The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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Ron Paul Rewind: 'You're Painting an Overly Optimistic Picture of Afghanistan Success' (2004)

Friday April 22, 2016

It was yet another in a periodic series of House International Relations Committee hearings where the "experts" were trotted out to tell us how incredibly well the US intervention in Afghanistan was going and that if only Congress would keep the money train at full throttle, one hundred flowers would bloom where US bombs planted the seeds. This date was 2004, a hearing titled "US Security Police in Afghanistan on the Eve of National Elections," featuring Lieutenant General Walter L. Sharp, Director, Strategic Plans and Policy, The Joint Staff.
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US-Saudi Relations: Yesteryear Days are Gone Forever

Friday April 22, 2016

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President Barack Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday has boomeranged. His good intentions were never in doubt – mend fences between the two countries. But what emerges is that it will need much more than one visit – maybe, even one full presidency cannot fulfill such a mission. According to Prince Turki al-Faisal, former Saudi intelligence chief, all the King’s horses and all the King’s men cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Turki told CNN’s Christian Amanpour that there is going to have to be “a recalibration of our (Saudi) relationship with America. How far we can go with our dependence on America, how much can we rely on steadfastness from American leadership, what is it that makes for our joint benefits to come together. These are things that we have to recalibrate.”

He then added, “I don’t think that we should expect any new president in America to go back to, as I said, the yesteryear days when things were different.”

When a close longstanding relationship unravels, it is always a painful sight to watch, leave alone experience. Obama experienced a humiliation in Riyadh that has probably no parallel in recent international diplomacy. He was received on arrival in Riyadh on Wednesday by a relatively less important Saudi functionary – the governor of Riyadh.
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US Assaults British Sovereignty

Thursday April 21, 2016

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The Washington elite believe that the British people should serve Washington’s interest and not their own. To this end, President Obama has been sent to London to emphasize that the UK must remain in the EU.

Does this make you wonder why it is important to Washington for the British people to surrender their national sovereignty to the European Union? If not, it should.

It is easier and less expensive for Washington to control the EU government than to control 28 seperate governments. For example, if Washington wants to open up Europe to Monsanto, it is easier for Washington to bribe one EU government than to deal with 28 governments, especially as the European Commission is not accountable to the European people, whereas the individual populations of the countries would make their objections known to the national governments. The EU can open the door to Monsanto without accountability.


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US Protects Saudis From Terror Suits, Yet Backs Suits Against Iran

Thursday April 21, 2016

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Intense debate and international diplomatic blackmail has dominated the discussion of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, a bipartisan bill which would open up civil lawsuits against any foreign nations if they are found to be involved in the funding of a terrorist attack occurring on US soil.

It’s not totally clear what the bill’s authors initially had in mind, but with the text explicitly started the liability under the act at 9/11/01, it is quite clear that the September 11 attacks in New York City are the big, obvious use of this bill, particularly since there aren’t exactly a lot of major terror attacks within the US since then, lat alone ones in which foreign nations are implicated.

The bill puts a big target on Saudi Arabia’s back, however, and the Saudis don’t like that. Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir was reported to have informed administration officials on Sunday that, if the bill was allowed to pass, Saudi Arabia would immediately move to sell $750 billion in US treasury assets, an amount which would cause US interest rates to spike, badly damaging the US dollar and the American economy.

It was all the Saudis had to do, it seems, because by Monday the White House was talking about vetoing the bill to protect "taxpayers," and there was growing opposition within Congress, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R – SC), a co-sponsor, putting a hold on the bill, citing concern that the bill would come back to "bite us."
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Saudis To Kerry: We Created ISIS...And CIA Knew

Thursday April 21, 2016

It was US intervention in the Middle East, say the Saudis, that led us to create first al-Qaeda and then ISIS. The US attack on Iraq tipped the balance in the region in favor of Iran and counter-measures needed to be taken. This is nothing new. The CIA helped create and back the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to counter the 1979 Soviet invasion. And the CIA knew about (at the least) Saudi plans to counter Iran's rise in the region and the uncertainty produced by US-instigated "Arab Spring" beginning in 2011. The lesson? Interventionism has consequences, some intended and some unintended. Usually counter to the stated objectives. Trying to order the world, the central planners have only created chaos...
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Collateral Damage - Obama OKs More Civilian Drone Deaths

