Ron Paul’s Non-Interventionist Foreign Policy is Most Probable Path to Peaceful Relations

Ron Paul’s non-interventionist foreign policy also includes stopping CIA drones from killing civilians, the primary source of legitimate human anger that encourages civilian enrollment in terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It is a proven fact that every time an unmanned CIA drone accidentally kills civilians along with terrorist targets in occupied nations like Afghanistan, the recruitment potential of terrorist groups like the Taliban and Al Qaeda is greatly increased. Very few people who are initially mentally stable will leave their loved ones, homes and trades and strap on a suicide vest for no reason. Even those who are biologically prone to mental instability would not give up their life to become suicide bombers for no reason. The majority of people with mental illness that become suicidal as a result of mental illness do not take the lives of others in the process of committing suicide. However, responses to deadly physical attacks on family and loved ones by an occupying military using robot drones creates a specific type of mental instability in individuals that is more focused on retaliatory justice seeking suicide attempts rather than the generally disorganized and internally focused suicide attempts found in the mentally ill. The term used by the CIA to describe this cause and effect process of mental destabilization leading to focused attempts at suicidal retaliation is “blowback”. This concept of blowback is generally recognized by the intelligence community as happening when U.S. military attacks kill Afghan civilians, causing otherwise harmless villagers, farmers and herdsmen to abandon their trades and families in order to join the nearest terrorist cell with the intent to obtain justice and retaliate against the nation that killed their loved ones with robot planes or flyover bombing.

Following the 9/11 attacks the GW Bush administration soon passed the Patriot Act and expanded the surveillance capabilities of the FBI, CIA and other government intelligence gathering agencies under the Office of Homeland Security umbrella. The reason given for this merger of intelligence gathering was that the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented had there been improved communication between the FBI and the CIA. More specifically, had the upper echelons of these two intelligence agencies listened to the warnings of FBI agent John O’Neill the tragedy of 9/11 could have been prevented. This preventative measure could have been accomplished simply by taking Agent O’Neill’s warnings seriously, it did not requiring an entire overhaul and merger of the intelligence agencies and virtual suspension of the U.S. Constitution’s protections of privacy that we lost following the passage of the Patriot Act and the increased surveillance state under the Department of Homeland Security. Instead Agent John O’Neill received a demotion for his efforts to keep the people of the U.S. safe and was transferred to an office in the WTC building where he lost his life during the 9/11 attacks.

Shortly after 9/11 the U.S. government sought to bring the terrorists of the 9/11 attacks to justice and began to invade and occupy Afghanistan as that is where Osama Bin Laden and other leaders of Al Qaeda were believed to be hiding. The goal of this foreign intervention was simply to capture Osama Bin Laden and other leaders of Al Qaeda and bring them to the U.S. to stand trial for the charges of terrorism on 9/11. However, the occupation of Afghanistan morphed from a search and capture mission of a few selected terrorists who were most directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks into a protracted war with the Taliban, a locally based terrorist group that shared the mountainous terrain with Al Qaeda.

Beginning soon after the invasion of Afghanistan the GW Bush team began to direct stronger criticism towards President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Though there was no evidence of any Al Qaeda fugitives hiding out in Iraq, claims were made by GW Bush that Saddam Hussein represented a serious credible threat to the safety of U.S. civilians. Only a few months after 9/11, the general public’s fear was utilized by GW Bush in promoting the need to take preventative measures to protect the safety of the U.S. people.

By early March of 2002 the GW Bush administration was preparing for pursuit of Saddam Hussein in Iraq based upon these three claims;

1) There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was planning to use against U.S. targets.

2) The Iraqi government has purchased depleted uranium from unknown individuals in the African nation of Niger and was planning to use the DU in attacks on U.S. targets.

3) Claims by CIA interrogators of confessions coming from Al Qaeda’s Sheik Al Libby that Saddam Hussein had sold weapons to Al Qaeda with the intent attacking U.S. targets.

These three claims were used by GW Bush as pretext to invade Iraq under a U.N. Resolution, bypassing Congress. However, not only did the bypassing of Congress violate the U.S. Constitution, as it was later discovered all three claims used as pretext by GW Bush to invade Iraq were patently false and deceptively engineered.

1) There was never any evidence of proof that Saddam Hussein had any weapons of mass destruction, as U.N. weapons inspectors were unable to find any weapons in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion, nor were there any weapons of mass destruction found anywhere in Iraq by U.S. troops or U.N. weapons inspectors following the collapse of Saddam Hussein and a more thorough search of the countryside.

