The House of Representatives has been whipping up war fever this week – helping the Bush team create pretexts for nuking Iran. Bush has as much right to kill Iranians as I have to kill my neighbor’s dogs – i.e, not a whiff. If Bush does attack Iran, the carnage could make the bombing of Dresden look like a minor scuffle. But the possiblity that the U.S. government will attack another Muslim country is generating cheering on Capitol Hill.
Here’s is Rep. Ron Paul’s excellent statement against House Res. 21.
June 21, 2007
Have We Forgotten 2003 Already?
Statement on H Con Res 21
by Rep. Ron Paul
This resolution is an exercise in propaganda that serves one purpose: to move us closer to initiating a war against Iran. Citing various controversial statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this legislation demands that the United Nations Security Council charge Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Having already initiated a disastrous war against Iraq citing UN resolutions as justification, this resolution is like déja-vu. Have we forgotten 2003 already? Do we really want to go to war again for UN resolutions? That is where this resolution, and the many others we have passed over the last several years on Iran, is leading us. I hope my colleagues understand that a vote for this bill is a vote to move us closer to war with Iran.
Clearly, language threatening to wipe a nation or a group of people off the map is to be condemned by all civilized people. And I do condemn any such language. But why does threatening Iran with a pre-emptive nuclear strike, as many here have done, not also deserve the same kind of condemnation? Does anyone believe that dropping nuclear weapons on Iran will not wipe a people off the map? When it is said that nothing, including a nuclear strike, is off the table on Iran, are those who say it not also threatening genocide? And we wonder why the rest of the world accuses us of behaving hypocritically, of telling the rest of the world “do as we say, not as we do.”
I strongly urge my colleagues to consider a different approach to Iran, and to foreign policy in general. General William Odom, President Reagan’s director of the National Security Agency, outlined a much more sensible approach in a recent article titled “Exit From Iraq Should Be Through Iran.” General Odom wrote: “Increasingly bogged down in the sands of Iraq, the U.S. thrashes about looking for an honorable exit. Restoring cooperation between Washington and Tehran is the single most important step that could be taken to rescue the U.S. from its predicament in Iraq.” General Odom makes good sense. We need to engage the rest of the world, including Iran and Syria, through diplomacy, trade, and travel rather than pass threatening legislation like this that paves the way to war. We have seen the limitations of force as a tool of U.S. foreign policy. It is time to try a more traditional and conservative approach. I urge a “no” vote on this resolution.
***
Ron Paul’s courage on this issue is another reason why his presidential campaign deserves support.
Likewise, on the Democratic side, presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich is also standing stoutly against this nonsense.
While the Bush administration (especially Cheney) enjoys demonizing the current Iranian ruler, they bear some blame for his election. Here is an excerpt from an American Conservative article I did last year:
Bush often talks as if elections are sacred events which automatically confer vast blessings upon a nation. Yet, last June, Bush effectively urged Iranians not to vote, deriding their pending presidential election for ignoring “the basic requirements of democracy.” Bush declared that the elections will be “sadly consistent with this oppressive record” of the Iranian government. U.S.-financed television and radio stations, broadcasting in Farsi, also effectively urged a boycott of the election.
The U.S. government’s actions contributed to the defeat of Mohammad Khatami, a comparatively moderate reformer, and the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , a fire-breathing hardliner. Ahmadinejad’s subsequent comments on Israel, the Holocaust, and other subjects sound almost Hollywood-scripted to help Washington persuade other nations that the Iranian government and its nuclear program must be suppressed at any cost.
Ron for president!
Once again, Paul is the lone voice of reason, surrounded by idiots…
GO Ron Paul! GO Ron Paul! God Bless Ron Paul! Ron Paul for President 2008!
Ron Paul in CNN debate on June 5, 2007!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwJKGfAWQUo
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the galleys, heard in the very hall of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor—he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and wears their face and their garment, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation—he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city—he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.
— Cicero: orator, statesman, political theorist, lawyer and philosopher of Ancient Rome.
Fight the power! Go Ron Paul!
What’s amazing is that these comments were never actually made by Ahmadinejad. They’re the results of mistranslation. Kucinich talked more in his speech about that.
Your comment spurred me to amend the initial posting & include an extract from a piece I did for the American Conservative last year.
By this logic all the idiots and whores of AIPAC should be turned over to the International court for their constant warmongering. Come to think of it, I would add the worthies of the AEI and the commentators of Fox news in their role of being modern day Julius Streichers.
The “honest politician” is like a four-leaf clover. They’re out there, but you rarely see them. Dr. Ron Paul is virtually the only “honest politician” in the “Parliament of Whores”–sorry, the U.S. Congress. To him, legislative questions–especially those of the gravest import–must be considered in the light of the public’s best interest. Paul’s not in it for the living-off-the-taxpayers’-dime careerism that motivates virtually every one of his bought-and-paid-for colleagues.
