Salvando el “Prestigio” en Afganistán

– Por Ron Paul

Esta semana pasada ha habido mucha discusión y debate sobre la continua guerra en Afganistán. Durando tanto como la Segunda Guerra Mundial y sin fin a la vista, la guerra en Afganistán ha sido uno de los conflictos más largos en los que se haya visto envuelto nuestro país. La situación ha empeorado con las recientes escaladas.

El debate actual se centra exclusivamente en la cuestión de los niveles de tropas. ¿Cuántas más tropas se deberán enviar para seguir con la guerra? La administración ya ha aprobado otros 21.000 militares estadounidenses adicionales que se desplegarán en noviembre, lo que aumentará el número de nuestras tropas a 68.000. ¿Harán falta otros 40.000 para hacer el trabajo? ¿O deberíamos eventualmente elevar el número a 100.000 adicionales? ¿Por qué no 500.000, sólo para sentirnos “seguros”? ¿Y cómo se obtendrá el apoyo público para esta guerra cuando el 58% está en contra de la misma? Me molesta bastante esta delgada línea de preguntas

Yo tengo otras preguntas. Hemos derrocado al gobierno Talibán en el 2001 con menos de 10.000 tropas estadounidenses. ¿Por qué parece ahora que cuantas más tropas son enviadas, peor se ponen las cosas? Si los soviéticos se fueron a la quiebra en Afganistán con un nivel de tropas de 100.000, y se vieron forzados a abandonar la zona en humillante derrota, ¿Por qué estamos determinados a seguir su ejemplo? Más importante aún, ¿Qué podemos sacar de todo esto? Hemos invertido miles de millones de dólares y miles de preciosas vidas, ¿Para qué?

La verdad es que no es coincidencia que cuanto más soldados enviamos peor se ponen las cosas. Las cosas empeoran precisamente porque enviamos más tropas y escalamos la violencia. Esperamos que gane el buen liderazgo en Afganistán, pero el grupo de potenciales líderes honestos han huido de la violencia, dejando detrás un gran vacío de poder. Las guerras no acaban con los malos gobernantes, los crea. Y cuantas más guerras tengamos en este país, más malos gobernantes estaremos creando inadvertidamente.

Otra cosa que hacen las guerras es crear ira con su indiscriminada violencia e injusticia. ¿Cuántos civiles han sido dañados por torpes bombardeos y errores que terminan costando vidas? La gente muere sólo por estar en el lugar equivocado en el momento equivocado en una zona de guerra, pero los asesinos nunca afrontan las consecuencias. Imaginen el resentimiento y la ira que deben sentir los sobrevivientes cuando un familiar es asesinado y no se hace nada al respecto. Cuando no quede ningún empleo porque todas las empresas hayan huido, ¿Qué más tendrán para hacer que unirse a las filas de la resistencia, donde tendrán un pago y una oportunidad para vengarse? Esta no es una justificación para nuestros enemigos, pero debemos aceptar que cuando se empuja a la gente, ellos empujarán de vuelta.

La verdadera pregunta es ¿Por qué estamos allí? ¿Qué tienen que ver nuestros esfuerzos actuales con la autorización original del uso de la fuerza? Ya no estamos tratando con nada ni nadie relacionado con el ataque del 11 de septiembre. A esta altura sólo estamos fortaleciendo la resolución y los rangos de nuestros enemigos. Ya no tenemos nada que ganar. Estamos allí solo para salvar el prestigio, y al final ni siquiera seremos capaces de lograr eso.

English: This past week there has been a lot of discussion and debate on the continuing war in Afghanistan. Lasting twice as long as World War II and with no end in sight, the war in Afghanistan has been one of the longest conflicts in which our country has ever been involved. The situation has only gotten worse with recent escalations.

The current debate is focused entirely on the question of troop levels. How many more troops should be sent over in order to pursue the war? The administration has already approved an additional 21,000 American service men and women to be deployed by November, which will increase our troop levels to 68,000. Will another 40,000 do the job? Or should we eventually build up the levels to 100,000 in addition to that? Why not 500,000 – just to be “safe”? And how will public support be brought back around to supporting this war again when 58 percent are now against it?

I get quite annoyed at this very narrow line of questioning. I have other questions. We overthrew the Taliban government in 2001 with less than 10,000 American troops. Why does it now seem that the more troops we send, the worse things get? If the Soviets bankrupted themselves in Afghanistan with troop levels of 100,000 and were eventually forced to leave in humiliating defeat, why are we determined to follow their example? Most importantly, what is there to be gained from all this? We’ve invested billions of dollars and thousands of precious lives – for what?

