Mr. Speaker, tonight I'd like to share a few thoughts about national security and about American foreign policy. We have many challenges that confront us today, and we live in perplexing times, but…
Mr. Speaker, tonight I'd like to share a few thoughts about national security and about American foreign policy. We have many challenges that confront us today, and we live in perplexing times, but we also live in a time when there are great challenges as well as great opportunities, as long as we, the American people, have the courage to live up to our potential as a country that could lead the world into a better way than we have known throughout the history of humankind.
We are indeed in a new millennium, and this new millennium, coupled with the technological capabilities that we have and the vast wealth that is available to the free societies of the world today make it possible that we can build a better world than any human being has ever known. But, again, a lot of this has to fall back on the United States of America and our willingness as Americans to live up to the responsibility that we've been handed.
Ronald Reagan used to say that America has a very special role to play in this world. He used to say that because we Americans are a very special kind of people. We are not of one race. We're not of one religion nor one ethnic group, but instead, we are made up of people who come from every part of this planet and every racial background and worship God in every way that you can imagine. And in fact, there are many atheists who don't worship God at all and have that right, but we've come here to live in freedom and to show the world and to lead the world as a country that's made up of people from all over, that lead the world toward that direction which will enable it to overcome those trials and tribulations, those hatreds, ancient hatreds that have plagued mankind for so long.
And yes, today, the United States is the great superpower, thanks of course a lot to Ronald Reagan who I just talked about. The fact that during the Cold War he was willing to act responsibly to make tough decisions, in a way that ended the Cold War in a very real sense, he oversaw the demise of communism in the Soviet Union. It was Ronald Reagan who everyone knows brought down the Berlin Wall and not George Herbert Walker Bush, George W. Bush's father.
But as the Berlin Wall came down because of the policies of Ronald Reagan, we too must make the right decisions to ensure that the challenges that we face today are overcome in time for the next generation to enjoy greater freedom and to free themselves from the threats of fear that we face today. This will not happen unless we act responsibly, unless we act with courage, but, most importantly, unless we stand up and proclaim that, yes, we are from every nation of the world and every race and every religion, and we are the ones who will promote freedom and liberty on this planet. It is that alliance that we can have with those people in every country, that we have are, as I say, those people within our own society who can reach out to every country with that message, that we are allied with those good and decent people throughout the world who would stand with us to create a world where human freedom and liberty and justice and treating people with respect is something that is commonplace rather than the exception.
Sometimes it's a little difficult to think of a world becoming free, and the expansion of liberty and justice in this world, when we hear the reports that we heard today coming out of Burma. Burma, for these last 4 decades, has lived under tyranny, a horrible, horrible tyranny. It has been a closed society. Burma is a country that is so rich in natural resources that after the Second World War it was thought that Burma would be the breadbasket of Asia, that Burma would indeed be one of the richest countries of Asia.
Instead, Burma has sunk year after year, suffering from tyranny but, as a result of that tyranny, its people have lived in deprivation and in hunger and in want that was never ever thought would happen. No one ever thought that would happen after the Second World War.
But if we have learned anything from Burma and from the other countries that are poor today, it is that poverty is not created by too big a population. Poverty is not created by even a scarcity of resources, natural resources. Poverty is created because of tyranny. Tyranny and dictatorship bring corruption and bring about a strangling of those creative impulses within any society and those productive people within every society that will build, that will create the wealth necessary to uplift the people of any society. Instead,
tyranny drags them down, no matter how prosperous the country could be in terms of its natural resources.
The report today is that Burma had its chance, or perhaps it still does, but that the ruling regime, the gangsters that have run that country for decades, have now unleashed their firepower upon the Buddhist monks and the other people in that society who are calling for a liberalization of the Burmese regime. Apparently, thousands of people have been slaughtered.
In fact, an intelligence officer for the Burmese military has defected, and he now is reporting to Western newspapers that it was his orders, by his commanding officers, to round up hundreds, if not thousands of monks, and put them in trucks and take them into the deep jungle and murder them and dump their bodies in the jungle.
