Mr. Speaker, I rise to address the issue of Iraq, and specifically how our war on terror, a truly just war in the defense of American civilization, entailed the strategic imperative for Iraq's regime change and reconstruction, and now how…
Mr. Speaker, I rise to address the issue of Iraq, and specifically how our war on terror, a truly just war in the defense of American civilization, entailed the strategic imperative for Iraq's regime change and reconstruction, and now how in the war on terror we stand at a crucible for our country and civilization.
On September 11, 2001, America was shaken by a sudden and concerted act of terrorism by fanatics who possessed no justification and our Nation no culpability for their willful, deliberate, and premeditated murder of innocents. Stunned, we resolutely marshaled our courage and solemnly accepted the duty to defend our country and human civilization from the atavistic nihilism of Islamic extremism which amorally and arbitrarily colors and conditions the unviable sanctity of human life within the skewed prism of its adherents' abject pursuit of power.
This is neither the first nor undoubtedly the last time our Nation will be called upon to protect itself and all the world from an extremist enemy with inhuman aims. In our relatively brief existence, we have led the successful efforts to eradicate the evils of imperialism, fascism and communism; and, heartened by our storied tradition of valor and victory, our current efforts must and will continue to tighten nooses around the necks of the practitioners of terror until they have joined their extremist antecedents in the ash can of history.
It will be a long, hard, bitter task to defeat these disparate, desperate denizens of terror, who skulk in the shadows and steep in the venom of their perverted political phantasms. Their strength is their stealth and ruthlessness which, in the absence of their own nation- state, was spawned by their inability to wage conventional war upon traditional combatants. Their weakness, in turn, is their inability to subsist and act without sustenance from a cut-throat confederation of sheltering nation-states and sympathizers.
These murderers are at once everywhere and nowhere; shrill in their threats, silent in their tactics; housed in the bosoms of evil and hunted in the citadels of freedom. They are the faceless foes of a million-mile front in a war without borders or bounds, but with this grim reality: they want to kill us. They want to kill our children. And to kill us, they will kill themselves, too. Make no mistake, the only way to stop them from killing us is to first kill them until they capitulate. The war is here. The war is now.
And unless and until our victory is won, every American man, woman and child will live in a perpetual state of imminent threat from terrorists and their patrons because, as proven by the sneak attack on September 11, the extremists' existence is an imminent threat to our existence.
Given this grim reality and our enemies' assets and liabilities, defeating terrorists requires severing them from their sponsoring states and sympathizers in tiered theaters of operations determined and devised as necessity demands and opportunity provides; and within these theaters of operations involved, diplomatic, economic and military, must each be tailored by time and circumstance for maximal advantage and efficiency. It is a root-and-branch approach. The U.S. and its allies must uproot regimes supporting terrorism; serve notice on other rogue regimes to cease and desist in their succor of terror, lest they suffer the same fate; and leave terrorists to die on the vine of their own dependencies and the steel of our resolve.
Within this mission, theaters of operations must first be defined. Tragically, the tier-one theater has already been designated for us: the homelands of America and her allies. Tier-two theaters exist within those nations in which America and her allies must diplomatically, economically, and/or militarily act to end a rogue regime's intransigent sponsorship of terrorism.
Prioritizing and selecting tier-two theaters is an agonizingly difficult task; but a practical, tripartite regime change, reconstruction calculus can be formulated from the factors of necessity, victory, and stability.
First, necessity is determined by the rogue regime's continued support of terrorism, a question answered only by these nations' actions.
Secondly, victory's viability is determined by the prospects for a successful regime change through diplomatic, economic, and/or military means.
Third, stability is determined by the prospects of reconstructing within the newly liberated nation a stable, civilized, indigenous government opposed to terrorism.
Regime change and reconstruction are the twin pillars of one policy: victory. Having effectuated a regime change, the U.S. and its allies cannot idly and anxiously await a newly liberated nation's indigenous developments in the areas of politics and economics for, devoid of stability and a steady progression toward democracy and prosperity, a deposed regime's vacuum will be filled by more ruthless rulers or by anarchy, and either outcome will foster terror's network.
