Antiwar.com Blog

Some supporters of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign may not know that congressman Paul was a champion of civil liberties even in the era before the U.S. government legalized torture.

Paul won the Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to Civil Liberties in 2002.  He is the only politician to ever win the award (named after the legendary psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, one of the great heroes of modern liberty).

Here are the comments I made at the award ceremony in November 2002 in Washington: 

It is my honor on behalf of the Szasz award committee to present the award this year to Congressman Ron Paul.

     Ron Paul speaks truth to power.     Congressman Paul  takes the high ground – stands on principle – and he often stands alone.  

     Last year, Paul was one of only three Republicans to vote against the Patriot Act  and the only member of the House to vote against the money laundering provisions of the Patriot Act.   Paul denounced that portion of the bill as “a laundry list of dangerous, unconstitutional power grabs…”  The type of honesty that is   damn near nonexistent in Washington.

     Ron Paul has made it clear from Day One where he stands on the War with Iraq. He stands on the Constitution on this – not on the public opinion polls. He is not finessing the issue.

     One thing I like about Paul is that he is wiling to question people’s motives – something that happens far too rarely in Washington.
    
     Back in mid-September, I was flipping on the TV at the end of the day – after a few beers – trolling on C SPAN.  And I happened to come upon a House hearing on the pending war with Iraq.  I think I missed the first couple hours of the hearing because chairman Henry Hyde announced that it was Congressman Paul’s chance to ask a question.
 
Paul scorned the hearing as “very one sided” and said “This turns out to be more propaganda for war than anything else.   We’re willing to go to war over phantom weapons.”
     And then he asked the two witnesses – Richard Perle and James Woolsey – whether they would personally be wiling to risk their lives for the war they so strongly advocated.
     Woolsey answered first.  He mentioned that he “flew a desk” during his two years in the army – but then stressed that it was not up to private citizens to decide whether to go to war – it was up to Congress.
     Then Perle answered. Perle was in London at the time – and they had a giant video screen up there for him to be seen.   The hearing setting looked like a scene out of Dr. Strangelove.  And there was a giant flag just to Perle’s right  – sort of like the Fox News Network on amphetamines.
 
   Perle opined: “Well, I find the question a particularly troubling question because the suggestion is that somehow it is illegitimate to make recommendation with respect to what one believes is in the best interest of the country and all of our citizens except in some intensely personal context.  And if I were in a position to serve, I would do so. But, that seems to me quite the wrong question, Congressman.  The question is how do we best protect the citizens of this country.”
   Woolsey chimed in: “This so-called chicken hawk argument does seem to me to be an extraordinarily unworthy argument.  And I think Senator John McCain has put it exactly where it belongs.  For one thing it says that if an American women or an openly gay American man supports the war that an opinion is unworthy or an over age, military age, American man, that that is an unworthy and ought to be an unconsidered opinion because none of those people are going to serve in combat. And I join Mr. Perle in saying that I think that it’s an extraordinarily unworthy ad hominem argument.” 

     Now – congressman Paul had not accused the two distinguished witnesses of being chickenhawks – they were the ones that brought this up.   But simply to directly challenge them made both Perle and Woolsey go strutting as if they had suffered some terrible insult.  I mean – since they were advocating killing foreigners – of course they had good intentions, right?
 
     Paul has done great work for freedom as far back as the mid-1970s.  His foundation for  Foundation for Rational Economic Education (FREE) has done cutting-edge work- such as its recent publication of his speech,  “The Case Against the Police State.”   His Liberty Committee has worked mightily to educate fellow congressmen on the danger of Leviathan.

