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MrSleeps liked a video
(3 days ago)
On October 1st, the land will rumble again when the world's best mountain bikers converge on Virgin, Utah for Red Bull Rampage 2010.
www.redbullramp...
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On October 1st, the land will rumble again when the world's best mountain bikers converge on Virgin, Utah for Red Bull Rampage 2010.
www.redbullrampage.com
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MrSleeps liked a video
(3 days ago)
It's All About Progression, but what is the Snowboarding Performance Camp? The athletes and coaches describe what make this camp so unique.
Get over...
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It's All About Progression, but what is the Snowboarding Performance Camp? The athletes and coaches describe what make this camp so unique.
Get over to http://www.RedBull.com to see more snowboard action from the Red Bull team
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MrSleeps favorited a video
(3 days ago)
08/09/2010 - http://www.RonPaul.com
by Ron Paul
Last week the National Bureau of Economic Research published a report on the effect of civilian casua...
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08/09/2010 - http://www.RonPaul.com
by Ron Paul
Last week the National Bureau of Economic Research published a report on the effect of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq that confirmed what critics of our foreign policy had been saying for years. The killing of civilians, although unintentional, angers other civilians and prompts them to seek revenge. This should be self-evident. The Central Intelligence Agency has long acknowledged and analyzed the concept blowback in our foreign policy.
It still amazes me that so many think that attacks against our soldiers occupying hostile foreign lands are motivated by hatred toward our system of government at home, or by the religion of the attackers. In fact, most of the anger toward us is rooted in reactions towards seeing their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and other loved ones, being killed by a foreign army. No matter our intention, the violence of our militarism in foreign lands causes those residents to seek revenge if innocents are killed. One does not have to be a Muslim to react this way - just human.
Our battle in Afghanistan resembles the battle against the many-headed Hydra monster in Greek mythology. According to former General Stanley McChrystal's so-called insurgent math, for every insurgent killed, ten more insurgents are created by the collateral damage to civilians. Every coalition attack leads to six retaliatory attacks against our troops within the following six weeks, according to the NBER report. These retaliatory attacks must then be acted on by our troops, leading to still more attacks, and so it goes. Violence begets more violence. Eventually more and more Afghanis will view American troops with hostility and seek revenge for the deaths of a loved one. Meanwhile we are bleeding ourselves dry militarily and economically.
Some say if we leave, the Taliban will be strengthened. However, those who make that claim ignore the numerous ways our interventionist foreign policy has strengthened groups like the Taliban over the years. I have already pointed out how we serve as excellent recruiters for them by killing civilians. Last week I pointed out how our foreign aid to Pakistan specifically makes it into the Taliban's coffers. And of course we provided the Taliban with aid and resources in the 1980s when they were our strategic allies against the Soviet Union.
For example, our CIA supplied them with stinger missiles to use against the Soviets, which are strikingly similar to the ones now allegedly used against us on the same battlefield according to the Wikileaks documents. As usual, our friends have a funny way of turning against us. Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein are also prime examples. Yet Congress never seems to acknowledge the blowback that results from our interventionism of the past.
Our war against the Taliban is going about as well as our War on Drugs or our War on Poverty, or any of our government's wars. They all tend to create more of the thing they purport to eradicate, thereby dodging any excuse to draw down and come to an end. It is hard to image even winning anything this way. We have done enough damage in Afghanistan, both to the Afghan people and to ourselves. It's time to reevaluate the situation. It's time to come home.
--
Ron Paul is America's leading voice for limited, constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies.
For more information visit the following sites:
http://www.RonPaul.com
http://www.RonPaulNews.com
http://www.CampaignForLiberty.com
http://www.house.gov/paul
http://www.DailyPaul.com
http://www.RonPaulForums.com
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MrSleeps liked a video
(3 days ago)
08/09/2010 - http://www.RonPaul.com
by Ron Paul
Last week the National Bureau of Economic Research published a report on the effect of civilian casua...
more
08/09/2010 - http://www.RonPaul.com
by Ron Paul
Last week the National Bureau of Economic Research published a report on the effect of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq that confirmed what critics of our foreign policy had been saying for years. The killing of civilians, although unintentional, angers other civilians and prompts them to seek revenge. This should be self-evident. The Central Intelligence Agency has long acknowledged and analyzed the concept blowback in our foreign policy.
It still amazes me that so many think that attacks against our soldiers occupying hostile foreign lands are motivated by hatred toward our system of government at home, or by the religion of the attackers. In fact, most of the anger toward us is rooted in reactions towards seeing their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and other loved ones, being killed by a foreign army. No matter our intention, the violence of our militarism in foreign lands causes those residents to seek revenge if innocents are killed. One does not have to be a Muslim to react this way - just human.