He could not do that, and so he defected. He grabbed his child and ran for the border. It is time for the other military officers in Burma and the police not just to take their children and run because they can't obey an order, but to realize that the orders they are being given by their generals, their so-called generals, are not lawful orders. It is time for the army of Burma to side with the people of Burma.
Any military leaders in Burma today who side with the people will become national heroes and will be renowned and remembered by their people for generations to come. They will receive the gratitude not only of the people of Burma, but to all the good and decent people of the world. The soldiers in Burma and the police in Burma should turn their guns on their generals. They should side with the people of Burma, their fathers, their mothers, their brothers and sisters who want honest government and clean government. They should not be slaughtering their fellow family members who want nothing more than clean, honest, Democratic government.
The regime, as I say, is headed by what they call generals, but these are not generals. These are gangsters who have put on military uniforms. No Burmese soldier owes them any allegiance. These generals, these gangsters, have sold out their country and their countrymen to foreign interests, namely, the Chinese. Yes, the dictatorship in Beijing is treating the government, which means the generals, in Burma as if Burma was a vassal state of China.
In exchange for the $1.5 billion worth of military equipment that China has given Burma, the Burmese gangsters who run that country are permitted, the government in Beijing and the Chinese, to rape the natural resources of the people of Burma, the teakwood, the gems, the uranium, the rich minerals that Burma has are being taken away. They are being eliminated from the future of the people of that country in order to pay for the weapons that repress the people of that country. The Chinese have demanded of the Burmese Government a facility on their ocean so that they can be in a position to outflank India and to interfere with the trade, ocean trade in that part of the world.
All of this is being given away by those leaders, so-called leaders in Burma. They are giving away the rightful legacy of the people of Burma to Chinese outsiders, gangsters in China now in league with gangsters of Burma.
This is the type of relationship that China will have with other countries if we permit them. And it is clear, for those of us who are looking, that the military troops that are now shooting down those who seek democracy in Burma would not be doing so if the Chinese would have objected and sent any message to their Burmese stooges not to shoot and not to commit violence against those who are peacefully advocating change, democratic change in Burma.
Yes, they have a regime. But unlike in other countries, like we faced in another issue which I will talk about in Iraq, in Burma, there is an alternative. There is an alternative to the Burmese dictatorship. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Prize winner, won with her party elections back in the 1990s when the generals were so deluded that they believed their own propaganda in thinking they were more popular than they were, and they permitted a free election. In that free election, they were wiped out.
The fact is that Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma and the people of Burma went to polls and the people of Burma overwhelmingly supported democratic reform and Aung San Suu Kyi. The election was, of course, immediately discarded; the generals mobilized their troops. Aung San Suu Kyi was sent into House arrest.
Aung San Suu Kyi, I went to Burma and met her several years ago, one of the great heroes of our time, a saintly person, someone who is depending on us like the people of Burma to make a strong stand. If nothing else, the American people must let the people of Burma know that we are on their side, and we must let the ruling junta know that we oppose them and we oppose their oppression of the Burmese people.
This should be clear to them, and we must make sure that those Burmese generals and those military officers who were committing atrocities against the people of Burma realize they are not just murdering their fellow Burmese, they are committing crimes against humanity, and they will be followed and pursued just like the Nazis before them, and they will be held accountable and brought to justice.
I am calling on our government to freeze any assets that any leader of the Burmese Government might have, and our government should be working with other governments to issue arrest warrants for any member of the Burmese Government who travels abroad.
Furthermore, we must join with other nations and suggest that China is not doing its part and is playing a horrible role when it comes to freedom in Burma, as it will play the same role in the Philippines and elsewhere as its strength as a country grows.
China has prevented the United Nations from stopping the atrocities that are now going on, as we speak, in Burma. China has been pulling the strings. The Burmese regime would never have opened fire without permission in Beijing. The people of Burma should know that. The people of the world should know that.
It is time for the people in the United States to quit closing their eyes to the monstrous nature of the Beijing regime. Without that regime, the Burmese dictators, the gangsters in Burma, would not be able to succeed in holding down that population and by brutalizing their people.
I have a piece of legislation before the Congress, and I would ask my colleagues to join me. The legislation is H.R. 610. It is a bill suggesting that we go on record as being in favor of boycotting the upcoming Olympics to be held in China.
