US Foreign Policy and Its Consequences

Who created al-Qaeda? Excuse me, Zbigniew

Brzezinski and the CIA.

Because they wanted to bring the Soviet Union

into, lure the Soviet Union into a war in

Afghanistan.

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.

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 right and 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 should be

hard.

But I cast it with conviction.

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.