2) Despite Colin Powell’s testimony before the U.N., the U.S. claims of stockpiles of depleted uranium leaving from Niger and entering Saddam Hussein’s Iraq never produced any evidence to be proven true. It was determined after the initial invasion of Iraq in March ’02 that false intelligence led to this claim.

3) The confession by Sheik Al Libby of a so-called conspiracy between Saddam and Al Qaeda was obtained under prolonged severe torture and was later proven to be a false confession obtained under extreme duress. The weeks of continuous torture of Sheik al Libby led him to make up a seemingly credible story of collusion between Al Queda and Saddam Hussein in order to end the severe physical pain he was experiencing at the hands of his torturers. The CIA and Egyptian intelligence individuals who administered the torture of Al Libby kept the pain level up for weeks until he finally broke down and created a somewhat believable story of collusion between Saddam and Al Qaeda that the CIA wanted to hear. However, his unlikely story now made public should have raised (and perhaps did) red flags in the greater foreign intelligence community, as those in the know understood the deeply vast and unbridgeable ideological chasm between the secular Sunni government of Saddam Hussein and the religious fundamentalism of the Wahhabist Al Qaeda was not easily overcome despite having the U.S. as a common enemy. Not only did the ultra-orthodox Islamists of Al Qaeda hate the “Great Satan” as they called the U.S., these fundamentalist terrorists also professed their hatred of the secular “heathen infidels” of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The strict dogmatism of Osama Bin Laden’s Wahhabist cells was always too rigid for them to work together with Saddam as an ally against a common enemy. Likewise Saddam’s secular ideology led him to regard the Saudi Arabian based Al Qaeda fundamentalists as unstable religious fanatics who may still be working with their former benefactors in the CIA.

Unfortunately the three false claims made by GW Bush were initially thought to be true by the U.S. public and on March 17, 2002 the U.S. military invasion of Iraq began. Once again Congress was bypassed and the threat of “another 9/11” coming from Saddam was enough pretext to convince most people that the U.S. military needed to be deployed to Iraq to remove the potential threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Those who questioned the relationship between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein were denounced as being “unpatriotic” and uncaring about the safety of the U.S. people. Thus began one of the longest, most expensive and deadliest military occupations in U.S. history.

If there were ulterior motives for the invasion and occupation of Iraq they were carefully hidden by GW Bush and his neoconservative supporters. There were claims by some anti-war protest groups that the primary reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq was to privatize and secure the Iraqi oil supply, second in size only to U.S. allies and longtime friends of the Bush family dynasty, Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Royal Family and George Herbert Walker Bush and his son GW Bush were friendly business allies in the petroleum industry for several decades prior to 9/11. The U.S. obtaining access to Iraq’s petroleum reserves would have resulted in a virtual monopoly on oil for the Saudi Royal Family and the Bush dynasty. During and after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, significant profits were made by many in the Bush administration, including V.P. Dick Cheney who received millions in deferred compensation from the Halliburton Corporation where he was previously employed. Halliburton was one of the contractors who won many bids on reconstruction and other services in Iraq following the initial occupation.

Despite several attempts to privatize the Iraqi oil supply following the removal of Saddam Hussein and installation of the newly installed “friendly to U.S. interests” Al Malaki interim government, the people of Iraq and the U.S. paid attention, and this heist of Iraq’s petroleum by U.S. and other foreign corporations was averted. However, contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel made millions in profits from the years of post-Saddam occupation, and certainly other benefactors in the GW Bush team besides Dick Cheney received some share of the corporations’ spoils of war.

Despite the financial gains of contractor corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel, the majority of the people involved in the near decade long U.S. occupation of Iraq experienced only losses. These losses were felt the most strongest by the Iraqi civilians who died and lost loved ones from white phosphorus bombing and other “accidental” attacks including drone strikes, and also by the U.S. soldiers who either died or experienced crippling injuries while on duty in Iraq. The losses were felt less directly by U.S. taxpayers who against their wishes footed the nearly trillion dollar bill for the sum of the two long term military occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq that lacked specific goals and timetables for withdrawals. Other as of yet unknown costs include rehabilitation for wounded veterans who returned over the years from these conflicts and continue to require medical and psychological support for injuries that left them disabled for life.

