Mr. Speaker, I proudly stand today with fellow veterans as the House debates the most damaging, costly, and divisive course of U.S. military involvement since Vietnam. At a naval station in…
Mr. Speaker, I proudly stand today with fellow veterans as the House debates the most damaging, costly, and divisive course of U.S. military involvement since Vietnam.
At a naval station in California, I treated combat veterans returning home from Vietnam, many with severe physical and psychological wounds like PTSD and the effects of agent orange. After Vietnam, America swore there would never be another tragic military misadventure, but that is exactly what is happening in Iraq.
The American people want this Congress to end the war and to bring our soldiers home now, not 2 years from now at the end of this President's term. That is what the American people elected Democrats to do in November.
What we do this week is a miniscule little step. Step two will come when we get to appropriations next month.
We have to get out of Iraq. We have to get out now, not 2 years from now. We are killing them, they are killing us, and nothing is getting better. And the reasons we started this whole war have turned out to be false. The American people know this, and today they are watching our debate. They will judge our actions.
Getting U.S. soldiers out of Iraq has been my top priority since they were sent there 4 years ago under false pretenses. And the new claim by the President that escalating the war will reduce the violence is just another attempt to mislead the American people. It is a lot like Lyndon Johnson sending the bombers into Cambodia and Laos. They don't accept it. The American people don't accept it and they won't.
Those who claim we cannot leave Iraq without causing chaos ignore reality.
I ask to insert in the Record a piece by Retired Lieutenant General and Reagan administration NSA Director William Odom that decisively debunks this argument.
[From the Washington Post, Feb. 11, 2007]
Victory Is Not an Option
(By William E. Odom)
The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly
delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions
from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees
it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-
American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of
producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the
consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is
a declaration of defeat.
Its gloomy implications--hedged, as intelligence agencies
prefer, in rubbery language that cannot soften its impact--
put the intelligence community and the American public on the
same page. The public awakened to the reality of failure in
Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of control of
Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are
still asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the
war soon.
Perhaps this is not surprising. Americans do not warm to
defeat or failure, and our politicians are famously reluctant
to admit their own responsibility for anything resembling
those un-American outcomes. So they beat around the bush,
wringing hands and debating ``nonbinding resolutions'' that
oppose the president's plan to increase the number of U.S.
troops in Iraq.
For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of
mind, the president's relentless pursuit of defeat and
Congress's anxiety has paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two
more years of chasing the mirage of democracy in Iraq and
possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is not
inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the
game of ``who gets the blame'' could begin to alter American
strategy in ways that will vastly improve the prospects of a
more stable Middle East.
No task is more important to the well-being of the United
States. We face great peril in that troubled region, and
improving our prospects will be difficult. First of all, it
will require, from Congress at least, public acknowledgment
that the president's policy is based on illusions, not
realities. There never has been any right way to invade and
transform Iraq. Most Americans need no further convincing,
but two truths ought to put the matter beyond question:
First, the assumption that the United States could create a
liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq defies just about
everything known by professional students of the topic. Of
the more than 40 democracies created since World War II,
fewer than 10 can be considered truly ``constitutional''--
meaning that their domestic order is protected by a broadly
accepted rule of law, and has survived for at least a
generation. None is a country with Arabic and Muslim
political cultures. None has deep sectarian and ethnic
fissures like those in Iraq.
Strangely, American political scientists whose business it
is to know these things have been irresponsibly quiet. In the
lead-up to the March 2003 invasion, neoconservative agitators
shouted insults at anyone who dared to mention the many
findings of academic research on how democracies evolve. They
also ignored our own struggles over two centuries to create
the democracy Americans enjoy today. Somehow Iraqis are now
expected to create a constitutional order in a country with
no conditions favoring it.
This is not to say that Arabs cannot become liberal
democrats. When they immigrate to the United States, many do
so quickly. But it is to say that Arab countries, as well as
a large majority of all countries, find creating a stable
constitutional democracy beyond their capacities.
Second, to expect any Iraqi leader who can hold his country
together to be pro-American, or to share American goals, is
to abandon common sense. It took the United States more than
a century to get over its hostility toward British
occupation. (In 1914, a majority of the public favored
supporting Germany against Britain.) Every month of the U.S.
occupation, polls have recorded Iraqis' rising animosity
toward the United States. Even supporters of an American
military presence say that it is acceptable temporarily and
only to prevent either of the warring sides in Iraq from
winning. Today the Iraqi government survives only because its
senior members and their families live within the heavily
guarded Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and
military command.
As Congress awakens to these realities--and a few members
have bravely pointed them out--will it act on them? Not
necessarily. Too many lawmakers have fallen for the myths
that are invoked to try to sell the president's new war aims.
Let us consider the most pernicious of them.
(1) We must continue the war to prevent the terrible
aftermath that will occur if our forces are withdrawn soon.
Reflect on the double-think of this formulation. We are now
fighting to prevent what our invasion made inevitable!
Undoubtedly we will leave a mess--the mess we created, which
has become worse each year we have remained. Lawmakers
gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next
breath express fear that quitting it will leave a blood bath,
a civil war, a terrorist haven, a ``failed state,'' or some
other horror. But this ``aftermath'' is already upon us; a
prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists.
(2) We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence
from growing in Iraq. This is another absurd notion. One of
the president's initial war aims, the creation of a democracy
in Iraq, ensured increased Iranian influence, both in Iraq
and the region. Electoral democracy, predictably, would put
Shiite groups in power--groups supported by Iran since Saddam
Hussein repressed them in 1991. Why are so many members of
Congress swallowing the claim that prolonging the war is now
supposed to prevent precisely what starting the war
inexorably and predictably caused? Fear that Congress will
confront this contradiction helps explain the administration
and neocon drumbeat we now hear for expanding the war to
Iran.
