Category: News

Horrible events like yesterday’s attack in New York capture our attention. The mainstream media focuses non-stop on every imaginable aspect of such events. Unfortunately there is little attention to tragedies of a far greater magnitude in places like Yemen which are largely due to our interventionist foreign policy. The US government has partnered with Saudi Arabia to completely flatten Yemen, with thousands of innocents killed in the process. We should pay attention to tragedies at home, but also tragedies overseas that are being perpetrated by Washington in our name. More in today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

On a Sunday morning more than two weeks after four U.S. soldiers were ambushed and killed in Niger, Rep. Walter Jones sat at the desk in his North Carolina office, doing what he’s done more than 11,000 times in 14 years: signing letters to families of the dead troops.

That is how Martha Waggoner begins her Monday Associated Press article relating the regret United States House of Representatives Member Walter Jones (R-NC) feels for voting in 2002 for the US invasion of Iraq and how he has channeled that regret into actions Jones calls “penance” that include sending letters to families of troops killed in the Iraq War and other US military actions overseas.

Read the complete article here.

In addition to sending these letters, Jones, who is a member of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Advisory Board, has pushed for Congress to undertake its constitutional responsibility of debating and voting on the starting or continuing of US military actions overseas, such as the Afghanistan War that Jones has worked hard to end, instead of leaving the decision to use military force to the executive branch.

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

This Letter to the Editor appeared in The Times-News in Burlington, North Carolina, October 15, 2017.

If the writers of the Constitution were alive today, they might well ask: Where’s Congress? They gave our representatives and senators the power to decide about going to war as a check on presidents. Congress has not declared war since 1941 though we have become an empire waging endless wars by other names.

Continue reading “Politicians Need To Answer War Questions”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) challenged the Defense Secretary and Secretary of State yesterday, asserting that no one of intellectual honesty would believe that the 9/11 war authorization had anything to do with ISIS or Niger. He has a good point. But the White House does not want its war wings clipped and insists that things are fine as they are. We are militarily active in some 19 countries now. Does the 9/11 resolution really encompass all of these wars? Tune in to today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Turkey’s decision to purchase a Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system has raised more than eyebrows at NATO headquarters. Top brass in Brussels has warned Turkey that its system would not be interoperable with NATO’s US-made system. Is Turkey turning away from its Western alliance? Hedging its bets? What do Syria and the Kurds have to do with the decision? Tune in to today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

President Donald Trump has a disturbing way of talking about the U.S. military. Consider the following Trump quotation about the recent attack on US troops in Niger:

“I have generals that are great generals,” Trump said. “I gave them authority to do what’s right so that we win. My generals and my military, they have decision-making ability. As far as the incident that we’re talking about [in Niger], I’ve been seeing it just like you’ve been seeing it. I’ve been getting reports.” [emphasis added]

For Trump, it’s not the American people’s military, it’s “my” military. Generals are not Congressionally-appointed officers, they’re “my” generals. Trump has a fundamental misunderstanding of his role as commander-in-chief, as well as the role of the US military. He sees himself as the big boss of “his” military, with generals as his personal employees whom he can order around and fire at will.

Continue reading “Trump Talks About the Military as if It’s His Praetorian Guard”