There is no reason, while China remains the world's worst human rights abuser, and that includes Burma, I might add, the Chinese are the world's worst human rights abuser, and why should we ever hold an Olympics, which stands for some of the higher aspirations of humankind, why should we ever hold an Olympics in China while it has that type of monstrously dictatorial government. Yes, in China they not only are involved with repressing the people of Burma, but they are deeply involved with criminal acts against their own people, especially against religious believers.
Isn't it fascinating that in Burma, those who would try to lead the country to a better and more Democratic way are those Buddhist monks who now, in a very peaceful way, have presented their case and are answered with an iron fist. They are answered by bullets, they are answered by brutality.
In China, it's the same. We have people of the religious faith, whether they are Muslims in the far reaches of China or whether they are people in Tibet, who have been so brutalized, or other religious believers, Christians, Catholics, and, yes, the Falun Gong, the Falun Gong who have a spiritual belief that is somewhat similar to yoga and somewhat meditation. Yet, this very simple and pacifist religion has been vilified by the communist party of China, and thousands and thousands of Falun Gong practitioners believing in meditation and yoga have been arrested. They are picked up, and they disappear.
The women are raped in prison; they are murdered. Perhaps worst of all, when they disappear, they are sent to prisons, and now we have reports coming out of those prisons that Falun Gong prisoners, people who are pacifists, who are simply believing in meditation and yoga, they are, what, they
are being murdered for their organ parts which are then being sold. Sometimes they sell them to Americans who come there. Falun Gong prisoners are killed right before a doctor, who would then remove the cornea from their eye and sell it to people in the West who spend thousands of dollars to get these body parts.
If there is anything more ghoulish than this, even the Nazis, I don't think, could sink that low, but they sank about as low as one could ever expect. But that is the type of thing that goes on today, and we are giving the Chinese the ability to hold the Olympics, to cover up, to put a good face on this type of monstrous regime.
It is time for the people of the United States Congress to join with me in agreeing that as long as China is doing, number one, what it's doing in Burma and in Darfur, where they are again behind the scenes playing a horrible role, it is time for us to join together and say we will not participate in an Olympics hosted by such a criminal government.
And I am happy to announce today Neil Abercrombie, my colleague from Hawaii, has joined me in supporting this legislation.
China, of course, even beyond, if it was simply a nondictatorship, there would be major problems with China. China is a predatory nation. China is a nation, for example, it is a nation, as a nation state it's huge, and it has more territorial claims than any other major power in the world. China has been built into a huge power, an economic power, which is now being translated into military power. Even though it has claims against India, huge areas of India and Russia, large areas of the ocean are claimed by China. If one remembers, it was just a few years ago when one of our planes, our surveillance planes flying in international waters was forced down in China, and they claimed that their territorial waters extended way beyond anything the United States would recognize. And all they wanted for us to get the crew back was for us to apologize and to acknowledge that we were in their territory.
What does that mean? They would have murdered these American military personnel in order to assert their claim to huge areas of ocean. In fact, they claim the ocean right up to the shore line of the Philippines. They claim the Sprattley Islands, which are only 100 miles from the Philippines and 500 to 600 miles from China. Huge areas, as I say, of India and of Russia.
This is a country that we have built an economy over these last two decades, we have built from a weak country, we now have created a Frankenstein monster. And when I say ``we,'' I mean the policies of the United States Government have uplifted the economic capabilities of a country that has had no liberalization, no political reform of their dictatorial system.
We were told for 20 years, when I first got here, vote for most favored nation status for China, because if we interact with China economically, they will liberalize. What they need to do is, we have to prove to them not to fear us. This is a reoccurring theme by which people who live in democratic societies fool themselves into thinking that the criminals who run other governments, dictatorships are in some way motivated by the same motives that people are in free societies, that people in free societies will fear someone, thus they will agree to certain expenditures, military expenditures.
