Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I want to speak today on Resolution 362 that is circulating in the House and its impact on policy in the Middle East.

As a result of Resolution 362 and its tightening of sanctions on Iran in a more broader way, will that have a positive impact on America's policy in the Middle East? Will it have a positive impact on the politics in the Middle East? Will it have a positive impact on Iran as far as the conflict between our two nations is concerned?

I will say, in my judgment, Mr. Speaker, that Resolution 362 will exacerbate, make much more difficult, the problems in the Middle East, the relationship of Iran with its neighbors in the Middle East, and the relationship of Iran with the United States, and the relationship of Iran with the country of Israel. Let me try to explain why.

If we look at the Middle East right now in a very objective fashion, what is going on in the Middle East right now?

The geopolitical balance of power in the Middle East right now is fractured. We are focusing on the conflict in Iraq. We need as a Nation to focus objectively on the Palestinian-Israeli question, to resolve that issue, to reduce the number of recruits for al Qaeda and the Taliban.

We need to understand that Saudi Arabia, a Sunni country, does not want Iraq, a Shia country, to become an Iranian satellite.

We need to understand that Iran, who lost more men dead in a conflict with Iraq just a few years ago than we lost in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam combined, wants to have some influence in the Middle East and certainly with what will go on in Iraq.

What will influence the direction the Middle East will take in the decades to come? There is violent conflict there. There is political conflict there. There is mistrust in the Middle East.

Let me use a quote from Sam Rayburn, former Speaker of the House. ``Any mule can kick a barn door down, but it takes carpenters to rebuild that door and that barn.''

We need carpenters. We need diplomats. More conflict, more restrictions, more sanctions is going to further exacerbate the problem in the Middle East and its relationship with the country of Iran.

One other quick comment. Iran is not an Arab country. Iran is a Persian nation that speaks Farsi, that does not speak Arabic. It is a nation of Shias with their own brand of Islam.

Knowledge and an informed policy in the Middle East, a surge of diplomacy, can make a key difference. Let me go back and express some precedence of the past about diplomacy and where it worked.

When Nikita Khrushchev said he was going to bury the United States, what was Eisenhower's response? He invited Nikita Khrushchev to the United States to tour the Nation, and it began to lessen the conflict between the two countries.

What did President Kennedy do when there were deployable nuclear weapons in Cuba aimed at the United States? He negotiated his way out of that conflict and saved a catastrophe.

What did Nixon do after Mao Zedong said it would be worth half the population of China being destroyed if we could destroy the capitalists in America? What did Nixon do? He had a dialogue. He went to China.

What happened when we did not have a dialogue, some understanding of Ho Chi Minh? A million people died.

Today in the Middle East we certainly need a strong military, we need a strong intelligence. But the aspect that is missing in the Middle East is what Eisenhower said was so critical in foreign policy; that is, consensus and dialogue.

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of Members in this house that have started a long time ago, a couple of years, beginning a dialogue with the Iranians. Just last fall, 58 Members of this House on both sides of the aisle signed a letter to the parliament in Iran asking for a parliamentary exchange; 58 Members of Republicans and Democrats. That letter was hand-delivered by some of us in Lisbon to Iranian parliamentarians. They took it to Iran. And what is their response to us? They want a dialogue. There are members of the Iranian parliament that want a dialogue. Consensus and dialogue.

We need more carpenters. Vote against Resolution 362.

I thank the gentleman from Utah for yielding.

I want to thank the gentleman from Maryland, the other gentleman from Maryland, for working on this project, the Gateways and Watertrails system. It is a system, Mr. Speaker, that provides, as the gentleman from Maryland described, public education about the ecology of the Chesapeake Bay and what an individual can do not only to enjoy the landscape, not only to explore and paddle the landscape, but to understand the landscape.

Now, a lot of discussion here recently has been about energy, fossil fuels, should we drill for more oil? The issue of the Gateways is about education. A quote from Norman Cousins, the editor of the Saturday Evening Post some 30 or 40 years ago, said, ``Knowledge is the solvent for danger.'' So let's focus on a little bit of information, knowledge. The United States can never become energy independent if it continues to be dependent on fossil fuel. There is simply not enough here. We peaked in the 1970s. Energy from fossil fuels has created the situation we now call ``climate change'' or ``global warming.'' Global warming creates a transition for the Chesapeake Bay. This is not a geologic transition. This is not a natural forces transition from a changing ecology. This is a human-forced transition for the Chesapeake Bay that will continue to degrade the water. What can we do about it? One of the things is a source of education, a source of knowledge.

The Gateways program involves the public in understanding some amazing things. Number one, the geology of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Why is the Chesapeake Bay here? Why is the Delmarva Peninsula here? An understanding of how geologic forces created this magnificent estuary over millions of years.

Number two, Gateways helps people understand the ecological evolution of the Chesapeake Bay. Why are there forests here? Why is there a whole range of song birds or water foul or marine life? It is a magnificent place unknown anywhere else on the continent but the Chesapeake Bay. The ecological evolution of the Chesapeake Bay.

And the other thing the Gateways program does is help us understand human history, when the first Native Americans got here about 10,000 years ago, to John Smith 400 years ago, to the transition that we see today in the Chesapeake Bay. The Gateways and Watertrails program is an educational program.

To understand the transition that the bay is now going through is not a geological change. It's not an ecological change. It's that human activity is not compatible with nature's design. And this program helps us understand those views so we can be a part of the solution and not part of the problem.

I urge my colleagues to vote for the bill.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to submit in the Record an opinion piece by Marshall Breger, a former alternate delegate of the U.S. to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, and currently a professor of law at the Columbus School of Law, the Catholic University of America. In it, he discusses the importance of religion in negotiating peace through diplomacy.

Faith in Diplomacy

(By Marshall Breger)

Whatever one's view of the Oslo peace process, it is

remarkable that the 1993 signing ceremony on the White House

lawn did not include benedictions by rabbis, imams, or

priests. In an America where religious leaders open sessions

of Congress, pray for the success of our armies, and even

sometimes pray for fair winds and bless the fleet at yachting

regattas, this is passing strange.

The absence of religious content speaks volumes about the

assumptions that drive conventional diplomatic wisdom in

Washington. Foreign policy professionals instinctively recoil

at the notion that religion can or should play an important

role in foreign policy. They see it as a ``private matter,''

according to Tom Farr, former director of the State

Department's office of international religious freedom,

``properly beyond the bounds of policy analysis and action.''

Far too many American diplomats and think-tank gurus

continue to dismiss or, at best, ignore religion as ``a tool

of statecraft.'' They talk about promoting ``civil society''

but forget that in regions as diverse as the Middle East and

South Asia, the largest and most powerful actors in civil

society are religious. They assume that a ``moderate'' Muslim

is a less religious Muslim, and that an ``Islamist'' who

believes that Islam should play a role in politics must be in

his or her heart a bomb-throwing extremist. They treat

religion as a distraction to diplomacy and a threat to global

stability.

Academic theories of modernization teach that as societies

modernize they irrevocably grow more secular. But the truth

is otherwise. Sociologist Peter Berger contends that

religious sensibility does not wither in the modern world.

Even the State Department, long a bastion of secularist

thinking, is beginning to get the picture. In a powerful book

written after she left the State Department, former secretary

Madeleine Albright effectively offered a mea culpa for

ignoring religion while she was in office. And Karen Hughes,

former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and

public affairs, said that President Bush wanted her ``to

reach out and meet with religious leaders--because faith is

such an important part of life for so many Americans and so

many people across the world.''

How should we incorporate religion in our foreign policy?

First, we must study it. You can't understand West Bank

settlers without understanding the ``Greater Israel''

theology of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook and his disciples. Nor can

you follow Shia politics without an appreciation of the role

of the ashura--the commemoration of the death of the

Prophet Mohammed's grandson in the 680 battle of Karbala--

as the transformative event in Shia martyrology, or the

oft-misunderstood role of the mahdi--the ``hidden Imam''

expected to bring justice and final judgment to the

world--in Shia eschatology. Or how the ``puritanism'' of

18th-century theologian Mohammed Ibn Abd-al Wahab has

affected the Salafi understanding of the Quran.

Only by understanding religion can we mobilize it as a

force for reconciliation and as an ally in the search for

peaceful solutions. No one can deny the injurious role

religious fervor has had in foreign affairs--just think of

the Thirty Years' War and Osama bin Laden. Nonetheless, we

know of many examples of how religion can assist in the

process of making peace. Consider the Community of

Sant'Edigio, which has midwived cease-fires in conflict zones

like Mozambique. The Vatican mediated the Argentina-Chile

dispute over the Beagle Channel, and evangelical Christians

have helped place international religious freedom, AIDS, and

global poverty on the major powers' foreign policy agendas.

Jewish groups, for their part, have led the campaign to end

the violence in Darfur.

In 2002, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian leaders in the

Middle East signed the Alexandria Declaration of the

Religious Leaders of the Holy Land, committing themselves to

the dignity of the individual, whatever his or her religion,

and an end to bloodshed. That work is being carried on by

groups like Mosaica and the Adam Institute and by other

religious leaders such as Knesset member Rabbi Michael

Melchior and Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, founder of the

Islamic movement in Israel.

Religious leaders in Jerusalem have formed a Council of

Religious Institutions of the Holy Land to promote not just

interfaith dialogue, but also practical advances like access

to and protection of holy sites; religious freedom; education

for tolerance in mosques, synagogues, and churches; and

support for a two-state solution that recognizes the dignity

of both Israelis and Palestinians. This nascent enterprise

includes religious leaders such as the Latin patriarch, chief

rabbis, and Sheikh Taysir Al-Tamimi, head of the Sharia

courts of Palestine.

These developments make clear that religious leaders can

foster reconciliation in the Middle East and elsewhere. To

succeed, any new peace initiative must encompass their

efforts. Perhaps this time around we can avoid the religious

deficit of so much previous American diplomacy.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to submit a poem penned by Albert Caswell of The United States Capitol Guide Service, in honor of a real American hero, Army Specialist Armer Nathan Burkart, on the eve of the 2nd anniversary of his gallant life and most tragic death in Baghdad, Iraq, on May 11, 2006. A Rockville native who gave that last full measure for all of us. Remember him this coming Memorial Day.

Armer All

Armer All . . .

Strength in honor, an American Hero who heard the call!

Who so marched off to war like all of his fine forefathers

have done so before!

A man of character, and faith . . .

A brave heart, who but to his country 'tis of thee so gave

and gave!

But All . . . But, his fine life . . . he who so sacrificed,

showing us all how to behave!

A soul,

One's being, so deep down inside one's heart which holds!

The Armer, The Mantle of Gold . . . to go and do, to shine in

the light of a hero's glow!

To march forward, with clenched fists!

To stare straight into that the darkest of all faces, that of

death!

To give all until none lies left, to the future . . . our

most precious sons and daughters bless!

A Maryland Man,

Who so showed us all what a warm heart of Armer and faith so

can!

But, only the very few . . . can and have so done, as Heaven

won . . . our fine son . . . Armer you!

A leader of men,

An Angel on Earth, who our Lord would so send!

And now, as your short time is done . . . to Heaven rise my

son . . .as your new battle begins!

As an Angel in the Army of our Lord,

As on Earth you brought your light, from heaven now you

continue the fight . . . evermore!

For yours, your life Burkart . . . was but our Lord's work of

art . . . for what you so stood for!

Armer . . . You!

You, so lived and died for What Is Real . . . For What Is

True!

Can you but hear our tears? All for you, and your fine life .

. . and all of your lost years!

Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk tonight about Iraq and the Middle East in general, but specifically about the present crisis in Iraq. And what I would like to do is to explain the present crisis based on recent history and from my perspective, Mr. Speaker, what is the way forward. Is there a solution to the war in Iraq.