The U.S. and its allies must promptly and purposely act, even prior to the final ending of military hostilities, to commence reconstructing newly liberated countries and actively facilitating their reentry into the community of civilized nations opposed to terrorism. Such reconstruction will not happen instantaneously; such reconstruction will not happen inexpensively. But happen it must, lest the war on terror never end.
But strategic imperatives are insufficient rationales for Americans to wage war. As a civilized people, we will only fight a just war, one necessarily engaged and morally waged.
In prosecuting the war on terror, America solidly stands on the moral high ground.
The moral legitimacy of our war on terror is lost upon many amidst the fog of rhetoric surrounding the determination of which rogue regimes supporting terror must be changed through American military force. Regardless, the logic remains: as all civilized nations have allied to end terrorism, any contrary country harboring and helping these criminals is, itself, uncivilized and criminal; and such a rogue country's immoral regime is illegitimate within the community of moral nations.
As for the moral legitimacy of unilateral American preemption of rogue regimes aiding and abetting terrorism, the United States, a sovereign Nation, cannot and will not delegate or subordinate to any country or international organization our morally justified duty of defend and deliver ourselves from evil. Having already been grievously wounded by an unannounced, unprovoked attack on our soil, the U.S. is already in a state of war against terrorists and their state sponsors, and is morally justified in speaking out and bringing to justice all who are, all who aid, and all who abet our self-appointed enemy. The doctrine of preemption, then, is both morally justified and wholly irrelevant, because the terrorists' insidious onset to this war means the war on terror is now. America is not arbitrarily or preemptively prosecuting a prospective war on terror; America is necessarily defending itself against terrorists and their state sponsors in a war which reached our shores over 2 years ago.
In the final analysis, because America was immorally and unilaterally attacked, America can morally and unilaterally counterattack. We have the moral right to do so, and the moral duty to do no less. Throughout this just war on terror, America possesses a moral right to seek rogue regime changes; and America possesses a moral responsibility to reconstruct liberated nations. This is not a novel path to a just and equitable peace for Americans who, in rebuilding our war-torn enemies following World War II, honorably fulfilled the promise of their late
President, Franklin Roosevelt: ``Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights to keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.''
Presently, such unity of martial and moral purpose can only be fulfilled by rehabilitating the newly liberated countries of Afghanistan and Iraq into democratic Middle Eastern allies in the world's war on terror.
Immediately following September 11, 2001, the United States and its allies against terror squarely set their sites upon Afghanistan, whose primitive Taliban regime repeatedly refused to terminate its assistance for the butchers of innocents.
Affirmatively evaluating the necessity for and viability of a regime change, and the prospects for reconstruction and post-conflict stability within Afghanistan and the region, on October 7, 2001, America's initial tier-two theater of operations opened in Afghanistan. Then, targeting terrorist enclaves and training camps and various Taliban military and political assets, the U.S. and our allies, including indigenous anti-Taliban Afghans, struck with unprecedented speed and success and the rogue regime rapidly disintegrated and capitulated on November 13.
Following the fall of Kabul, the U.S. and its allies have engaged in both military operations against terrorists and Taliban loyalists and reconstruction operations with the Afghan people. Militarily, there exists a NATO force of 5,000 troops in Kabul to provide security and stability to the fledgling government of President Hamid Karzai, and there remains a U.S.-led coalition force of 11,500 troops throughout the country to hunt down al-Qaida and Taliban diehards. In reconstruction efforts, the U.S. alone has contributed over $900 million in assistance to the people of Afghanistan, including the rehabilitation of 72 hospitals, clinics and women's health care centers; the vaccination of 4.3 million children against measles; the treatment of 700,000 cases of malaria, the enrollment of 4 million children in school, the repatriation of 2.5 million Afghans to their homes, the commencement of 6,100 water projects to aid farmers, and commitment to rebuild the Kabul Kandahar road.
