For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton, and this is Antiwar Radio.
And that's really what I'm interested in anyway.
So welcome back to the show, Dr. Paul.
Thank you, Scott.
Good to be with you.
You have the most consistent antiwar record of any congressman from either party.
If one goes back and reads your speeches from years and years ago, they're just the same as the ones today taking the strict antiwar position.
This is obviously due to the fact that you have some very strong principles about such things.
So, Dr. Paul, what are your first principles of American foreign policy?
Well, first, I think it's in our best interest to mind our own business, provide for a strong national offense, and stay out of the affairs of other nations.
I don't believe in internationalism of the sort where we go to war under the United Nations.
So those are my personal beliefs.
But at the same time, the most important promise I make is the promise to uphold the Constitution.
If you read the Constitution carefully, we find out that there is no authority to do those things.
So I personally abhor getting involved when we don't need to be and getting in wars that are unnecessary.
At the same time, we're told that we're not allowed unless there's an explicit declaration of war.
And since World War II, we've totally ignored those guidelines.
And now, I think probably the mainstream policy establishment would say that that makes you an isolationist then, is that right?
Yeah, well, they use that term all the time, and they do that to be very, very negative.
There are a few people in the country who say, well, that's good, I sort of like that term.
I don't particularly like the term because I don't think I'm an isolationist at all, because along with the advice of not getting involved in the entangling alliances and the internal affairs of other countries, the founders, and it's permissible under the Constitution, is to be friends with people and trade with people and communicate with them and get along with them but stay out of the military alliances.
The irony of all this is they accuse us who would like to be less interventionist and keep our troops at home as being isolationists.
And yet, if you look at the results of the policy of the last six years, we find out that we're more isolated than ever before.
So I claim the policy of those who charge us with being isolationists are really diplomatic isolationists.
They're not willing to talk to Syria.
They're not willing to talk to Iran.
They're not willing to trade with people that might have questionable people in charge.
And we have literally isolated ourselves.
We have less friends and more enemies than ever before.
So in a way, it's one of the unintended consequences of their charges.
They are the true isolationists, I believe.
The original term for it back in the 18th century was independence, right?
That's right, and that's a much better term, but they don't want to use that.
It really probably came out in World War I and World War II when there was a drumbeat to get involved in wars even then that were unnecessary.
So they had to paint those who didn't want to go as being somewhat unpatriotic and isolationist and not caring about the world.
Okay, well, I'd like to get your criticism of the Bush doctrine as it stands.
It's three main sections.
Preemption of threats before they occur in order to prevent catastrophes like happened on September 11th.
Unilateralism and doing what America thinks is right regardless of international opinion and the United Nations.
And then third, obviously, being regime change and deciding who's fit to run other people's countries.
Right, and of those three, the one that I talk about the most and I think is the most dangerous is preemption.
We've been involved much more so than we should have been for many, many years.
Even before World War I, for over 100 years, we've been doing way too much.
Our CIA has been involved on numerous occasions, even in the 50s, getting involved with overthrowing the elected leaders in Iran.
But today it's much more blatant and it's not sort of back door stuff.
It's not sneaky.
It's not using the CIA secretly to get us involved when we shouldn't be.
It's a blatant, open, declared policy, well, if we think it's in our best interest and we don't like them, we should go and start the war.
That's what preemption is all about.
And we have never been so bold as to say we should start wars and at least we pretended that we weren't involved in starting wars.
So I think that is the most significant and most dangerous change in our foreign policy.
I think unilateralism is a tricky term because in some ways, militarily, I'd just as soon be unilateralist.
But I think that if you were unilateralist in your military but you were willing to talk with people and be friends with them, it would be a more natural internationalism.
Of course, that would require an international sound commodity standard of money such as gold or silver, which would allow much more conducive trade with everybody.
But going it alone, at the same time bragging about being the powerhouse and that if you don't listen to us, we can take you on, I think is very, very dangerous.
The other one is very tempting and that is a lot of American people succumb to the temptation of saying, well, when you really have a bad guy, we have to get rid of him because he might become worse.
So they get tempted and they support this idea, well, we've got to get rid of a Saddam Hussein or an Ahmadinejad without seriously thinking that through because in some ways, I think it's a disaster.
Here, Bush says, well, it boiled down to, well, we got rid of this really, really bad guy.
We got rid of Saddam Hussein and that means it's worth it.
That means Saddam Hussein, that one person was worth 3,200 American deaths and 25,000 casualties.
I don't think the guy was worth that much.