The Chinese know exactly who we are and who they are. The Chinese people are not the enemy. Those people in Beijing want to hold on to power, just as the dictators in Burma want to hold on to power. And as we move forward and try to determine what our policy should be in the future, let us note the policies of trying to engage China economically, permitting huge transfers of dollars of capital assets, of technology, of American know-how, of opening our markets, even though their markets were closed, letting them manipulate the currency, letting them get away with policies that shifted wealth from the United States into China. That did not have a positive impact on their government. Their government is still corrupt. Their government is still a government of criminal dictators, people who oppress their people and, as I say, are the worst human rights abusers in the world.
So first and foremost, in dealing with China, as in dealing with Burma, we must differentiate how we treat a dictatorship and how we treat a democratic country. Those leaders in China should not be granted the status of acceptability that goes with hosting the Olympics with our blessing.
Yet, we have, for the last two decades, seen an army of American corporate leaders rushing to China to invest and build factories and in partnership with the Chinese Government set up these factories and create manufacturing units that sell goods back to the United States, putting American workers out of work, selling goods back to the United States that have such poor standards that some of them are made of toxic material, as we've just seen with Mattel Toys, American corporate leaders, who are looking for two, three, maybe 4 years' worth of big profit for themselves, then they can cut and run and go off to their vacationland homes and enjoy themselves.
Those corporate leaders have created a monster with the blessing of the United States Government, because it's been our policy to permit them to transfer the technology, the know-how, and the investment dollars that were needed to build China into what it is today. And today, the Chinese are destroying the manufacturing base of the United States, and we have turned a blind eye to the fact that they manipulate the currency, that they manipulate access to their markets, and that they steal American intellectual property. We have turned a blind eye to that, just as we have turned a blind eye to the fact that the Chinese repress their own people.
And when you talk to these corporate leaders who've gone over there and built this monster, created this Nazi-like government, you ask them, they say, well, you know, when we do more and more economic interaction, we have more business; that's what's going to create more liberalism and reform there. How many times have we heard that? We've been listening to that for 20 years. The first speech I heard about this on the floor for most favored nation status for China was saying just that 20 years ago, yet it never happens. This is called the ``hug a Nazi, make a liberal theory.'' Just get close to them and they won't fear you anymore.
Well, the fact is China has been getting worse since, over these last two decades. It was Tiananmen Square that was the turning point. Up until Tiananmen Square, there was a legitimate reason for us to try to build the economy of China, to create closer ties, because there was an evolution going on, both economically and politically in China. And when it reached a point, at Tiananmen Square, you might say the tipping point, the United States didn't stand up. The Chinese gangsters, just like in Burma, where the military regime had to make its decision, was it going to open fire on their own people, the Chinese Government was facing this decision, and our government did nothing and we said nothing.
It is my contention that had George Herbert Walker Bush, then President of the United States, sent a message to China and to the Chinese leaders that if you murder and try to slaughter the democratic movement in China, we are withdrawing from our economic cooperation that we have agreed to, they would not have done so. And I will tell you tonight, Ronald Reagan would have sent that letter in a millisecond. Ronald Reagan would have been told that the democratic movement was on the verge of success, but they would be slaughtered if they sent the troops in and they need to send a message to the leadership of China saying that we are going to withdraw our economic cooperation with them if they, indeed, mowed down their own people. Reagan would have done it.
This President Bush's father did not; and thus we have had, in the last two decades, not a transition to democracy, but only a growing of their economy, which now gives them greater military capabilities and gives them greater wealth from which to try to undermine the United States.
And, again, as we look at this threat, what is really important is the same thing that's important in Burma and elsewhere, the basic message that we need to understand tonight, that when confronting regimes like China and
Burma, and confronting radical Islam that hates America, let's remember that it is the people who want to live decent lives and live in democracy who are America's greatest allies. The people of China, the people of China are the ones we must ally ourselves with. They need to know that we are on their side. They need to know that the people of the United States and the people of China all long to treat people decently and to live in freedom and justice. The people of China will be on our side if we are on their side. The people of Burma are on our side as long as they know we are on their side. Good and decent people throughout the world know this.
But, instead, we have been so busy building an economic infrastructure that permits wealth to flow to China that we have not bothered to make the demands on the government or to create, to help create the democratic movements within China that would move their government from within.
