Last Straw

Repub­lican Con­gress­man from Texas, Ron Paul, describe’s America’s prob­lem in a nut­shell:

Ima­gine for a moment that some­where in the middle of Texas there was a large for­eign mil­it­ary base, say Chinese or Rus­sian. Ima­gine that thou­sands of armed for­eign troops were con­stantly patrolling Amer­ican streets in mil­it­ary vehicles. Ima­gine they were here under the aus­pices of “keep­ing us safe” or “pro­mot­ing demo­cracy” or “pro­tect­ing their stra­tegic interests.”

Ima­gine that they oper­ated out­side of US law, and that the Con­sti­tu­tion did not apply to them. Ima­gine that every now and then they made mis­takes or acted on bad inform­a­tion and acci­dent­ally killed or ter­ror­ized inno­cent Amer­ic­ans, includ­ing women and chil­dren, most of the time with little to no reper­cus­sions or con­sequences. Ima­gine that they set up check points on our soil and routinely searched and ran­sacked entire neigh­bor­hoods of homes. Ima­gine if Amer­ic­ans were fear­ful of these for­eign troops, and over­whelm­ingly thought Amer­ica would be bet­ter off without their presence.

Ima­gine if some Amer­ic­ans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actu­ally joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sov­er­eignty, because lead­er­ship in gov­ern­ment refused or were unable to do so. Ima­gine that those Amer­ic­ans were labeled ter­ror­ists or insur­gents for their defens­ive actions, and routinely killed, or cap­tured and tor­tured by the for­eign troops on our land. Ima­gine that the occu­pi­ers’ atti­tude was that if they just killed enough Amer­ic­ans, the res­ist­ance would stop, but instead, for every Amer­ican killed, ten more would take up arms against them, res­ult­ing in per­petual bloodshed.

Accord­ing to our own CIA, our med­dling in the Middle East was the prime motiv­a­tion for the hor­rific attacks on 9/11. But instead of re-evaluating our for­eign policy, we have simply escal­ated it. We had a right to go after those respons­ible for 9/11, to be sure, but why do so many Amer­ic­ans feel as if we have a right to a mil­it­ary pres­ence in some 160 coun­tries when we wouldn’t stand for even one for­eign base on our soil, for any reason?