Our battle in Afghanistan resembles the battle against the many-headed Hydra monster in Greek mythology. According to former General Stanley McChrystal's so-called insurgent math, for every insurgent killed, ten more insurgents are created by the collateral damage to civilians. Every coalition attack leads to six retaliatory attacks against our troops within the following six weeks, according to the NBER report. These retaliatory attacks must then be acted on by our troops, leading to still more attacks, and so it goes. Violence begets more violence. Eventually more and more Afghanis will view American troops with hostility and seek revenge for the deaths of a loved one. Meanwhile we are bleeding ourselves dry militarily and economically.
Some say if we leave, the Taliban will be strengthened. However, those who make that claim ignore the numerous ways our interventionist foreign policy has strengthened groups like the Taliban over the years. I have already pointed out how we serve as excellent recruiters for them by killing civilians. Last week I pointed out how our foreign aid to Pakistan specifically makes it into the Taliban's coffers. And of course we provided the Taliban with aid and resources in the 1980s when they were our strategic allies against the Soviet Union.
For example, our CIA supplied them with stinger missiles to use against the Soviets, which are strikingly similar to the ones now allegedly used against us on the same battlefield according to the Wikileaks documents. As usual, our friends have a funny way of turning against us. Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein are also prime examples. Yet Congress never seems to acknowledge the blowback that results from our interventionism of the past.
Our war against the Taliban is going about as well as our War on Drugs or our War on Poverty, or any of our government's wars. They all tend to create more of the thing they purport to eradicate, thereby dodging any excuse to draw down and come to an end. It is hard to image even winning anything this way. We have done enough damage in Afghanistan, both to the Afghan people and to ourselves. It's time to reevaluate the situation. It's time to come home.
--
Ron Paul is America's leading voice for limited, constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies.
For more information visit the following sites:
http://www.RonPaul.com
http://www.RonPaulNews.com
http://www.CampaignForLiberty.com
http://www.house.gov/paul
http://www.DailyPaul.com
http://www.RonPaulForums.com
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MrSleeps favorited a video
(3 days ago)
07/26/2010 - http://www.RonPaul.com
On the Bloated Intelligence Bureaucracy
by Ron Paul
I have often spoken about the excessive size of government, an...
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07/26/2010 - http://www.RonPaul.com
On the Bloated Intelligence Bureaucracy
by Ron Paul
I have often spoken about the excessive size of government, and most recently how waste and inefficiency needs to be eliminated from our military budget. Our foreign policy is not only bankrupting us, but actively creating and antagonizing enemies of the United States, and compromising our national security. Spending more and adding more programs and initiatives does not improve things for us; it makes them much much worse. This applies to more than just the military budget.
Recently the Washington Post ran an extensive report by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin on the bloated intelligence community. They found that an estimated 854,000 people hold top-secret security clearances. Just what are all these people up to? By my calculation this is about 11,000 intelligence workers per al Qaeda member in Afghanistan. This also begs the question -- if close to 1 million people are authorized to know top secrets, how closely guarded are these secrets?
They also found that since the September 11 attacks, some 17 million square feet of building space has been built or is being built to accommodate the 250 percent expansion of intelligence organizations. Intelligence work is now done by some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private contracting companies in about 10,000 locations in the United States.
The former Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, has asserted that US intelligence now has the authority to target American citizens for assassination without charge or trial. How many of these resources are being devoted to spying on American citizens for nefarious reasons at home rather than targeting foreign enemies abroad?
It has been pointed out how much information we had about the impending attacks on 9/11, but because of layers upon layers of bureaucratic inefficiencies, our intelligence community was unable to act meaningfully on that information. Obviously we needed drastic change. But it was pretty clear that we did not need more bureaucracy, more confusion, more expenditures and more government.
It is even claimed by some leaders that the intelligence community has grown this way by design; that it is advantageous to have more than one set of eyes looking at the same information. With this logic, is there any number of intelligence employees at which we achieve diminishing returns? Can there ever be too many cooks in the kitchen, in their view?
Are there any problems at all that the government wouldn't attempt to solve by throwing more money at them? Even now, the government is trying to solve our economic problems related to too much government spending and debt, with more government spending and debt.
The problem with our intelligence community before 9/11 was not an inability to collect information. Therefore, the post-September 11 build-up of the surveillance state does nothing to enhance safety. Instead what Americans have gotten in return for the billions of tax dollars spent on security is a surveillance state that reads our e-mails, wiretaps us without warrants, and strip searches grandmothers at airports. This is yet another instance in which Americans would be safer, richer and freer if our government would simply look to the Constitution and respect the boundaries it has set.
--
Ron Paul is America's leading voice for limited, constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies.
For more information visit the following sites:
http://www.RonPaul.com
http://www.RonPaulNews.com
http://www.CampaignForLiberty.com
http://www.house.gov/paul
http://www.DailyPaul.com
http://www.RonPaulForums.com
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