One example, by the way, of how we have done this is the fact that we have built a conveyor system for trade across our oceans, especially across the Pacific, especially from Shanghai into the ports that I represent, Long Beach and Los Angeles. We have built, with American taxpayer dollars, an incredibly efficient system so that American businessmen could go and set up factories in China, manufacture their goods over there, and ship them to the United States via a system that we've paid for, and come into our market and undercut our own American working people and our own American manufacturers who've stayed at home. We built this for them.
That's why I've long been an advocate of a container fee system so that at least, at the very least, if they're going to send containers filled with goods here, why should we build the ports and spend billions of dollars of infrastructure so that they can very efficiently send containers filled with goods into our society and undercut our own manufacturers?
I have not received the support that I believe that idea justifies. In fact, you see people in both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, oh poo-pooing that as if it was a tax on the American people. We are not charging those American manufacturers who go to China. We're not. We are subsidizing them in their shipment of goods here to undercut our own people. That makes no sense. But it makes sense to those businessmen. It makes not only sense; it makes dollars for them. And as I say, they make a really quick profit; 4 or 5 years and they're done. They're even done with their own companies after 4 or 5 years. But we are the ones with our manufacturing base destroyed who have to pick up the pieces.
In my own city, in Huntington Beach, where I live, a manufacturer of paint and coatings was the person who sold the coatings to Mattel Toys for Barbie dolls. And in the year 2000, Mattel Toys gave an award to this company as the number one supplier for Mattel Toys. And then Mattel Toys sold out to the Chinese, decided to manufacture everything in China. The Chinese came to this gentleman and said, give us the formula for your coatings, and we will be partners. As soon as he gave them the formula, the Chinese disappeared. They disappeared, and he was never able to get a hold of them. And next thing you know, they aren't using his formula. They're using lead in the formula. And my children at home, who have Barbie dolls now, and all the other American children who have Barbie dolls, may have been infected with lead poisoning because Mattel Toys took the easy way out, along with the other American manufacturers who went to China in order to not pay our own American workers a decent wage.
They want to get a 10 percent or 20 percent higher profit in China rather than paying American workers a decent wage and having half as much profit. Who is paying the price for us? The American people in the end will pay the price as China grows into a massive, economic, and military power, which goes with that.
Of course, during the Clinton years, what did we find? There was not only technology transfer in the economic area, but they had actually polluted our political system as well. Campaign contributions flowing into the American political system and American missile technology leaking out in the other direction. The scandal during the Clinton years of American missile technology being transferred to the Chinese through Hughes and Lorel Corporation is a disgrace. And the evidence of Chinese influence and especially financial support during that election makes that even worse.
But we need to make sure that we bypass our own business leaders, bypass the leadership, the gangsters that run Beijing and Burma and like countries, and go directly to the people throughout the world with our message of hope, democracy, liberty, and justice. The people of Burma and the people of China are our greatest allies. These Burmese soldiers now have to make a decision as to whether they will fire upon their own people. The Chinese people should not permit their children, and they only have one child per family, to go into the military so that it can be used to suppress their own people.
This is not unlike the war we fight today, not with Burma or China but, of course, with radical Islam. China is not an enemy today. China is an adversary today, a very powerful adversary. We are, in fact, making that adversary so powerful, it's becoming frightening. But we are at war with radical Islam. We are at war with radical Islam. And again let me note that when I say that, I emphasize that Muslims throughout the world who do not hate America, Muslims throughout the world who love their faith, as they should, which it has meant very much to their lives and over a billion people, Muslims throughout the world who know that their prayer time and their other religious ceremonies and beliefs have meant a lot to their life and have added great depth to their life, those people are not our enemies. Those people are our friends.
We believe in freedom of religion. We respect other people's religion. We ask only that other people respect our religion. And, by the way, our respect for religion doesn't just go to other faiths, but it goes to people who don't believe in God at all, who don't choose to worship.
Our Founding Fathers did not come here, as some of my conservative friends say, to create a Christian Nation. We came here to create a Nation where freedom of religion was respected and that we acknowledged God but we did not in any way want to force those beliefs on those who were nonbelievers.
It is right that the people of Islam worship the way they choose, whether here or abroad. Those people who only want that freedom and are willing to grant that to others are our friends. But a radical fringe which hates everything we stand for has now arisen in the Muslim world.