He wasn't going to attack us, so I think he put way too much value on a Saddam Hussein insisting that we have to have regime change.
And when we know that a certain regime is powerful enough that it might do some harm to us, all of a sudden this noble goal of getting rid of bad guys doesn't exist.
So we don't go after, we didn't go after Stalin and we didn't go after Mao, Mao Zedong in China and Pol Pot, we just let them be.
And of course, even today, we deal with a lot of bad people.
So that is just a pretense for the American people once we say, well, we got to rile the people up to go get rid of Saddam Hussein, where in reality, they're probably thinking more about the oil than they are about Saddam Hussein.
Now, September 11th did reveal an actual threat to the lives of American civilians that must be faced one way or another.
So I wonder if I can get you to address the war on terror, specifically, if possible, in the context of your being a conservative Christian, Texas Republican, and whether you think September 11th heralded the clash of civilizations and a real long-term struggle that America needs to win victoriously, or whether you think this is the kind of thing that could be settled by other means.
Well, I think there is a pretty significant clash, but I think very few people in America understand it because they've been told so many lies about why they want to attack us here and why we have to go over there and fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here.
I think that is so misleading.
I think the whole mess in the Middle East started many, many years ago, hundreds, if not a thousand years ago, where the fighting was going on between Christians and Jews and Sunnis and Shiites and Persians, and it's just been going on forever.
In recent years, I see this as a civil war within the Muslim world, the Shiites and the Sunnis, and we'd prop up Sunni governments around the world, and sense those Shiites who then would like to attack us.
So the war on terrorism is real, and there is a clash, but I think we would be out of danger if we would have never imposed our will on them by going over there and being in their face.
I happen to believe most everything that Osama bin Laden wrote about why they attacked us, and it was nothing more than blowback for our policies over there, having bases on holy land, and I think we would be a lot better off if we just had a more neutral policy, and the war on terrorism probably would fade.
Zawahiri has been reported as writing in an email that he hopes and prays that we don't leave Iraq because it is a very good thing for them to rally their troops and motivate their fighters and recruit suicide bombers, and if all of a sudden we would leave, it would be very detrimental to their policy.
I believe that is the case.
I'd like to hurt their policy by leaving.
And when you talk about American forces occupying the Arabian Peninsula as Osama bin Laden's motivation, that's not to justify what he's done, just to explain it, right?
Well, yeah, I think that's the explanation.
He had some other reasons, but that was the biggest one, the fact that we had military bases in Saudi Arabia.
The other thing is that some people think that, boy, I think we actually closed that based on Saudi Arabia, but then we invaded two other Muslim countries, as well as we are in the various countries like Kuwait and all around on the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, so the whole peninsula is, to them, holy land.
So this provides a tremendous motivation for them to come after us because they see us as attacking them.
Whether or not we're involved in a clash or whether or not we're over there really taking them on doesn't matter because probably 90% of the Muslims believe we're over there for the wrong reasons and that we are out as an enemy of the Muslim people, and therefore it serves as a motivation for them to be continuously willing to attack us.
Besides ceasing poking the hornet's nest, what is to be done about the followers of Osama bin Laden as they exist already today?
Our policy now creates more, not less of them.
Immediately after 9-11, I was supportive of the authority to go after those responsible.
Of course, those truly responsible were all dead.
The 19 were dead, but it certainly didn't mean that we should go into Iraq.
It meant that we could go after Osama bin Laden himself, but we should have maybe taken a closer look at Pakistan and Saudi Arabia if we were really looking for the source of our problems.
It's something that, unless we change our policy, we're going to have a difficult time solving this.
I just don't think that our administration has been willing to look at it objectively, and there's too many other factors involved.
Well, what sort of changes to our policy towards Saudi Arabia and Pakistan do you have in mind?
Just leave them alone and not propping their governments up.
I thought it was rather amazing the other day when the Abdullah in Saudi Arabia announced that we were occupying unnecessarily and dangerously the country of Iraq.
That, to me, is pretty amazing, the fact that Saudi Arabia is actually talking to the Shiites in Iran.
And I think they should sort this out.
I think we should come home.
The Arab League over there could solve a lot of those problems.
Israel's willing to talk to Syria, and we interfere with that negotiation.
I think if we weren't there, Israel would have a much different motivation to talk to moderates over there.
If we have Sunnis and Shiites talking to each other in spite of us over there trying to stir up this hornet's nest, I would think if we left, there would be a great deal more willingness on the part of these factions to talk to each other.
It would be far from peace and tranquility, but look at what it's like since we've been there.
