Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk 03/15/10: End the Occupation of Afghanistan Now!

Here's the text:

Supporting the War Instead of the Troops
By Congressman Ron Paul, R-Texas, 3/15/2010

Last week, Congress debated a resolution directing the President to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan no later than the end of this year.

The Constitution gives the power to declare war to the Congress, so it is clearly appropriate for Congress to assert its voice on matters of armed conflict. In recent decades, however, Congress has defaulted on this most critical duty, essentially granting successive presidents the unilateral (and clearly unconstitutional) power to begin and end wars at will. This resolution was not expected to pass; however, the ensuing debate and floor vote served some very important purposes.

First, it was important to finally have an actual floor debate on the merits and demerits of continuing our involvement in the conflict in Afghanistan. Most congressional action regarding Afghanistan has concerned continued funding for the conflict.

Thus, members of Congress have cloaked their support for an increasingly unpopular war in terms of financial support of the troops. But last week’s resolution had nothing to do with funding or defunding the war, but rather dealt directly with the wisdom of an open-ended commitment of U.S. troops (and hundreds of billions of tax dollars) in Afghanistan. Members opposing the resolution had to make their case for the ongoing loss of American lives as well as the huge expenditures required for an intractable conflict.

In my opinion, this was an impossible case to make.

Supporters of the war made the same intellectually weak arguments for continuing our occupation of a nation with a long and bloody history of resisting foreign occupation. Ultimately, the war supporters in Congress prevailed in the vote on the resolution. Still, the vote was significant because it places every member of Congress on the record as supporting or not supporting the unconstitutional, costly, violent occupation of a country that never attacked us...
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http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?d46a0ac0-7931-40c1-...

In the Afghanistan bill that failed to pass in the House last week only 5 republicans voted compared to 60 for democrats. It makes you think sometimes...what are we doing in the republican party?