Transcript [PDF] - House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats

40
well as our critical cooperation on Iran with our allies on the U.N.
Security Council.
We must allow, encourage and commend the progress made between
Armenia and Turkey to continue as their governments work
to ratify the protocols of their historic accord. These include a process
of historic review that will allow Armenia and Turkey to deal
with their past together. We must also remember the whole of our
foreign policy objectives, including our responsibility to our citizens,
our troops, for our national security, to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan,
and to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, as well
as to promote ongoing reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey.
Turkey is a longtime friend and ally on a number of key issues. In
this context, I believe it is an inappropriate time for this resolution.
I must vote no on the resolution at this time.
Chairman BERMAN. The gentleman has yielded back his time.
And the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Paul, is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. PAUL. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I find this vote difficult
because voting yes or no would not represent my position. It has
been mentioned by other speakers already that this does not serve
American interests to even bring this subject up, and that would
be what I would consider the best position is by not having issues
like this come up. But those who spoke against it spoke eloquently
about why neutrality on this issue serves American interests the
best.
I only wish that that same principle would be applied to our foreign
policy. It is almost a compulsion on our part to always be involved
in the internal affairs and the conflicts of other nations
when it is not necessary for us to do this, and this is more or less
a reflection of this. So I don’t see there is going to be any advantage
to us to pass this, as a matter of fact I see a lot of disadvantages.
It won’t resolve anything.
There were a lot of tragedies in the twentieth century. There
were 262 million people killed by their own governments in the
twentieth century. There were 34 million people killed in armed
conflict. That is so much tragedy, and to iron that out and solve
these problems and decide who is to get the most blame from governments
that don’t exist any longer, I see no purpose in that, it
doesn’t serve our benefit.
But it is also disappointing to me about how these issues come
up and the conflicts come. One of my goals, long term goals, has
always been to strive for eliminating hyphenated Americans. I
don’t like the idea that we have so many groups that are hyphenated,
so they have lobbyist groups to serve the interests of this
group of Americans against another group of Americans. And then
you have foreign lobbyists come in and foreign governments that
represents one government over the other.
Truly if we had a republic we wouldn’t be dealing with this kind
of a problem being brought up constantly over many, many years.
Decades we have been dealing with this. The purpose that I see for
this is that the consequence will be nothing more than just stirring
the pot. We are going to stir the pot and nothing is going to be settled
and it will come up again. And yet, the evidence is rather
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