won't be, it can't be continued. The dollar will eventually weaken. You are going to have horrendous inflation. Interest rates are going to go up, and it is going to be worse than the stagflation of the 1970s.
And domestic spending is never curtailed. We have been in charge of the Congress and the Presidency for several years now, and the government gets bigger, probably faster than it was before.
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But what if I am right? It is frightening, because if this leads to bombing in Iran, look for oil at $150 a barrel. Then the American people will wake up. They will say, hey what's going on here? Why is gasoline so expensive? It is expensive because we have less production out of Iraq, and it is expensive because the value of the dollar is going down. And it is expensive because they are anticipating this crisis is not going away, and what we do are antagonizing the world.
I, for humanity's sake, hope Rep. Paul is way off base here. But I also fear that he's entirely correct in his prognostications. Whether one support's H.Res. 921 is not really the issue, the issue is the way forward towards peace. From listening to the recent comments in the House (from both sides of the aisle I might add), you have to believe our elected representatives are either very naive or willfully ignorant. Does anyone seriously think that destroying the perceived 'root cause' will bring about everlasting peace towards the United States and Israel? That's about as realistic as the US being greated as liberators in Iraq, but that's what many of our elected representatives and dear Condi seem to think.
Can massive public outcry shift the debate towards more rational ground? I'm unconvinced but it's worth an attempt.