IPFS
IPFS
The 9-11 Commission
Charade
The 9-11 Commission report, released
late last month, has disrupted the normally quiet Washington August.
Various congressional committees are holding hearings on the report
this week, even though Congress is not in session, in an attempt to
show the government is “doing something” about terrorism in an
election year. The Commission recommendations themselves have been
accepted reverently and without question, as if handed down from on
high.
But what exactly is going on here?
These hearings amount to nothing more than current government
officials meeting with former government officials, many of whom now
lobby government officials, and agreeing that we need more
government! The current and past architects of the very bureaucracy
that failed Americans so badly on September 11th three years ago are
now meeting to recommend more bureaucracy. Why on earth do we assume
that former government officials, some of whom are self-interested
government lobbyists, suddenly become wise, benevolent, and
politically neutral when they retire? Why do we look to former
bureaucrats to address a bureaucratic failure?
The 9-11 Commission report is several
hundred pages worth of recommendations to make government larger and
more intrusive. Does this surprise anyone? It was written by people
who cannot imagine any solution not coming from government. One
thing you definitely will not see in the Commission report is a
single critique of our interventionist foreign policy, which is the
real source of most anti-American feelings around the globe.
The Commissioners recommend the
government spend billions of dollars spreading pro-US propaganda
overseas, as if that will convince the world to love us. What we
have forgotten in the years since the end of the Cold War is that
actions speak louder than words. The US didn't need propaganda in
the captive nations of Eastern Europe during the Cold War because
people knew us by our deeds. They could see the difference between
the United States and their Soviet overlords. That is why, given the
first chance, they chose freedom. Yet everything we have done in
response to the 9-11 attacks, from the Patriot Act to the war in
Iraq, has reduced freedom in America. Spending more money abroad or
restricting liberties at home will do nothing to deter terrorists,
yet this is exactly what the 9-11 Commission recommends.
Our nation will be safer only when
government does less, not more. Rather than asking ourselves what
Congress or the president should be doing about terrorism, we ought
to ask what government should stop doing. It should stop spending
trillions of dollars on unconstitutional programs that detract from
basic government functions like national defense and border
security. It should stop meddling in the internal affairs of foreign
nations, but instead demonstrate by example the superiority of
freedom, capitalism, and an open society. It should stop engaging in
nation-building, and stop trying to create democratic societies
through military force. It should stop militarizing future enemies,
as we did by supplying money and weapons to characters like Bin
Laden and Saddam Hussein. It should stop entangling the American
people in unholy alliances like the UN and NATO, and pledge that our
armed forces will never serve under foreign command. It should stop
committing American troops to useless, expensive, and troublesome
assignments overseas, and instead commit the Department of Defense
to actually defending America. It should stop interfering with the
2nd amendment rights of private citizens and businesses seeking to
defend themselves.
More than anything, our federal
government should stop deluding us that more government is the
answer. We have far more to fear from an unaccountable government at
home than from any foreign terrorist.
August 24, 2004
Dr. Ron Paul is a
Republican member of Congress from Texas.