The real friends of peace in the US Congress are sadly few and far between, but North Carolina Republican Walter Jones, Jr. is definitely one of them. The neocons threw everything they could at him by way of a primary challenger, but he won with a huge margin. Find out what he is doing about the "28 Pages" and Obama's endless wars in the Middle East in this Liberty Report interview with Rep. Jones.
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
The real friends of peace in the US Congress are sadly few and far between, but North Carolina Republican Walter Jones, Jr. is definitely one of them. The neocons threw everything they could at him by way of a primary challenger, but he won with a huge margin. Find out what he is doing about the "28 Pages" and Obama's endless wars in the Middle East in this Liberty Report interview with Rep. Jones.
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
Congress's Role in Military Force Authorization00:07:54
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today as co-host is Daniel McAdams, who's also the Executive Director of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
We have a special guest today and a special friend, somebody that I served in the Congress, Walter Jones, and he had a recent election, and he did quite well.
And Walter, I want to welcome you to the program and congratulations on your recent victory.
Thank you very much.
And I always say if you follow the position of Ron Paul, then you'll usually come out ahead of the game.
And so thank you for being my friend for many years in the United States House of Representatives.
Thank you for taking that risk.
But anyway, anyway, well, Walter has been in Congress since 1994.
And we have worked together on many projects, but especially on foreign policy and wasteful spending in the military.
But Walter is from the 6th District of North Carolina, a state where I lived for a while when I was in medical school.
But Walter, it's really great to have you with us today.
You've been working on so many projects, and I guess if you and I got together, we could spend a half hour, an hour longer talking about all the things.
But we want to try to pack a few important things together on what you've been working on, and so much of it is so important.
I want to bring up first the 28 pages.
We have visited on that, and you know, it's still in the news, and there's more concern than ever, and you get the credit for all that, keeping that alive.
Could you give us an update on that and how important you think that is?
Well, Ron, thank you very much.
I have worked with Steve Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, Thomas Massey from Kentucky, who you know well.
We have been trying to get our colleagues to go read the 28 pages.
The three of us, I read the pages two and a half years ago.
There is nothing about the national security or threat to the national security in the 28 pages, but the 9-11 families that felt so much pain from that event, they're asking that this be declassified.
The President Obama has the authority to recommend a declassification of the 28 pages.
So we have a resolution in that we get more and more members from both parties to join us in the resolution.
We soon will be putting in a resolution calling on the Homeland Security Intelligence Committee to use their position and come forward and recommend a declassification.
We're going to continue to beat this drum, Ron, because America cannot be a strong free nation if its people do not know the truth about one of the worst events to ever happen on the soil of America.
Well, and I think what you're doing is right because you're going to the public.
Ultimately, Congress is a little bit slow on things, as you well know, and public pressure is very important.
And you and I have worked on the issue of the Federal Reserve, and we have put pressure on them, and we do get a little bit more information, but a lot more people know about it.
So I think it's great that you're keeping that pressure up, and of course, we do our very best to reach as many people to put pressure on those members of Congress, because fortunately, that is one good thing.
If there's enough people in the country who will put pressure on the members of Congress, they will respond for political reasons, no matter what they believe in.
But Daniel, an individual you know quite well, has a question for you.
Sure.
Mr. Jones, it's so great to talk to you again.
Another issue I know that you've been working very hard on, and I think it's very important, is the issue of the authorization for the use of military force.
Now, President Obama has deployed troops back into Iraq.
He's deployed troops into Syria, special forces into Syria.
He's deploying everywhere, and he's still claiming that he has the authorization under the 2001 authorization 15 years ago to go after the people who attacked us on 9-11.
And I know that you disagree, and you're doing a lot to try to bring a new authorization to the floor.
You're working with Barbara Lee and a number of others, but there are various factions within the party and within Congress on this.
Maybe if you can help explain and untangle some of that for us, I think it would help a lot.
Daniel, thank you for the statement and also the question.
There is no more, and I know Ron was really out front about the war issues when he was a member of the House, and I've taken on that mantle as well.
We in Congress, the most serious responsibility we have is to make a decision to send a young man or woman to die for this country.
And I've been very disappointed.
John Boehner, we wrote six letters, and that's bipartisan, and plus individually, six letters to John Boehner when he was a Speaker of the House asking John Boehner to please allow us to meet our constitutional responsibility and debate war.
He never even responded to the letters, much less making any type of public comment.
Well, during that period of time when he was a Speaker of the House, he kept saying to the press: if President Obama will send us a new AUMF, then we will go to the committee and then we will bring it to the floor of the House.
He never did that.
And we reminded him of his public statement in those six letters, but obviously it did no good, Daniel.
So I have, with other members of Congress, we've written two letters now to the new Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, and I've talked to him one time about this, to allow us to meet our constitutional responsibility.
We get nowhere on this.
So I don't know what drastic actions we might be taking the next few weeks to force a debate on the floor of the House.
And you're right.
The last AUMF that passed the House of Representatives was 2002, and Dr. Paul was here at the time.
This is just one of those things that, quite frankly, disappoints me about Washington.
It's like we don't have a Constitution.
And James Madison was very clear.
It is the legislative branch that will debate and declare war, not the executive branch.
And what we have done is put it all in the lap of the executive branch, and that is wrong.
You know, Walter, over the years, I've always argued the case that even though perceptions out there are that you have to vote for every single war or you're weakling and you're un-American, you don't support the troops.
And I've always believed sincerely that a message of peace is more popular than a message of war, especially after you look at our history and all the waste in the war.
And the American people, I think, are with us on this, but once again, they're not putting enough pressure on the Congress.
But do you see Congress as being more apathetic than promoting a certain policy?
