Chapter 11. 2000

Columbia has not gotten very much attention since 9/11, but our intervention there may well end up being more lengthy than Iraq, and more devastating in the long run.

September 6, 2000
MINDING OUR OWN BUSINESS REGARDING COLOMBIA
IS IN THE BEST INTEREST OF AMERICA
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. Speaker, those of us who warned of the shortcomings of expanding our military presence in Colombia were ignored when funds were appropriated for this purpose earlier this year. We argued at that time that clearly no national security interests were involved; that the Civil War was more than 30 years old, complex with three factions fighting, and no assurance as to who the good guys were; that the drug war was a subterfuge, only an excuse, not a reason, to needlessly expand our involvement in Colombia; and that special interests were really driving our policy: Colombia Oil Reserves owned by American interests, American weapons manufacturers, and American corporations anxious to build infrastructure in Colombia.

Already our foolishly expanded pressure in Colombia has had a perverse effect. The stated purpose of promoting peace and stability has been undermined. Violence has worsened as factions are now fighting more fiercely than ever before for territory while they anticipate the full force of U.S. weapons arriving.

The already-weak peace process has been essentially abandoned. Hatred toward Americans by many Colombians has grown. The presidents of 12 South American countries rejected outright the American-backed military operation amendment aimed at the revolutionary groups in Colombia.

This foolhardy effort to settle the Colombian civil war has clearly turned out to be a diplomatic failure. The best evidence of a seriously flawed policy is the departure of capital. Watching money flows gives us a market assessment of policy; and by all indications, our policy spells trouble.

There is evidence of a recent large-scale exodus of wealthy Colombians to Miami. Tens of thousands of Colombians are leaving for the U.S., Canada, Costa Rica, Spain, and Australia. These are the middle-class and upper-class citizens, taking their money with them. Our enhanced presence in Colombia has accelerated this exodus.

Our policy, unless quickly and thoroughly reversed, will surely force an escalation of the civil war and a dangerous increase in our involvement with both dollars and troops. All this will further heighten the need for drug sales to finance all factions of the civil war. So much for stopping the drug war.

Our policy is doomed to fail. There is no national security interest involved; therefore, no goals can be set and no victory is achievable. A foreign policy of non-intervention designed only to protect our sovereignty with an eagerness to trade with all nations willing to be friends is the traditional American foreign policy and would give us the guaranteed hope of peace, the greatest hope of peace and prosperity.

Let us think seriously about our foreign policy, and hopefully someday we will pursue a policy in the best interest of America by minding our own business.

I have crafted several pieces of legislation highly critical of the UN, the International Criminal Court and other entities that not only tend to be corrupt and ineffective, but also threaten our national independence.

September 18, 2000
AMERICA’S ROLE IN THE UNITED NATIONS
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. Speaker, over a half a century has transpired since the United States of America became a member of the United Nations. Purporting to act pursuant to the treaty powers of the Constitution, the president of the United States signed, and the United States Senate ratified, the charter of the United Nations. Yet, the debate in government circles over the United Nations’ charter scarcely has touched on the question of the constitutional power of the United States to enter such an agreement. Instead, the only questions addressed concerned the respective roles that the president and Congress would assume upon the implementation of that charter.

On the one hand, some proposed that once the charter of the United States was ratified, the president of the United States would act independently of Congress pursuant to his executive prerogatives to conduct the foreign affairs of the nation. Others insisted, however, that the Congress played a major role of defining foreign policy, especially because that policy implicated the power to declare war, a subject reserved strictly for Congress by Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.

At first, it appeared that Congress would take control of America’s participation in the United Nations. But in the enactment of the United Nations’ participation act on December 20, 1945, Congress laid down several rules by which America’s participation would be governed. Among those rules was the requirement that, before the president of the United States could deploy United States Armed Forces in service of the United Nations, he was required to submit to Congress for its specific approval the numbers and types of Armed Forces, their degree of readiness and general location, and the nature of the facilities and assistance, including rights of passage to be made available to the United Nations Security Council on its call for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.

