Alright, my friends, now joining us on Anti-War Radio, live from the nation's capital in Washington, D.C.
It's my favorite politician in American history, Dr. Ron Paul, recently won his primary race for District 14 to go back to the House of Representatives, at the very least, even if he's not going to be our president.
Congratulations, Dr. Paul, and welcome back to Anti-War Radio.
Thank you, Scott.
Good to be with you again.
It's great to have you here.
Now, I wanted to ask you, first of all, about the Bush administration's assertion that Congress basically has no more role to play in deciding Iraq policy.
It sounds like, although I guess Bush has never gone as far as saying that he can go ahead and pay for the war himself, as some of your competition in the Republican primaries had asserted, his administration is basically saying that they don't need the consent of Congress to create long-term treaties of alliance with the new Iraqi government.
Your take on that, sir?
Well, you know, it sounds like he learned that from his father.
I don't know if you recall.
I'm sure you do.
But, you know, when Bush Sr. went into the Persian Gulf War, he was advised that he should ask Congress for, not a declaration of war, but just to get some token approval from the Congress.
And he said, I do not need to do that.
I get my authority from a U.N. resolution, which I thought was pretty outrageous.
But he did go back and get the authority.
But then this sort of reminds me of that, that they think executive power is all superior.
And, unfortunately, it seems that too many people go along with this.
I really consider the Congress to be the most derelict in their duties.
Executive branch officials have notoriously, over all of history, always wanted more and more power.
And our Constitution was written to have a separation and a balance, and the Congress is supposed to stand up for their prerogatives.
And yet it hasn't happened.
So I think Bush has gotten away with so much on his searches and FISA courts and, you know, Habeas Corpus and all these things that he's just taking it to the next step, that he's claiming that he can do these treaties without congressional approval.
Isn't it the case that the Democrats in the Congress, if only they would vote like you, have the power to end the war right now?
Sure they could, and they could do it reasonably.
They wouldn't have to say, tomorrow there's war over and give you 24 hours to get out.
They could say, you know, the funding is ending, and do it safely and reasonably as possible.
You have, you know, a month or two or three, whatever is necessary to do it sensibly.
And, you know, I think you could make the argument that is done more with dignity than waiting until there's a calamity.
I mean, the ending of the Vietnam War, I think that's what people visualize.
They see the ending of the Vietnam War, and it was tragic because they put it off and put it off and put it off.
And then everybody has this vision of running at the last minute and trying to get on a helicopter.
Well, if we did this in a deliberate fashion and the Democrats would stand up, they would say, look, this is it.
You can no longer spend this money after so many months, and it's a reasonable time.
If you can get them out in six weeks, fine, but, you know, get them out.
And if not, there's no more funding.
Well, Senator McCain says that anyone who wants the American military to pack up and leave Iraq is waving the white flag of surrender to al-Qaeda.
You know, he's used that a long time, and he probably believes it to a degree, but the reality is what we're doing is serving the interests of al-Qaeda.
They weren't even in Iraq before, and now they are.
And we've had quotes from Osama bin Laden that said, he's delighted for us to be there.
And we're fighting him on his stand, and that will do to the United States exactly what we were able to do to the Soviets with our help, and that is drag them into a prolonged war, demoralize their troops, and bankrupt the country.
And so I would say that the policies that McCain defends are doing exactly what he claims that leaving would do.
The world would be much more peaceful.
Today, what the financial markets are telling us is this war will end, and our empire will come down for financial reasons.
And that's been my argument all along.
And with this dollar going down so sharply in oil prices, I mean, to see oil going up $5 in one day should alert people to some really serious problems that we face.
And you can't, no matter whether Bush thinks he can fund the war without the Congress, or the Congress thinks they can continue to fund the war because they don't have the courage to do what is right, it's going to end because if the dollars don't buy anything, and the more they resort to inflation, the faster the dollar goes down.
So they're in a catch-22.
They're trapped.