The pattern of U.S. military interventionism and profiteering from reconstruction begun as early as post-WW2 Germany, when Hitler’s Nazi Party was deposed and bombed out cities needed to be rebuilt. The first phase of interventionist foreign policy is the installation, grooming and propping up of dictators that are initially friendly to U.S. interests. Prescott Bush, grandfather of GW Bush, was implicated under the Trading with the Enemy Act after WW2 ended for funneling money to Hitler’s Nazi Party in order to help him get elected as Germany’s Chancellor. Here the motive of Prescott Bush and others to install Hitler was to prevent the German Communist Party (Kommunist Partei Deutschland) from winning the popular election against the mainstream Democratic Socialists (Socialist Partei Deutschland) and the far right National Socialists of the Nazi Party. This goal to prevent the Soviet Union’s spreading communist ideology from gaining ground in Germany was shared by wealthy industrialists in the U.S. including John Rockefeller and Henry Ford, who personally sent Hitler U.S. made tanks and truck to assist him in his invasion of Poland. Instead of allowing German people to choose the government of their liking and learning from their mistakes, the support of the Nazi regime by influential industrialists in the U.S. was the first form of interventionism as foreign policy strategy. Propping up foreign dictators to prevent popularly elected governments from possibly threatening the interests of U.S. industrialists is a form of interventionism that has continued for decades following the initial experiment of assisting in the installation of Hitler.

The financial benefits of foreign wars for the elite industrialists of the U.S. were apparent during and after WW2, especially for those involved in the manufacture of military weapons. Following the turmoil of WW2, President Eisenhower warned the U.S. public to be cautious of a future military-industrial complex. This represented the collaboration between military weapons manufacturers and military generals who both profited from foreign wars. The lessons learned by the CIA and the military-industrial complex after WW2 were that strong dictators, like the storybook Frankenstein monster, could be created and destroyed and recreated at will by the U.S. in any nation unstable enough to fall prey to economic desperation and charismatic savior leaders that soon morphed into powerful dictators with the help of U.S. weapons supplied at low or no cost.

Once again the first phase of U.S. foreign policy interventionism was happening in Iraq long before the occupations began. The CIA followed and supported the early government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s power grew exponentially following U.S. interventionist foreign policy under President Ronald Reagan in the early eighties when U.S. special envoy Donald Rumsfeld gave Saddam weapons to fight the most recent enemy of the U.S., Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. Our ally Saddam did not know that Reagan was also covertly selling weapons to Iran. During the Iran-Contra trial, Reagan conveniently forgot many of the details of how drug money from Contras in Nicaragua was used to purchase and later resell weapons to Iran. The goal of overtly supporting Saddam as an armed ally against Iran while also covertly selling weapons to Iran was to cause the two neighboring nations to grow steadily weaker and less stable over the years of the Iran-Iraq war. As Saddam Hussein’s power grew, and he learned of the betrayal of his U.S. mentors during the Iran Contra hearings when Ronald Reagan forgot to remember the details of the arms being sold to Iran with drug money coming from South America’s Contras, he naturally acted against the U.S. interests and a few years later invaded U.S. ally Kuwait.

Only after the attacks by Nazi Germany’s Japanese allies on Pearl Harbor did the U.S. join WW2 to slay the Nazi monster that they helped create. This is the second phase of foreign policy interventionism that includes military occupations, bombing and killing of civilians and destruction of infrastructure. Many cities in Germany were reduced to rubble by U.S. and British air attacks that left many German civilians either dead or homeless. However, the German civilians were unable to directly stop the actions of Hitler’s Nazi Party, as under most dictatorships any and all dissidents of government authority are usually either jailed or killed. Some German civilians even put their own lives at risk by sheltering Jewish or Gypsy refugees in their homes. If they were caught by the Nazis, they themselves would have been killed in concentration camps alongside the refugees they were sheltering. Yet the U.S. and British air attacks were directed by their leaders to destroy civilian homes and apartments in many cities across Germany.

After Hitler and the Nazis fell from power and WW2 ended, the U.S. began the third phase of interventionism called reconstruction. The bombed out German cities and homeless civilians were given food rations and reconstructed housing by the U.S. troops, who remained there to ensure that Germany did not endure further economic hardships like that after WW1, which many claim led to conditions of desperation that enabled Hitler to come into power. The initial good intent of interventionist reconstruction eventually was recognized as a chance to profit further from the war. The interventionist reconstruction of Germany was also motivated by the desire to prevent the communist government of Soviet occupied East Germany from crossing further west of the Berlin Wall. Behind the overt claims of helping the bombed out civilians recover was the hidden hand of controlling and grooming the new West German government to remain friendly to U.S. political interests against former allies and now cold war enemies of the communist Soviet Union.