Let me note that during the 1920s we had terrorists and in years past we had terrorists who were Christians. In 1920, the biggest political force in this country was the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan, as we know, carried around banners with crosses and declaring their love of Christianity. And the fact is that Christian churches in the South did not condemn the Ku Klux Klan, as they should have. The good and decent people of the American South, when they knew that these Klansmen were murdering people, they were terrorizing the black population, murdering them, hanging them, all kinds of torture that was going on in our country against our own black population, the Christian people did not stand up in those areas when they knew that the Klansmen were right there in church with them.
Well, that was a hundred years ago. Our Muslim brothers we are expecting to do better than we did when it came to the Klan because al Qaeda is the Ku Klux Klan of Islam. Al Qaeda are the hate mongers. Al Qaeda are those who would bring people who believe in God and put them at war with one another rather than trying to bring them together in peace and brotherhood.
In Afghanistan after 9/11, the United States went to Afghanistan and allied itself with moderate Muslims. During the 1990s, there was a mistake by this government just as we made a mistake with China. We tried to work with the Taliban. In fact, during the Clinton administration, the Taliban came into
being. And, in fact, it is very easy to see the historical record that the Clinton administration reached an agreement with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and our government was involved in creating the Taliban.
During that time period, I was a Member of Congress, and because I had spent time in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets, I spent considerable time in Afghanistan working with those people who would oppose the Taliban. I begged the powers that be that they support King Zahir Shaw, a moderate Muslim, a man who was much beloved by all Afghans, to support his return. And, instead, our government, under Madeleine Albright and all the others of the Clinton administration, did what? They decided to go along with the Saudis and to go along with the Pakistanis in creating a religious force, that they said because the people of Afghanistan are devout, this is what will draw them together, by supporting religious fanatics.
I told them at the time it was ridiculous. I told them that it would backfire on them during the war with the Soviets. The Pakistanis had passed on aid to Hikmatyar Gulbadin, a horrendous terrorist who was, again, a radical Islamist. But there were many others whom we helped during the war against the Soviets. I was there with them. And whether it was Abdul Haq or Commander Massoud or others like them, there were many others, Galani's forces and others, who were very, very mainstream Islamic people who were not anti-Western but were just trying to free their own country from the atheistic dictatorship of the communists, and we helped them. But after that, as we walked away, when the Soviets walked away, we made this deal with the Saudis and with the Pakistanis to let them finance the reconstruction and determine who would be in power in Afghanistan, and that is when the Taliban was born, as I say, at that time over my serious objections, and I spent 5 years going in and out of Afghanistan meeting with those people who would later become the Northern Alliance.
So as we look back on Afghanistan now, years after the Taliban has been defeated and al Qaeda was driven out of that country, let us remember the success that we had was because we went to the people.
There is a mistaken belief that we are not ``winning'' in Iraq because we didn't have enough boots on the ground. We didn't send in enough American troops. Well, in fact, we had probably 100 boots on the ground when Kabul was liberated from the Taliban and al Qaeda forces in the aftermath of 9/11. In fact, that liberation of Afghanistan was accomplished with very few American soldiers on the frontlines. In fact, the people of Afghanistan liberated themselves, and we did not liberate them. And we went into that war, and we reached agreements with those leaders, tribal leaders. They are often called warlords, but that was the Northern Alliance. And it was the Northern Alliance and those good people in Afghanistan who worked with me in the Mujahideen to fight against the Soviets. Those are the people who drove out the Taliban.
When we went into Iraq, it was a different story, unfortunately. Mistakes have been made, yes. Mistakes have been made in Iraq. There is no doubt. We sent in a military force, a strong military force, and they did their job. What did not happen was the political job that was necessary to complement the fact that we had dispossessed Saddam Hussein of his military might. Instead of making agreements as we did in Afghanistan with the tribal leaders, we did not, as we did in Afghanistan, reach out to the local powers that be that were moderate Muslims, and there are many moderate Muslims in Iraq. What we instead did was tell the people of Iraq that we were going to rebuild their entire country and that, for example, there would be no room. Mr. Bremer is quoted as saying to tribal leaders that there would be no room in a modern democratic Iraq for tribalism. Thus in our effort to make the decision for those people, rather than going to the people and their leaders ourselves, we have put ourselves in what has been a horrific quagmire.