To date, this concerted implementation of the regime change rebuilding nexus, still in its infancy, has been successful in eliminating the state-sponsored terrorism of the Taliban, facilitating a stable new government progressing toward democracy and prosperity, and increasing America's and the world's security.
For the allied forces, this success in the Afghan tier-two theater of operations provided concrete milestones and guideposts along the path toward the next tier-two theater of operations, Iraq.
Under the despotic direction of Saddam Hussein, Iraq long posed a danger to America and the international community. Suffice to say the threat was recognized by all nations after Iraq's 1991 invasion of and expulsion from Kuwait. Curiously, though, after the onset of the war on terror, minds have differed over whether or not Iraq's threat to America, in particular, and the world community in general, sufficiently existed to compel martial force be used to effectuate an Iraqi regime change.
There should be no doubt. Applying the regime change-reconstruction calculus proves opening the Tier 2 Iraqi theater of operations was a strategic imperative in the war on terror. First, Iraq constituted a necessary Tier 2 theater of operations due to its refusal to stem and, instead, perpetuate its state sponsorship of terrorism. Interestingly, as early as 1998, the agreement on this point appeared nearly unanimous. ``The only answer to aggression and outlaw behavior is firmness. He Saddam will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and someday, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again as he has ten times since 1983.'' National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, February 18, 1998.
From the same day I quote:
``Iraq is a long way from here but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.'' Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, February 18, 1998.
``One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.'' President William Jefferson Clinton, February 4, 1998.
Given Saddam Hussein's unabashed and unabated hatred of Americans and his willingness to conspire with murderers of any stripe to kill Americans, the evidence of which continues to slowly but surely seep to the surface despite the old regime's attempts to bury and burn their intelligence records, the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, seemed to solidify the early consensus American national security required a regime change in Iraq.
``We know that he, Hussein, has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.'' Former Vice President Al Gore, September 23, 2002.
The necessity test met, what was the viability of deposing Hussein and his minions? While the level of U.S. and allied military force required was debated, especially in the absence of the United Nations' cooperation, the viability of successful Iraqi regime change was little disputed by knowledgeable minds. Iraqi forces remained hobbled after their defeat during the liberation of Kuwait, and its economy languished under postwar economic sanctions. Still, it was not an easy decision and never is when sending good American sons and daughters into harm's way. But it was a decision which nearly all involved concluded would lead to a victorious military operation. Events, to date, have validated this original assessment.
On March 20, 2003, the U.S. and its Coalition of the Willing allies launched military strikes against Iraqi leaders. By April 5, U.S. tanks entered Baghdad. By April 9, U.S. troops aided Baghdad residents in toppling a statue of Saddam Hussein, thereby symbolizing his removal from power. By April 14, the Pentagon announced it ``would anticipate that the major combat operations are over'' and it began the process of sending air and naval forces home. And finally on May 1, President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq. Yet even as the general assessment of the viability of an Iraqi regime change was upheld, significant opposition has arisen and jeopardizes the final stage of the operation, the reconstruction of a stable, democratic and prosperous Iraq.
Initially, the postregime change reconstruction of Iraq portended a long, but ultimately successful, transition to a stable democratic state. The Iraqi people, though long oppressed by Hussein, remained a highly-industrious, highly-educated people, possessed of a long history replete with notable accomplishments in the areas of agriculture, commerce, science and scholarship. Once liberated, it was projected, Iraqis would seize upon their newfound freedoms to forge a new nation of equality and prosperity and join the league of civilized nations.
According to the State Department, Iraq has experienced enormous post-Saddam progress in the areas of security, essential services, economics and governance. On the security front, significant accomplishments have occurred.
More than 40 of the 55 most wanted former Iraqi officials have been apprehended by Coalition forces. Northern Iraq and the Shi'a heartland, running from just south of Baghdad to the Kuwaiti border, have been secured; and recruitment for the first battalion of the new Iraqi army has commenced, with 1,200 Iraqi being trained this year and 40,000 to be trained over the next 2 years.