It just seems like they want to keep hands off.
They don't want to take any responsibility.
And this is how we end up with this imperialistic presidency, Republican or Democrat.
Well, Ron, to your point, and I think you're exactly right.
I think one reason is, and you know this well because you've used it on the floor of the House, that Eisenhower warned the American people and the Congress beware of the military-industrial complex.
And I think that does have an impact on the fact that we are not having this kind of debate because we're spending, I've seen many of your writings, by the way, and we're spending billions and billions and billions of dollars buying war materials to spend, to send overseas, and yet we have no accountability from Washington, very little at best.
Changing Stance on War00:06:40
And it's just like real quickly, John Sopko is the Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction.
He has testified publicly about the waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan.
He's been doing that for years, and we keep funding Afghanistan.
It's just crazy.
First, you have the waste because it's a foolish policy, then you have the ordinary waste where there's corruption.
Daniel.
You know, Mr. Jones, one of my earliest memories of you was not very long after 9-11, after the Iraq War, when you changed your position on the war.
And you probably don't remember it, but we had to evacuate one of those evacuations.
We seemed to have all the time back then.
And everyone was walking back into the House office buildings.
And a lot of your Republican colleagues were along with you.
And I recognized you and went over to say hi.
And it was very interesting because after you turned against the war, each and every one of these Republicans, your colleagues, turned away.
They wouldn't greet you.
They didn't shake your hands.
They didn't smile at you.
And it was really telling, I think, at that time.
And obviously, I really admired your courage at the time.
But I think you were worried when you made this change.
Politically, it wasn't a very smart, it didn't seem to be a very smart decision in your district of all places.
But now, look, your margin of victory has dramatically increased over a neoconservative backed by the neocons.
Maybe you can tell us a little bit about how you think your district is changing and how it's reacted to your consistent stand against war now.
Bron, you know, I have, and Daniel, I have Camp Lajurin Marine Base in my district.
I have well over 70,000 retired military in the third district that I represent.
And I can honestly tell you that when you, you were right.
You did not give President Bush the authority to go into Iraq.
I did, and I will always regret it to the day I die.
We had no business going into Iraq.
In fact, by removing Saddam Hussein is one reason that Iraq is falling apart now, just like when President Obama went into Libya to take out Gaddafi.
Now that's falling apart.
So going back to your point for me personally, I never believed the intelligence that we were being told at the time by President Bush and Mr. Cheney and Runsfield and Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell that we were being told in classified settings.
But I made the mistake that you did not make.
I voted to give President Bush the authority, which I regret.
So once I found out and continued to look into whether we were justified to go into Iraq or not, it led me to join you and Dennis Kucinich and Neil Abercrombie in a news conference and asking that we have a timetable to bring our troops home.
I don't know up here, it's almost like, Ron, I even hate to say it, and Daniel, I really hate to say it, it's almost like the majority of members of Congress don't think about those who are giving their life overseas.
I have signed over 11,000 letters to families and extended families in America who's lost loved ones in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I started that after I realized I made a horrible mistake in giving President Bush the authority to go into Iraq.
Well, Walter, this is why you're a special person.
You had a position, you were willing to change it.
You have a conscience and you actually understand what shame is.
I think most members of Congress, this isn't everybody because we do have some friends there, but I think most politicians, whether it's stupidity and economic policy or foreign policy or civil liberties, even though they're absolutely, there's absolute evidence that it's wrong, they never feel shame.
They don't have a conscience, and that's why you're unique.
And there's only a handful, and I think that is a problem.
But I don't know whether I'm coming down too hard on the other people, but I've heard you make statements about some of the neocons who were orchestrating the war and promoting the war, and you had some pretty strong criticism of those individuals, and it sort of goes along with they have no shame, they have no conscience, and they rationalize it, and they accept it, and they just go on with life.
Well, Ron, to your point, President Bush nor Vice President Cheney has ever apologized for the Iraq war, not one time.
And I'm not saying that by signing 11,000 letters, but that was my penance to God because I knew that I didn't have the strength that you and others had in the House to vote no.
I didn't have the strength to vote no.
That's why I become an outspoken critic of not following the Constitution to allow any president, whether it be a Democrat or Republican, to continue to send our young men and women to fight and die without us meeting our constitutional responsibility.
Well, I have one more short question for you, Walter, because all our times are limited and I know how busy you are.
But do we have a coalition of sorts?
You've mentioned a couple names, but those individuals right now don't happen to be in Congress.
Do you still have a coalition there?
We used to be, because it does have an impact if you can get two or three progressive, honest Democrats together with some Republicans.
Do you have a loose-knit or even more than a loose-knit coalition against some of these war spending?
Well, we've got the Liberty Caucus that you started years ago that we still are very active in.
In fact, we have a meeting this afternoon.
You have the Freedom Caucus now.
But when it comes to the issue of war, I tell you the truth, the numbers are growing.
I would say that we have probably close to 25 to 30 Republicans and probably 50 Democrats that on any type of amendment on the floor dealing with any type of war issues, we usually come together.
But that's not, as you said, that's not the majority, but we are fighting.
This is one of those things.
I still go to Walter Reed.
There are not as many wounded or paralyzed soldiers as there were a few years ago, but some still come back for rehabilitation.
And for me personally, never again will I vote to send a young man or woman to war unless I have my constitutional duty and have a debate on it.
Walter, wonderfully said, and peace is popular.
I sincerely believe that.
And you have done a great job.
I'm very delighted to call you my friend.
And I want to thank you very much for being with us today.
Thank you both.
I've enjoyed being with you.
Thank you for your friendships.
And I mean that sincerely.
Thank you.
And I want to thank the audience for being with us today.