How we extricate ourselves from Iraq will go a long way in defining what type of world my children live in and, in fact, what kind of world the young people who are with us today will have. If we try to pull out precipitously and look like we are running away, if we look like we are surrendering, if it looks like we have been defeated, we will embolden those people in Iraq who hate everything about the United States, and we will embolden the radical Islamists throughout the world. There is no doubt about that. That is not to say, again, that we should not be admitting our mistakes and doing what we can to extricate ourselves in a responsible way. That is why I have been supporting General Petraeus and his efforts to have a phased withdrawal, a responsible phased withdrawal, that will then permit those elements within Iraq that do not want to be ruled by radical Islam or those elements that would like to be friends of the West to give them a chance to step up. If we are viewed as retreating and abandoning those people, there will be a heavy price to pay.
And let us admit that with the mistakes that I have already mentioned, it is a tempting target for people involved in our political system to use what is going on in Iraq as a political vehicle in the upcoming elections.
Now, the people here in Congress, we have to search our souls to make sure what we are doing is based not on political motives but instead is based on what is the long-term interest of the people of the United States.
I go down and welcome home the troops, the reservists and National Guard, all the time that come in and out and leave Iraq or are coming back from Iraq, and I welcome them back, and I know, because I have supported this effort, that I must pay special attention. But let us note that we have to be doing this and looking at this and analyzing what is happening in a nonpolitical way. I am afraid that there are some forces at play that would try to politicize what is going on in Iraq.
Those people who oppose our efforts to have a phased withdrawal, would like immediate withdrawal from Iraq, those people who see America as the big problem in the world instead of as the world's only hope, those people cannot attack American soldiers because they realize that all Americans are proud of the men and women who are defending our country in uniform. But what we are witnessing now is what I would consider a maneuver on the part of those who, if they could, would attack American military troops. What they are doing is attacking American security companies who have been brought to Iraq to try to supplement our war effort there. By and large these American security companies are made up of people who have perhaps 10 times the experience of our own soldiers. American security companies like Blackwater, for example, hire on special forces and other extraordinarily well-trained American military personnel when they retire from the military so that their skills can still be put to use in the defense of our country and in the promotion of human freedom.
Their personnel are essential to the success of any of our military goals, but they're also essential to the success of a phased pull-out of Iraq. Otherwise, there will be no buffer. Otherwise, there is no means for us to have the type of withdrawal with success. Otherwise, it is a retreat.
Blackwater, as I say, has been working now, I think, since 1997. It's run by a young man named Eric Prince. He inherited his money. And the fact is he could have done a lot of other things with his money and made a lot more money. He could have gone to China and made 10 times the profit that he makes by creating a security company that would work side by side with American forces and American diplomats overseas to try to offer protection to our country and to those State Department and other people who are working in the United States Government overseas. He could have gone and made much more money.
Instead, now he's being called, I've seen him called ``murderer,'' I've seen the people in Blackwater being called ``thugs,'' when in fact almost every one of these people who work for Blackwater, like Eric himself, are former Special Forces people. Eric was a Navy SEAL for 5 years. And then, rather than just living the life of luxury that he could have done when he
inherited his money, he decided to do something good for his country. Those people who are retiring from our military and have good pensions, yes, they could live the life of Riley; they could go fishing every day. But, instead, they are putting their skills to use by putting their lives in danger for us. Yet, they are being attacked unmercifully by people who just basically oppose the fact that this President got us involved in Iraq in the first place.
We should not be taking it out on the people of Blackwater. Those men and women who are in Blackwater are very honorable people. And not to say they haven't made some mistakes, just as our own military personnel have made mistakes; but, in fact, Blackwater probably has a better record than our own military because they are, as I say, they are people with vastly more experience than that of our own soldiers and sailors and airmen.