Essential services, too, have progressed. All of Iraq's hospitals and 95 percent of its health clinics have opened and are providing services, including the dissemination of 22.3 doses of measles, TB, hepatitis B, diptheria, whooping cough, tetanus and polio vaccines required to inoculate 4.2 million children.
More than 100 schools have been rehabilitated, with 600 more projected to be completed prior to the start of the
school year. Ninety percent of Iraq's public schools and all of Baghdad's universities have reopened.
Dilapidated and looted power, water, and sewage treatment facilities have been rehabilitated and electricity generation now nears 75 percent of prewar levels.
Further, phone service has been restored to hundreds of thousands of customers; and massive cleanups of Baghdad's poorest neighborhoods have been completed.
Economically, Iraq is beginning to flourish. The streets of major cities bustle with commerce, markets now access many previously sanctioned goods, including more than 150 Iraqi published newspapers. Long-term growth is being promoted through regional integration and increased trade.
Banking reforms, including the unification of currency with new bank notes in circulation and new monetary policies based upon transparency and discipline are being implemented.
And oil production has passed 1 million barrels per day and soon will reach 2 million barrels per day. And the governance of this once captive country is finally in the hands of the Iraqi people. Iraq's new, diverse, 25-member Governing Council was fully formed on July 13. All major Iraqi cities have city councils, and over 85 percent of Iraqi towns have town councils. All Baghdad neighborhoods have advisory councils.
Eleven government ministry buildings have been rehabilitated or equipped, and dozens of nongovernmental organizations are being funded to deliver local services and build a civil society. As noted by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on September 25, when measured against past reconstruction efforts, specifically those in Germany following World War II, the progress in Iraq is striking:
``Within 2 months, all major Iraqi cities and most towns had municipal councils, something that took 8 months in postwar Germany. Within 4 months the Iraqi Governing Council had appointed a cabinet, something that took 14 months in Germany. An independent Iraqi Central Bank was established and a new currency announced in just 2 months, accomplishments that took 3 years in postwar Germany. Within 2 months a new Iraqi police force was conducting joint patrols with Coalition forces. Within 3 months we had begun training a new Iraqi army, and today some 56,000 are participating in the defense of their country. By contrast, it took 14 months to establish a police force in Germany and 10 years to begin training a new German army.''
Moreover, Iraqi reconstruction successes are especially striking when one realizes the new Germany's reconstruction only followed Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender and complete cessation of hostilities. In Iraq, while the major operational conflict is over, the Coalition is rebuilding a country with which we are still at war. The major military conflict phase ended with the fall of Baghdad. But the fall of Baghdad was not a surrender. It was a strategic retreat, one devised to commence the war's guerilla phase.
Baathist diehards, Saddam loyalists and terrorists from or drawn to Iraq are employing terror's ruthless tactics to wage a guerilla war against American soldiers and a psychological war against American citizens. These cowardly criminals' ghoulish goal is to kill enough American soldiers to force a disheartened American public to demand a hasty withdrawal from Iraq. The criminals learned this lesson from the successful North Vietnamese military dictum asserting their war with the U.S. would not be won or lost on battlefields of Southeast Asia but in the streets of America. Thus, heartened by every politician's or pundit's groundless pontificating to the effect Iraq is our new Vietnam, these Iraqi extremists kill on as they cling to any false hope they will usurp power when a dispirited America retreats. They are, of course, wrong. America will not retreat from Iraq. America will reconstruct Iraq. And we will do so in the very face of this guerilla phase of the Iraqi campaign.
Unfortunately, this act of humanitarianism is both unprecedented in world history and little noticed by the world community, including many Americans. The failure to fully recognize the context and accurately gauge the progress of Iraqi reconstruction forms a misguided basis for opposition to Iraqi reconstruction, jeopardizes the coalition's efforts to win the Iraqi theater of operations, and increases the odds of Iraq becoming the first setback in America's and its allies' war on terrorism. And it is not the only misguided basis for opposing Iraqi reconstruction. While subsequent events have so far vindicated the decisions dictated by the regime change-reconstruction calculus regarding the necessity and viability of regime change in the Iraqi theater of operations in the war on terror, the stability wrought only through successful reconstruction efforts remains elusive due to international, Iraqi and American opposition.