Here we see shades of the Nixon-Kissinger strategy in
Vietnam: widen the war into Cambodia and Laos. Only this
time, the adverse consequences would be far greater. Iran's
ability to hurt U.S. forces in Iraq are not trivial. And the
anti-American backlash in the region would be larger, and
have more lasting consequences.
(3) We must prevent the emergence of a new haven for al-
Qaeda in Iraq. But it was the U.S. invasion that opened
Iraq's doors to al-Qaeda. The longer U.S. forces have
remained there, the stronger al-Qaeda has become. Yet its
strength within the Kurdish and Shiite areas is trivial.
After a U.S. withdrawal, it will probably play a continuing
role in helping the Sunni groups against the Shiites and the
Kurds. Whether such foreign elements could remain or thrive
in Iraq after the resolution of civil war is open to
question. Meanwhile, continuing the war will not push al-
Qaeda outside Iraq. On the contrary, the American presence is
the glue that holds al-Qaeda there now.
(4) We must continue to fight in order to ``support the
troops.'' This argument effectively paralyzes almost all
members of Congress. Lawmakers proclaim in grave tones a
litany of problems in Iraq sufficient to justify a rapid
pullout. Then they reject that logical conclusion, insisting
we cannot do so because we must support the troops. Has
anybody asked the troops?
During their first tours, most may well have favored
``staying the course''--whatever that meant to them--but now
in their second, third and fourth tours, many are changing
their minds. We see evidence of that in the many news stories
about unhappy troops being sent back to Iraq. Veterans groups
are beginning to make public the case for bringing them home.
Soldiers and officers in Iraq are speaking out critically to
reporters on the ground.
But the strangest aspect of this rationale for continuing
the war is the implication that the troops are somehow
responsible for deciding to continue the president's course.
That political and moral responsibility belongs to the
president, not the troops. Did not President Harry S Truman
make it clear that ``the buck stops'' in the Oval Office? If
the president keeps dodging it, where does it stop? With
Congress?
Embracing the four myths gives Congress excuses not to
exercise its power of the purse to end the war and open the
way for a strategy that might actually bear fruit.
The first and most critical step is to recognize that
fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way
to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition
for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away
the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy
our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to
collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.
Second, we must recognize that the United States alone
cannot stabilize the Middle East.
Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are
actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using
sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening
``regime change,'' using the hysterical rhetoric of the
``global war on terrorism''--all undermine the stability we
so desperately need in the Middle East.
Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable
region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our
military operations so they enhance rather than undermine
stability. We can write off the war as a ``tactical draw''
and make ``regional stability'' our measure of ``victory.''
That single step would dramatically realign the opposing
forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even
many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities
against the United States want predictable order, albeit on
better social and economic terms than they now have.
Realigning our diplomacy and military capabilities to
achieve order will hugely reduce the numbers of our enemies
and gain us new and important allies. This cannot happen,
however, until our forces are moving out of Iraq. Why should
Iran negotiate to relieve our pain as long as we are
increasing its influence in Iraq and beyond? Withdrawal will
awaken most leaders in the region to their own need for U.S.-
led diplomacy to stabilize their neighborhood.
If Bush truly wanted to rescue something of his historical
legacy, he would seize the initiative to implement this kind
of strategy. He would eventually be held up as a leader
capable of reversing direction by turning an imminent, tragic
defeat into strategic recovery.
If he stays on his present course, he will leave Congress
the opportunity to earn the credit for such a turnaround. It
is already too late to wait for some presidential candidate
for 2008 to retrieve the situation. If Congress cannot act,
it, too, will live in infamy.
Chaos, not democracy, has taken root in Iraq, and chaos will continue to take U.S. lives until we act in our best interest and order our people out of harm's way.
News accounts continue to remind us that our soldiers don't even have the proper body and vehicle armor. We cannot adequately protect the soldiers already serving, but more were ordered in anyway. If you want the most basic reason to vote to oppose escalation, it is that we haven't properly equipped the troops already in Iraq, and we are not doing any better by the troops we are sending in now.
Just being on the record against the President's escalation of this war is not enough. The only way to diffuse the violence in Iraq is to defund the war in Iraq. Congress has the power to control the funding, and we have the responsibility to exercise the power vested in us by the Constitution. That is what the American people elected us to do. We must exercise our constitutional power as a co-equal branch of government and do what the President is unwilling to do: bring our soldiers home.
When appropriations for Iraq come to the floor, I intend to offer an amendment based on the 1970 Hatfield-McGovern appropriations amendment to end the war in Vietnam. It will be an amendment to provide funding to protect our soldiers as we bring them home in a planned, safe, and orderly way, and to prohibit taxpayers' monies from being used to continue or expand the war in Iraq. This will provide a transition for the Iraqi security forces using a benchmark that matters: the date when U.S. troops will be out of there.
The Iraqis can't help themselves until we get out. Right now, almost anything constructive that Iraqis do is seen as collaborating with the United States occupiers. We have to get out of the way so the Iraqis can solve their own problems. We can't help; we just make good targets.
So I want to encourage everyone in the House to vote for this resolution. I want to make it the biggest, strongest, clearest vote that we can get to let the President know for the second time, he ignored the election, that the Congress says ``no.''
I know that many Members of the Republican Party are as distressed as I am about Iraq, and I admire their courage in standing up to their President. Every veteran, including myself, in this House and in this Nation is very proud of our soldiers. They have done what we have asked them to do. It is time for new orders to be issued. It is time to end the U.S. role in the Iraq civil war. It is not a war on terrorism; it is a civil war. And bring our soldiers home. We can begin to do it immediately. That is what I advocate and that is what the American people expect from us.