Since the passage of the United Nations Participation Act, however, congressional control of presidential foreign policy initiatives, in cooperation with the United Nations, has been more theoretical than real. Presidents from Truman to the current president have again and again presented Congress with already-begun military actions, thus forcing Congress’s hand to support United States troops or risk the accusation of having put the nation’s servicemen and service women in unnecessary danger. Instead of seeking congressional approval of the use of the United States Armed Forces in service of the United Nations, presidents from Truman to Clinton have used the United Nations Security Council as a substitute for congressional authorization of the deployment of United States Armed Forces in that service.

This transfer of power from Congress to the United Nations has not, however, been limited to the power to make war. Increasingly, presidents are using the UN not only to implement foreign policy in pursuit of international peace, but also domestic policy in pursuit of international, environmental, economic, education, social welfare and human rights policy, both in derogation of the legislative prerogatives of Congress and of the 50 State legislatures, and further in derogation of the rights of the American people to constitute their own civil order.

As Cornell University government professor Jeremy Rabkin has observed, although the UN charter specifies that none of its provisions “shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State,” nothing has ever been found so “essentially domestic” as to exclude UN intrusions.

The release in July 2000 of the UN Human Development Report provides unmistakable evidence of the universality of the United Nations’ jurisdictional claims. Boldly proclaiming that global integration is eroding national borders, the report calls for the implementation and, if necessary, the imposition of global standards of economic and social justice by international agencies and tribunals. In a special contribution endorsing this call for the globalization of domestic policymaking, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote, “Above all, we have committed ourselves to the idea that no individual shall have his or her human rights abused or ignored. The idea is enshrined in the charter of the United Nations. The United Nations’ achievements in the area of human rights over the last 50 years are rooted in the universal acceptance of those rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Rights. Emerging slowly, but I believe, surely, is an international norm,” and these are Annan’s words, “that must and will take precedence over concerns of State sovereignty.”

Although such a wholesale transfer of United States sovereignty to the United Nations as envisioned by Secretary General Annan has not yet come to pass, it will, unless Congress takes action.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1146, the American Sovereignty Restoration Act, is my answer to this problem.

To date, Congress has attempted to curb the abuse of power of the United Nations by urging the United Nations to reform itself, threatening the nonpayment of assessments and dues allegedly owed by the United States and thereby cutting off the United Nations’ major source of funds. America’s problems with the United Nations will not, however, be solved by such reform measures. The threat posed by the United Nations to the sovereignty of the United States and independence is not that the United Nations is currently plagued by a bloated and irresponsible international bureaucracy. Rather, the threat arises from the United Nation’s Charter which—from the beginning—was a threat to sovereignty protections in the U.S. Constitution. The American people have not, however, approved of the Charter of the United Nations which, by its nature, cannot be the supreme law of the land for it was never “made under the Authority of the U.S.,” as required by Article VI.

H.R. 1146—The American Sovereignty Restoration Act of 1999 is my solution to the continued abuses of the United Nations. The U.S. Congress can remedy its earlier unconstitutional action of embracing the Charter of the United Nations by enacting H.R. 1146. The U.S. Congress, by passing H.R. 1146, and the U.S. president, by signing H.R. 1146—will heed the wise counsel of our first president, George Washington, when he advised his countrymen to “steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world,” lest the nation’s security and liberties be compromised by endless and overriding international commitments.

Sitting on both the Foreign Affairs and Financial Services Committees gives me the opportunity to see where our foreign and financial polices intersect, often in danger to American taxpayers.

October 12, 2000
WARNING ABOUT FOREIGN POLICY AND
MONETARY POLICY
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. Speaker, over the last three to four years, I have come to the floor on numerous occasions trying to sound a warning about both our foreign policy and our monetary policy. Today our monetary policy and our foreign policy have clashed. We see now that we face serious problems, not only in the Middle East, but in our financial markets.

Yesterday I talked a bit about what I see as a financial bubble that has developed over the past decade and made the point that a financial bubble can be financed through borrowing money, as well as inflation. A financial bubble is essentially a consequence of inflation. A lot of people talk about inflation being the mere rising of some prices, but that is not the case.

Most good economists recognize that inflation is a consequence of monetary policy; as one increases the supply of money, it inflates the currency. This distorts interest rates, and it distorts the markets. Sometimes this goes into goods and services, and other times these excessive funds will go into the marketplace and distort the value of stocks and bonds.

