Ron Paul On Iraq Part 2: "The ‘Liberation’ Neocons Would Rather Forget"

From Ron Paul

Iraq: The Liberation Neocons Would Rather Forget

Remember Fallujah? Shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US military fired on unarmed protestors, killing as many as 20 and wounding dozens. In retaliation, local Iraqis attacked a convoy of US military contractors, killing four. The US then launched a full attack on Fallujah to regain control, which left perhaps 700 Iraqis dead and the city virtually destroyed.

According to press reports last weekend, Fallujah is now under the control of al-Qaeda affiliates. The Anbar province, where Fallujah is located, is under siege by al-Qaeda. During the 2007 surge, more than 1,000 US troops were killed pacifying the Anbar province. Although al-Qaeda was not in Iraq before the US invasion, it is now conducting its own surge in Anbar. For Iraq, the US liberation is proving far worse than the authoritarianism of Saddam Hussein, and it keeps getting worse. Last year was Iraqs deadliest in five years. In 2013, fighting and bomb blasts claimed the lives of 7,818 civilians and 1,050 members of the security forces. In December alone nearly a thousand people were killed. I remember sitting through many hearings in the House International Relations Committee praising the surge, which we were told secured a US victory in Iraq. They also praised the so-called Awakening, which was really an agreement by insurgents to stop fighting in exchange for US dollars. I always wondered what would happen when those dollars stopped coming. Where are the surge and awakening cheerleaders now? One of them, Richard Perle, was interviewed last year on NPR and asked whether the Iraq invasion that he pushed was worth it. He replied:

I've got to say I think that is not a reasonable question. What we did at the time was done in the belief that it was necessary to protect this nation. You can't a decade later go back and say, well, we shouldn't have done that.

Many of us were saying all along that we shouldnt have done that before we did it. Unfortunately the Bush Administration took the advice of the neocons pushing for war and promising it would be a cakewalk. We continue to see the results of that terrible mistake, and it is only getting worse. Last month the US shipped nearly a hundred air-to-ground missiles to the Iraqi air force to help combat the surging al-Qaeda. Ironically, the same al-Qaeda groups the US is helping the Iraqis combat are benefiting from the US covert and overt war to overthrow Assad next door in Syria. Why cant the US government learn from its mistakes? The neocons may be on the run from their earlier positions on Iraq, but that does not mean they have given up. They were the ones pushing for an attack on Syria this summer. Thankfully they were not successful. They are now making every effort to derail President Obamas efforts to negotiate with the Iranians. Just last week William Kristol urged Israel to attack Iran with the hope we would then get involved. Neoconservative Senators from both parties recently introduced the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, which would also bring us back on war-footing with Iran. Next time the neocons tell us we must attack, just think Iraq.

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Ron Paul On Iraq Part 2: "The ‘Liberation’ Neocons Would Rather Forget"