Friday
Dec 21, 2012
NDAA
fuels militarization, enriches defense corporations, expands empire
Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) gave the following speech on
the floor of the House of Representatives on December 20, 2012.
Mr. Speaker I
rise to oppose what will be the final National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)
I will face as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. As many of my
colleagues are aware, I have always voted against the NDAA regardless of what
party controls the House. Far from simply providing an authorization for the
money needed to defend this country, which I of course support, this
authorization and its many predecessors have long been used to fuel
militarization, enrich the military industrial complex, expand our empire
overseas, and purchase military and other enormously expensive equipment that
we do not need and in large part does not work anyway. They wrap all of this
mess up in false patriotism, implying that Members who do not vote for these
boondoggles do not love their country.
The military
industrial complex is a jigsaw puzzle of seemingly competing private companies;
but they are in reality state-sponsored enterprises where well-connected
lobbyists, usually after long and prosperous careers in the military or
government, pressure Congress to fund pet projects regardless of whether we can
afford them or whether they are needed to defend our country. This convenient
arrangement is the welfare of the warfare state.
Because of the
false perception that we must pass this military spending authorization each
year or our men and women in uniform will go hungry, Congress has over the
years taken the opportunity to pack it with other items that would have been
difficult to pass on their own. This is nothing new on Capitol Hill. In the
last few years, however, this practice has taken a sinister turn.
The
now-infamous NDAA for fiscal year 2012, passed last year, granted the president
the authority to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge, without
access to an attorney, and without trial. It is difficult to imagine anything
more un-American than this attack on our Constitutional protections. While we
may not have yet seen the widespread use of this unspeakably evil measure, a
wider application of this “authority” may only be a matter of time.
Historically
these kinds of measures have been used to bolster state power at the expense of
unpopular scapegoats. The Jewish citizens of 1930s Germany knew all about this
reprehensible practice. Lately the scapegoats have been mostly Muslims.
Hundreds, perhaps many more, even Americans, have been held by the U.S. at
Guantanamo and in other secret prisons around the world.
But this can
all change quickly, which makes it all the more dangerous. Maybe one day it
will be Christians, gun-owners, home-schoolers, etc.
That is why
last year, along with Reps. Justin Amash, Walter Jones, and others, we
attempted to simply remove the language from the NDAA (sec. 1021) that gave the
president this unconstitutional authority. It was a simple, readable amendment.
Others tried to thwart our straightforward efforts by crafting elaborately
worded amendments that in practice did nothing to protect us from this measure
in the bill. Likewise, this year there were a few celebrated but mostly
meaningless attempts to address this issue. One such effort passed in the
senate version of this bill. The conferees have simply cut it out. The will of
Congress was thus ignored by a small group of Members and Senators named by
House and Senate leadership.
There are
many other measures in this NDAA Conference Report to be concerned about. It
continues to fund our disastrous wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and
elsewhere for example.
The
Conference Report contains yet another round of doomed-to-fail new sanctions
against Iran. These are acts of war against Iran without actually firing a
shot. But this time the House and Senate conferees are going further than that.
The report contains language that pushes the U.S. as close to an actual
authorization for the use of force against Iran as we can get. The Report
“…asserts that the U.S. should be prepared to take all necessary measures,
including military action if required, to prevent Iran from threatening the U.S.,
its allies, or Iran’s neighbors with a nuclear weapon and reinforces the
military option should it prove necessary.”
This kind of
language just emboldens Iran’s enemies in the region to engage in increasingly
reckless behavior with the guarantee that the U.S. military will step in if
they push it too far. That is an unwise move for everyone concerned.
This
Conference Report contains increased levels of foreign military aid, including
an additional half-billion dollars in missile assistance to an already
prosperous Israel and some $300 million to help an increasingly prosperous
Russia control its chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons. And Russia does not even want the money!
Overall, this
authorization will give the president even more money for military activities
next year than he requested. At a time when the news has been dominated by
reports of our budget crisis, the “fiscal cliff,” and the “need” to increase
taxes on Americans, Congress is foolishly spending even more on the military
budget than the administration wants! I suppose that is what counts as a
reduction in the language of Washington.
I urge my
colleagues to oppose this, and all future, reckless and dangerous military
spending bills that are destroying our national security by destroying our
economy.
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