The truth is it is no coincidence that the more troops we send the worse things get. Things are getting worse precisely because we are sending more troops and escalating the violence. We are hoping that good leadership wins out in Afghanistan, but the pool of potential honest leaders from which to draw have been fleeing the violence, leaving a tremendous power vacuum behind. War does not quell bad leaders. It creates them. And the more war we visit on this country, the more bad leaders we will inadvertently create.

Another thing that war does is create anger with its indiscriminate violence and injustice. How many innocent civilians have been harmed from clumsy bombings and mistakes that end up costing lives? People die from simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time in a war zone, but the killers never face consequences. Imagine the resentment and anger survivors must feel when a family member is killed and nothing is done about it. When there are no other jobs available because all the businesses have fled, what else is there to do, but join ranks with the resistance where there is a paycheck and also an opportunity for revenge? This is no justification for our enemies over there, but we have to accept that when we push people, they will push back.

The real question is why are we there at all? What do our efforts now have to do with the original authorization of the use of force? We are no longer dealing with anything or anyone involved in the attacks of 9/11. At this point we are only strengthening the resolve and the ranks of our enemies. We have nothing left to win. We are only there to save face, and in the end we will not even be able to do that.

Ron Paul Sobre el Juicio Político a Clinton y Prediciendo el Futuro

El “Estado Niñera”

El “Estado Niñera” está llegando a su fin

– Por Ron Paul

La semana pasada, el Congreso y la administración se rehusaron a considerar seriamente el problema del gasto público. A pesar del alarmismo, un cierre de gobierno no habría sido tan malo como se dice.

Es alentador ver cómo algunos en Washington parecen insistir en reducir el gasto, lo cual definitivamente es un paso en la dirección correcta, pero sólo un paso. Tenemos millas por recorrer antes de siquiera acercarnos a una solución, lo cual supondría redefinir completamente el rol del gobierno en nuestras vidas y en el escenario mundial. Se logró un compromiso a último momento, pero hasta que los demócratas estén de acuerdo con frenar el gasto en prestaciones y los republicanos se alejen de los cheques en blanco destinados al Complejo Militar Industrial, todo seguirá siendo un mero juego político.

Desafortunadamente, los compromisos parecen estar siempre al revés: en vez de que la “izquierda” esté de acuerdo con disminuir el gasto social y la “derecha” con reducir el gasto militar, la “derecha” acuerda aumentar el gasto social y la “izquierda” acuerda incrementar el gasto bélico. A pesar de toda la retórica, nos endeudaremos aún más, la Reserva Federal imprimirá más dinero, y el valor del dólar continuará cayendo en picada. ¿Cuánto pasará antes de que los extranjeros dejen de comprar nuestra deuda, y llegue la hiperinflación? A lo largo de la historia, los imperios siempre se han extendido demasiado en sus conquistas y en la transferencia de riqueza, lo que los ha llevado a un eventual colapso; desde el Imperio Romano hasta la Unión Soviética. Estamos yendo en la misma dirección, y parecería que sólo el caos de la caída del dólar podría detener la ola de gastos. El discutir sobre la Planificación Familiar y la NPR (Radio Nacional Pública), aunque importante, sólo prueba cómo el liderazgo en Washington simplemente no hará frente a la realidad, o no comprende la seriedad del problema.

Por supuesto, un colapso del gobierno crearía serios problemas para muchas personas que han llegado a depender de los pagos del mismo concernientes a la salud, la jubilación, la educación de sus hijos, y hasta vivienda y comida. No obstante, estos programas llamados de “ayuda social” son, para empezar, inconstitucionales, y han engendrado una cultura de dependencia en la transferencia de la riqueza que está fuera de control. Me preocupa enormemente que en vez de que tratemos seriamente nuestra situación, tantos en Washington prefieran permitir el caos que se producirá cuando todas las personas dependientes, de buenas a primeras, dejen de recibir sus pagos. Es mejor afrontar la realidad de lleno y decirle a la gente la difícil verdad: que el gobierno es simplemente incapaz de manejar las vidas de las personas desde la cuna hasta la tumba, como sínicamente se les promete. Nos enfrentamos a un déficit de billones, con cualquiera de los presupuestos propuestos. Cumplir con tales promesas no es, por desgracia, una opción en el largo plazo. Es mejor admitir que el “Estado Niñera” está llegando a su fin, y que ya no se trata de “compromisos”, sino de una transición – a un modo de vida sustentable, uno que respete la Constitución, el Estado de derecho y los derechos de propiedad.-

Vicious or virtuous?

