US Foreign Policy and Military Interventions

We also have a history of kind of

moving in and out of Pakistan.

I mean let's remember here,

the people we are fighting today,

we funded 20 years ago.

And we did it because

we were locked in this struggle with the Soviet Union.

They invaded Afghanistan and

we did not want to see them control Central Asia.

And we went to work.

And it was President Reagan in partnership with the Congress,

led by Democrats, who said,

you know what? Sounds like a pretty good idea.

Let's deal with the ISI and the Pakistani military.

And let's go recruit these Mujahideen.

And that's great.

Let's get some to come from Saudi Arabia and other places,

importing their Wahhabi brand of Islam so

that we can go beat the Soviet Union.

And guess what? They retreated.

They lost billions of dollars and

it led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

So there's a very strong argument,

which is, wasn't a bad investment to end the Soviet Union,

but let's be careful what we sow because we will harvest.

So we then left Pakistan.

We said, okay, fine.

You deal with the stingers that we've left all over your country.

You deal with the mines that are along the border.

And by the way,

we don't want to have anything to do with you.

In fact, we're sanctioning you.

So we stopped dealing with the Pakistani military and with ISI.

And we now are making up for a lot of lost time.

You know, that land over there is yours.

You'll go back to it one day because

your fight will prevail and you'll have your homes and

your mosques back again because your cause is

God is on your side.

In the four years since the inspectors left,

intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked

to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock,

his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program.

He has also given aid,

comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al-Qaeda members.

It is clear, however,

that if left unchecked,

Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity

to wage biological and chemical warfare

and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Should he succeed in that endeavor,

he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East,

which, as we know all too well, affects American security.

This is a very difficult vote.

This is probably the hardest decision I've ever had to make.

Any vote that might lead to war

so

71 to 2021 and it asked what

were the consequences of those sanctions

and we murdered 38 million people.

38 million people.

The amount of havoc we have wrought on

the Middle East in recent years is just stunning.

If you think about the consequences of the Iraq war,

what we do in places like Venezuela,

Cuba, Iran,

you understand we're using this tremendous economic leverage

we have to basically starve people,

to make them suffer,

to inflict great punishment on them so

that they'll rise up against their government.

You understand that this is what we're doing in Venezuela.

This is what we're doing in Iran.

We're inflicting massive punishment on these people.

Given all that, I find it very difficult

to talk about the United States as a noble country.