I believe this is what has happened for the past 10 years, Mr. Speaker. So in spite of the grand prosperity that we have had for this past decade, I believe it is an illusion in many ways, because we have not paid for it. In a true capitalist society, true wealth comes from hard work and savings.

Today the American people have a negative savings rate, which means that we get our so-called capital from a printing press—because there are no savings and no funds to invest. The Federal Reserve creates these funds to be invested. On a short term, this seems to benefit everyone.

The poor like it because they seem to get welfare benefits from it; and certainly the rich like it, because it motivates and stimulates their businesses; and politicians like it, because it takes care of deficits and it stimulates the economy.

The only problem with this is it always ends, and it always ends badly. And this is the reason that we have to meet up with a policy that seems ridiculous. The economy seems to be doing quite well, but the Federal Reserve comes along and says there is a problem with economic growth. Economic growth might cause prices to go up; so, therefore, what we have to do is cut off the economic growth. If you have slower growth, the prices will not go up any longer.

They are talking about a symptom and not the cause. The cause is the Federal Reserve. The problem is that the Federal Reserve has been granted authority that is unconstitutional to counterfeit money, and until we recognize that and deal with that, we will continue to have financial problems.

We have heard that the 1990s was a different decade; it was a new era, economy—exactly what we heard throughout the decade prior to the collapse of the markets in Japan. The markets have now been down more than 50 percent in Japan for more than 10 years, and there is no sign of significant recovery there.

Also there were other times in our history when they talked about a new era economy.

Let me read a quote from Herbert Hoover in his memoirs.: “With growing optimism, they gave birth to a foolish idea called the New Economic Era. That notion spread over the whole country. We were assured that we were in a new period where the old laws of economics no longer applied.”

It is an illusion to believe that the new paradigm exists. Actually, the computer industry involves five percent of the economy; 95 percent is what they called the old economy. I ascribe to old economic laws, because the truth is, we cannot change economic laws. And if inflating a currency distorts the market and the boom leads to the bust, that cannot be repelled.

If we are looking toward bad times, it is not because of current policy; it is because of previous policy, the previous policy of the last 10 years, the time when we live beyond our means. We say how did we live beyond our means? Where did the money come from? Are we not spending less in Washington? No, we are not spending less in Washington. Are not the deficits a lot less? They are less, but they are not gone.

Where did we borrow? We borrowed from overseas. We have a current account deficit that requires over a billion dollars a day that we borrow from foreigners, just to finance our current account deficit. We are now the greatest debtor in the world, and that is a problem. This is why the markets are shaky, and this is why the markets have been going down for six months. This is why in a foreign-policy crisis such as we are facing in the Middle East, we will accentuate these problems. Therefore, the foreign policy of military interventionism overseas is something that we should seriously question.

Here I make the point that our Middle East policy is harming our national defense.

November 15, 2000
OUR FOOLISH WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

The West has been at war with the Muslim world for over a thousand years. In this century, the British led the charge prior to World War II. Since that time it has been the United States. Although the British remain close allies of ours in intimidating the Muslim world, it is the military strength of the United States that assumes the burden of responsibility for the policy. It is justified by claiming a right and need to protect “our” oil.

For over a thousand years the West has dominated the Middle East. During these thousand years, resentment has continued, but for obvious reasons it is now being directed toward America. No one should be surprised when our ships become vulnerable and are actually blown up in the Middle East.

If the U.S. understood the history of this region, it would see the total folly of anchoring a war vessel in an enemy port. This lack of understanding of history and respect for religious beliefs of the area, in combination with our foreign policy of aggression and empire-building, leads to arrogant foreign military intervention, not only in the Middle East, but around the world as well.

It is clear that we are not in the Middle East for national security reasons, but instead to protect powerful commercial interests. This assures that we protect oil supplies for the West, and provides us with an excuse to keep the military-industrial complex active.

To put this in a proper perspective, consider how Americans, or especially Texans, would feel if the Gulf of Mexico were patrolled and protected by warships of a foreign power, say the Russians. What would we then think if that same power patrolling the Gulf built air bases in Texas and Florida with our government’s complicity, with the argument that this was necessary to protect “their” oil and with our government’s complicity? This would anger many Americans, and this anger would be directed to both the foreign occupiers of our territorial waters and our own government that permitted it. Yet this is exactly what has been happening in the Persian Gulf region. For religious, historic and sovereignty reasons, the Muslim people harbor great resentment toward us.