And the other thing I would like to discuss is this: Do the American people have a role to play in the conflict? And to discuss this tonight, I would like to frame the picture of the present crisis in Iraq by a couple of quotes from a book called ``Human Options'' written about, oh, I would say 30 years ago by the former editor of the Saturday Evening Post, a man named Norman Cousins. Two extraordinary quotes in this book. One is, Knowledge is the solvent for danger. The other quote is, History is a vast early warning system.

And so what I will do tonight is attempt to convey to the Speaker, the Members, and the American people the importance of knowledge in a conflict to find a solution and a reconciliation to the warring factions.

The other is history's advanced early warning system. Many people will say that 20 years from now we'll have hindsight to the present crisis. Twenty years after the war in Vietnam ended, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said, If I only knew then what I know now. Well, if the former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara read history in the fifties and the early sixties, he would have had a better understanding of the conflict in Southeast Asia, Indochina, the conflict between the French and the Vietnamese who were trying to seek sovereignty and get rid of Colonial rule. In other words, Mr. McNamara would have understood, with hindsight, the conflict in the war in Indochina before it started if he had a better understanding of its history.

And what I'm going to try to do tonight is give a better frame of reference for the present crisis from the historical point of view so we don't have to worry 20 years from now whether this policy was a good policy or not. We can't let the troops fight that long if it is not necessary. And so a history of the region of the Middle East will give us a better sense of the conflict and how to resolve and reconcile the vast, intricate, violent conflicts that exist there now.

I also want to quote a British author, Rudyard Kipling, who had to face the tragedy of his son being killed in northern France during World War I. This literary giant at the time made this comment soon after his son's death, but he spoke to all the young men who were dying in Europe during that tragic event of World War I, and Rudyard Kipling said this: Why did young men die because old men lied?

I'd like to paraphrase that quote in the present crisis today. I'd like to paraphrase that quote for foreign policy for the 21st century. Old men should talk before they send young men to die or old people should talk before they send young people to die. A country does not become strong by filling up its cemeteries.

Our role as legislators, as policy-makers and the role of the American people, what is it? What is our role? What is the role of the American people? How do we support the troops in the Middle East and Afghanistan and Iraq? How do policy-makers, how does the administration, and equally as important, how do the American people support the troops in Iraq?

First of all, we recognize their stunning competence. The soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world from around the United States are stunningly competent. Why? Because they're well-trained. They're well-informed. They take the time to know what they're doing, to be competent at their job, to use technology, to be aware of the soldiers next to them. They work hard to be knowledgeable as soldiers.

Do we take the initiative to be informed and knowledgeable? The soldiers take the initiative. They volunteered. They go through boot camp. They go through very skillful training of the technology, of the weaponry, of troop movements, of how to protect each other, of how to move through villages at night, of how to find the enemy. The troops are competent because they take the initiative.

Now, do we take the initiative as legislators to be competent and informed about the conflict that we send them to? Do the American people take the initiative to become knowledgeable about all of the issues? Are we knowledgeable about the present crisis and past crises that have brought us to where we are today?

I want to tell you that I've been to many meetings around my district. I've talked to many, many people about the conflict. I've done my best to explain that the troops are competent, but in a certain measure, the policy is flawed.

And like many people, we often hear Americans say that we need to pray for the troops, for their safe return, for the end of the conflict. I will say that that's a very important thing to do, to pray for the troops.

I remember when I was in Vietnam in 1966 standing, what we called, lines where we were in bunkers and barbwire, and at night we had to stand the lines and make sure the enemy didn't sneak into the camp. And a chaplain came up and he would come up to the lines very often. His name was Chaplain Doffin, D-O-F-F-I-N. He's now a retired Baptist minister in Charleston, South Carolina. At the time, he was a young navy chaplain who often went on patrols with us.

And he came up to me while standing lines one night. We were having a wonderful conversation that became very philosophical. It was philosophical in 1966 about the present crisis at that time in Vietnam, and I asked the chaplain if he believed in prayer. And I asked the chaplain if he believed in prayer because we prayed mightily for the conflict to end as young soldiers, young Marines. We prayed mightily for the butchery to stop because that's what war is. It's brutal and it's tragic.

I said, ``Chaplain, do you believe in prayer?'' And he said, ``Yes, but when I cross the lines to go out on a patrol,'' which he would occasionally, ``I make sure I have my helmet, my flak jacket and my rifle.''

That means the soldier needs to be prepared. Believe in prayer, but that the soldier needed to be competent, the soldier needed to be informed, the soldier needed to be prepared.

Now, Mr. Speaker, what I'm going to do tonight is suggest to my colleagues and the American people that they should be prepared as the soldier is prepared. They should be knowledgeable and competent about this crisis. So I'm going to give you, Mr. Speaker, and the American people a reading list, and I want you to consider that this reading list is your helmet, your flak jacket and your rifle, and you are to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the servicemen and -women who are now in harm's way. They are counting on you, like the soldiers when I went across the

line. When I went on patrol or operations, I was a squad leader, then a platoon sergeant, and the soldiers and the Marines standing right next to me wanted me to be prepared, wanted me to know what I was doing. They wanted me to be competent. They wanted to make sure I had my helmet, my flak jacket, my rifle, and I knew what I was doing.

So these soldiers in Iraq, they want us to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them. They want us to be competent.

Now, the soldiers in Iraq are competent. They are sacrificing their time every day to serve this Nation. They don't watch television at night. They don't saunter around the malls looking for things. They don't pass their days idly. They pass their days with horrific, vicious, violent incidents. They serve this Nation. Are we willing to serve our Nation? Are we willing to serve those young men and women? And how can we do it? Well, by being competent.

I'm going to give a list of 10 books. I will say the 10 books at the end of this address as well.

The first is a very easy read, ``A Letter to America,'' just written by the former senator from Oklahoma, David Boren. ``A Letter to America.'' What should America be like in the 21st century? It's an extraordinary read. It's a view of how we would like America to be.

The second book is--you've heard it before--``The Iraq Study Group Report.'' Iraq Study Group. It's by James Baker and Lee Hamilton. And it has a strategy for dealing with the conflict that I think the American people should read and become informed of.

The third book is a book called ``Fiasco.'' It's a harsh word. It describes the present crisis in Iraq. ``Fiasco.'' If you want to know the problems we've seen in Iraq and what went wrong from the very beginning, read the book ``Fiasco'' by Thomas Ricks.

The fourth book is ``A Struggle For Peace,'' General Tony Zinni. Actually, I think it's called ``The Battle for Peace'' by Tony Zinni, and it's a book describing how we can find peace in the volatile areas of the world through dialogue, through consensus. We need a strong military, we need good intelligence, but the third thing Tony Zinni talks about is understanding the nature of the culture and having a dialogue.

The fifth book is ``Violent Politics'' by William Polk. He worked for President Kennedy and President Johnson. ``Violent Politics'' is a discussion from the American Revolution in which we were the insurgents, all the way to the present crisis in Iraq, and also talks, interestingly enough, about the 6-day war and how it was won between Israel and the Arab Nations. The war was won in 6 days, mission accomplished, but the horrific struggle continues. There is no end to the violence. ``Violent Politics'' is a discussion about insurgencies when diplomacy goes wrong.

Number six is called ``Treacherous Alliance'' by Trita Parsi. Interestingly enough, it's a relationship between the Israelis and the Iranians, or the Jews and the Persians from 1948, the inception of Israel, till today, the present crisis. But what it showed through most of the Cold War, Israel and Iran, who seem to be bitter enemies today, were quiet, secret allies from 1948 to 1991 because they had the same enemies. They were both bitter enemies of Russia, the Soviet Union. They were bitter enemies of Iraq and many of the Arab countries, especially Saddam Hussein. And so what the Iranians and the Israelis did was trade oil for technology. They were strong quiet allies.

Number 7 is ``All the Shah's Men'' by Stephen Kinzer, K-I-N-Z-E-R, ``All the Shah's Men.'' It showed a problem that we created, the United States, in our relationship with Iran, starting in 1953. We lit a slow fuse in 1953 because the United States, with the significant help of the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, Kermit Roosevelt, planned in the American embassy in Tehran to violently overthrow the duly elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, of the Iranian people, with the help of the British. We kicked him out of office violently. Thousands of people were killed, and then we put in the person now known as the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who did not believe in democracy, who was a harsh, dictatorial monarch. And that slow fuse was lit in 1953, and it blew up in 1979.

Number eight, ``The Silence of the Rational Center'' by Messrs. Halper and Clark. Basically, what they say, there are many people around this country, universities, former diplomats, diplomats who have a better understanding of the cultural, religious, historic facts of many regions of the world, especially the Middle East, but what they say in this book is it's not just enough to know. You have to take the initiative, use your ingenuity and your intellect and your courage, and begin discussing with the American people, with the Congress, with the administration what is wrong with our policy in the Middle East.

Number nine is a historic book, interesting though. It's called ``Why Vietnam?'' by Archimedes Patti, who was in the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA, who was with the first Americans to meet Ho Chi Minh in 1945, who found that Ho Chi Minh wanted to work with the Americans to get the wording right in his Declaration of Independence from French colonial rule and be sure that he used the words, ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.''

And Ho Chi Minh put that in his Declaration of Independence, those words, and Archimedes Patti, the author of this book, ``Why Vietnam?'' helped Ho Chi Minh do that.

The reason I suggest ``Why Vietnam?'' is because years later people had no historic understanding of Ho Chi Minh, that he, in fact, Ho Chi Minh, back in 1919 at the Treaty of Versailles in France at the end of World War I, was knocking at the door of America to ask for their help to gain his independence from the French. He didn't go to Russia to help gain his independence. He did not go to China to help gain his independence. He came to the United States, and because of not enough knowledge, not enough information, not enough inquiring politicians, did we have the war in Vietnam where 58,000 Americans died.

The last book, ``Human Options'' by Norman Cousins. ``Human Options.'' What are your options when you have a situation? What do you base your decision on, your opinion on? Is it good information? Is it a broad array of knowledge that you have or do you let somebody on the radio or the TV filter out and distort the information so you only get a small piece of it?

Knowledge makes you more informed, more competent and gives you hindsight in the present crisis. The military does it all the time. They're knowledgeable and they're competent and they're doing it now.

Mr. Speaker, what I would like to go through very briefly now is recent history that can help us in this war in Iraq to show what other leaders did in our recent past to resolve conflicts.

And I want to start with the Cold War, which ended at the end of World War II.

World War II was a war where you could bomb munition factories, you could bomb huge armies, you could bomb supply lines, you could bomb convoys. World War II was not an insurgency like we see in Iraq and Afghanistan. World War II is probably something of the past. We are now faced with an insurgency with violent politics, not a standing war.

And right after World War II, Winston Churchill coined the phrase ``An iron curtain has descended around eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.'' We were engaged in what was called the Cold War. We know that in the 1950s, Nikita Khrushchev said on a number of occasions, pointing to western diplomats in foreign countries and in the United Nations, he would say, ``We will bury you.'' ``We will bury you.'' And he had thousands of deployable nuclear weapons.

The point here, Mr. Speaker, is: What was President Eisenhower's response to that violent rhetoric? President Eisenhower's response was to invite Nikita Khrushchev to the United States to tour our cities, to tour our suburbs, and to travel through the beautiful farming regions of the United States. President Eisenhower's response to his violent rhetoric was dialogue. Let's sit down and discuss the issue.

1962, President Kennedy; what did he do when he found out there were

deployable nuclear weapons minutes away from the United States in Fidel Castro's Cuba? The military said we need to attack, we need to bomb, we need to get rid of those nuclear weapons. What was President Kennedy's response? Let's work through channels. Let's talk to Khrushchev. Let's have a dialogue. And the crisis passed.

Communist China said throughout the sixties that it would be worth half the population of China dying if the United States was wiped off the face of the Earth. And what was Richard Nixon's response to Mao Tse-tung's violent rhetoric? Richard Nixon's response? Dialogue. Nixon went to China.