America’s political system may have become too polarised to produce compromise

JUST how dysfunctional is politics in America? After last week’s near-shutdown of the federal government, and with another scare to come when Congress votes on whether to raise the federal debt ceiling, this feels like a good time to ask. Unfortunately, it is absurdly easy to count the ways. Here is one fairly typical list, offered up at a recent event at the Brookings Institution by Dan Glickman, a former (Democratic) member of the House of Representatives and agriculture secretary under Bill Clinton.

First, money. Congressmen spend every waking minute raising the stuff. Their indebtedness to donors leads to paralysis, because most donors want either to retain the benefits they receive from Uncle Sam or press for more. Second, the self-reinforcing partisanship of the new media. Third, politicians are spending less time on Capitol Hill and more shoring up support back home. Reduced social contact makes it harder to build trust and strike compromises across party lines. This leads, fourth, to a reluctance to show leadership, if leading requires quarrelling with your own. Just look, says Mr Glickman, at how both parties treated the deficit-reduction proposals last year of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission as a potato too hot to handle. Fifth, an atmosphere of total war encourages the parties to treat every battle, no matter how trivial, as Armageddon.

Mr Glickman’s list is far from exhaustive. At the same meeting of the same think-tank, Bob Bennett, who served three terms as a (Republican) senator for Utah, offered a no less scathing critique. The flaws he enumerated ranged from television having killed debate (by making senators talk to the camera and not to each other) to the scandal of gerrymandering. Only a few dozen of the 435 House seats are genuinely in play between the parties. The real fight takes place inside the parties, in primaries where victory depends on moving to the extreme to woo the activists. Mr Bennett knows whereof he speaks about those: despite a strong conservative record, he was dumped by Utah’s Republicans last year for having voted for the banking bail-out.

Naturally, even these grizzled veterans allow that some things have changed for the better. For all the money, corruption is less naked than it once was: Mr Bennett is proud that Senate offices are no longer designed with safes into which venal politicians used casually to stuff their visitors’ personal cash contributions. Mr Glickman argues that although the media are more partisan they are also livelier—and that new social networks have enabled far more ordinary people to have a direct impact on politics. As for the comic opera that brought the government to the edge of a shutdown last week, there is always the reassuring thought that America’s governing arrangements are dysfunctional by design. Arguably, the Founding Fathers favoured a system in which one foot stayed permanently on the accelerator and the other on the brake. Hasn’t America got what they wanted?

Not quite. One big thing that has changed politics fundamentally is the extreme polarisation of the parties. The Brookings event was held in honour of Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a Democratic senator who died in 1983. In nearly half a century on the Hill he became famous for building cross-party coalitions and championing bipartisan legislation. But his is a dying breed. In 2010 Congress was more deeply split on partisan lines than at any time since the second world war, according to Congressional Quarterly, a sister publication of The Economist, which has measured voting patterns on the Hill since 1945. And it is getting worse. So far this year, a record 80% of roll-call votes in the House have pitted a majority of Republicans against a majority of Democrats. On average, House Republicans have voted with their party’s majority 91% of the time and Democrats 90% of the time. The picture is very similar in the Senate.

How can a government divided between two parties at loggerheads possibly take the painful decisions needed to tame America’s deficit? At first glance, the events of the past fortnight look mildly encouraging. In spite of the brinkmanship, the parties endorsed a budget for 2011 without falling off the edge. Moreover, both sides now claim in their different ways to be serious about tackling the deficit and the entitlement spending that drives it. This is the topic that seemed too dangerous for either to address until the Republicans’ Paul Ryan put his radical blueprint for 2012 and beyond on the table, thus forcing Barack Obama to counter this week with a plan of his own.

Here’s hoping Winston was right

An optimist might infer that each party is at last shaming the other into taking the hard decisions they had previously ducked. The most striking aspect of this spectacle has been the behaviour of the president. After failing to prevent the Republicans lopping $38 billion off his own party’s budget, Mr Obama promptly performed a jaw-dropping U-turn, heaping praise on, and taking credit for, the “largest annual spending cut in our history”. You would think it was some other president who four months ago touted as a famous victory the spending increase he pushed through the lame-duck session of the previous Congress.

Mr Obama’s inconsistency is no mystery. Posing as a conciliator seeking a sensible middle between the warring tribes on the Hill may help him win re-election in 2012. But for the present a posture is all it can be. Mr Ryan’s plan would raise no taxes and, in effect, privatise Medicare. In other words, he has planted his party’s flag so far to the right that it is hard to see how an agreement on the deficit could emerge from any Congress, let alone the most polarised one since the second world war. In the end, American politics may well rise to the needs of the moment, proving the truth of Winston Churchill’s famous adage. But until then more comic opera, with even less amusing results, lies ahead.