As a consequence of the USS Cole incident, our Navy has recognized the great danger we face in this region. This has forced us to avoid sending any more naval vessels through the Suez Canal. The ongoing conflict cannot end peacefully as long as we pursue this policy of folly.

The Cole disaster was needless and preventable. The loss of this vessel and the senseless deaths of 17 Americans were a consequence of a policy that has led to a lack of military readiness for our country, while increasing the danger to all Americans, and in particular our servicemen in that region. It’s positively amazing that, with a military budget of $300 billion, we do not have the ability to protect ourselves against a rubber raft, which destroyed a $ 1 billion vessel. Our sentries on duty had rifles without bullets and were prohibited from firing on any enemy targets. This policy is absurd, if not insane. It is obvious that our Navy lacks the military intelligence to warn and prevent such an event. It is incapable even of investigating the incident, since the FBI was required to try to figure out what happened. This further intrusion has only served to increase the resentment of the people of Yemen toward all Americans.

But the Yemenis never will cooperate with our CIA and FBI agents, many who already have been forced to retreat and return to the States. Our insistence on invading Yemen to search for all those involved will only make our precarious situation in the Middle East worse.

Our policy in the Middle East cannot possibly be successful. It’s obvious there will be an inevitable conflict between our support for the moderate Arabs—which antagonizes the Islamic fundamentalists of this region—and our special treatment for Israel. It is clear that the powerful financial interests of this country want to use our military force to protect their commercial and oil interests in this region, while there will always remain powerful U.S. political support for the State of Israel. The two sides never will be reconciled by our attempt to balance our support by giving help to both sides. This is exactly opposite of being neutral and friends with both sides. The one reason why this confrontation is going to continue is that 75 percent of known oil reserves are now owned by Muslims around the world.

Our current foreign policy does nothing more than stir the flames of hatred of both sides, clearly evident as we witness the daily fighting between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Growing influence of the radical Islamic fundamentalists will allow them one day to overthrow the secular moderate puppet regimes supported by our government.

As the world becomes less stable due to currency, trade and other economic reasons, this region will become even more volatile. We should expect higher oil prices. Hatred toward America will continue to escalate, and United States security will continue to be diminished due to the threat of terrorist attacks. All the anti-ballistic missiles in the world will not be able to protect us against attacks such as the Cole suffered or from the nuclear and biological weapons that can be brought into this country in a suitcase.

The greatest threat to our national security is our own bad policy. Our policy has continued to permit our own military technology, developed by our taxpayers, to get into the hands of our so-called allies, as well as our potential enemies like China.

The turmoil in the Middle East is now spilling over into Indonesia, a country made up of 17,000 islands and very vulnerable to political instability, especially since its currency and financial crisis of a few years ago. Indonesia is the world’s fourth largest nation, with the largest Muslim population of any country. Hatred toward the West, and especially America, due to the Middle East policy, has led to Christian persecution in Indonesia. The embassy is now closed, and American Ambassador Robert Gelbard has been recalled after his life was threatened.

Our many failures in the last 50 years should prompt us to reassess our entire foreign policy of interventionism. The notion that, since we are the only superpower left, we have an obligation to tell everybody else how to live should come to an end. Our failure in Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, and the Middle East, and our failure yet to come in Bosnia and Kosovo, should alert all Americans to this great danger. But, no, we instead continue to expand our intervention by further involving ourselves in yet another sovereign nation. This time it’s Columbia. By sending more weapons into the region, we continue to stir up this 30-year-old civil conflict. And just recently this conflict has spilled over into Venezuela, a major force in South America, due to its oil reserves. The Foreign Minister of Venezuela, angered by U.S. actions, recently warned, “Any ship or boat which enters the Gulf of Venezuela, of whatever nationality it may be, will be expelled.” Our intervention in many of these regions, and especially in South America, has been done in the name of the drug war. But the truth is it’s serving the interests of the companies who own the oil rights in this region, as well as those who produce the weapons that get sent into these regions.