October 18, 2009
Venue: U.S. House Committee on Foreign AffairsDate: 10/15/2009
Transcript:
Ron Paul: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the last months, we have had a pretense of having a debate about Afghanistan, but unfortunately, it’s not much of a debate. We’re deciding whether or not to send 40,000 or 80,000 troops over to Afghanistan and we can’t even decide where the frontlines are. But the worst part of this is this is just déjà vu again, all about going to war needlessly. The same arguments were used in going into war against Iraq and that is “weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda, scare the people, it’s in our national security interest to go there” and we continue.
The Taliban never did a thing to us. The Taliban, we were paying them money up until May of 2001. They’re not capable, even if they wanted to, they’re not capable of touching us. So we’re over there, pursuing a war, spreading the war, and going into Pakistan. The American people don’t want it. We’re out of money. We can’t afford medical education here and we’re demanding that we send 80,000 or 40,000 troops to Afghanistan and expand the war. It’s time to end the whole mess.
Chairman Howard L. Berman: The time of the gentleman has expired.
The time has expired and the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Paul, is through.
Ron Paul: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It seems like we’ve had now a war going on for eight years, into the ninth year, and from the discussion, it looks like we’re searching for a justification for it; what is the reason we are there? I think we got that cart before the horse. We’ve been fighting all this time and it means that it isn’t a management problem. It’s a policy problem of how we got there, why we’re there, and what we’re doing, and besides, this type of debate about management, I can’t imagine this type of debate going on in World War II. You know, we knew who the enemy was; we declared war. The President said he’s the commander in chief and told the Congress what he needed. Now, that isn’t an argument for the Congress not paying attention. It’s an argument against the way we go to war and it looks like we have accepted this notion that perpetual war leads to perpetual peace, and we satisfy the military-industrial complex and the special interests and all these motivations just to stay in war endlessly.
But even these eight years, I don’t see where the success is. Men die, thousands of Afghanis are displaced and die. It cost a quarter trillion dollars and we’re still finding out, you know, what are we there for? Oh, well, “if the Taliban takes over” – whom we used to, you know, get along with quite well = “if they take over all of a sudden, al-Qaeda is going to be there and there’s going to another 9/11.”
This is making the assumption that 9/11 couldn’t have occurred without these training camps in Afghanistan. Do you think those nineteen guys went over there and did push-ups in those camps? There is no way. There is no way they were there doing those things. The report, when they studied 9/11, they said, “Well, there is a lot of planning going on in Germany. A lot of planning going on in Spain and there were 15 of them and were Afghans [Saudis]. I mean, if somebody really wanted to, I bet they could have talked the American people into bombing Saudi Arabia. I mean, 15 of them are Saudis. I imagine under those circumstances, the American people and the Congress could have been talked into bombing Saudi Arabia under those conditions.
So I just don’t see how we could continue to do this and come up with any sensible policy because we never challenge, we never question whether preemptive war is a good strategy and this is what this is all about: preemptive wars, starting wars, saying it’s preventative. But this is a completely un-American approach to fighting wars because under the original system, the people got behind the war, declared the war, knew who the enemy was and we didn’t come up with these strategies; “Do we need 40,000 or 80,000 people and who should we give the money to? Should we give it to this group?”
Why don’t we ever ask the question and this will be the question I’ll leave with you. Why don’t we as a Congress and the administrations, former administrations as well as this one, why don’t we ask the question, what is the motivation for somebody to attack us? And I don’t think it’s ever really asked because I think there is a different answer than then if some say, “Oh, they hate us. They hate us for our freedoms and our wealth.”
And I don’t believe that for a minute. I think the people in Afghanistan, the large majority, no matter what the reports are from the administration, our puppet administration, most people want us out of there. They don’t want us in Pakistan. The people in Pakistan don’t want us there. People in Iraq don’t want us there. It’s occupation. So my question is this, why is that never talked about, or why is it dismissed so easily if indeed you study and you find out that people who are willing to sacrifice their life to make a point is because we are seen as foreign occupiers. Just as the Soviets were seen as foreign occupiers, just as we joined those individuals who wanted to throw out the foreign occupiers in the past, and yet now, we are. We learn nothing from history, both ancient history or even recent history. Why don’t we pay more attention to the true motivations behind somebody who wants to commit suicide terrorism against us. Anybody care to answer?
Chairman Howard L. Berman: In 20 seconds.
Unidentified Male Speaker: In twenty seconds. (Laughs).