Is China the flower of human rights today? Is there religious freedom in China? Is there freedom of thought, freedom of conscience? No. Are they better today than they were 30 years ago? They are, but they still do not have a country that is democratic. There is no democracy there. And there are human rights violations every day. But we have a dialogue with China. We don't have violent rhetoric about an evil empire. We have trade wars with China. China is better. Richard Nixon went to China.

I want to briefly mention Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh in 1945 wanted independence from the French. He wanted freedom for his people. In 1949, he would have never known that he was going to have to wait 30 years; it was 1975 before Vietnam was fully united and had complete independence. We did not have a dialogue with Ho Chi Minh during that same period of time that we were pursuing dialogue with Khrushchev, with Cuba, and with Red China. And as a result of not having dialogue, 58,000 Americans died, hundreds of thousands were wounded, and several million Vietnamese were dead.

Throughout that same period of time of the Cold War there was a wall dividing Berlin, east and west, and many people were killed trying to cross that wall. And Kennedy went to that wall and said, ``I am a Berliner,'' meaning there is freedom for the people in the city of Berlin because we believe in freedom. Ronald Reagan went to the Berlin Wall and said, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.

And when the wall was finally being torn down, there was a moment when no one knew what Gorbachev was going to do. Was Gorbachev going to bring in more Soviet troops and repair the wall and keep the Iron Curtain the way it was? Was it going to be like the Hungarian revolution in 1956, when the Hungarians revolted and wanted to be free, wanted their independence? What was going to happen? Was Gorbachev going to do the same thing that Khrushchev did in 1956? Well, what did President Bush do at that moment? He showed Mikhail Gorbachev that President Brezhnev signed the Helsinki Accords. And the Helsinki Accords talked about sovereignty, human dignity, and respect for international law.

President Bush, 1990, did not resort to violent rhetoric, threatening Mikhail Gorbachev. He quietly, deliberately, but effectively, showed Mr. Gorbachev that there was agreement with all European countries, including the Soviet Union, called the Helsinki Accords; that there was to be respect for human thought, human consciousness, freedom of religion, sovereignty, and international law. And what happened? The Berlin Wall came down, Eastern Europe became free.

Let's take a look at the same period of time, but concentrate just in the Middle East. Same period of time, 1948. The Cold War has basically just started. Israel becomes a nation, and it is, this week, celebrating its 60th anniversary, the independent country of Israel. It was carved out of an area known as Palestine in 1948. But when Israel was formed in 1948, it threw the entire region into what some people in the region said would be a 100-year war. That war between Israel, the Arabs and the Palestinians is now 60 years old. Must we wait 40 more years for peace?

I mentioned ``All the Shah's Men'' by Stephen Kinzer. 1953, the height of the Cold War, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, unfortunately with the blessings of John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State of the United States, staged a very violent coup in support of the British independent Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, today known as BP, because that Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, not a British company, but an independent oil company headquartered in Britain, wanted to extract as much oil as they could from Iran without sharing the proceeds, without sharing the profits.

And so Mohammad Mosaddeq came into power in 1950, and he nationalized the Iranian Oil Company because it was Iranian oil, and he wanted the Iranian people to have some of the benefits of that natural resource. And the British didn't like that. The British tried to get President Truman to stage a coup, and Truman refused to do it. Eisenhower, with much trepidation, allowed it to go forward. And what happened from 1953, when we staged the coup in Iran? In the embassy in Tehran we lit a slow fuse, and that slow fuse burned until 1979 when the Islamic Revolution was staged in Tehran in 1979 and our embassy was taken over.

The Soviet Union in the Middle East during the Cold War was like a roller coaster ride. Sometimes they were a friend of certain Arab countries and sometimes they were an enemy of certain Arab countries, depending on what the Soviet policy was.

Israel and Iran, we talked about that in the book ``Treacherous Alliance.'' They both shared a common interest. Neither country, Israel nor Iran, are Arab countries, obviously; the Israelis are Jews, the Iranians are Persians. The Israelis speak Hebrew, the Iranians speak Farsi. They had strategic interests that were similar. They had enemies that were similar. They had ideological differences, but they resolved those ideological differences and began quietly trading with each other. Those ideological differences were resolved because geopolitical realities trumped those ideological fantasies. Let me say that again. Israel and Iran, from 1948 to 1991, they had many ideological differences, but the geopolitical realities--that means, because of where they lived, because of the region--the geopolitical realities trumped their ideological fantasies, and they were quiet, but strong, allies.

We know during the period of the Cold War--the end of the Cold War anyway--in the Middle East there was a war between Russia and Afghanistan, 1979 to 1989. When that war was over, the Soviet Union declined precipitously as a super power. It lost significant influence in the Middle East and it limped home defeated by Islamic fundamentalists. Those same Islamic fundamentalists that we helped, the mujahidin, that we helped in the war against the Soviet Union, they then turned around and focused their attention on the western world.

But let me show you something that's interesting. During the war in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union, who was their enemy? The mujahidin was their enemy, but gradually turned into the Taliban and al Qaeda. Pakistan fought with the mujahidin. And who was the third ally against the Soviet Union? The United States. The United States, Pakistan, and the mujahidin fought with the Afghan and foreign fighters against the Soviet Union. Things are a little different today. Over one million deaths just in Afghanistan.

What happened at the same period of time in the Middle East just a few short years ago? Iraq and Iran went to war from 1980 to 1988. This was over border disputes, oil, and so on. 1,500,000 deaths. Not 1,500,000 casualties; 1,500,000 deaths. That's more deaths than all the Americans that died in World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam combined.

We are in a huge violent region today where these people, the Middle East people, are very used to violent politics and violent death. Can you resolve these conflicts with more violence? I think the answer is no.

What happened back in 1978 and 1979, a period of time when the Iranian Revolution took place, the Afghan war with Russia was about to take place, and the war between Iran and Iraq was about to take place, what happened when Jimmy Carter got Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin together for a period of time in the United States? What happened? There was peace on the edge of conflict between Egypt and Israel. They reconciled their differences.

The last piece of conflict that I want to discuss in the Middle East during the Cold War, right at the end of the Cold War, was the Persian Gulf War when Iraq invaded Kuwait over border disputes. They felt that Kuwait was actually a part of Iraq historically.

When we went into the Persian Gulf War in 1991, there were very clear, defined objectives. And when those objectives were met, we came home. There was truly an international coalition; I mean, an international coalition that was so good the United States spent no money on the Persian Gulf War because those countries that did not contribute troops contributed large financial assistance. International financial assistance helped resolve that conflict. We had greater integrated diplomatic initiatives by the international community. And so the Persian Gulf War came, it was violent, and then it was resolved in a very short period of time.

The present crisis, Iraq, right now in the Middle East; what is it like in Iraq?

There are three great religions there, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, that at times throughout history have had violent interactions. But there are also many, many examples over the centuries where these three great religions have lived together in peace. Faith is a very important part. Religion is a very important part of the Middle East.

Oil exports are vital to the economic viability of the region. Oil exports are very important.

The geopolitical balance of power in the Middle East today is fractured. There are no more super powers. There is not a conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. Saddam Hussein, who was one of the more powerful dictatorial leaders in the region, is gone. Who will have more influence there? No one knows. The geopolitical balance of power is fractured. So what direction will the Middle East take, and how can we be a part of the solution?

The Shiites and the Sunnis, these are both Muslim. They are both of the Islamic faith. But there are differences. But their differences are much greater than the differences between the different denominations in the Christian church. They are much different from Catholicism and the Protestants. They're different from the Baptists and the Methodists and the Episcopalians and the Lutherans and so on. And one of the major differences between the Shiites and the Sunnis is who has authority over the religion of Islam. There was a shift, a break, between the descendants of Muhammad. So authority creates significant differences in how religion works. And there are differences between the hierarchy of Shiites and the Sunnis; hence we see sectarian violence and we see intrasectarian violence. But I can tell you the vast majority of Arabs who are Muslim, who are Sunni, and who are Shia, especially in Iraq, have lived peacefully for centuries, have intermarried for centuries. And for the most part, there is not sectarian violence between the two religious groups. There is not intrasectarian violence within the Shias or within the Sunnis. This conflict has separated the two. But more importantly, the differences between the Shias and the Sunnis can be reconciled.

But make no mistake, there is a difference, a fundamental difference, between an al Qaeda member and a Sunni or a Shia. There is a significant difference between someone who is a Taliban and someone who is a Shia and a Sunni. And it is the same difference, if we go back 30 some years, to a group of people called the Khmer Rouge in Thailand led by a fanatical maniac called Pol Pot. He was a Thai. He was Southeast Asian. But to compare Pol Pot with the Khmer Rouge with any average Buddhist in Thailand would be completely out of the question, completely false.

So trying to lump all the Muslims together into one picture is a stereotype. That's a big mistake. Al Qaeda are terrorists. They are the enemy. The Taliban are very strict, ancient, primitive. They have a very primitive, ancient interpretation of Islam. But if you're a Sunni or a Shia and you're living in Iraq, you want your country to be at peace and you want to be modernized. We need to understand this culture a little bit better.

The war in Iraq has now more than 34,000 casualties. What does that mean, 34,000 casualties? That means more than 4,000 Americans dead that will never come home. That means more than 30,000 Americans wounded, hospitalized, disabled that will never be the same; $600 billion and counting, about $12 billion a month; global dissent; soldiers on their third and fourth tour in Iraq and Afghanistan; posttraumatic syndrome.

Now let me say something about posttraumatic stress syndrome. It's when you have a violent incident in your life and it doesn't go away if you're a soldier from Iraq when you go home. You just can't put it aside. Posttraumatic stress syndrome is nothing more than remembering your past, a year ago, 10 years ago, 6 months ago. You remember these incidents. You remember what a land mine in the middle of the road did to your Humvee or your tank or your jeep or your buddy. You remember that. The violent incident that occurred does not get forgotten any more than you remember what you did in high school or what you did in a picnic last week or whom you spoke to in a church last week or a birthday party that you had. Posttraumatic stress syndrome is basically 100 percent for anyone who has been in combat, 100 percent. Now, some people are able to deal with it, they digest it, and they move on with their life, and they're normal and they're successful. But for some, depending on their physiological capacity, they cannot forget that incident where they saw children blown to pieces, where they may have pressed the barrel of their rifle against another man's chest and pulled the trigger. Do you forget that? Children burned with napalm, violent conflict, do you forget it? You don't. You deal with it. But posttraumatic stress is a problem.

The troops are stunningly competent. Are we policymakers informed enough to deal with these issues in a way that we can bring the conflict to an end?

Does that mean, then, because of these casualties, because of this conflict, that we should leave Iraq right away? Let's talk about that for a second. We left Mogadishu, Somalia. And what did we leave behind in the early 1990s? We left behind chaos. So we can't leave right away without any consequences. What happened to the Russians when they left Afghanistan? We wanted them to leave Afghanistan, but who took care to look at the diplomatic effort to build up Afghanistan? Nobody. And look what happened to Afghanistan after the Russians left. It turned into a haven for al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But how many troops should we leave behind or leave in Iraq? That's a consideration. If we go back to 1954, the French were leaving Vietnam, and they left a group of soldiers at Dien Bien Phu, and they were all killed or captured. So we don't want another Mogadishu. We don't want another Afghanistan. We don't want another Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam in 1954.

General Petraeus says there is no military solution. Under the present situation, it doesn't look like there is a political solution. So what do we do? Well, we look beyond Iraq. If we just look at Iraq alone, there is no political or military solution. But to understand the way forward, we need to frame a regional strategy. So what does it look like?

Right now the U.S. military is a skeletal structure upon which Iraqi society rests. You pull the military out, it may collapse. We are the skeletal structure. So we need to be strategic about what we're doing there now, and being strategic means we look at the region.

First, the Palestinian-Israeli issue, unsettled since 1948. What has that caused? It is the biggest advertising recruitment tool for violent, radical al Qaeda. We need to begin to seriously resolve that conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

Saudi Arabia, they live in a fractured Middle East. Saudi Arabia fears, a natural fear, that Iraq will be an Iranian satellite; so we need to deal with the fears of Saudi Arabia.