In 1940, England's finest hour arrived as it singlehandedly fought off the Wehrmacht war-machine subjugating continental Europe, and its steadfast lion, Mr. Churchill, implored the United States to abandon its intransigent, antiquated isolationism and join the struggle to save civilization from Naziism. Ironically, we now find ourselves similarly situated in the concert of international events and the court of world opinion. Yet unlike the opposition Prime Minister Churchill faced from international appeasers and American isolationists in the nascent stages of World War II, in the war on terror no civilized country denies the danger and all demand its end. Still, many nations are reticent to make the hard sacrifices needed to end terror. This is thoroughly disgusting but hardly surprising. Nearing the close of World War II, a former isolationist and an eventual bipartisan leader in international cooperation, U.S. Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Republican of Michigan, squarely addressed the problem of international cooperation against common foes:
It means the continued and total battle fraternity of the
United Nations. It must mean one for all and all for one, and
it will mean this unless somewhere in this grand alliance the
stupid and sinister folly of ulterior ambitions shall invite
the enemy to postpone our victory through our own rivalries
and our own confusion. The United Nations, in even greater
unity of military action than heretofore, must never, for any
cause, permit this military unity to fall apart. If it does,
we shall count the cost in mortal anguish even though we
stumble on to a belated though inevitable victory. This is an
obligation which rests no less upon our allies than upon us
and no less upon us than our allies. First things must come
first. History will not deal lightly with any who undermine
this aim ere it is achieved. Destiny will one day balance any
such ghastly accounts.
Now I am not so naive as to expect any country to act on
any final motive other than self-interest. I know of no
reason why it should. That is what nations are for. I
certainly intend that intelligent and loyal American self-
interest shall be just as vigilantly and vigorously guarded
as is amply obvious from time to time in their own behalf by
the actions of our allies. The real question always becomes
just this, where does real self-interest lie?
Until last week, the answer was mixed, with too many nations cravenly calculating to meanly subsidize their security from terrorism with the blood of American and allied soldiers. Yes, the recent unanimous approval by the United Nations' Security Council of Resolution 1511, (2003) provides a faint, begrudging admission a democratic Iraq would benefit the world community.
However, these nations' true test will come not through their delicate words, but through their concrete deeds. The international community's first concrete deed must be relieving the new Iraq of the debts amassed by the old Iraq. The resolution of this issue involving billions of dollars of debt, much of it munitions debts owed to members of the very United Nations Security Council which sanctioned Iraq, yet who continued to sell weapons and dual-use technologies to the former rogue regime until the removal of Mr. Hussein, will prove the real answer to where these nations believe their real self-interest lies. Regardless of their decision on the debt, and their track record does not portend a proper one, the U.S. and its allies must still fulfill the obligation of international etiquette to ask these other nations' participation and cooperation. But we must, throughout the process, rid ourselves of any delusion these nations will suddenly abandon their old greed and accept their true duty. And we must dedicate ourselves to the arduous task of reconstructing the new Iraq
wherever these nations perceive their real self-interest to lie.
This debt test also applies to American supporters of reconstruction efforts who advocate U.S. reconstruction funds to Iraq be tendered as a loan rather than a grant. If America shares the taint of short-term pecuniary interest, it will eclipse the faint hope the world's predator-creditor community will relent from their billions in claims upon Iraq. The death of this slim hope will then write its own wicked epithet by crushing this nascent democracy under oceans of red ink, precluding Iraqi prosperity, undermining Iraqi democracy, and spawning a new Iraq regime of the old Iraq regime, by the old Iraqi regime and for the Iraqi regime, or worse.
