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CounterPunch
December
17, 2002
So Much for
Sovereignty...
What Does Regime Change Mean?
by Rep. RON PAUL
The buzzwords in Washington concerning Iraq these
days are "regime change," which in a sense is surprisingly
honest. It means the upcoming Gulf War II will not be about protecting
Kuwait or stemming Iraqi aggression. The pretenses have been
discarded, and now we've simply decided Saddam must go. We seem
to have very little idea, however, what a post-Saddam Iraq will
look like. We should expect another lesson in nation-building,
with American troops remaining in the country indefinitely while
billions of our tax dollars attempt to prop up a new government.
With this goal of regime change in mind,
the administration recently announced plans to spend nearly $100
million training an Iraqi militia force to help overthrow Hussein.
A NATO airbase in southern Hungary will be used for military
training. The problem, however, will be choosing individuals
from at least five different factions vying for power in Iraq,
including the fundamentalist Kurds in the north. Given the religious,
ethnic, and social complexities that make up the Middle East,
do we really believe that somehow we can choose the "good
guys" who deserve to rule Iraq?
Of course any of these groups will be
happy to use American military power to remove Hussein, and will
form a short-term alliance with the Pentagon accordingly. Their
opposition to the current government, however, should not be
mistaken for support for America or its policies. As we've seen
so many times in the past, the groups we support in foreign conflicts
rarely remain grateful for long.
Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are
perfect examples of our onetime "allies" who accepted
our help yet failed to do our bidding for long. Both gladly welcomed
American money, weapons, and military training during the 1980s.
With bin Laden we sought to frustrate the Soviet advance into
Afghanistan, and many Pentagon hawks undoubtedly felt vindicated
when the Russian army retreated. Yet twenty years later, bin
Laden is a rabid American-hating madman whose operatives are
armed with our own Stinger missiles. Similarly, we supported
the relatively moderate Hussein in the hopes of neutralizing
a radically fundamentalist Iran. Yet this military strengthening
of Iraq led to its invasion of Kuwait and our subsequent military
involvement in the gulf. Today the Hussein regime is belligerently
anti-American, and any biological or chemical weapons he possesses
were supplied by our own government.
We've seen this time and time again.
We support a military or political group based on our short-term
objectives, only to have them turn against us later. Ultimately,
our money, weapons, and interventionist policies never buy us
friends for long, and more often we simply arm our future enemies.
The politicians responsible for the mess are usually long gone
when the trouble starts, and voters with a short attention span
don't connect the foreign policy blunders of twenty years ago
with today's problems. But wouldn't our long-term interests be
better served by not creating the problems in the first place?
The practical consequences of meddling
in the domestic politics of foreign nations are clearly disastrous.
We should remember, however, that it is also wrong in principle
to interfere with the self-determination rights of foreign peoples.
Consider how angry Americans become when Europeans or Mexicans
merely comment on our elections, or show a decided preference
for one candidate. We rightfully feel that our politics are simply
none of the world's business, yet we seem blind to the anger
created when we use military force to install governments in
places like Iraq. The unspoken question is this: What gives us
the right to decide who governs Iraq or any other foreign country?
Apparently our own loss of national sovereignty, as we surrender
more and more authority to organizations like the UN and WTO,
mirrors our lack of respect for the sovereignty of foreign nations.
Ron Paul,
M.D., represents the 14th Congressional District of Texas in
the United States House of Representatives.
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2002
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