Syria, a secular Islamic country, not a fundamentalist Islamic country, still has concerns about its role in Lebanon and the Golan Heights that were taken from them in the 1967 war. We need to engage the Syrians at the highest levels.

Iran, they have historic fears of Iraq and Russia, now China. They are Persian. They speak farsi. They are not Arab. We need to engage the Iranians with no preconditions. We didn't put conditions on Khrushchev when we engaged him. We didn't have any preconditions against Mao Se Tung when we engaged them.

Turkey, what of the Kurdish question? We need to bring Turkey into the process of reconciliation.

The problems of the Middle East are centuries old. It is an interconnected, integrated region that must be brought together. An integrated region needs to be brought together with an integrated set of diplomatic efforts.

And by the way, the countries that I just mentioned, Palestine, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Iraq, those countries in and of themselves without U.S. aid could deal and take care of al Qaeda.

It would be wise to remember Eisenhower's words: A country like the United States needs a strong military, strong intelligence, but it also needs consensus and dialogue. The third leg of the three legged stool, consensus and dialogue, is also a part of America's arsenal. And it includes exquisite diplomacy, which means trading, education, science, technology, cultural, social, and religious exchanges. That's what the third leg of that stool does. That is what diplomacy is. Eisenhower spoke to Khrushchev. Kennedy spoke to Khrushchev. Nixon spoke to Mao Tse-tung. Knowledge is the solvent for danger, said Norman Cousins. The troops know that. The troops know the smarter they are, the better prepared they are, the better their day is going to be. Do the policymakers know that? Do the policymakers know what their role is in this war? Standing shoulder to shoulder with the troops means more than just praying for the troops. It means you also wear a helmet, a flak jacket, and a rifle. And what is that helmet, flak jacket, and rifle? That's knowledge. That's knowing something about the issue.

History is a vast early warning system. The Arabs, the Persians, the Israelis know the history of the last centuries of the Middle East. Do we? Sam Rayburn, former Speaker of the House, said, ``Any mule can kick a barn door down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.'' We need carpenters. A lot of them. Remember what Rudyard Kipling said when his son tragically died in northern France during World War I: ``Why did young men die? Because old men lied.'' And to paraphrase that today, old people should talk before they send young people to die.

The landscape of human tragedy since the dawn of time, who has been our enemy? Ignorance, arrogance, dogma. It leads to monstrous certainty, monstrous dictators, monstrous violence. Ignorance, arrogance, dogma. What's the antidote? More violence? Filling up our cemeteries?

The answer is knowledge replaces ignorance, humility replaces arrogance, and tolerance replaces dogma. Consensus and dialogue. A diplomatic initiative with the region. A full diplomatic initiative with the region. That comes out of the intelligence and the ingenuity of our arsenal. Certainly we need a strong military. Certainly we need a strong intelligence community. But we need the other leg of that arsenal, a regional diplomacy policy.

An international support structure, do we have it in the middle East? Do we have it with the Palestinian and Israelis? Are we working with an international support structure in Iraq and Afghanistan? Not enough.

Integrated security alliance. We had it with NATO. We had it with SEATO. We have it with OAS. The U.S. has it, and many countries want to join it. The integrated economic alliance. It is with the European Union. All of the Eastern European countries and the Balkans want to get into that integrated security alliance and that integrated economic alliance.

We can do that in the Middle East. We should continue the current military draw down strategically and responsibly, a reconciliation among the different factions to reduce the sectarian violence, an effort that is ongoing. And we should continue it.

Let's take a walk down Memory Lane going back to 1941 just at the very early stages of World War II. A number of countries signed what was called the Atlantic Charter. And the Atlantic Charter was to deal with sovereignty, freedom and independence. The Atlantic Charter led to the organization now known as NATO. That integrated security alliance kept the peace in Europe basically as a result of that from 1948 to the present.

I will say a little side remark. The Atlantic Charter, which talked about sovereignty and human rights, when Ho Chi Minh read it shortly after it was signed, he wondered if it would apply to Asians. That is what he said. And apparently it didn't for some time to come.

The Helsinki Accords, which we mentioned earlier, which President Bush reminded Mikhail Gorbachev of and so there was a peaceful solution to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the Helsinki Accords was signed in 1975 by a number of European countries, including the Soviet Union. And that Accord said the following, there should be territorial integrity, peaceful settlements of disputes, freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief, equal rights and respect for international law. That is what the Helsinki Accord said.

The Helsinki Accord gave people under the Soviet domination courage to strive for a better life. Look at Eastern Europe and many of the former Soviet Republics. They read the Helsinki Accords. It gave them hope to put aside their fear and their despair and dream for a better life to come and then make it happen.

The Geneva Convention, 1949, talked about the treatment of prisoners, all prisoners, not just certain types, but that all prisoners should be treated humanely. And I would suggest that my colleagues and those who are listening read the Geneva Convention. It is only 59 pages. You ought to have some understanding of who is a prisoner of war, who is an enemy combatant, is there some kind of difference between someone that doesn't come from a state or a country or wear a uniform? Read the Geneva Convention. It's 59 pages.

Mr. Speaker, I want to conclude my remarks tonight with a quote from a book, that was not on the list, written by Jacob Bronowski. It's called ``The Ascent of Man.'' It is about 30 years old. It is an interesting book because it talks about the evolution of science in human civilization. But there is a chapter in this book about World War II and the Holocaust. The author of the book had most of his relatives die in Auschwitz. But here is what Bronowski says about war, which is still applicable in the present crisis: There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means, that push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering that has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit where a nation becomes a nation of ghosts, obedient ghosts or tortured ghosts.

Where do we fit into that equation?

Mr. Speaker, before I finish, I did tell the listeners that I would reread the list of books that I call your helmet, your flak jacket and your rifle. So now are you ready to cross the line to stand shoulder to shoulder with the troops who are knowledgable and competent about what they do? And so we as policy makers, are we knowledgable? And what is the role of the American people?

The first book is ``A Letter to America'' by David Boren.

``Iraq Study Group Report'' by James Baker and Lee Hamilton.

``Fiasco'' by Thomas Ricks.

``The Struggle for Peace'' by General Tony Zinni.

``Violent Politics'' by William Polk.

``Treacherous Alliance'' by Trita Parsi.

``All the Shah's Men'' by Stephen Kinzer.

``The Silence of the Rational Center'' by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke.

``Why Viet Nam?'' by Archimedes Patti.

And the last book, number 10, ``Human Options'' by Norman Cousins.

One more quote from Norman Cousins and the book, ``Human Options.'' This is us. Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis once that crisis can be recognized and understood. And so if we have recognized the present crisis, great changes can take place.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 51 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, May 14, 2008, at 10 a.m.

I thank the Speaker for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, tonight I would like to talk to you and the American people about the troubled Middle East.

American troops are serving in Iraq and Afghan as we speak. They are stunningly competent and, to some extent, they are implementing a policy that is flawed.

America is behind the troops. Members of Congress are behind the troops. We want to bring independence, a sense of freedom and justice, certainly democracy to this troubled area of the world. But I think in order for us, the policymakers, to develop a policy that is as competent as those troops are competent that carry out the policy, then there is some knowledge that we need to acquire. So, what I would like to do tonight is talk a little bit about the present crisis in Iraq and the way forward.

In order to understand the present crisis in Iraq, and the way forward, which, yes, we can say, can lead to stability, can lead to peace, respect for the rule of law, human dignity, justice and democracy, we need to acquire information to have a better understanding of that region and the present crisis.

So what I would like to do is give a brief history of the Cold War and the United States' involvement in that, during the Cold War what was going on in the Middle East, touch on the present crisis that we are now seeing since 2003, and then, how do we solve this particular situation?

Before I get into that information, I would like to share with you, Mr. Speaker, and Americans where in part some of this information I will give to you tonight has come from. And so I would like the listeners, Mr. Speaker, and I will say this twice during my address this evening. I would like them to get a piece of paper and a pencil, because I want them to write down the name of some of these books. There are not a lot of books. I am not talking about 100 books or 50 books or 20 books, although there are many out there. I am just talking about 10 books that can be easily read in a relatively short period of time.

And what I would ask the readers to do, or in this case if they read the books, the listeners, out across the landscape: You support the troops. You may have a son, a daughter, a father, a brother, a cousin, some relative, a friend in Iraq or Afghanistan, and you want America to rise up and support the troops. You want America to rise up and have a shared sacrifice in this huge endeavor that we are now involved with.

But you are not quite sure how to do that. We are not collecting tin cans for the troops. We are not storing or sending cans of food. We are not using less gasoline, although we should, to support the troops. What specifically are we doing as individual Americans to support the troops and understand the policy in which those troops are implemented?

I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the listeners starting tonight turn the television off every night for as long as it takes to really understand, deeply understand the policy in Iraq. Understand the history, the intrigue, the violence, the complexity of the troubled area, the Middle East. So I would ask the listeners, you might have some interesting shows you like to watch occasionally, but I would ask the listeners to put on your calendars two hours every night you are not going to watch television. What are you going to do for those two hours, you are going to support the troops. How are you going to support the troops? You are going to become knowledgeable in the issues in which the troops are involved. You are going to become knowledgeable in the issues that Members of Congress should know and debate and come to some resolution on.

Here are the books. Number one, ``A Letter to America,'' very easily read. It is a message of hope through difficult times by a former Senator from Oklahoma, David Boren. ``A Letter to America.'' Pick it up. You can read it in a day, but it will take a few nights. Take a look at it. You will have some understanding where this Nation is right now in the 21st century.

The next volume is a paperback by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, you've heard of it, Iraq Study Group. ``The Iraq Study Group Report'' gives a clear vision on the way forward in Iraq. Take a look at it. It is not very long either.

The next one is a little heavy reading by Thomas Ricks. It is called ``Fiasco.'' It gets deep into the complexities of why there are still continuing difficulties in the war in Iraq especially.

Just a thought about that. A few years ago we saw ``Mission Accomplished'' on a huge aircraft carrier out in the Pacific Ocean. I am not going to make a comment about whether ``Mission Accomplished'' was appropriate or not appropriate, but there was a remark by a defense intelligence analyst right at that moment who said Israel won the war with the Arabs in 1967 in 6 days. They won that war in 6 days in 1967. Forty-one years later the struggle continues. Read ``Fiasco.'' It gives you some sense of the problems and difficulties and mistakes that the policymakers made in Iraq that the troops, stunningly competent, are trying to implement.

The next is by a retired marine general, Tony Zinni, ``The Battle for Peace.'' The struggle for peace in the Middle East will take everything we have: a strong military, a strong and

vibrant intelligence apparatus. But the thing that is vital in this particular conflict is dialogue, consensus, talking to your friends and foes.

Number five is ``Violent Politics'' by William Polk. He worked for President Kennedy and President Johnson. ``Violent Politics.'' It is not what we see here arguing. ``Violent Politics'' is about wars of insurgency when there is no dialogue and diplomacy has failed and small groups of people supported by the population in the region continue to fight. It will give you an understanding what we are going through right now in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Number six is by Trita Parsi, ``Treacherous Alliance.'' It is a fascinating book because it shows for 30 years the Israelis and the Iranians, the Iranians who are Persian, not Arab, speak Farsi, not Arabic, the Iranians had a quiet alliance where they traded oil for technology with Israel. Israel was allied with Iran mainly because they had similar enemies. Israel was an enemy of the Soviet Union; so was Iran. Israel was an enemy of many Arab countries; so was Iran.

Book number seven, ``All the Shah's Men'' by Stephen Kinzer. It is about Iran and its relationship with Britain and the United States in the 20th century, mainly the first half of the 20th century, where Britain and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which is now British Petroleum, extracted huge amounts of natural resources, mostly oil and natural gas from Iran without the Iranians knowing or being able to know how much was leaving and how much they were being paid. It is a fascinating book about how the United States made a mistake during the Cold War in its relationship with Iran which festered until 1979.