So I think the most important thing is to come home, and people say, well, there still could be some chaos.
But the chaos is because we went in there and messed things up.
There wasn't nearly this type of chaos before we went in.
And our answer should be what is best for America.
I mean, we shouldn't pretend that we can nation-build and pick regimes and make all these decisions and pretend that we're the policemen of the world.
That's where our big mistake has been, and it's going to contribute to a major bankruptcy of this country.
Now, when you talk about the interests of America, it seems often that what takes precedence over the interests of America is the interests of certain Americans, say, for example, stockholders in some of the military-industrial complex corporations.
And William S. Lynn, for example, has characterized Washington, D.C. as merely an imperial court, where there are so many people sucking off the United States Treasury and pushing these policies that are bad for America as a whole but good for them in the short term that it is almost impossible to have it undone.
We know how much it takes to run for office a lot of money, and only rich people can afford to bankroll politicians.
And it seems more and more rich people have their interest in sucking off the U.S. Treasury rather than having a free enterprise system where they can make their ends their own way.
You know, and I think the money tells you a whole lot.
The fact that some of these candidates will be able to raise $100 million to run their campaigns tells you that as far as companies are concerned, it's a good investment.
So, Hello Burton has a lot of incentive to pump in the money into the campaigns.
What about a drug company who gets these monopoly control over sale of drugs?
They must think it's a good investment as well, and there's many companies involved in the military-industrial complex.
So, the real evil isn't the spending of somebody's own money to help a candidate.
The real evil is the fact that government is so big and has so much to auction off, and there's such an incentive, and there are so many benefits by being friendly to the people who are in power that government is bought on a continuous basis.
The big question is whether the American people will wake up and try to combat this, or will they just go along with, you know, another candidate who has a lot of this money and can put some fancy ads on television, but hopefully a few people will wake up one day.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio, and I'm talking with Congressman Dr. Ron Paul from District 14 in South Texas.
And if we can switch gears here a bit to worries about a war with Iran, you may have seen the headline this morning, Washington Hurting British Bid to Free Crew.
The Iranians have captured 15 British sailors and marines, and apparently the United States is interfering in their negotiations with the Iranians to get these sailors back.
Your comment, Dr. Paul?
Well, I guess we shouldn't be surprised because it seems like the neo-cons have always said, and I guess they believe that chaos is a benefit to them.
Out of chaos, they can gain a certain edge.
We don't want these Israelis, like I said, to negotiate with Syria.
We have to paint them in a certain fashion.
They don't want this thing to be settled too easy with Iran because we're looking for an excuse to go in there and bomb them and cause chaos there and have regime change.
So it to me is a real mess, and the Iranians at least I think would be a lot more reasonable in their dealings with the British.
But hardly anybody is talking about the five hostages that we hold, the diplomats from Iran that we picked up, and there are some who believe this is nothing more than retaliation for us holding their diplomats.
And that's compounding the problem with the British.
I mean, unless the British can talk to the United States in the release of those diplomats, they're going to have more trouble getting their 15 men back.
And it may be important of things to come in Iraq, perhaps a warning from Iran, look how easy it is for us to get at your guys.
This is what to look forward to if you do bomb us.
I think that is the case, and they're not stupid.
I mean, our reaction would have been a lot different if they had captured 15 Americans.
So they're picking on a softer spot.
Blair speaks stuff and wants to do whatever Bush tells them to do, but I don't think the British people are nearly as supportive of Blair as Blair is of Bush.
Now, there was a provision in the recently passed authorization for funding of the further war, which included the benchmarks and timetables and so forth.
And that provision basically, I believe, reminded the president that he does not have the authority to initiate a war with Iran, and yet Speaker Pelosi took it out.
What does that reveal about the Democrats' leadership, the Democrats who were elected to their majority in the House and the Senate by an anti-war American population last November?
Well, I think it shows that they're trying to appease the anti-war position.
At the same time, I don't think they're truly anti-war.
If you look back to 1998, it was Clinton who signed the Iraq Liberation Act into law, which was to have regime change in Iraq.
I mean, as bad as this administration has been, these plans have been in place for a long time.
So the removal of this is really pretty sick.
First, it seemed like it should be unnecessary because it should be automatic that a president can't go to war and start bombing another country without permission.
But under the conditions of today, everybody realizes that he might.
So to put that in seemed reasonable, and matter of fact, it was a bill that I was an original cosponsor of that we attached to the budget bill.
But the explicit removal of this is almost like saying to the president, well, you know, we really don't care.