Prior to determining where their real self-interest lies, these international amassers of Iraqi debt and American loan proponents should read an elementary treatise recording the mounting miseries of their philosophical predecessors beginning with the Treaty of Versailles up to the Weimar Republic and on through the rise of Nazi Germany. Then they might see their position may or may not ``saddle our children with tomorrow's debt''; but it will saddle our children with today's threat.
Not surprisingly, active Iraqi opposition to reconstruction is comprised of the same thugs who opposed Iraqi regime change, namely, deposed members of the former Baathist regime, former soldiers who were disbanded under the first wave of de-Baathification, and terrorists both native to and newly arrived in the country. These bands' opposition to a new, democratic Iraq is self-evident. They will fight to the death to restore the old Iraq, for they have nothing to live for in the new Iraq. The larger, long-term obstacle to reconstruction is the passive nonparticipation of large segments of Iraq's general population. Typified by a reticence to assist Coalition forces and nongovernmental organizations in rebuilding efforts, this de facto opposition is a direct result of recent history. Too often Iraqis have witnessed Saddam's apparent demise only to see him resurrected; and, not illogically, a chary Iraqi populace will not risk life and limb in reconstruction efforts so long as there exists a glimmer of danger the Coalition will depart and Saddam will return.
Despite this indigenous opposition, the beneficent prospects for long-term reconstruction remain. The active opposition must and will be dealt with by both coalition forces and the new Iraqi security apparatus; while the defacto opposition must be dealt with through a firm coalition commitment to reconstruction, consistent progress towards democracy and prosperity, and by Saddam's corpse.
Finally, there exists domestic American opposition to the reconstruction of postwar Iraq. Such opposition is fascinating, particularly when viewed in light of the President's $87 billion Iraqi reconstruction request, a reasonable request, the New York Post observed, as it was less than ``the sum to replace a chunk of Manhattan, which could easily top $100 billion, not to mention the toll on the broader economy.'' And not to mention the death toll of 3,000 Americans on September 11.
Why this domestic opposition? To begin with, all previous combatants in war utilized information, or more crudely, propaganda, to galvanize one's homefront and demoralize an opponent's homefront. In the war on terror, contrarily, and especially in the area of homeland security, unprecedented propaganda constraints severely delimit a nation's ability to broadcast its victories to its citizens.
Practically and strategically, the U.S. and its allies cannot list all of the terrorist attacks prevented without jeopardizing precious and often scarce intelligence sources, instructing terrorists as to the real internal machinery of homeland defenses, and disconcerting and demoralizing our citizenry. The American public is reduced then to accepting the proposition ``no news is good news,'' equating government officials' silence with homeland security's efficacy, and all the while they are expect to remain fully engaged in the war on terror. It is a daunting chore and dangerous circumstance.
In yet another dubious precedent of the war on terror, Americans rarely hear of our wins and our enemies rarely hear of their losses. The inverted equation becomes elementary and insidious: the more successful the effort to stop terrorist attacks on American soil, the more likely Americans are to believe the war has already been won or the threat significantly diminished. And for terrorism's adherents, one successful attack amidst a sea of defeats will delude them into believing they are winning and will lead them to ever greater depths of depravity.
Exacerbating and intertwining with the ``no news is good news'' conundrum of the war on terror is the man-bites-dog dictum of journalism fostering a barrage of reports upon solely the setbacks in Iraqi reconstruction efforts. Such reporting has crafted an inaccurate public perception to the effect an ungrateful Iraqi people are bent upon killing the very American infidels who liberated them. This public perception is demonstrably false. Polls consistently prove the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are grateful for their liberation, and once the threat of a Baathist resurgence is finally vanquished, Iraqis will prove the ultimate architects of their own emancipation and realization of democracy. Nevertheless, an American public bombarded by no news or negative news will not prove easily disabused of this misconception, and it will continue to prove a formidable obstacle to garnering domestic support for Iraqi reconstruction efforts.