Number eight is ``The Silence of the Rational Center'' by Halper and Clarke. Scholars and diplomats from great institutions in the United States, universities, including retired diplomats, speak out about what America needs to do in the 21st century, and ``The Silence of the Rational Center'' are those people who have great information, have years and decades of experience in different areas of the world, especially the Middle East, have been silent about a better way, more and better sophisticated policy. It is not just enough to know something, you have to act on that knowledge.

Number nine is a fascinating book by a man called Archimedes Patti who was in the OSS. That is the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, who met Ho Chi Minh in 1945 because Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh were helping the United States track Japanese troop movements in Southeast Asia because the French were not willing to do that for the United States. And Ho Chi Minh talked and discussed issues, including the wording of the soon-to-be-independent Vietnam about their declaration of independence which Ho Chi Minh, talking with Archimedes Patti, wanted it to be very similar to our Declaration of Independence, much of the words written by Thomas Jefferson. The name of the book is ``Why Vietnam?'' It gives you an understanding of the intrigue, the complexity, the foreign policy issues, the conflict issues, the economic issues, the criminal issues, the deception that was perpetrated in that region of the world back in 1945. The book goes from 1940 to 1954, ``Why Vietnam?'' Archimedes Patti. It will give you a fascinating understanding, along with these other books, about the intrigue, the complexity, the violence and sometimes the tragedy of how these very complex issues are handled.

The last book, Mr. Speaker, is called ``Human Options'' by Norman Cousins. That is a book about choices and how we make them, how we make decisions.

I use that as the last book because I want to start our discussion tonight with two quotes from Norman Cousins' book ``Human Options.'' The first quote is: ``Knowledge is the solvent for danger.'' Knowledge is the solvent for danger. The more you know when you are going into any situation, you are going to benefit from that knowledge. Preparation, understanding, to develop a policy, is so critical.

The troops in Iraq are stunningly competent because they are prepared. They are trained. They learn things. They know things. The integration of integrity with their fellow soldiers, and now their fellow Iraqi soldiers, and the Iraqi citizens. The integration of integrity happens because they are prepared.

How prepared are the policymakers in their knowledge, in their information, in their ability to integrate their integrity with their fellow members in the international community? You as American citizens can be knowledgeable and help resolve this conflict.

The next quote by Norman Cousins in his book ``Human Options'' is: ``History is a vast early warning system.'' I have heard for a long time about many conflicts we have experienced. Even in Iraq, I hear many of the people in the administration who are retired or have left the administration say, ``If we only knew this in 2003.'' ``Well, if we knew that, we would have done things differently.'' I have heard that about the Vietnam war for decades.

``Well, if we knew back then what we know now, things would be different.'' That is a bad excuse. That is a bad excuse because if you are knowledgeable, if you are prepared, if you want to know things, if you had a broad enough mind to view the majesty of this complex world in all of its dimensions, you would understand that hindsight is nothing more than understanding history to make better decisions.

Rudyard Kipling, a British writer whose son was killed tragically in World War II in northern France resolved his sadness by saying this: ``Why did young men die because old men lied?''

We can take Robert Kipling's phrase to try to heal his soul because of the loss of his son, we can paraphrase it today and say: Old men should talk before they send young men to die. And that is what we should do.

And it is not just talking to Maliki or our friends in Iraq, it is talking to all of the different factions in Iraq, whether they be Sunni or Shia or Kurds or any of the other factions that are there. And we should also be talking through dialogue with the Iranians and the Syrians. We should be talking to the full length and breadth of people in the Middle East because if we just focus on a few over-simplified issues in Iraq, the resolution will be long in coming.

The Israelis won the 1967 war in 6 days; 41 years later that conflict is still a tragedy.

Let's take a look at the Cold War and some of the incidents that occurred after World War II. We finally resolved the Korean War, at least to continue in a dialogue for decades, but only after 54,000 Americans were killed. And many, many more wounded.

In the 1950s, Khrushchev said on a number of occasions, the leader of the Soviet Union, pointing his finger at Americans in the U.N., in speeches around the Soviet Union and speeches around Eastern Europe he said we will bury the United States. Well, what was President Eisenhower's response to Khrushchev's volatile rhetoric? President Eisenhower invited Khrushchev to the United States to have a dialogue. They visited cities and the suburbs. They visited factories and farms. They went throughout the United States, and what was the sense of Americans when Eisenhower invited Khrushchev to the United States, our number one enemy with nuclear weapons pointing at America, what was America's response to Eisenhower inviting the enemy of this country here? America welcomed Premier Khrushchev. America was relieved because now we can have a dialogue and learn about each other. America responded in a positive fashion because they were sick of war, World War II and Korea on its heels.

When Kennedy found out that there were deployable nuclear weapons in Cuba pointing at the United States, 90 miles from our shore, those nuclear missiles were minutes from the United States. What was Kennedy's response? Let's quickly talk to the Soviets and see if we can resolve this issue without war and conflict, without bloodletting. Let's resolve the issue, and the issue was resolved and the missiles were removed.

Communist China Mao Zedong said many times it would be worth for half the population of China to die in a war with the United States as long as we could get rid of the United States. This was an enemy of the United States.

What was America's reaction when Nixon went to China? They were relieved. They were glad. The bloodshed, the violence, the sadness, the tragedy is avoided through a dialogue, through a conversation by learning how to see

the world through the Chinese eyes, by learning how to see the world through Khrushchev's eyes, by learning how to see the world in all of its complexities and difficulties.

The other conflict that I have to mention here, Mr. Speaker, is the Vietnam war. 58,000 Americans dead, well over 100,000 wounded. A million Vietnamese dead.

Ho Chi Minh, a small, frail, sickly old Vietnamese man, who wanted sovereignty from the French; he wanted his independence. He was tired of French colonial rule. He was tired of Japanese oppression. He didn't want the British to come in and colonize another section of Southeast Asia. He wanted his freedom.

Because of that misunderstanding, because we didn't go to Hanoi and talk to Ho Chi Minh; some Americans did but it never worked its way up to the White House, we had a conflict, we had tragedy, we had war. We had a problem.

The present crisis in Iraq, how do we see it?

Well, in the Middle East, three great religions, for centuries, these religions have lived together. They've shared joy and they've shared sorrow. For centuries there was laughter or there was blood letting. There was community or there was death. It's a complicated place.

Faith, to each of these three world religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is an important part of everyday life throughout the Middle East. They all come together in Jerusalem. They all have an important part of that city that emanates throughout the Middle East.

In the Middle East, oil exports are the economy. Economic viability depends upon oil exports. Because of the war in Iraq, because of the crash of the Soviet Union, because of the war in Afghanistan, because of other problems, the geopolitical balance of power is fractured right now.

Who will be more influential in the Middle East? It's not going to be Europe. They pretty much left there after World War II. Most of the countries do not want Russia. They feel that Russia, an atheistic country, has not found its soul yet. The Middle Eastern countries don't want China to have that much influence, because China, they know, is after the resources.

The geopolitical balance of power is fractured. Who still do the countries of the Middle East look to for resolving this and creating a better climate for a balance of power for the economy, for an integrated security alliance similar to what we have in NATO or SEATO or the Organization of American States or the European Union or other places? They still look to the United States.

And the world is still waiting for the United States, since the focus of the Middle East came after 9/11. They're still waiting to see how we can not only resolve the issues between the Shiia, the Sunnis and the Kurds in Iraq, but how do we bring all of the Middle East together.

How do we separate to the American mind the difference between the Shiia, the Kurds, the Sunnis, al Qaeda, and the Taliban and Wahhabiism? They're all very different forms of Islam.

The Iranians, for example, are bitter enemies of al Qaeda and the Taliban. The Wahhabis, mostly in Saudi Arabia, are not bitter enemies of al Qaeda or the Taliban. The government of Saudi Arabia may keep them at arm's length, but many of the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia, have a relationship with the Taliban and al Qaeda. Virtually nobody in Iran has a relationship with al Qaeda and the Taliban. A pretty complex place, the Middle East. The more we know about it the better able we are to deal with it.

The war in Iraq, it's a war. There's a war in Iraq. But ask this question. Where are the munitions factories that we can bomb like we did in Germany and Japan and Italy? Where are the large troop concentrations that can be decimated? Where are the supply lines that we can cut off?

It's not that kind of war it's a war of insurgency. It's a war of a few radical people who are supported by the vast population, by their tribes, by their relatives, by people across the vast reaches of the Middle East. Political violence is an insurgency, but it's a different kind of war.

The present crisis in Iraq has taken 34,000 American casualties. What does that mean? That means over 4,000 Americans are dead. Over 30,000 Americans are wounded and have lost limbs, have lost good brain function, cannot walk, have Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome.

And what's post-traumatic stress? It's when you see pretty violent acts. Someone is blown up, someone is shot and killed. You pull the trigger of your rifle and someone dies. That's a pretty traumatic act. Do you forget that? Not for the rest of your life. You come home and that image comes in the forefront of your thoughts because of a smell, a sound, something you see, something you feel that will be with you for the rest of your life.

Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome is virtually 100 percent of anybody in combat. Now, most are able to digest that and deal with it and go about their daily lives and compartmentalize those horrific incidents, but many are not.

Over $600 billion so far in the war in Iraq. How engaged are the Americans in the war in Iraq? How often do they discuss the issue at the mall, at the movies, at the grocery store, at parties? How often is this issue discussed?

There's a sense of apprehension about the war in Iraq. Americans are disturbed. They want it to end. But how engaged are we in the war in Iraq?

There's global dissent. We look around the globe, we look at many of our allies, many of them said we should not have gone in to Iraq. One of our strongest allies in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, says that the U.S. war in Iraq is illegal. That's really interesting.

But we should understand, do we ever question them about that? Do we have a dialogue with the Saudis about that?

The present crisis is still very difficult. Now, should we leave Iraq right now? Should we send all the U.S. troops down into Basra, bring Navy ships up there, load them on the ships and bring them home? Should we do that right away?

Well, look what happened in Mogadishu some years ago when the Americans left. It was chaos. There was rape, murder and mayhem. The criminals took over. We don't want another Mogadishu in Iraq. So we shouldn't leave right away. We need to be responsible about how we deal with it. But as we gradually pull out, how many American troops do we leave?

And unless some of the politics are resolved, both in Iraq and the Middle East, we may have another French Dien Bien Phu, 1954 Vietnam, when the French pulled most of their troops out of Vietnam and the last remaining troops were surrounded by the Vietnamese, and many Frenchmen lost their lives.

General Petraeus says there's no military solution in Iraq. Is there a political solution under the present circumstances?

If we just look at Iraq, like many of us do, just Iraq, there is no political solution and there is no military solution. If we just look at Iraq in isolation, that's simply not going to happen.

What we need to do is look at Iraq in the broader context of the Middle East. American troops right now, it's understood, are the skeletal structure upon which the entire Iraqi society depends, so you can't pull them out. But how long do they stay?

And if there's no military solution, how do you deal with this politically?

Well, the first step is to understand the Middle East and what drives radicals to run to al Qaeda or the Taliban. What drives Arab and Islamic fundamentalists to hate the United States?

The Palestinian Israeli question has been going on since 1948. Palestine was created, Israel was created out of the region, the former British protectorate, Palestine, after the war, after the Holocaust, when the world felt that they needed to do something for the Jews who lost six million of their fellow citizens during World War II in Nazi concentration camps.

Since 1948, the Arabs and the Palestinians, the Palestinians and the Israelis have been fighting, since 1948. So the United States needs to engage, as we've started, but more fully engage as an objective arbitrator of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And the Arabs need to see

that. We need to do that because it's the right thing to do. It's the ethical thing to do because both the Israelis and the Palestinians need and justly deserve peace, the rule of law and to raise their children out of harm's way. But the Arab world needs to see the United States working on this issue in a very objective fashion.

