There are a handful of things that Congressman Paul has illuminated my mind regarding the US imperialist position that I think important to bring up here.
First, it was through the Cold War proxy battles that the US finally ceased being a Republic (a decline, some argue, begun at the win by the North of the Civil War) and was officially an Empire. Once the power to go to war is vested in the authority of one man (president, prime minister, etc.), then you no longer have a Republic by definition.
Such a switch occurred through Truman's war in Korea, "The Forgotten War", in which 53, 000 American boys died for American presidential adventurism in the East. Following this we have the illegal (read: unconstitutional) wars of Vietnam, Panama, Lebanon, Grenada, Persian Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the rest of those proxy wars fought by CIA trained and owned operatives in the Central and South America and in Asia.
Second, the introduction of Congressional "non-binding resolutions" is often the first step into unnecessary and illegal wars. Congress, while condemning some horrible tragedy, throws in a line or paragraph stating that the president should do "everything he can" to stem the tragedy from increasing, or some such thing. Remarkable, when you see Ron Paul speaking out against the non-binding resolution to condemn the Palestinian masacre by the Israelis, tossing in some comments about the president's roll to do anything he deems necessary till the conflict between Lebanon and Israel is over. This led to scores of Marines dying as the president committed our troops in irresponsible ways and got them killed. Placing our boys and girls in harms way between two warring factions is not a way to keep peace, but it is a sure-fire way to get a lot of good people killed.
What worries me most about this is that we just past such a non-binding resolution expressing our sorrow for the earthquake in Haiti, while throwing in the part at the end about committing US troops to the area indefinitely. Oh, and they found a lot of oil in Haiti recently...
Finally, and probably most misunderstood about Ron Paul's domestic and economic policies (fiscal and monetary) is just how much our spending at home and abroad leads to militarism and adventurism all over the world. You cannot talk about foreign policy without bringing up economic policy, even domestic spending, because of how much they are linked. This is the old "Welfare-warfare" problem.
This recently came up while I was listening to an episode on Anti-War Radio with Scott Horton. He was interviewing Robert Dreyfuss, of the Dreyfuss report, especially regarding his article entitled "Petraeus Gets It Wrong", when Robert called Ron Paul a "nut", doing so in regards to his desire "abolish the tax system". (Horton loves Ron Paul)
Consistently, Ron Paul brings up the fact that there is really only one thing that can sustain, at least for a while, warfare statism is an inflationary monetary policy fostered by the Federal Reserve. You cannot have the warfare state without subordinating the economy to serve federal interests, which involves socialist-style central planning and heavy taxation.
Do you really want to end the imperialism of the US, then you need precisely to attack the War Party's manipulation of the monetary policy of the country. You need to end the Fed. It is not an option. Jefferson did it. Jackson did it. Obama would never do it. He has demonstrated that he is not strong enough or cares enough to, because social welfare programs are just as dependent on the same tax structure and Fed irresponsibility and monetary manipulation as the warfare state.
The sad thing is Robert Dreyfuss continues in the interview as a borderline apologist for Obama, saying that he trying to turn our foreign policy around, but he is just doing it slower than he would want. He cannot or will not see that Obama is a part of the same Establishment Party that brought us all of the imperial wars of the past 60 years. Nothing changed. We still have the Patriot Act I & II under Obama. We still have a total lack of transparency. We still have Iraq going strong and now Afghanistan going stronger.
Ron Paul, sorry we did not vote for you.
gomer
AMDG