Finally and most formidably of all domestic opposition to reconstruction stems from America's still retaining a strong current, however scattered and misdirected, of isolationism, comprised of the twin branches of traditional isolationism and, ironically, liberalism's post-Cold War hyperglobalism. Liberalism's post-Cold War hyperglobalism is, in reality, a thinly veiled venture to delegate and thereby subordinate America's national interests to international organizations. Inveterately, such hyperglobalist requests for international aid or assistance or cooperation or partnership on issues affecting American national security are but a pretext to providing an international veto prior to America's defending its interests. In doing so, hyperglobalism would alienate America from its own national security interests by subordinating America to the United Nations. This, in effect, would isolate America from its supreme sovereign duty to defend its own interests and from its especial role to defend freedom and democracy throughout the world.
Naturally, while America must still always welcome international support to defend freedom and ourselves, in the war on terror where America is the enemies' primary target, isolationism disguised as hyperglobalism is ridiculous and dangerous: if we surrender our self- defense to the whims and good wishes of the U.N., soon we will never be more loved and never more dead.
The separate branch of the same tree, traditional isolationism, once thought as ideological casualty of Pearl Harbor, has never expired because of its emotional, albeit fanciful, appeal: Who would not want to avoid foreign wars costing the lives of Americans? Of course, so few people argue against a wish so enticing, and this of course is why so many politicians propound isolationism, be it however subtly or less than subtly.
For example, consider these excerpts from a certain Senator's radio address:
``My friends, it is this satanically clear, clever propaganda that appeals to Christianity, the idealism, the humanity, and the loyalty of the American people that takes us into war.
``Do not let yourselves be swayed by mass hysteria.
``Warmongers, sordid romanticists, reckless adventurers, and some whose sympathies and sentiments are stronger than their reasoning powers would plunge this Nation into war. Plunge us into a war from which we would gain nothing.
``Don't let yourselves be misled by the so-called notables . . . they do not represent labor, the farmer, the youth and the mothers or fathers of America.
`` . . . Americans in greater numbers must firmly resolve and express themselves that we will fight no offensive war.''
The Senator continued: ``America's war ought to be against industrial unemployment and low farm prices . . .
``We sympathize with the oppressed and persecuted everywhere. We also realize that we have great problems at home, that one third of our population is ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-clad, and unless and until this situation is corrected, our democracy is in danger.''
He then concluded: ``I cannot help but feel that we should settle our own problems before we undertake to settle the problems of Asia, Africa, Australasia, South America and Europe. As Americans interested first in America, what is our present stake?''
This isolationist ode to only spending Americans' money solving Americans' domestic problems comes not from the current Iraqi reconstruction debates. They were the remarks of U.S. Senator Burton Wheeler, Democrat, Montana, in opposing the Roosevelt administration's lend-lease proposal with England.
Still, the crude crux of the matter, originally posited by Wheeler and later by his isolationist ilk from the debates over aid to Greece and Turkey through the Marshall Plan right up to today's debates over Iraqi reconstruction remains: What is in it for us? A bitterly ironic inquiry from baby boomer Democrats who once applauded JFK's inaugural challenge to ``ask not what your country can do for you,'' but I digress.
What is in it for us is what is in it for everyone: a stable, democratic, and prosperous new ally in the war on terror serving for generations to come as a bulwark in the struggle for the survival of our Nation and world civilization.
True, some isolationists find the survival of freedom and civilization far less tactile goals than, say, a new road or free condoms, but the survival of freedom and civilization must suffice as our abiding cause in this time of national crisis.
Seriously, what is more presently pressing: erecting schoolchildren new classes or eradicating schoolchildren's killers? Where must we must urgently expends our resources: finishing the liberation of Iraq and standing tall at the front door of terrorism, or spending ever more money at home so when terrorists blow in our back door, they can admire our compassion as they kill us?
Right now, more than ever, we must resist all of isolationism's shortsighted and selfish special interest appeals, lest America asphyxiate upon its tissue of lies. And may God spare the souls of those who do partake of the isolationism's fools gold only to find its blood money, blood money borrowed at the collateral cost of future Americans killed.
