Pat Buchanan on War & Peace
Doesn’t matter to US whose flag flies over Jerusalem
If Palestine wants to fight and die and unite the Arab states around them, we cannot stop them. It’s not vital to America’s security whose flag flies over Jerusalem or the Golan Heights.
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (in Boston Globe, p. A19)
Oct 18, 2000
Iraq: end sanctions that kill kids, or pay price later
For ten years, we’ve maintained rigid sanctions on Iraq, resulting in the premature deaths of 500,000 children. Will the parents of those children ever forgive us? Even our European Allies recoil. By keeping these sanctions fastened on Iraq, we flout
every tenet of Christianity’s Just War doctrine, and build up deposits of hatred across the Arab world that will take decades to draw down. One day our children shall pay the price of our callous indifference to what is happening to the children of Iraq.
Source: Speech at AntiWar.com conference, San Mateo, CA
Mar 24, 2000
Israel: Provide for self-defense, but concede land for peace
Israel will not know peace as long as it occupies Arab land.The US should end foreign aid to Israel and Egypt, which runs to $5 billion yearly, and lay out the elements of an honorable peace:- return of the
Golan Heights to Syria, and their demilitarization
- Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, with a right of return if Hezbollah uses the territory for attacks.
Source: “A Republic, Not an Empire,” p.382-3
Oct 9, 1999
Palestine: a flag, a land, a capital in Jerusalem
[An honorable peace with Israel should include]:- a flag and land of their own for the Palestinians
- a Vatican enclave-capital in Arab East Jerusalem
- any Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza should be demilitarized
- a permanent commitment to Israel of access to US weapons to enable it to maintain a security edge, with Israeli guarantees of no further technology transfers to China.
Source: “A Republic, Not an Empire,” p.383
Oct 9, 1999
Iran & Iraq: Abandon dual containment strategy
It is time to abandon a sterile policy of dual containment for a more active diplomacy , especially with Iran. Nothing Iran’s regime has done, despicable as it may be, compares with what Mao’s men did. As for Saddam,
murderous though he may be, he is not a threat to America. Should he use a weapon of mass destruction... his destruction would be total -- and he knows it.
Source: “A Republic, Not an Empire,” p.381
Oct 9, 1999
Israeli lobby should not dominate Mideast policy
Q: In your book, you also seem to express great concern about the influence that Jews have had on American foreign policy.
A: I don’t know why you singled out American Jews.
Q: Because you did.
A: There are 16 ethnic lobbies. We mentioned every
single one of them.
Q: You say that “the Israeli lobby is the most powerful of ethnic lobbies.” That’s your view?
A: The Israeli lobby is the most powerful of ethnic lobbies in terms of dominating foreign policy. Let me make an honest statement
to you. If Pat Buchanan becomes president of the US, the foreign policy of this country and the Middle East policy of this country will be made in the Oval Office by the president of the US alone. We need a foreign policy that puts our own country first.
What I am saying is AIPAC, the Israeli lobby or any other lobby, is not going to dominate foreign policy if Pat Buchanan becomes president. Our policy in the Middle East should be based on American values and American interests.
Source: Interview on “Meet the Press”
Sep 12, 1999
Casualties “in the service of the UN” breaches sovereignty
What were they fighting and dying for [in the American Revolution]? They were fighting and dying so that America would be sovereign-be free-be independent-and retain her liberty from all these world organizations from London and Brussels-from anywhere.
Look how far we have gone, my friends. When those 16 young Americans were shot down in the so-called friendly fire incident in Iraq, the vice-president of the United States issued a formal statement saying, “The parents of these young men and women
can be proud they died in the service of the United Nations.:
These 16 Americans did not take an oath to the United Nations. They took an oath to the Constitution of the United States-to you and me.
And when I get to the oval office, never again will young Americans be sent into battle except under American officers and to fight under the American flag.
Source: United We Stand America Conference, p.320
Aug 12, 1995
Israelis are our friends; but must bear some responsibility
Buchanan said Bush and Gore have been unquestioning supporters of Israel during the recent conflict in the Middle East. He said Israel bears some responsibility for provoking Palestinian attacks by extending Jewish settlements in the West Bank. “Of
course the Israelis are our friends, but we’ve got to have a more even-handed policy,” he said. “We have friends in the Arab world, and we have to be friends to the idea of justice in the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.”
Source: Zachary Coile, San Francisco Examiner
Oct 27, 2000
Kuwait War benefited Iran; not US
I did not believe Kuwait was vital to the US. Saddam, after all, had stolen Kuwait’s oil to sell it, and Saudi Arabia could be defended without a war on Baghdad. The nation most likely to acheive hegemony in the Gulf is Iran. Iraq, a third as large and
populous, was the Arab counter. If we destroyed it, Iran would be the beneficiary and the US would be left with the obligation to contain both nations, an open-ended commitment America would be unwilling to sustain.
Source: “A Republic, Not an Empire,” p.327
Oct 9, 1999
Pat Buchanan on Balkans
In long term, Serbs & Kosovars & Albanians will resent US
For 78 days, US pilots flew thousands of missions against Serbia, destroying bridges, electrical grids, and, yes, even hospitals, schools and the occasional embassy. Yet, before launching his war, Clinton never received the authorization of Congress.