The saber is rattling against Iran. Why? You can be sure the Israeli lobby is pushing hard for this. The Congress is, as Patrick J. Buchanan said, “Israeli-occupied territory.” Israel and its lobby in this country wants Americans to start dying in Iran, the way they’re dying every day in Iraq–for Israeli interests.
There’s no American policy in the Middle East. There’s only the Israeli-approved American policy in the Middle East.
…Idiots and Whores pimped by AIPAC, AEI worthies and the Propagandist cum Desinformativa Mavens of Fox News—All of ’em guilty as hell, have no doubt. Conversely, Ryan: International Courts enforcing International Laws have tendency to be void of any oversight whatsoever. If the bastards are our bastards?—And they are—I’d contend it to be much better idea to try them here…Hell of it is; they’re not the ones that will end up being tried. Before all’s said and done. It’ll probably be us.
…I’ve never seen The State more indifferent to Public Consensus than in these last 4 years. It’s as if they have–And The Democrats in particular–fairly told the US Electorate as much. They now openly State that another 5 to 10 years of Military Occupation in Iraq; this at a cost of 11 Million Dollars per hour, along with an ever burgeoning toll of US Service Members killed and maimed is, as usual, the well known “Cost of Freedom” and always “The fostering of Democracy.”
I would ask them. Ladies and Gentlemen. If, this is a Republic. If We The People consent to be Governed on our collective terms. If we remain a Nation of Laws in lieu of Dictates. If our Tax Dollars continue to sponsor an Undeclared War of Occupation, contrived and instigated by partisans of a US subsidised Foreign Power, one guilty no less of actively practicing espionage against its benefactor…and they, The Congress elected to represent us would not but continue to spout the same, worthless, rhetoric of equivication. I would then ask you, their constituency, one and all: What part of the term ‘Mandate’ do they, our “Democratically elected Representatives” not seem to understand? …What has happened? What has failed to happen??
Mace,
I left out something in my post. I include Congress in this along with these other folks. These folks are one of the biggest collection of traitor and cowards in our history.
Yes, I agree. We should be the ones to try them and convict them. I have no use for these international bodies and regard them as not only a threat to sovereignty, but a playground for our globalist meddlers.
Oh yes, there is one minor exception to the above. If all of these traitors and war criminals were convicted I would strap all of them down on a cargo pallet in a C-130, dressed in orange jumpsuits, have the C-130 as the last plane to leave Baghdad, and as the plane taxied for take off roll the pallet on the back ramp of the C-130 for the Iraqis to pick up and to sentence these guys for the fate they so richly deserve.
The bottom line is we lose freedoms here in America. The WTC got everyone on the other side of the fence (orchestrated by every recent administration.)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19360920/
Jim,
I heard a little bit of Neal Boortz today and he looked into this business about Cheney. He dicovered something that “dumbfounded” him. Cheney is correct. His office is independent of the excutive branch, so the rest of us are wrong to think there are three branches. We have four and the fourth one is totally separate from the other three. How about that for the ultimate check and balance? He relayed all this newly discovered information to a reporter on his show. I really wish the reporter had saw fit to ask Neal about Cheney’s previous invocations of executive privilege. I’m sure a sage like Boortz could have explained it to the rest of us idiots. John Nance Garner said back during the first term of FDR that the vice presidency wasn’t worth a bucket of spit. He should have had someone as smart as Boortz advising him. I rest reassured. The Republic is in the good and capable hands of Dick Cheney. 😀
Boortz is a stain. I am ashamed he is from Georgia. I have not been following the news for over a week lately, having been in North Carolina coaching. I didnt know anything about this resolution. Anyone who gives Bush more authority to attack anything is mad.
Thanks as always, Jim.
…and yes, good luck to Ron Paul….
….and also to Dennis Kucinich….
Steve,
Boortz is from PA originally. So is Paul. We should count our blessings. One out of two is good considering the times we live in.
A “school bus”! LOL! Good analogy, Jim. 😀
And get rid of the “Overseas Private Investment Corp”. (sic)
Neal Boortz would discover that Bush is the Messiah and Cheney is King of the World under the U. S. Constitution if he thought it would perpetuate war.
Boortz is the ultimate Julius Streicher and I find it incredible that anyone would consider this pathological liar a source of reliable information.
With the largest and most expensive military in the world unable to secure more fraction of Baghingrad after more than three years time at the cost of $500 billion and several million people being killed, maimed, tortured, imprisoned, and displaced in the process, nuking innocent people in yet another country also completely unconnected to the terrorist incidents that occurred in New York appears to many in Congress to be the solution to the problem.