Robert Kagan: Congressman, I think in 20 seconds, I can only tell you that some of us do pay a great deal of attention to what the ideology is that drives al-Qaeda and affiliated groups to try to attack us. It’s been articulated in tremendous detail on multiple books. It goes beyond not liking us because of our wealth and a variety of other things and it has to do with the struggle within Islam that they see us participating in whether we are present there or not. It is a very, very sophisticated strategy. It is a very, very sophisticated ideology and it is extremely clear on what their intentions are and why.
from the October 22, 2009 edition
New York - Recent polls show that a majority of Americans believe the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting. This is said to weigh heavily on President Obama as he considers Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request to focus on counterinsurgency and add 40,000 troops to the field.
Ideally, when leaders deliberate over a proposed foreign policy, they consider whether it furthers the national interest, not whether the public supports it at the moment. A paradox of US democracy is that people expect their officials to ignore them from time to time.
Leaders generally depend on two assumptions when making foreign-policy decisions: (1) that the public will support what emerges as good policy over the long term, and (2) that a foreign policy's effectiveness is divorced from domestic public support.
Under normal circumstances, the public could expect Mr. Obama to focus only on the question of whether the war's goals are worth its costs, ignoring the transitory polls.
The situation in Afghanistan, however, throws this model out the window. Today, the American public is the newest front in winning the conflict in Afghanistan.
Obama's consideration of public opinion shows that the administration recognizes that the public might not support even a successful long-term effort, and this lack of support might doom an otherwise effective mission.
What are some of the reasons for lagging support?
Because the war's goals are vague and abstract (e.g., building democracy and stability) and difficult to measure (e.g., making terrorism less likely), the public might deem any long-term mission obscure and wasteful – even an effective one.
It is also possible that the public is able to comprehend and measure the goals, but disagrees with the president that they are achievable or worthy enough. Or it may simply be that Americans are worn out – tired of sending soldiers to fight and tired of spending billions in faraway lands to liberate people who do not want us there entirely.
The nature of the war's goals makes it difficult to maintain public support – a point to be considered before entering into such conflicts in the future.
No matter the reasons for declining support, it seems a president should ignore public opinion to execute a necessary war – a term Obama applies to the Afghanistan conflict. In Afghanistan however, the viability of any counterinsurgency strategy depends upon continued support from the American public.
The US government must convince our existing and would-be Afghan allies that US commitment to developing a stable nation is resolute. Among the Iraqi Sunnis, Washington won allies not by being friendly, but by convincing them that US-Iraqi interests dovetailed and that the US was committed to and capable of winning.
Washington will see no such parallel in Afghanistan if Afghans believe US troops leaving early is likely. But if public opinion stays negative, Afghans may be justified in their skepticism.
American leaders can resist the public's wishes for only so long. If the public continues to oppose the effort in Afghanistan, the US may have to pull out early – even if the counterinsurgency is working.
This is crucial, because under a counterinsurgency strategy Afghanistan is either worth fighting until our goals are achieved, no matter how long it takes, or not worth fighting at all. A middle ground – where the US spends billions more, American soldiers and Afghan civilians continue to die, and we place yet more credibility on the line, only to leave early and have the Taliban return to power – would be worse than if the US pulled out in the first place.
For these reasons, when Obama analyzes McChrystal's plan he needs to consider not only if it would work had he five to 10 years of steady support, but also – despite the vague nature of some of the goals – whether it will deliver results tangible enough to convince a weary public to provide that very support.
Should he choose prolonged escalation, Obama has to walk a fine line between managing and raising expectations. While telling the truth, he needs to raise expectations so people believe the goals are worth the costs. But he needs to manage expectations so people won't lose faith if the strategy doesn't deliver immediately.
He needs to make the public aware of the absurdity of nation-building on two and four-year election-cycle time frames. It took America 12 years to replace the unworkable Articles of Confederation with the Constitution. Americans seem to forget that when we complain about the lack of progress in Iraq or Afghanistan.
After eight years of war, there are now three fronts in the conflict against the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and associated regional movements, commonly called "AfPak."
The first is in Afghanistan. The second is in Pakistan. And the third is in America, where the public needs to maintain a high enough level of support for our commitment to the Afghan people to have credibility and sufficient longevity.
It is now the age of "AfPakAm."
Jacob Bronsther, a law student at New York University and former Fulbright scholar, writes for ThePublicPhilosopher.com. Shalev Roisman, a Harvard Law School graduate, recently completed a clerkship on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City.
Professor of Religion and International Affairs at Georgetown UniversityBarack Obama and Islam