And we need to engage the Saudis, because the Saudis are Sunnis, and there are Sunnis in Iraq, but there are Shiias in Iraq. And the Saudis have some fear that Iraq, if left unattended, can become an Iranian satellite. And the Iranians are Shiias. This sounds all pretty confusing, but it shouldn't be confusing at this point. It's year 2008. The war started in 2002. And so Americans need to be more engaged in some of these issues.

The Saudis need to know that Iraq is not going to become an Iranian satellite. And we need to assure them that that's the case so they can work constructively with the Sunnis in Iraq.

The Iraqis need to know that the Americans aren't going to abandon them. But they also need to know we're not going to stay there for 100 years, certainly. They also need to know that militarily, this conflict which is an insurgency, is not going to be won unless there's a political solution.

And the Iranians, who we should talk to, need to know that the United States, eventually, will become one of their allies, and the United States will help the Iranians find a way to stabilize the mess in Iraq.

Eisenhower said that there were three things the United States needed to do in order to remain strong. Three. We needed a strong military, we needed the best intelligence of the world we could gather in the world, and the third leg of that stool was consensus and dialogue.

We have the strongest military in the world. We should not be afraid to talk to anybody. We have the best intelligence in the world, especially if it is objectively analyzed. But we need to engage our enemies, as well as our friends, in a conversation, in a dialogue.

When President Kennedy invited Kruschev to the United States to talk about issues, this was not Chamberlain telling Hitler he could have a piece of Czechoslovakia. This was not a compromise that started World War II. When Kennedy brought Kruschev to the United States it was from a position of strength, and it was a dialogue and we avoided tragedy and death and suffering. Eisenhower and Kennedy, Richard Nixon did the same thing.

We should talk to the Iranians without any preconditions. This is not giving in to the Iranians. This is showing the rest of the world who the Iranians are and what the Iranians are really like. The United States is bargaining from a position of power.

Consensus and dialogue are the third leg of that three-legged stool. Knowledge is the solvent for danger. Knowledge. The more information we have, the better off we're going to be.

History is a vast early warning system. We know the things that have worked in the past. Kennedy and Kruschev, it worked. It avoided war. The collapse eventually of the Soviet Union.

We did not have a dialogue with Ho Chi Minh. And if we did we could have avoided the tragedy of the war in Vietnam.

And what is our policy in Iraq now based on? What do you, the American people, understand our policy to be?

Let's take a look at Sam Rayburn, former Speaker of the House. Sam said, ``Any mule can kick a barn door down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.''

We need carpenters to build the dialog, the integration of integrity with all the world's peoples.

What did Rudyard Kipling say so many years ago when his son tragically died in Northern France? ``Why did young men die? Because old men lied?''

And why did old men lie? Maybe they just didn't know enough.

To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling today, old people should talk. Old people should be carpenters, not mules, carpenters, before they send young men, young women, young people to die.

The landscape of human history is tragically filled with conflicts. What is the main reason for these conflicts? Ignorance, arrogance, and dogma. What does that combination lead to? I'm right and you are wrong. Monstrous certainty. Can you shoot your way through that? How do you get through that, that maze of complexity, of arrogance, ignorance, and dogma?

You replace ignorance with knowledge, and you do that with knowledge and you do a consensus and you do it with dialogue. Arrogance is replaced with humility. And generally, the more someone knows, the more humble they are. And you get rid of dogma with tolerance.

We need a diplomatic surge in the Middle East. That diplomatic surge means that we have the best and the brightest diplomats in the world right here and now employed in the State Department, employed in the Defense Department, retired diplomats, retired generals. And they can integrate themselves throughout the Middle East. They can talk about an economic alliance, a security alliance. They can talk about exchanging all kinds of medical and scientific and economic information.

We need to continue and let the world know the drawdown in a responsible, strategic fashion of our military presence in the Middle East. Work for reconciliation among the different factions in the Middle East by integrating those factions with a broader Middle East.

Let's look at some examples of the past.

1941. United States, Britain, and a number of other countries right at the very early stages of World War II signed something called the Atlantic Alliance. And what was the Atlantic Alliance? It was a commitment, an agreement among many countries around the world that people would live in freedom, they would work for economic prosperity in all the world, they would make sure people would live free of fear and want, and the list goes on.

The Atlantic Charter. What did the Atlantic Charter lead to? It led to the union of the many regions of the world, led to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It led to the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization. It led to the Organization of American States in Latin America. It was a commitment of nations that they would work together to have dialogue and rule out the use of force.

You know what Ho Chi Minh said about the Atlantic Charter in 1942 when he heard about it? He said, I hope it applies to Asians, meaning Vietnamese, because they were still under the iron fist of the Japanese and the French. You know what Ho Chi Minh said in 1945? He said, I guess the Atlantic Charter doesn't apply to the Vietnamese people.

To me, that's pretty sad.

1975, we signed the Helsinki Accords. A number of countries around Europe, including the Soviet Union and most of Eastern European countries except Albania. Helsinki Accords said basically the same thing as the Atlantic Charter: We would respect the integrity of the territory of all of the states that signed this; it would be peaceful settlement of disputes and not armed interaction; we would not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries; there would be freedom of thought, conscious, and religion; there would be equal rights for people.

The Helsinki Accords, 1975, what did that do to oppressed people in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union when they found out that the Soviet Union signed that? They gradually, the courageous ones, began to rise up, and eventually you saw the collapse of the Soviet Union. People in the Ukraine or Georgia or Poland or Czechoslovakia or the former Yugoslavia, they saw the Helsinki Accords, and they had a goal that they would reach out to. So the Helsinki Accords gradually integrated like-minded, peace-loving, freedom-loving people to begin exercising their God-given rights.

1949, one last comment about the past. The Geneva Conventions. The international community came together and signed the Geneva Conventions about the treatment of people in conflicts. Not just uniformed soldiers. This international agreement applied to anybody that was captured on a battlefield and how that person was to be treated and how they were to be interrogated and how they were be imprisoned, and it was based on some pretty

fundamental human rights. An international agreement.

So people from around the world see these things. They understand that there is hope; the way forward is to have knowledge. It's to understand the complexity of this world and see it in all its vast, deep dimensions. Don't look at the world through a bent straw. That is the way too many of us see it. There's vast opportunities.

I'm going to quote from a book that you don't have to read, it's called ``The Ascent of Man'' by Jacob Bronowski. It's actually a book about the evolution of science and civilizations going back to pre- history. But there's a chapter in there about World War II. Many of Jacob Bronowski's relatives died in concentration camps in Auschwitz, and Bronowski has a paragraph: there are two parts to the human dilemma, one is the belief that the end justifies the means, that push- button philosophy that delivered deafness to suffering that has become the monster in the war machine.

When we go to the mall, do we think about the war in Iraq, or is it silent to us? Do we have conversations at the dinner table about the war in Iraq, or do we talk about other things? Do we ever talk about the war in Iraq, or do we have a sense of deliberate deafness to suffering? Do we think the war machine is going to take care of it?

The other aspect of human dilemma is that too often, tragically, nations become a nation of ghosts, obedient ghosts or tortured ghosts. That means you're not a whole human being. You go through life almost imperceptible. What is your value? What is your contribution? How do you make that contribution?

So those two dilemmas can be resolved by listening to the sound and the voices of tragedy and then becoming knowledgeable and begin learning that you, too, can do something.

So over the next few months, turn the television off. You want to commit yourself to helping the soldiers in Iraq, the people of Iraq, the people in Afghanistan, the tragedy of human history that plagues us so often where there is ignorance, arrogance, and dogma. ``A Letter to America,'' David Boren. ``A Letter to America.'' ``The Iraq Study Group,'' James Baker, Lee Hamilton; ``Fiasco,'' Thomas Ricks; ``The Battle for Peace,'' Tony Zinni; ``Violent Politics,'' William Polk; ``Treacherous Alliance,'' Trita Parsi; ``All the Shah's Men,'' Steve Kinzer; ``The Silence of the Rational Center,'' Halper and Clarke; ``Why Vietnam?'' by Archimedes Patti; ``Human Options,'' Norman Cousins.

I wish you well in your reading.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I yield the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 24 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, April 30, 2008, at 10 a.m.

I thank the Speaker for the time. And Mr. Speaker, what I would like to talk about today, and it's actually a pretty good follow-up to the previous special order by Ms. Waters, who is a classmate of mine, going back to, I was going to say 1891, but going back to 1991, Maxine and I came in as freshman and we've been here now for the past 17 years. And the previous discussion about the Iraq war, the relationship with Iran, I think, leads fairly well into the special order that I am prepared to give tonight.

Mr. Speaker, what I would like to do is to give a presentation on the war in Iraq, the Middle East, an American perspective on the Cold War that engulfed the world for many decades, an American perspective on the Cold War and how it impacted the Middle East, the present crisis in the Middle East and Iraq, from an American perspective, and an American perspective on the way forward.

When I say an American perspective, tonight, Mr. Speaker, I'm trying to relate an idea that the United States, for the past 50 years, has seen itself not as a lone super power in the world, but as a Nation, as Walt Whitman described, the race of races, the United States, the melting pot.

The United States has engaged itself in the fiber of the international community, and has not seen itself as a lone ranger in the international arena of conflict, of economy, of culture, of exchanges. The United States has seen itself as an integrated part of the international community in much of its history. And so, tonight, when I talk about the U.S. view of the war in Iraq, it is to illustrate the complexity of that conflict, the complexity of the intrigue and violence that we are now seeing, the complexity of the way forward, but, in fact, there is a way forward.

So I want to give a brief history covering about the last 60 years. And what I would like to share with the American people, Mr. Speaker, among many, many periodicals, many books, many resources, I'd like to share ideas tonight from seven books.

The first one is Violent Politics by William Polk, who served in the Kennedy and Johnson Administration. Violent politics is not what we see here on the House floor. Violent politics is when diplomacy fails and war begins, war usually that engulfs communities or regions, not in what we saw in World War II, but in insurgencies, where there are no munitions factories to bomb, there are no supply lines to bomb, there are no massive armies to bomb or thousands of tanks to take out, but violent politics as it envelops regions in insurgencies.

And is there an effective counter insurgency to that particular break down in diplomacy?

We're seeing an insurgency in the Middle East, in the Middle East, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and certainly in other places. In Violent Politics, William Polk gives an idea of how an insurgency actually works, and how you can deal with an insurgency like we're experiencing now in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The other book is Fiasco by Thomas Ricks. How did we get involved in Iraq? What were the mistakes, the very clear, obvious mistakes over the planning in the first few years?

The next one is by Steven Kinzer, All the Shah's Men; America's relationship with a large country that is seeking to have influence for self-defense purposes, mainly, the country of Iran.

The next one is Trita Parsi who wrote Treacherous Alliance. What is the arrangement or what has been the arrangement or the alliance and sometimes the verbal conflict between Israel and Iran?

The next is Tony Zinni, who was Commander of CENTCOM for a number of years, spent much of his military Marine career in the Middle East. He wrote a book about the Battle for Peace. Tony Zinni, like President Eisenhower, knows you need a strong military, strong intelligence, and consensus in dialogue and diplomacy. That plays a vital role in actions that the United States is involved in.

An interesting book called Human Options by Norman Cousins. What kind of decisions do we make? Why do we make them? And do we know all the options that are before us?

The last book is a little bit older. It's about the Vietnam war, called Why Vietnam? How did we get involved in that conflict? It's written by a man called Archimedes Patty, who was among the first Americans to meet Ho Chi Minh in 1945; sent there by this government as the head of the OSS or the Office of Strategic Services, which was the forerunner of the CIA, to find out how we can find people in Indochina, to see, to gather intelligence about the Japanese troop movements in that region of the world since we couldn't get any intelligence from the French or the Chinese or anybody else.

