U.S. Foreign Policy Toward Iraq

This is a follow-up to the last post to help further prove Lew's point that, "the U.S. government is the enemy of the American people and their values." Check out the links at the end of the article.

Consider U.S. foreign policy toward Iraq:

1. The U.S. support of Saddam Hussein.
2. The U.S. furnishing of weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein and the correlative assistance provided by the U.S. in the use of such weaponry.
3. The Persian Gulf intervention.
4. The intentional destruction of Iraq’s water and sewage facilities, with full knowledge as to what effect such action would have on the long-term health of the Iraqi people.
5. The more than 10 years of brutal sanctions, which contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children from sickness and disease.
6. The deadly no-fly zones, which had not been authorized by either the UN or the U.S. Congress, and whose enforcement entailed the firing of missiles and the dropping of bombs that killed even more Iraqis.
7. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement to “Sixty Minutes” that reverberated throughout the Middle East that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children had been “worth it.”
8. The invasion and occupation of Iraq, which has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of more Iraqis.
9. The torture and sex abuse of Iraqi men at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq, photographs and videos of which are still being kept hidden by U.S. officials because of their potential blowback.
10. The periodic rapes and murders that some U.S. troops have committed against the Iraqi people during the occupation.
11. The arbitrary and indiscriminate searches and seizures without warrants being conducted by U.S. troops.
12. The indefinite detentions without trial of some 20,000 Iraqi men and women in overcrowded prisons.

How can anyone honestly believe that such actions would not engender horrible anger and rage throughout the Middle East and, indeed, throughout the world?

As Ron Paul emphasized in last night’s debate, imagine if some foreign power – such as China – had done these types of things to the United States. Wouldn’t Americans experience anger and rage?

In last night’s debate Rudy Giuliani made a mistake that is commonly made by those who view the federal government as a deity. Conflating the U.S. government and the American people, he suggested in the post-debate interview that Ron Paul was “blaming America.” Actually, Paul did no such thing. He blamed the U.S. government’s interventionist foreign policies for the morass in which our nation now finds itself. Like our Founding Fathers and the Framers, Paul understands that the federal government and the country are two separate and distinct groups, which in fact is precisely why the Bill of Rights expressly protects the country from the federal government.