This pattern of a three stage foreign policy intervention that began with installation and/or support of “U.S. friendly” dictators, then military invasion and removal of those same yet now “unfriendly” dictators and finally reconstruction and re-installation of new “U.S. friendly and democratic” governments has continued to dominate U.S. foreign policy decisions since WW2. One variation of this pattern is when a popular revolution deposes a U.S. friendly dictator and results in an invasion by the U.S., though this is less desirable as popularly elected leaders are more difficult to replace by military invasion. It seems likely that a psychological predisposition to tyranny and mental instability is needed for selected dictators that can be replaced when they eventually decompensate and become hated by their population.

The interventionist pattern’s first phase was evidenced when the U.S. propped up Saddam Hussein in the early years of his dictatorship of Iraq when Reagan’s envoy Donald Rumsfeld delivered U.S. weapons to Iraq, enabling Saddam’s power to expand exponentially. Despite many human rights violations and attempted genocide against the Kurds by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, this inconvenient truth was ignored by the U.S. foreign policy experts. They claimed a “greater good” was accomplished as the weapons enabled Saddam to successfully fight Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, who had emerged victorious in popular coup against the U.S. supported Shah, a known brutal dictator. When the Iran Contra scandal emerged to the public in the form of a trial, the world also learned of the double dealing between Iran and Iraq was the norm for U.S. foreign policy.

Saddam was propped up and made more powerful by U.S. weapons given as gifts, though eventually the switch to the second phase of interventionism began as Saddam no longer performed according to the wishes of his benefactors. When Saddam Hussein used Iraqi military and U.S. weapons to invade U.S. ally Kuwait, George H.W. Bush began the first intervention of Iraq dubbed as “Desert Storm”. This intervention pushed Saddam back out of Kuwait, though Saddam remained in power until son GW Bush used the 9/11 attacks as incentive to finish the war his father began. When Saddam was toppled by GW Bush, the third phase of interventionism began with Halliburton at the helm of reconstruction profiteering. Iraq’s newly installed Al Malaki government was friendly to U.S. interests and helped GW Bush and U.S. oil corporations in their attempts to privatize Iraq’s significant petroleum supplies.

These three phases of interventionist foreign policy primarily benefit the military weapons contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and others who receive corporate welfare at taxpayer expense and require constant and frequent ongoing military campaigns in order to justify manufacture of expensive fighter jets, robot drones and other high tech equipment. Other beneficiaries include the reconstruction phase corporations like Halliburton, Bechtel and others who win bids during occupations. During the “friendly” phase of the dictatorship some U.S. corporations may be given special privileges by the installed regime for some duration. However, the pattern appears to predict that eventually even the most friendly dictator will either turn against their benefactors or be overthrown by some sort of public coup as occurred in Iran after the Shah was deposed by Ayatollah Khomeini and most recently in Egypt in 2010 when the Mubarak regime finally was brought down after many mass public demonstrations. The recent public inspired revolutions in Egypt did not have the blessings of the CIA, as Mubarak was a reliable dictator that supported U.S. and Israeli interests without attracting much attention by committing genocides. However, throughout his 36 year reign in Egypt, Mubarak was known to frequently employ torture tactics against Egyptian civilians and dissidents of his authority. Following 9/11 the CIA began using the soil of nations of friendly dictators like Mubarak as “black site” discreet bases where torture of suspected Al Qaeda terrorists would take place without any international human rights monitors ever knowing. The torture of Sheik al Libby that led to false confessions and thereby faulty intelligence of collaboration between Saddam and Al Qaeda and was used as pretext to invade Iraq occurred under the watch of Egypt’s Mubarak.

If people give Ron Paul the chance to try a different path of non-interventionist foreign policy and use the U.S. military for defense purposes only, our nation can regain stability and respect in the international community. If we follow Ron Paul’s advice of “stop being the world’s police force”, we can stop the destructive interventionist pattern of installing, removing and reinstalling dictators and allow other nations the sovereignty to popularly elect positive leaders and if needed remove negative leaders by popular uprising.

We can generally define the term insanity as “repeating the same behavior yet expecting different results every time.” Our nation’s current insane interventionist foreign policy could then be specifically defined as;

“decades of repetitious misadventures where patterns of supporting or removing and reinstalling dictators deemed friendly to certain U.S. interests that results in ongoing military occupations costly to human lives, ecosystems and taxpayers and probable to produce further violent responses in the form of terrorism that the CIA would call ‘blowback’.”

If we continue down the path of insane interventionist foreign policy, we can expect more individuals provoked by U.S. military killings of civilians and foreign occupations in general to respond with terrorist attacks domestically and abroad. However, in 2012 Sen. Ron Paul can offer people of the U.S. and the world a different path to obtain peace and stability at home and abroad instead of fear and insecurity.