And Archimedes Patty discovered this man, the head of the Viet Minh, known as Ho Chi Minh that was willing to help and in fact did help the United States gather intelligence on Japanese troop movements in Indochina; helped many, many, many Americans, downed pilots and so on, and allied himself with the United States in 1945, hoping to get help from the United States, not from Russia, not from China, to gain his independence from French colonial rule. A fabulous book that shows the intricacies of how diplomacy works sometimes, and how the bureaucracy doesn't always work too well when communicating those kinds of pieces of information.

Seven books, Violent Politics, Fiasco, All the Shah's Men, Treacherous Alliance, Battle for Peace, Human Options, Why Vietnam. Sounds like a tall order.

But, Mr. Speaker, I can imagine the American public, who have some dissatisfaction, some apprehension, some anger, some wanting a ray of hope about the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, I can see the American public, over the next many months, turning the television off every single night for 1 or 2 hours, every night, and dedicating themselves to help the solution, the American solution, the American solution of how to solve this difficult problem in the Middle East, by becoming informed, by finding out information, by becoming more knowledgeable about these issues, not waiting for the government that people sometimes assume is competent, but being a part of the process.

Now, I mentioned the book Human Options by Norman Cousins. And I want to give you two quotes out of that book to frame this discussion tonight. The first one is, ``Knowledge is the solvent for danger.'' You want to solve a problem? You need a couple of things. You need initiative, of course. You're going to turn the TV off and read these books. You need initiative. And then as you read this material, some of it is pretty intricate, exquisite detail, complicated. But you need some ingenuity and intellect to figure it out. And you have that.

But what this assignment will give to you is knowledge. It'll give you information. It'll give you a depth of information so that, you, as an individual, can become more competent to share this with your fellow Americans and maybe even write your congressman.

The other one in Human Options, the quote, is ``History is a vast early warning system.'' We know more about

Vietnam, or we should today, than we did 40 years ago, 50 years ago when we became embroiled in that tragic conflict.

And we say we should have had, you know, it's okay to say it now, and hindsight is better than foresight. We've had 40 years of experience to know what was good and what was bad about that conflict. But I will tell you that when the United States became involved in that violent conflict, we already had all the information we need to know. We needed to understand the history of our relationship with Indochina, with China, and their relationship, Vietnam, with the rest of the world. But we didn't bother to understand or listen carefully enough to what Archimedes Patty was saying when he spoke to Ho Chi Minh. We didn't know the history of Vietnam in 1945 in 1965, and we should have.

History is a vast early warning system. We owe it to the soldiers in Iraq, we owe it to the soldiers in Afghanistan, we owe it to eighth graders and ninth graders in high school today who will graduate in just a few years and should not have to be involved in a conflict that, if we put our intellect together with enough knowledge, this can be solved.

So I would suggest to the American people, Mr. Speaker, that every single night, if you're a patriotic American, you want to solve this problem. You want to commit yourself to bringing the troops home in a responsible fashion, find some source of information, read it objectively.

You know, Rudyard Kipling, the writer and poet from Great Britain, traveled the world, spent much time in India, had a son who died in World War I in northern France in a violent struggle. And to express his sorrow, Rudyard Kipling said, why did young men die because old men lied?

I want to paraphrase that today. Old men should talk before they send young men to die. We should talk. We should be knowledgeable. We should spend the time to understand the nature of history, the nature of conflict.

Let's take a short walk back in history to the Cold War and some of its successes and failures.

President Eisenhower and the leader of the Soviet Union, Premier Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, bitter enemies, faced off with thousands of nuclear weapons all armed, ready to go at a moment's notice. We know that Khrushchev told the United States and the Western powers many, many times that he was going to bury us. One time in the United Nations, we remember this, Nikita Khrushchev took his shoes off, pounded the podium, looked right at the western diplomats--ours was Henry Cabot Lodge at the time--pointed his finger and said, we will bury you.

What was Eisenhower's response during the time that he was President of the United States to these kinds of threats from the Soviet Union, from Nikita Khrushchev? Open dialogue. He invited President Khrushchev to come and tour American cities, ride on American trains, go to our suburbs, visit our farms, visit our schools. President Eisenhower's response was dialogue.

What happened in 1962 when it was discovered by our spy planes that Cuba, Fidel Castro, had deployable nuclear weapons in Cuba 90 miles off the coast of Florida? What was Kennedy's response? Call the Kremlin. Have a dialogue. Negotiate with the Soviet Union. Talk to Nikita Khrushchev. What happened? The weapons were removed; we avoided war.

China, Communist China, said that they would not mind if half the population of China was wiped off the face of the earth as long as they destroyed the United States. Violent rhetoric pointed at the United States. What was President Nixon's response to Mao Zedong? Nixon went to China. Nixon opened the dialogue that continues today.

Is China today a model democracy? No. Does China have human rights violations? Yes. Are they well-known? Do we know that they continue to violate freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion? Do they continue to violate human rights? The answer is yes. What is our response to China? It's our biggest trading partner. We constantly have a dialogue. The Olympics will be held there. Do we condemn the Chinese for human rights violations? How do we deal with it? Do we get ourselves in violent politics? No. The answer is dialogue.

Those were our successes. They continue to be a struggle. They continue to be a challenge, but we continue to pursue them through dialogue.

What happened in Vietnam? Ho Chi Minh. A tiny old man with slight whiskers who, in 1945, wanted to ally himself with the United States to gain sovereignty from under the French colonial rule. What happened in the 1950s? Senator McCarthy talked about communism. John Foster Douglas wanted to contain Communism. We somehow didn't listen to the people in the State Department or the CIA. We somehow didn't follow that path to dialogue with Khrushchev or dialogue that got ourselves out of the Cuban missile crisis or dialogue with Mao Zedong.

So what happened because there wasn't a dialogue? 58,000 Americans died. Hundreds of thousands were wounded. Post-traumatic stress syndrome still affects thousands of Vietnam veterans. Well more than a million Vietnamese died because we didn't have the dialogue.

It's time, Mr. Speaker, for the American public to really understand the complexities of international politics. The dialogue, communications, consensus can be a strong and powerful tool to enhance America's interest. America does not become stronger by putting more people in cemeteries as a result of these violent conflicts.

Let's take a look at the Middle East, the area that we're now dealing with, during the Cold War.

Then, as now, it was a complex place. There was intrigue there, and there was a great deal of violence. Let's look at some of the incidents that the United States has been involved in or was involved in.

In 1953, actually in 1950, Muhammed Mossadeq was a duly elected Prime Minister of Iran running a secular country moving toward democracy. But because of some misunderstandings, believe it or not, between what the British Petroleum Company, called the Anglo Persian Petroleum Company, which is now today BP, British Petroleum, they had some strong disagreements with Muhammed Mossadeq. The United States, under John Foster Dulles, was thinking, although they were wrong, that Muhommad Mossadeq had a strong relationship with the Soviet Union and he might turn to communism.

In 1953, we were at the very early stages of the Cold War, and a lot of things were going on. But as a result of some misunderstanding, the United States planned a coup inside its embassy in Tehran, and it turned out to be a very violent, very bloody coup in which their duly elected prime minister was removed from office, put under house arrest for the rest of his life. And we put in the Shah. The United States put in the Shah. In 1953, we broke down a relationship that we had had with Iran for many, many years.

The United States was looked upon as being the beacon of hope around the world by many people, including Iranians, hoping the United States would help them gain some equality with the British extracting oil from Iran. In 1953, we started a violent coup in Iran.

What happened in 1979? Most of us would remember. In 1979, there was a revolution in Iran. The United States embassy in Tehran was taken over by the Revolutionary Guard, and all relationships with the United States were broken. But it's interesting that the American embassy was taken over in Tehran, the same embassy that planned the coup in 1953. That was a mistake. We lit a slow fuse in 1953 that blew up in 1979.

What about the Soviet Union in the Middle East during the Cold War? It's like a roller coaster ride. Sometimes they were allied with certain Arab nations; sometimes they were not allied with certain nations. Most Arab nations always distrusted the Soviet Union because they were a country of atheists, and Arab nations were a country under Islam.

How about Israel during the Cold War? It's interesting, and you ought to read the book ``Treacherous Alliance'' by Trita Parsi, to understand the nature of the relationship between Israel and Iran between 1948 and 1991. Israel

and Iran had many enemies in common. They were both enemies of the Soviet Union. They were both enemies of many Arab states, especially Iraq under Saddam Hussein. And as a result of that, because they had the same enemies--and Iran is a Persian country, does not speak Arabic, speaks Farsi, it is an Islamic State, but Israel and Iran had many similar enemies. And so they had secret arrangements: Oil for technology. That went on to 1991.

Russia invaded Afghanistan from 1980 and the war went on to just about 1989. They call it Russia's Vietnam. Iran and Iraq went to war in 1980 to 1988. There were more people killed in the Iran-Iraq War than all of the Americans killed in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. More people killed between 1980 and 1988 between two neighboring states. The blood, the bitterness, the fear, remains to this day.

1979, Egypt decided that they were going to recognize Israel, and Egypt became more of an American ally than a Soviet ally. Jordan followed not far behind.

What I'm trying to present to you is that the Middle East, in most of recent history, has been a place of intrigue, a place of complexity, and a place of violence. What do we see now today in the Middle East?

We know that in the three great religions faith is very important. It's a part of everyone's life. The three great religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And in many places in the Middle East, the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims live together. There is even intermarriage. The children go to school, and when they learn about their faith, they just move to different classrooms. When they learn about math, they move back to the math classroom together or the history classroom together. And this is throughout much of the Middle East.

So there is a strong religious component. Faith is important in their life. But in many communities, the three great religions live side by side, and for the most part, harmoniously.

Oil is a vital component of their economic viability. We know that and the world knows that. The oil exports from the Middle East are extremely vital for their economy, and that's why we have not seen the Gulf of Hormuz, where most of that oil comes out of, we have not seen that, we have not seen any of those countries in the Middle East try to shut that route out.

Today, as in the past, but especially today, the geopolitical balance of power is fractured. What does that mean? That means, which direction is the Middle East going to go?

Mr. Speaker, who is going to have more influence in the Middle East? Will it be Saudi Arabia? Will it be Iran? Will it be Israel? Will it be Russia? Will it be China? Will it be Europe? Will it be the United States? Nobody knows exactly right now. But what we do know is the Middle East has been a focus of America's attention since 9/11, an absolute focus of America's attention mainly because we were attacked, thousands of Americans were killed. We invaded Afghanistan to get rid of the source of the attack, al Qaeda and the Taliban, and then we subsequently invaded Iraq in which we eliminated a brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein. We eliminated a potential for weapons of mass destruction.

We are beginning and we have developed a working Iraqi Government. Iraq has been the focus of America's attention, but how much information do we know about this region, about Iraq?

But again, I would recommend reading especially some of these books to bring us up to date on some of that information.

The Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds, the main factions in Iraq, the Shiites and the Sunnis are Muslim, the Kurds are Muslim. What is the difference between the Shiites and the Kurds and the Muslims? Much of it has to do with historic understanding about who would be inheriting Muhammad's role in the Muslim faith. But the average Muslim, I will tell you, whether they're a Sunni, a Shia or a Kurd, the average Muslim wants to live their life in peace, wants human rights for themselves and their family. They want to raise their family.

There is no bitter quarrel among the average Muslim about who's a Sunni or a Shia, who is supposed to inherit the role of Muhammad. The average Muslim wants to live their life in peace. They want human rights. They want justice. They want the rule of law. They want freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of expression. Where the trouble comes with the Islamic faith is with al Qaeda, with the Taliban. Sometimes I would even say with the teachings of Wahhabi, where they confine themselves to a certain monstrous certainty.

