|
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 12, 2001
Robert Jensen
Goodbye to
All That...
Patriotism
Nancy
Oden
My
Day at the Airport
CounterPunch Wire
East Timor
10 Years
After the Massacre
C.G. Estabrook
Instead
of Terror
Alexander Cockburn
Wide World
of Torture
November 11, 2001
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
November 10, 2001
Grover Furr
Seeking an Opposition
to the Afghan War
Bruce
Kyle
Anatomy
of a Green Smear:
Backstabbing Nancy Oden
November 9, 2001
Karen Snell
Torture By
Proxy
John Troyer
A
New Kind of Activism
Tariq Ali
Q &
A About the War
Michael
Colby
Schoolgirl
Gets Booted
for Anti-war Views
November 8, 2001
Mokhiber/Weissman
The
Cipro Rip-Off
Mitchel Cohen
The Smear Campaign
Against Nancy Oden
Steve
Perry
American
Roulette
November 7, 2001
Bahour/Dahan
Placebo Peace
Plan
Tom Turnipseed
Bush
Gives Billions
to His Oil Buddies
Cockburn/St. Clair
Greens, Airports
and
National ID Cards
Dr. Susan
Block
Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
Rep. Ron Paul
Underwriting
the Taliban
Tariq
Ali
The
General Who
Came to Dinner
Evan Ravitz
Stop the War
Through
Direct Democracy
Steve
Perry
Hunger
in Afghanistan
November 5, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
Living
in the Minefields
David Price
Terror
and Indigenous People
November 3, 2001
Declan McCullagh
Nancy Oden Interview
Daniel
Wolff
The
Memphis Blues Again
Mark Weisbrot
War on Civilians
Dave Marsh
How
the RIAA (and the FBI) Cheat Musicians
Robert Jensen
Speaking
Out Against
War on Campus
November 2, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Green
Party Leader Detained at Maine Airport; Prevented from Boarding
Any Plane
Alexander Cockburn
FBI Eyes
Torture
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
November
13, 2001
Expansion of NATO is a Bad Idea
By Rep. Ron Paul
America's founders, having survived a violent
and protracted struggle to break away from England, shared a
belief that their fledgling nation should be free from foreign
entanglements. Thomas Jefferson's well-known quote- "Peace,
commerce, and honest friendship with all nations- entangling
alliances with none" -encapsulates perfectly their view
of the wisest foreign policy for America. A famous portrait of
George Washington depicts him holding a sheaf of paper emblazoned
with the admonition: "Beware foreign influence." Yet
our modern lawmakers reject the non-interventionist principles
of our founders, choosing instead to involve America in conflicts
around the globe.
Consider our participation in NATO, which
commits American military forces to conflicts that serve no national
interest. Congress voted last week to expand NATO and increase
the number of countries we are obligated to defend, even while
our own military forces are stretched far to thin around the
globe. Department of Defense figures show that 250,000 American
troops are deployed on 6 continents and 141 nations. When we
suffered the September 11th attack on our own shores, we were
forced to call on foreign nations to supply AWACS planes and
defend our domestic airspace! Our military entanglements, especially
NATO, have left us relying on foreigners to defend us- yet this
is exactly what the globalists want. They want us to lose our
sense of national sovereignty, so that America's national defense
becomes a matter of international consensus. Only by removing
ourselves from NATO and the UN can we reassert our fundamental
right to defend our borders without the approval or participation
of any international coalition.
NATO is an organization that has outlived
its usefulness. It was formed as a defensive military alliance,
designed to protect western Europe against the Soviet threat.
With the Soviet collapse in 1991, however, NATO bureaucrats (and
the governments backing them) were forced to reinvent the alliance
and justify its continued existence. So the "new NATO"
began to occupy itself with issues totally unrelated to defense,
such as economic development, human rights, territorial disputes,
religious conflicts, and ethnic rivalries. In other words, "nation
building." The new game was interventionism, not defense.
The new approach manifested itself in
Yugoslavia in the late 1990s. The defensive alliance became a
military aggressor, in direct violation of its own charter. When
NATO bombed Yugoslavia, a country that had neither attacked nor
threatened a NATO member state, it turned its back on its stated
purpose and lost any credibility it once had. Predictably, the
NATO strikes failed to produce peace or stability in the former
Yugoslavia, and UN occupation forces likely will remain in the
Balkans indefinitely.
Now Congress has endorsed the expansion
of this purposeless alliance, of course taking the opportunity
to grant 55 million of your tax dollars to the former Soviet
bloc countries that want to join. This expansion may be profitable
for weapons manufacturers and bureaucrats, but it represents
another example of U.S. taxpayers subsidizing foreign governments
and big corporations. It is time for the Europeans to take responsibility
for their own military defense.
As the world's foremost military power,
it always seems that our money, our weapons, and our troops play
the primary role in any NATO military action. It's a one-way
street, however, as our NATO partners are not so enthusiastic
about defending us. Some NATO states have refused outright to
participate in our campaign in Afghanistan, while presumably
reliable allies like France and Germany have expressed serious
doubts. Only England, with whom we share a very strong kinship
regardless of NATO, fully supports our actions. It's time for
America to recognize that the interests NATO serves are not our
own. CP
Ron Paul,
M.D., represents the 14th Congressional District of Texas in
the United States House of Representatives.
|