So tomorrow there will be a hearing on Blackwater. I would hope that Blackwater and the people of Blackwater, those people who have made enormous contributions to the safety and security of our operations in Afghanistan and in Iraq, that they are not brutalized, that they're treated fairly, and that we do not permit the politicalization of this fight with radical Islam and this effort that now goes on in Iraq to be used in a way that will, number one, hurt brave people who are risking their lives for us, but at the same time, undermine our efforts for the long-term security of our country so that we will have a phased withdrawal that will give the good people of this world a chance.
We need to give the people of Burma a chance. We need to give the people of China a chance. We need to give the people of Iraq a chance. They are our greatest allies.
The people of the world who would live in democracy and see America as a positive force and, fortunately, many of them see America as a positive force, yet many people here in the United States for some reason do not share that opinion of their own country and believe that the United States is a negative force in the world. And that's what motivates many of them in their actions when it comes to Blackwater and it comes to this war.
Finally, let me note this: this President has made a lot of mistakes. And I have supported the President when he has been right; I have been opposed to him when he's wrong. This President seems to be headstrong, and I think that's a pleasant way of putting it. That does not mean that all the decisions that he has made have been wrong. We need to support him when he's right; we need to try to work with him and try to steer American policy when he is wrong. The idea of a phased withdrawal from Iraq is right.
But this President did not get us in this war with radical Islam. This war that we are in with radical Islam was created in the previous administration. We need to document that. It needs to be documented what the policies of the Clinton administration were towards the Taliban. I will be giving a speech in the next few weeks again detailing that, about how I pled, as a senior member of the International Relations Committee, for the documents from Madeleine Albright to prove what our policy was towards the Taliban; why it was that we were giving our foreign aid to the Taliban in radical Islamic areas of Afghanistan and giving short shrift to Commander Massoud and the pro-Western Muslims in Afghanistan.
We need to document these things. We need to document whether or not bin Laden was someone who could have been handled, if we were courageous enough to do it, 5 years, 10 years before 9/11.
We know now that some of the documents that the 9/11 Commission was supposed to read were not available to them. We had a commission that went to study why we had 9/11, but yet we know today that the National Security Adviser to President Bill Clinton stole documents out of the National Archives to prevent that commission, the 9/11 Commission, from seeing certain information that would be relevant to the war on terrorism. Part of his agreement, Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser to President Clinton, when his theft was discovered, he volunteered, as part of his plea agreement, to give a lie detector test to the Justice Department if so requested to determine exactly what were the documents that he stole from the National Archives.
At the beginning of this year, a majority of Republican Members of this body signed a letter to the Justice Department, under the leadership of Tom Davis, asking the Justice Department to give that polygraph test, after so many years, I think it's been 4 years, it could be 3. For 3 years Sandy Berger has not been given the polygraph test to see exactly what documents he stole from the National Archives.
It is time for the American people to demand that we know what caused 9/11, and we will not know that until Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser to the Clinton administration, is given a polygraph test, which won't happen until the Department of Justice gives that polygraph test and demands it.
Today, I am calling upon the new Attorney General to put Sandy Berger on the line, to give him a polygraph test and determine what documents he stole from the National Archives and to give us a full accounting of what led up to 9/11, what happened during the Clinton administration that was so heinous that Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser to the President, would risk everything, would risk his reputation and go into the National Archives and steal documents.
Could it be that during the Clinton years that, for example, there was evidence of technology transfers and Chinese involvement in our political system? Could it be that a Gorelick memo, who at that time the lady was an important player in the Clinton administration, she had a mandate that domestic and international intelligence groups and law enforcement could not work together, could that have something to do with a Chinese connection?
What did Sandy Berger steal from the National Archives? We need to know. We should not be ignored. If this was a Republican, I can tell you that every newspaper in the country would be clamoring until we found out exactly what documents were stolen from the National Archives by the President's National Security Adviser.
So, tonight, I hope that my colleagues would join me, number one, in telling the people of Burma we're on their side; and joining me in calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics; of supporting a phased withdrawal, responsible withdrawal from Iraq; supporting our people both in uniform and in our protective companies like Blackwater, making sure we do not mistreat them; and finally, join me in calling for the truth in what Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser for Bill Clinton, stole from the Archives. He needs to be given his polygraph test. The Justice Department needs to act.
So with those requests for my fellow colleagues, I now yield back the balance of my time.