Wednesday April 20, 2016

Civilians will continue to pay a heavy price in the ongoing US war on at least seven other countries. According to a recent article, the Pentagon has issued new rules permitting a strike on a target even if up to ten innocent civilians may also get killed. Additionally, the "signature strikes" (whereby any male of military age is considered a target regardless of his actions) that were supposed to be phased out, have continued unabated. Will all this killing of innocents overseas make us more, or less, safe?
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Sue Saudis for 9/11…and the US For All its Wars

Wednesday April 20, 2016

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President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry say that allowing family members of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia for its complicity in that crime would set a terrible precedent that would open the United States up to lawsuits from abroad.

Wonderful! Let the lawsuits rain down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream!

Suing Saudis over 9/11 will only set a precedent if it succeeds, which is to say if there is evidence of Saudi complicity. We know that there is, according to former Senator Bob Graham and others who have read 28 pages censored from a US Senate report. Pressure is building in Congress both to reveal those 28 pages and to allow lawsuits. And yet another Senate bill gaining support would block further US arming of Saudi Arabia.

The precedent of allowing international victims to sue those complicit in murder would not place you, dear reader, or I at risk of any lawsuits. It would, however, put numerous top US officials and former officials at risk of suits from many corners of the globe, including from the seven nations that President Obama has bragged about bombing: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya. It's not as if any of these wars is legal under Kellogg-Briand or the UN Charter.
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Nation-Building: Global Hegemony Without Local Knowledge

Wednesday April 20, 2016

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In 1974, when Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel Prize in Economics, he used his acceptance speech to deliver a warning to the world. Do not again fall for “the pretense of knowledge,” he counseled.

Hayek was singling out economic policymakers who presume to possess the knowledge needed to confidently predict and design market outcomes, much as engineers precisely predict and design mechanical outcomes.

Yet, as Hayek surely recognized, such epistemic arrogance is rampant throughout all social thought, and not just economics. It particularly plagues the realm of foreign policy.

Consider how impossible it is to know exactly what is going on in anyone else’s mind. Nobody can predict with certainty an individual’s future choices, and the preferences those choices reveal. The mind of even a single person is to a great degree opaque. Now take that opacity and multiply it by the millions of minds that make up an economy or a country. That is a hell of a lot of ignorance and unpredictability.
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Enemies Everywhere - The US War On The World

Tuesday April 19, 2016

The USS Donald Cook, equipped with the Aegis combat system, recently found the Russian air force unwelcoming as the US conducted military maneuvers just 50 miles from Russian soil. The Russian flyover was greeted in Washington with howls of "aggression!" But why was a US Naval vessel whose purpose is to target enemy missiles -- nuclear and conventional -- conducting exercises so close to Russia? Is that not also provocative? And what about the US Navy in the South China Sea? And near North Korea? And the Black Sea? Is the US at war with the world really the best idea for our security, or is Washington more interested in the financial security of the military-industrial complex?
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Washington’s War Against the World

Tuesday April 19, 2016

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Secretary of War Ash Carter is concerned about America’s posture. No, it’s not about sitting with your back straight up and your knees placed primly together. It all has to do with how many enemies there are out there threatening the United States and what we have to do, globally speaking, to make them cry uncle. Ash outlined his views at a “posture hearing” before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17th, part of a process intended to give still more money to the Pentagon, $582.7 billion to be exact for fiscal year 2017.

I respect Ash at least a bit because he once studied Medieval History at Yale, though he apparently has forgotten about the Hundred Years War and the War of the Roses. Both devastated winners and losers alike, a salutary lesson for those who are concerned about what the United States has been up to for the past fifteen years. Yet Ash, who is characteristically no veteran and for whom war is an abstraction that must be supported by counting and piling up sufficient beans, thinks that more is always better when it comes to having fancy new toys to play with. Since his proposed budget will be giving the Navy a few tens of billions worth of Ohio class subs the Air Force will have to get its own strategic bombers so no one will feel cheated. Just wait until the bill from the Army comes in.

Ash justified all the needless spending by telling the Senators that there are five “security challenges” confronting the United States – terrorism, North Korea, China, Russia and Iran – before lapsing into Pentagon-speak about why more money is always better than less money. He attacked any attempt at sequestration, which would require budget cuts across the board, because it risks the “funding of critical investments.”
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