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Congress Again Proves that the Business of Washington is War
By Ron Paul
December 16, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - Libertarian educator Tom Woods famously quipped that “no matter who youvote for you end up with John McCain.” Unfortunately Woods was proven right for about the thousandth time this past week, as Washington again showed us that it is all about war.First, we learned that if Joe Biden ends up in the White House next month he intends to put a deep state member of the military-industrial complex in charge of the Pentagon. General Lloyd Austin will be only the second Defense Secretary in decades to require a special Senate waiver to serve in that position. Gen. James Mattis under President Trump also needed a waiver, as he had been out of the military less than the required seven years before becoming Defense Secretary.
But the revolving door between active military service and civilian leadership of the Pentagon is perhaps less troubling than the revolving door between the military-industrial complex and leadership of the Defense Department.
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As the first African-American to take charge
of the Pentagon, the Austin pick is celebrated
as a great victory for “diversity.” However, if
we move beyond the color of a person’s skin,
Biden’s selection is not all that diverse. Gen.
Austin was head of the US Central Command under
an Obama Administration that launched a brutal
war on Libya under false pretenses and pursued a
regime-change policy in Syria that involved
arming and training jihadists. Upon retirement,
as is all too common with military leaders, he
cashed in on his service with a position on the
board of military contractor Raytheon.
Austin will be “business as usual” for
Washington’s warmongers and the military
contractors who make a fortune inventing endless
conflicts overseas.
Then things went from bad to worse, as the
yearly monstrosity called the National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA) was passed with an
amendment severely restricting the US
president’s ability to remove troops from
Afghanistan and Europe. Offered by
neoconservative Congresswoman Liz Cheney,
daughter of the warmongering Dick Cheney, the
amendment all but guarantees that America’s
longest war in history will continue pointlessly
onward.
A coalition of warmongering Democrats and
Republicans have been furious with President
Trump for his last minute effort to draw troops
down from Afghanistan and elsewhere, and they
appear to have a veto-proof majority to tie the
president’s hands.
Congress has for decades believed that the
president can go to war whenever or wherever he
pleases without a declaration, but if the
president dares attempt to end a war their
belief in a “unitary executive” is thrown out
the window. What hypocrisy.
The Constitution is clear that the president is
the commander in chief of the military and as
such should have the authority to move troops as
he sees fit. The Founders understood that 535
Members of Congress trying to micromanage troops
on the battlefield is not a good idea.
Congress has it backward. It should be very
difficult for a president to take the country to
war and easy for that war to be ended.
Time after time, the “peace” candidate usually
wins the election. But no matter how sick the
American people are of endless war, the war
machine finds a way to keep chugging along. What
will it take to return to a policy of peace and
prosperity?
Ron Paul is an American author, physician, and retired politician who served as the U.S. Representative for Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1976 to 1977 and again from 1979 to 1985, and for Texas's 14th congressional district from 1997 to 2013.
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