This we will not do to our children. This we will not do to our civilization. This we will not do to ourselves. History is a harsh mistress, beautifully chaste in her truth, but brutally cruel in her treatment of fools who fail to learn her lessons. So while many today may not recall Senator Burton Wheeler's name and many presently reprise his siren song of isolationism, for both, history will record and return an equally ignominious and indelible indictment. Or worse, for our contemporary isolationists.
After all, the isolationist Wheeler railed before 2,300 Americans were killed at Pearl Harbor. The new isolationists rail after 3,000 Americans were killed on 9-11.
Mr. Speaker, waging and winning the war on terror requires the arduous global eradication of terrorists through diplomatic, economic, and military operations, often including the concomitant tactics of rogue regime change and reconstruction, in tiered theaters of operations. To do so throughout this unsought struggle, we must mobilize our Nation's greatest resource: ourselves.
For while our path is clear, our road is hard. But we must trod it ever bravely to a better world for ourselves and our children. There is no turning back to await an ignoble death.
In his December 26, 1941, address to a joint session of Congress, Prime Minister Winston Churchill warned another shocked generation of Americans sucked into a world conflagration to firmly press on: ``Some people may be startled or momentarily depressed when, like your President, I speak of a long and hard war. But our peoples would rather know the truth, somber though it be. And, after all, when we are doing the noblest work in the world, not only defending our hearths and homes but the cause of freedom in other lands . . . Sure I am that this day, now we are masters of our fate, that the task which has been set us is not above our strength, that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our cause and an unconquerable willpower, salvation will not be denied us.''
Once again ambushed but unbowed, we heirs of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill have again allied and formed a coalition of the willing to defeat the common enemies of our countries and our civilization, while much of the world stands mute or worse and seems blithely ambivalent to the arrival of the terrorists upon their doorsteps. But we cannot evade this crusade. We cannot wish the world away. Today's war on terror will yield either a bitter death or a better day. And thusly does our generation of Americans face our fiercest foe and our finest hour.
As Americans, we are honor bound to defend freedom for ourselves and all the world. And no one more ably embodied and expressed this grim acceptance of our sacred duty than our valiant wartime Commander in Chief, whom I quote: ``There comes a time when you and I must see the cold, inexorable necessity of saying to these inhuman, unrestrained seekers of world conquest and permanent world domination by the sword: `You seek to throw our children and our children's children into your form of terrorism and slavery. You have now attacked our own safety. You shall go no further.'
``Normal practices of diplomacy, note writing, are of no possible use in dealing with international outlaws who . . . kill our citizens.
``One peaceful nation after another has met disaster because each refused to look the danger squarely in the eye until it actually had them by the throat.
``The United States will not make that fatal mistake . . . ''
Our President continued: ``I have no illusions about the gravity of this step. I have not taken it hurriedly or lightly. It is the result of months and months of constant thought and anxiety and prayer. In the protection of your Nation and mine, it cannot be avoided.
``The American people have faced other grave crises in their history, with American courage, and with American resolution. They will do no less today.
``They know the actualities of the attacks upon us. They know the necessities of a bold defense against these attacks. They know that the times call for clear heads and fearless hearts.
``And with that inner strength that comes to a free people conscious of their duty and conscious of the righteousness of what they do, they will, with Divine help and guidance, stand their ground against this latest assault upon their democracy, their sovereignty, and their freedom.''
Those were the inspirational words our wartime President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which he used to conclude his fireside chat on national defense. The date: September 11, 1941.
Be it September 11, 1941, or September 11, 2001, our Nation, founded as a revolutionary experiment in democracy and remaining so to this day, so too remains the primary target of all would-be world despots. Consequently, as every generation of Americans inherits the blessings and the burdens of our liberty, every generation of Americans has the right and responsibility to defend our Nation and civilization against every tyrant and terrorist who knows they cannot enslave and exterminate humanity so long as the United States and its people breathe and fight on against them.
Mr. Speaker, in this, our moment, such is our duty, we must accept. And it will be met, in this, our finest hour, until tomorrow where a finer, kinder day awaits. May God continue to grace and guard and bless our United States of America.