Under Ron Paul’s foreign policy of non-interventionism, we could alter our decades of insane patterns of intruding into the sovereignty and self-determination of other nations by returning our military bases to locations inside of U.S. borders and allowing the citizens of foreign nations the autonomy to elect and remove leaders at their discretion without interference from either CIA or the U.S. military. Finally Ron Paul’s non-interventionist foreign policy is about showing respect to the people of foreign nations for their inherent ability to choose their own path with autonomy and self-determination instead of having limited choices under the dominating effects of U.S. interventionist interference.

We could sum up with Ron Paul’s Golden Rule of non-interventionism, do onto others as you would have others do onto you. If we imagine a hypothetical scenario in the future or an where China decides which U.S. President is best for their foreign policy interests and uses their military to ensure that the correct leader remains in power.

Perhaps in our hypothetical “mirror world” future a small time corrupt political gangster from South Philadelphia would be chosen to enter U.S. Presidential politics under the close supervision of the Chinese Intelligence Agency (CIA), who regularly preselect and groom future dictators from the U.S. population. The CIA chooses an easily influenced and psychologically unstable materialistic thug to become “U.S. President Scarf” who would support Wal-marts selling U.S. children lead coated toys without impunity. The lead coated toys are made in U.S. sweatshop factories in Ohio that are owned by China. Any parents or dissidents in the U.S. who complained aloud about toxic lead laced toys killing their children would be considered threats to Chinese business interests and are quickly removed from society by our hypothetical thug President Scarf, ending up either jailed or dead. These sorts of abuses against the U.S. population under the watch of President Scarf would continue unchecked until the Chinese weapons manufacturers decide it is time for another direct military conflict to boost their stock rating.

Perhaps a provoked conflict with neighboring Canada that is also dependent on Chinese corporations for their economy. The Chinese government had previously been overt allies with the Canadian dictator Prime Minister Glove. After massive violent protests in Toronto, Quebec and other cities, the Canadian dictator PM Glove was replaced by a popularly elected Canadian nationalist Prime Minister Maple that closed down Chinese owned corporations and reopened them as Canadian owned factories.

The CIA then covertly provided arms to Canada’s PM Maple while overtly arming their U.S. allies and publically supporting President Scarf. For several years a border war raged between Canada and the U.S., leaving Detroit, Toronto, Seattle, Vancouver and other cities from both nations in rubble. This conflict between two neighbors caused many civilian and military casualties and wore down the endurance and economies of both nations. After years of the U.S. and Canadian Border War President Scarf learned of China’s double dealing through a trial and began to invade China’s ally Cuba. This resulted in termination of any friendly relations between China and the U.S., beginning with economic sanctions and trade barriers

.

After several years of the U.S. and Canadian Border War and sanctions against the U.S. the Chinese government would petition the U.N. that they were under threat of attack by the now unfriendly U.S. President Scarf and request permission to invade and occupy U.S. cities like D.C., L.A., New York, and Philadelphia. Any people in the U.S. who resist the Chinese occupation would be labeled as “enemy combatants” and are attacked with CIA drones and white phosphorus. A militia loyal to the U.S. President Scarf would be hiding out in his home neighborhood of South Philadelphia and occasionally make small attacks against the Chinese tanks lined up along Broad Street. This would result in the Chinese military declaring all of South Philly a conflict zone full of enemy insurgents and drop white phosphorus on homes of residents suspected of “harboring terrorists”. Cab drivers picking up clients along South Street who “look suspicious” would be kidnapped by Chinese intelligence agents and flown to “black sites” in Northern Mexico where they are tortured under the watch of Mexican dictator friendly to Chinese business interests. After several years of bombings and death of civilians the Chinese military would announce the capture of President Scarf found hiding in a tunnel under the sand of the Pine Barrens of South Jersey. The Chinese military would remain in Philadelphia, D.C., L.A. and New York as “residual forces” for another five years after the trial and execution of President Scarf until a new President that the Chinese government approved of could be elected by the U.S. public. Of course this new President would already be a Wal-mart loyalist who wouldn’t question the need for lead to be found in children’s toys.

This hypothetical scenario illustrates that Ron Paul’s Golden Rule of Non-interventionism is best understood by placing ourselves in the shoes of people in nations like Iraq and imagining if we would be happy if our nation was invaded and occupied in the same manner that the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq. Clearly when seen through our own occupation the tables are turned and the cruelty and arrogance of interventionist foreign policy becomes apparent. That is why the people of the U.S. and of the world need to have Ron Paul elected as U.S. President in 2012 in order to remove our nation from the insanity of decades of military interventionism and instead enable self-determination in election choices at home and abroad by changing our military’s top priority to non-interventionist self-defense inside of our borders.