But as a consequence of our triumph over Serbia, our young men and women are in Kosovo policing territory that has been violently contested for hundreds of years. As of now, we do not know if US troops will end up fighting Serbs, or Kosovar Albanians,
or first one, then the other. But it is a near certainty that the US will one day be forced to pull out of Kosovo, after having earned the lasting hatred of Serbs--a people who never harmed the US--and of the Albanians, whose aspirations will not be
satisfied until the US helps to carve out an ethnically pure Greater Albania.
If 78 days of bombing could not eject Milosevic from power, how does forcing the people of Serbia to endure a brutal winter without fuel or heat advance our goal?
Source: Speech at AntiWar.com conference, San Mateo, CA
Mar 24, 2000
Balkan policy is a neo-imperialist failure
NATO, a defensive alliance, launched an offensive war against a nation that threatened no member of that alliance, dissipating its moral authority. Serbia is smashed. Montenegro and Macedonia are destabilized. Kosovo was purged first of Albanians, then
of Serbs. And lies in ruins. US relations with China and Russia have been damaged. For what? So we and NATO could police in perpetuity a Balkan province that has not the remotest connection to US vital interests. Such are the fruits of neo-imperialism.
Source: Speech at AntiWar.com conference, San Mateo, CA
Mar 24, 2000
End sanctions that hurt innocent Serbs
Buchanan criticized “smashing” Serbia with a 78-day bombing campaign, and then denying Serbs heating oil & aid in removing the debris of war. “This immoral policy shames us as a people,” Buchanan said. “We are putting old men, women, and children under a
sentence of death for failing to do what NATO itself could not do: overthrow Milosevic.” Better ways to punish rogue states, Buchanan said, include cutting off overseas assets of dictators, denying them loans & levying tariffs to deny them hard currency.
Source: NY Times, p. A22
Dec 17, 1999
Balkans: Let Europe police their own backyard
The Balkan wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia have lasted for nearly a decade, but until we attacked Belgrade in 1999, America remained unaffected. We have no vital interest in that blood-soaked peninsula to justify a permanent
military presence. The Balkans are not our backyard; they are Europe’s backyard, and responsibility for policing the peninsula belongs to them, not us.
Source: “A Republic, Not an Empire,” p.385
Oct 9, 1999
We attacked Yugoslav territory without Congress’ approval
Before Clinton ordered air strikes on Yugoslavia in the early 1999, US forces had never fought in the Balkans. But today there are 8,000 US troops in Bosnia and a US occupation army in Kosovo. America engaged in acts of war against a nation that did
not perpetrate any act of violence against the US or its allies. Clinton’s original ultimatum to Yugoslavia--to attack its troops and sovereign territory if it did not remove its forces from Kosovo--was made without the formal approval of Congress.
Source: “A Republic, Not an Empire,” p. 29
Oct 9, 1999
Kosovo conflict is illegal and unconstitutional
Buchanan called the conflict over Kosovo “an illegal and unconstitutional war, launched without authorization by Congress. There is not now, and there never has been, any vital US interest in whose flag flies over Pristina to justify the loss of a single
platoon of US Marines.”
Source: Associated Press
Jun 18, 1999
Prefers “least-bad peace” patrolled by Europeans & locals
Rather than wading deeper into this bloodsoaked peninsula with “all means necessary” to win, what the US needs today in the Balkans is a least-bad peace, patrolled by Europeans, where Serbs rule Serbs, Croats rule Croats, and Albanians rule Albanians.
Source: www.GoPatGo.org/ “Issues: Disaster called Kosovo”
Jun 5, 1999
Intervention causes the disaster we sought to avoid
When Mr. Clinton launched this misguided crusade, he claimed that if we did not intervene, the Balkans would be destabilized, the Kosovar Albanians would be victimized, and NATO’s credibility would be compromised. Our mindless intervention has produced
precisely the disaster we sought to avoid. After weeks of bombing and billions of American tax dollars, a million Albanians have been displaced, Milosevic’s ground forces control all of Kosovo, and NATO is deeply divided.
Source: www.GoPatGo.org/ “Issues: Disaster called Kosovo”
Jun 5, 1999
No vital US interests; no right of US attack
America has no vital national interest in whose flag flies over Kosovo’s capital, and no right to attack and kill Serbs fighting on their own soil to preserve the territorial integrity of their country.
Source: www.GoPatGo.org/ “Issues: Disaster called Kosovo”
Jun 5, 1999
War in Yugoslavia is none of our business
Mr. Buchanan opposed from early on the NATO attacks on Yugoslavia. “We are now in a foreign war that’s none of our business.” Buchanan contended that his antiwar stance will be his definitive rallying cry.
Source: NY Times, p. A10, col. 1, “A Crowded Race”
May 29, 1999
NATO should not be the air arm of the KLA
NATO was created to defend Western Europe against Soviet aggression, not to serve as the air arm of some highly suspect ‘Kosovo Liberation Army’ in its war of secession from the former
Yugoslavia. What has Slobodan Milosevic done to the Albanians that Mr. Clinton’s ‘strategic partners’ in Beijing have not done to the Tibetans?
Source: Press release quoted on “Geraldo Rivera Show”
May 6, 1999