INTERVENTIONIST FOREIGN POLICY GOES TOO FAR

April 25, 2007
U.S. House of Representatives
 

Mr. Speaker, no country has ever done as much for another country as the United States has done for Iraq. We have spent hundreds of billions rebuilding their infrastructure, providing police protection, building hospitals and clinics, schools, and water and power plants, giving free medical care, hiring hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and on and on. All of this in a country that had a total GDP of only $65 billion the year before the war was started.

In spite of all this generosity, a huge majority of Iraqis, 78 to 80 percent by almost every poll, wants us to leave. They want our money, of course, but not our presence, except those who are working for us. But there needs to be some limit to our generosity.

We need to start putting our own people first. If we do not, we are soon not going to be able to pay all the Social Security and military pensions, and all the other things we have promised our own people with money that will buy very much.

Governments all over the world have gotten in this situation. They then start printing more money, and people do not realize what is going on. All they see is each year their pensions buy less than the year before.

Today we have a national debt approaching $9 trillion. Even worse, according to the GAO, we have unfunded future pension liabilities of $50 trillion.

We all love and respect our military, but there is waste in any gigantic bureaucracy, and there is huge waste even in the military. A year and a half ago, it was reported by the Defense Department's own inspector general that $35 billion had been misspent in Iraq due to waste, fraud and abuse, and another $9 billion had simply been lost and could not be accounted for at all.

Not only has the U.S. done more for Iraq, we do more for every other country, by far, than does any other Nation. Almost every Federal department and agency has operations around the world.

Liberals will tell you that our foreign aid is only a little over 1 percent of our budget. This is very misleading. We are spending megabillions in other countries when you add up not only the Defense Department but all the other departments' spending, too.

We all love and appreciate our country, but all of this spending is not helping. There is more resentment than ever toward the U.S. because of our interventionist foreign policies.

President Bush campaigned in 2000, saying that we needed a more humble foreign policy, and that we should not be doing nation-building. Interventionist foreign policies and nation-building are not only causing resentment toward us, but we simply cannot afford them if we are going to pay our Social Security and other promises a few years from now. You can still love this country and be a very patriotic American and oppose interventionist foreign policies.

We cannot afford perpetual war just because defense contractors and people at the top levels of the Pentagon always want more and more money. All of this is stated more articulately by two conservative writers, Jacob Hornberger, president of the Future of Freedom Foundation, and Richard Ebeling of the Foundation for Economic Education.

Mr. Hornberger wrote: ``If Americans come to realize that the Federal Government's philosophy on foreign aid, foreign intervention and empire lies at the heart of foreign anger, resentment, and hatred for America, then they will see that another option is available to them: End the motivation for terrorism by putting an end to the U.S. Government's role as international welfare provider, intervenor, and meddler.

"The interventionist and imperial vision will inevitably lead to more terrorism against Americans, less freedom for the American people, and more power for the Federal Government. It is a vision that will inevitably lead us away from the principles on which our Nation was founded.''

He continued, "The contrary vision, a vision based on liberty, free markets and limited government, is the key to peace, prosperity and harmony for the American people. That vision entails ending the U.S. Government's interventionist and imperial role in the world and limiting it to protecting our Nation from attack or invasion.''

Mr. Ebeling wrote: "Two wrongs do not make a right. That America does things abroad it should not is not an excuse or rationale for what happened on September 11. But the United States will continue to create desperate and fanatical men who will view it as the enemy for as long as it interferes into the affairs of other people in other nations. That means there is no end to this 'war on terrorism' as long as the United States follows the foreign policy'' of recent years. ``Ending U.S. foreign political and military interventionism is the only way to reduce the creation of enemies of America in other lands.''

He continues, "Ending the policy of foreign internventionism is also crucial to protecting our freedoms at home.

"Who will guard us from the guardians is the perennial dilemma. When the crisis has passed there will be new government agencies and bureaus with new government employees who will look around for new justifications and rationales to keep their jobs and expand their budgets. They will have powers to intrude into our lives that they will want to use in ways not originally intended. And even more of our freedoms will then be at risk.''