We're not going to tell you that you're not allowed.
And to me, that looks so bad, and it's something that indicates that the president probably is going to have a free ride if the excuse is there.
I'm afraid the bombing and the attack on Iran will happen, and unfortunately, if the incident that precipitates our bombing is strong enough, the American people, unfortunately, will probably go along with it.
And what do you think the likely consequences of an American war against Iran might be?
You talked about their ability to get at our guys in Iraq.
What else do you foresee as likely consequences if we do start another war?
Probably $200 per barrel for oil and $4 or $5 of gasoline.
So that's one economic consequence, but I think it will mean that a lot more of our men are going to be killed in Iraq, and there will be a call for doubling the number of troops over there.
Before you know it, although there's no plans right now for us to invade Iran, somebody will say, well, let's not be hamstrung.
We can't let them hit us and run back over into Iran.
They'll have to send a lot more troops over.
And that's going to, who knows what it will do after that, I mean, how this war might spread.
But right now, you know, we have ups and downs.
Today happens to be a down day.
That is that there's probably not as much friction right there now in hopes that the British and the Iranians will work something out.
But that could change within hours.
And, of course, bombing Iran and perhaps even changing the regime there is exactly what Osama bin Laden would want us to do, isn't it?
Boy, that's for sure.
You know, we tend to want to get rid of their enemies.
I mean, we've fallen in the trap of supporting Iran.
You know, we got rid of the Taliban, and so we've helped the Iranians.
And Osama bin Laden has been helped in his recruiting.
So the al Qaeda was pretty weak, you know, six months a year after 9-11.
But it looks like they're getting all their strengths back.
And the motivation is our troops in the various countries over there.
So far it looks like we're in for a long fight.
I'm not so sure that we're all of a sudden going to have a change in policy, but I do think there's a chance that this country will become so poor with a dollar crisis that we won't be able to afford this empire anyway.
Now, Dr. Paul, there's a story that has been very little covered, and it's something I was hoping you could help explain.
The John Warner Defense Appropriations Act that was passed last fall the same day, I believe, as the Military Commissions Act, apparently changed the authority over the state National Guard units and gives the president the power to nationalize them without seeking the permission of the governors.
And the State Governors Association sent a unanimous letter signed by all 50 governors protesting this, and yet apparently they've lost the fight.
So I wonder if you can tell me if I've characterized that accurately and what that might pretend for our federal system.
Well, I'm not sure, but that may be related to the changes that occurred and the modifications in the Insurrection Act, which means that the president can call up all these troops at will.
It doesn't even have to be a military confrontation or a real insurrection.
It could be a big flood someplace.
The president can do this.
It does, I believe it's also related to the modification in the Pasa Comitatus Act, which means the president has a lot more authority to declare a national emergency and actually impose martial law.
It has gone through, and those changes have gone through subtly and quietly, but long-term this is not very good for us as citizens, not very good for the principles of the republic.
And it does reveal, doesn't it, that principle that war is the health of the state, that while we have an overseas empire, our domestic government grows bigger and bigger as well.
Yeah, that's probably the most dangerous part of it when you look at all the laws that have been passed domestically, everything from the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act, and the whole works, you know, the idea that we can be monitored, everything that we do, warrantless searches, and another very, very serious change is this attitude about habeas corpus, the fact that we can be held as an American citizen without getting into court as a suspected terrorist.
As long as we're suspected terrorists, we don't have any rights left, although that has been not used so much with American citizens as of yet, although to a slight degree, once that principle is established, it's very hard to reverse, but it's very dangerous.
And we've seen kind of the farcical nature of the Guantanamo Bay tribunals when this man David Hicks, who's been in the news for years and years because he's an Australian citizen, a state that is closely allied to us, and they made a plea bargain and gave him nine months.
So how dangerous could this terrorist have been all this time?
Well, our courts are politicized.
The sooner we close down Guantanamo, though, the better.
So I don't know how you can solve that mess down there.
That is just so un-American.
Do we give these men trials in American federal courts, Dr. Paul?
I don't know the full details of every single person they ever captured, but there has to be some type of a court, whether it's a military court or a court here, I guess a crime committed in another country.
I don't know whether that means that you can bring them here and justify it, but there has to be something better than secret courts and secret holdings and extraordinary renditions and having prisons all around the world.
That process has to end.
Dr. Ron Paul, he represents District 14 in South Texas, a Libertarian Republican Congressman.
Thank you so much for your time today, Dr. Paul.
Thanks, Scott.
Good to be with you.