And they'll have to wake up someday.
I'm just hoping we can wake them up before there's a total financial tragedy that will be so difficult to handle.
Well, Dr. Noe, yesterday the House of Representatives voted to condemn Hamas for their rocket attacks.
The House of Representatives voted 404 to 1.
There were quite a few abstentions, but you were the only no vote.
Why did you vote no?
Because it's always interference and implications and saying that if you don't do this, and blaming people, you know, one side versus the other.
And it's always on and on, getting involved when we shouldn't be.
And I put a statement into the record, and it will be available, I think, on the Internet today, explaining my position, and very simply, I abhor the violence, but I abhor the violence on both sides.
But when we pick one side and say all the violence comes from one side, and therefore we don't care about the other side, I think that only encourages more violence.
So we would be better off, you know, if we took a more neutral position, encourage people to do the right thing, even be available if they want to come into the United States and have a true discussion about how to move toward peace.
But we should not be involved in the dictates of saying, well, do it our way or we'll bomb you.
If you do it our way, we'll give you money.
That's where the real tragedy is.
And these resolutions do nothing more than precipitate more problems, and we are calling up those resolutions constantly.
And it's mainly for the purpose of endorsing policy, because they always pick an incident and say, oh, there's been violence.
Let's condemn the violence.
Who can say you can't condemn the violence?
But then they always have something in the resolution that implies our responsibility for what we will do, and an endorsement of the policy that continues to fail.
Well, you know, I've been reading the foreign policy of freedom, and this reminds me of what you said about Ronald Reagan's intervention in Lebanon in the 1980s.
That is right.
When he went in there, he said he would never turn tail and run, and I was interested in reading what he would put in his memoirs, because that's exactly what he did.
He recited his quote.
He said, I once said I wouldn't turn tail and run.
But he said, after I was in there, he said, I didn't realize the irrationality of the politics of that region.
So he admitted it.
At least he had the courage to admit it.
You know, they talk about a lot of heroic things that Reagan had done when he was president, and some were good and some weren't all that good.
I mean, Oran Contre was nothing to brag about.
But I thought that he was pretty bold to at least admit that he made a mistake and he came home.
Suicide terrorism ceased.
When the Israelis left Lebanon and the French left, the Americans left, there was no more suicide terrorism in Lebanon.
It's so dramatic, you know, the change that occurred.
And to read your book, which is all your foreign policy speeches, going back all the way through your career in Congress, it's the best, the closest I've ever been able to get to being able to keep track of whether America favored the PLO or Hamas at any given time, and all the different interventions against the PLO, to save the PLO, to move them from one place to another, and all these things.
This has been going on for decades.
And, you know, when I put those speeches together, of course, I went back and re-read some of them.
I said, you know what, I could almost give the same speech on three events over there today.
I mean, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Yeah, we've switched back and forth a few times since then, but now we're back again.
Yeah, there you go.
All right.
It doesn't look like they're going to quit any time soon.
Okay, now if I can ask you one more real quick question.
You brought up the wiretapping.
The Washington Post reported two days ago that there's a compromise soon on the Protect America Act.
Is that the case?
Yes, and it's from our viewpoint of protecting civil liberties, there's not a whole lot of compromise.
I mean, nothing.
When you compromise something like this, there's really, I don't see much room for compromise.
What they've done is they've had a legislative compromise.
They split the bill.
There will be one vote on whether or not the telecommunications can be exempt for disobeying the law and invading our privacy and becoming a criminal element and listening to the government orders.
That's the way I see it, and separating that vote from the renewal of the FISA courts.
So to me, there's no compromise.
I haven't looked in great detail, but it looks like I'll be probably a strong no on both halves of it.
Well, I'm sure you will.
And I want to thank you, Dr. Paul, first of all, for the opportunity to vote for you for president the other day.
Made my day, believe it.
And I want to thank you very much for your time on the show today.
Thank you, Scott.