+++++++

Paul’s 2002 comments on “phantom weapons” is a reminder that there was plenty of evidence available to doubt the Bush administration’s WMD pretext for clobbering Iraq.  On the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Paul issued a series of “Questions that Won’t be Asked About Iraq.”  Unfortunately, very few other people in Washington had Paul’s courage to doggedly demand key information before the bombing began.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

It’s unquestionably premature to conclude that Pakistan may displace Iran as the most urgent foreign-policy challenge likely to be faced by the Bush administration next year, but it’s beginning to look like a distinct possibility. For evidence, see his column in the Sunday New York Times by Tom Friedman in which he somewhat offhandedly asserts, “After Iraq and Pakistan, the most vexing foreign policy issues that will face the next president will be how to handle Iran,” and, more strikingly, a second Times column co-authored by neo-conservative Fred Kagan and liberal interventionist Michael O’Hanlon, entitled “Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem” — the latest example of the growing partnership between the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Brookings Institution. “We do not intend to be fear mongers,” according to the two authors who then proceed to argue that Washington needs to focus right now on how best to intervene militarily in the Muslim world’s second-most-populous nation to secure its nuclear stockpile if and when things get out of hand there. Their optimal goal is to get those weapons to New Mexico, but, if that proves impossible [for, say, political reasons], then the U.S. should “settle for establishing a remote redoubt within Pakistan, with the nuclear technology guarded by elite Pakistani forces backed up (and watched over) by crack international troops.”

The article itself is mind-blowing in the various scenarios it depicts; sending in, for example, “a sizable combat force — not only from the United States, but ideally also other Western powers and moderate Muslim nations” — in support of “the core of the Pakistan armed forces as they sought to hold the country together in the face of ineffective government, seceding border regions and Al Qaeda and Taliban assassination attempts against the leadership”. But the fact that Kagan is widely viewed as an architect of the “Surge” in Iraq (and hence close to the White House); and that O’Hanlon, a former Clinton national-security aide, is regarded as representative of an important sector within the Democratic Party means that the article and its various scenarios are likely to be taken quite seriously in the Muslim world, most especially in Pakistan itself. And, please note, there’s no talk of the importance of democracy here; it’s all about making sure those nukes are placed in reliable (preferably our) hands. The assumption is that the “moderate” core of the Pakistani military will be the key to success and, despite any nationalist feelings it may harbor, is prepared to fully cooperate with a major foreign military intervention to ensure foreign control of its most important weapons.

I’m no Pakistan specialist; nor do I have any reason to believe that Kagan (whose expertise is German military history) and O’Hanlon are particularly learned on the subject; their operating assumptions appear highly questionable to me. But I have no doubt that their musings are indeed an indication of what is speeding to the top of the administration’s national-security agenda. Moreover, compared to the concerns they express about the fate of Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile and the lengths to which Washington should be prepared to go to secure it, the threats posed by Iran over the next year or so seem awfully tame. Now, with Musharraf appearing to have rejected the appeals of both Bush last week and Negroponte over the weekend, and the political impasse between the civilian opposition and the military under Musharraf having hardened considerably in just the past few days, a serious crisis of the kind envisaged by Mssrs. Kagan and O’Hanlon is looming ever larger. Under such circumstances, the notion that the U.S. would attack Iran seems considerably less credible, at least from Tehran’s point of view.

Incidentally, for an interesting analysis of the relationship between U.S. military intervention, the regional rise in “Islamic nationalism,” and how it plays out in Pakistan, particularly from the point of view of the Pakistani military, I strongly recommend an article by the former vice chair of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council and an expert on the region, Graham Fuller published November 8 by New Perspectives Quarterly. Fuller currently teaches at Simon Fraser University in beautiful Vancouver, B.C.

The New York Times is reporting that the Bush Administration has spent almost $100 million helping Pakistan’s on-again, off-again dictator Pervez Musharraf secure the country’s weapons of mass destruction.

This is the same Bush Administration that has spent hundreds of billions of dollars chasing after Iraq’s fictional WMDs, and is gearing up to spend God-only-knows how much on a missile defense systm to defend against Iran’s hypothetical future nukes.

Sort of sad when $100 million wasted in the last 6 years (which would buy you a pretty good free agent in most professional sports) trying in vain to get a nuclear training center built in Pakistan seems like an economical option.

If you use Facebook and read Antiwar.com, consider signing up as an “Antiwar.com Fan.” As a fan, you will advertise Antiwar.com on your Facebook profile and help spread the word about non-interventionist foreign policy.

From last night’s Democratic debate:

Who among us is going to pick up the phone and immediately interface with Putin and tell him to lay off Georgia because Saakashvili is in real trouble?

Just don’t phone Saakashvili while he’s attacking unarmed protesters. Good way to get an earache.