Iran, by the way, as do most other Arab countries, oppose the teachings of al Qaeda. They oppose the teachings of Taliban. One of our problems in the Middle East is to find allies, is to have a dialogue with other countries. And I will tell you, when the Taliban took over Afghanistan, just think about this, when the Taliban took over Afghanistan, every country in the world pulled their embassy out except Iran. Iran left its embassy in Kabul. And what did the Taliban soldiers do? They went to the Iranian Embassy in Kabul, pulled out the 11 Iranians, and they shot them, the only embassy left in Kabul. What did the Taliban do? They shot the Iranians. Who helped them? Al Qaeda. Is Iran a friend of these Islamic extremists? No. Is Iran a friend of the Taliban and al Qaeda? No. Is Iran open to discussion about these issues to bring stability? The answer is yes.

There are many differences between these Arab countries, whether it's Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Qatar, Amman, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, you name it. They all have some differences in the way they look at religion and the way they look at their leadership. They're either democracies or they're monarchies or they're dictatorships, but what they have in common is they want stability in that region.

The present crisis, the war in Iraq, the war in Iraq is not World War II. It is not like World War II. There are no munitions factories to bomb anywhere in Iraq like there were in Germany and Japan. There are no standing armies. There are no supply lines. We are fighting an insurgency, a very multi-complex insurgency.

Where are we now? Why is there a sense of urgency to find a resolution, an end to this conflict? We say there's 34,000 casualties. What does that mean, 34,000 American casualties? That means there's more than 4,000 young American soldiers dead. Thirty thousand wounded. What does that mean? That means 30,000 Americans have come back that have been brutally blown up and have lost limbs, been burned severely. Their physical lives are, for the most part, ultimately and absolutely changed. They will never be the same. With courage, they can pick up the pieces of their life and move on with strong families.

There are tens of thousands who have post traumatic problems. I will say that everyone that enters a war zone, 100 percent comes back with post-traumatic stress. Now, what does that mean? That means that the violence that they see, the violence and destruction of explosions, of human bodies being torn to pieces, that image that they see and experience never leaves their memory. They will always remember that. That image never goes away. It just happens that your soldier can deal with it effectively and become a productive citizen and take that image in their mind and figure out how to conduct themselves in a normal fashion so they can lead a good life, they can raise a family, they can have a relationship, they can deal with it. Some cannot. Some are psychologically scarred for a long time to come.

The war so far is costing a little over $600 billion. That's where we are as far as the Treasury is concerned. The American people want a conclusion to the conflict. How are we going to end the war in Iraq?

There is global dissent about our policy at present. There is a struggling Iraqi Government. Are they ready to take over completely with their politics, with their military, with their infrastructure, with their economy? Not quite yet, they aren't. Some of our Arab allies, including Saudi Arabia, our strongest ally in the Middle East, have stated publicly that America's war in Iraq is illegal. That is where we are at this point.

Can we leave Iraq, like some of our generals have suggested; drive them to

Basra, put them on boats and airplanes and bring them home? Many people are suggesting that. But I would remind the American people, Mr. Speaker, of something that General McCaffrey said. We left Mogadishu abruptly, and it was chaos. If we abruptly leave Iraq, that chaos will be multiplied by a thousand times.

When the French began to pull out of Vietnam, they left some military there. And the famous battle of Dien Bien Phu has been retold many times. If we leave Iraq under the present conditions and leave some American troops there, how many should we leave? We don't want another Dien Bien Phu for American soldiers in Iraq.

General Petraeus said there is no military solution in the war in Iraq. Is there a political solution? What is the road ahead?

There is a great deal of talk about elections in October. We really have to work toward that goal. What about a hydrocarbon law? Is there a strong local police force? Is there a strong Iraqi national army? Is there a stable government? How do we achieve these goals, and many more? We don't achieve them with military power alone. That simply is not going to work.

Let's take a look at the way forward. What do we do? Very complicated situation. History, to a certain extent, can be a guiding post to avoid certain obstacles that we don't anticipate, but let's take a look.

Iraq. The United States and the United States military is the skeletal structure upon which the entire Iraqi society rests right now. We are the structure that that government depends upon. If we pulled out, to a large extent, at least for a time, hard to predict, there would be chaos. So we are the skeletal structure upon which the entire Iraqi society rests.

If we just focus on Iraq, though, we understand there is no long-term military solution to its insurgency, there is no basic long-term political solution if we just focus in on Iraq. The United States needs to understand the region and how we impact the region and how we can be interconnected with many of the problems that are there. And that will also begin to help resolve the Iraqi question.

Many of the insurgents in Iraq still are al Qaeda and the Taliban. Many of the recruiting tools to bring more people into that violent extremist movement is the Palestinian-Israel question. So if the United States, and we've already begun that, we've seen the Bush Administration in Annapolis, we've seen some discussions in a number of levels trying to resolve and reconcile the differences between the different factions in Palestine and the different factions in Israel. If the United States becomes an objective arbitrator with the Palestinian-Israel question, we will reduce significantly the number of people that are recruited into the violent Islamic community known as al Qaeda.

Our discussions with Saudi Arabia, that we're not going to abandon the region, Saudi Arabia still has some fear that Iraq could be an Iranian satellite. And Saudi Arabia fears too much Iranian influence in the region. So our discussions with Saudi Arabia are pretty important.

Our discussions with Iraq, obviously, can be very interesting, especially with the Iranians, because the Iraqis have diplomatic relations with the Iranians, and vice versa; Maliki has gone to Tehran, Ahmadinejad has gone to Baghdad. So the Iraqis can see us as being a little closer to their relationship as far as the Iranians are concerned.

Now, the Iranians, obviously, we talked a little bit about the Iran- Iraq war that lasted from 1980 to 1988 and how many hundreds of thousands of Iranians were killed. The Iranians fear the kind of government that could do that again in Iraq.

The differences between the Ba'athist party, the Sunnis, the old Saddam Hussein regime is could that possibly come back? So our relationship, our open dialogue with the Iranians is pretty important.

No one in the Middle East wants too much Russian influence. They remember the old Soviet Union, they remember Afghanistan. They simply don't know if Russia has found its soul yet, so many in the Middle East fear too much Russian influence. Many in the Middle East fear too much Chinese influence because they know China is looking for resources, especially oil.

So the U.S. involved in the Middle East in all these areas, including Syria, including, I will say, Hamas and Hezbollah, it is America's power that gives us the ability to negotiable, to dialogue, to communicate, to find some way to talk to our allies, our friends, and also our enemies in the Middle East. This is not Chamberlain giving away Czechoslovakia. This is the United States, the most powerful country in the world militarily, economically, and with our diplomats, discussing the issues in the Middle East with our friends, our allies, and our enemies, not giving up anything, certainly not giving up territory, not giving in to threats, not giving in to proliferation of nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction. This is the United States, with its power, negotiating its way to find a solution with our strength.

Eisenhower said in the 1950s, and it's true today, the United States' ability to be a super power, to be strong, is a three-legged stool, a strong military, a strong intelligence system, and consensus and dialogue. That's in our arsenal as well, diplomacy, trade, education, technology, social exchanges, science exchanges, cultural exchanges. That's the beacon, that's our strength.

So let's take a look at some ways to resolve this problem. We have the military. People know we're strong. We have the best intelligence in the world. We talked about a military surge about a year ago. Let's take a look at a diplomatic surge, with present and former diplomats in the United States covering the gauntlet in the Middle East to talk about these kinds of reconciliation measures.

International support structure from the international community, that has worked so well for many decades, and integrated security alliance. We have it, we've had it for some time with NATO. We've had it with SEATO, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. We've had it with Latin America, the Organization of American States. The Soviet Union had it. They know how these integrated security alliances work. We are fully aware of the Warsaw Pact, that gave those countries participating a certain amount of strength.

An integrated economic system can help immensely. And I'm not saying that you will have a NATO-type alliance among Middle Eastern countries, but you can begin to discuss an integrated security alliance.

Continue the current military draw-down of American troops that is now ongoing strategically and in a responsible manner. Continue to work toward a reconciliation among the different factions in the Shia community, the Sunni community, and the Kurds. And we have seen recently in Basra between Iraq, the United States, and the country of Iran, the resolution to that violent conflict in Basra among the different Shia factions. Reconciliation among those factions can work.

And let's take a quick look historically at how these alliances can work. In 1941 the United States signed the Atlantic Charter with a number of European countries. And in part how did that Atlantic Charter work? What were some of the provisions? It said that all peoples have a right to self-determination. Trade barriers were to be lowered. There was to be global economic cooperation and advancement of social welfare, freedom from want and fear, disarmament of aggressor nations. Why did we sign the Atlantic Charter actually in September of 1941? Because we knew the war wasn't going to last forever and we knew that we needed some agreement about sovereignty and human rights that we could work toward. Those would be our goals.

That, I have to say as an aside, it was signed in 1941. In 1942, with Ho Chi Minh living under Japanese rule with the blessings of the French in Indochina, Ho Chi Minh said, ``I hope that means that that Atlantic Charter also includes Asians.'' And, unfortunately, he went on to say a few years later, since the Atlantic Charter talked about sovereignty, he said, ``I guess the Atlantic Charter did not include Asians.''

A couple of decades after the Atlantic Charter was written and signed,

there was something called the Helsinki Accords. The Helsinki Declaration was signed in December, 1975, by many European countries, including the Soviet Union, including Eastern Europe. And, by the way, the Atlantic Charter was what led into the United Nations to help secure sovereignty for countries, human rights, freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and so on. In 1975, and I want to bring this out for another particular reason and how it can apply today in the Middle East, in 1975 a number of countries signed the Helsinki Declaration, and what did that say in part? It said ``sovereign equality, respect for the rights inherent in sovereignty.'' It said, ``refraining from the threat of use of force.'' This helped trigger dialogue between the differences of nations that had conflict. ``Peaceful settlements of disputes.'' We didn't go to war with the Soviet Union. We didn't go to war with East Germany. We didn't go to war with a number of other conflicts around the world. ``Nonintervention in internal affairs. Respect for human rights, including the freedom of thought. Equal rights and self-determination of peoples. Fulfillment in good faith of obligations under international law.''

Now, Brezhnev actually liked this. Premier Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, Prime Minister Brezhnev, liked that because he thought that all the land that the Soviet Union then occupied, he would be able to occupy that territory forever. But what, in fact, did the Helsinki Accords actually do to people around the world, Eastern Europe, and Soviet Republics like the Ukraine? What did it do? It gave them official permission to say what they felt, to say what they thought, and the world would listen, and the world did listen. People living in the Ukraine today, the former Soviet Union, will tell you that the Helsinki Accords was that trigger, that slow fuse that led to their self-determination, their sovereignty, their independence. The Atlantic Charter, the Helsinki Accords.

What the United States can do in the Middle East is to remember those words, bring about a Middle East summit in which there can be Middle East accords, to bring about sovereignty, to bring about human rights, to bring about the respect for international law, to bring about respect for human thought. It can do for the Middle East what it did for former Soviet Republics that are now independent, now free. And the Ukraine is trying to get into the European Union. The Ukraine is trying to get into NATO, as is Kosovo, as is Macedonia, former Soviet Republics. View of the Helsinki Accords is what led to their ability to become sovereign and free nations and develop democracy. What can happen in the Middle East under these circumstances is the same thing. Eisenhower talked to Khrushchev. Kennedy avoided war in Cuba. Nixon talked to Mao Tse-tung. Knowledge is the solvent for danger. History is the vast early warning system.

What is our policy now based on in the Middle East? Do we have a definite direction? Are we sure about our power, our power to influence, our power of trade, our power of human dignity? What is our policy now in the Middle East?

Sam Rayburn, former Speaker, former Member of the House, the building right across the road is named after him, the Rayburn Office Building, where I work. What did Sam Rayburn say years ago that is actually applicable today? ``Any mule can kick a barn door down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.'' It takes a carpenter to build a barn.

We need more carpenters. We need more people who understand the nature of conflict. We need more people that have a sense of urgency.

The soldiers in Iraq that are driving in convoys that actually in the next few minutes might run over a land mine, those soldiers need to know, those soldiers in Iraq who are stunningly competent about what they do, need to know that we, the policymakers, are also stunningly competent in how we developed a policy that they have to take out.

But I will tell the American people, Mr. Speaker, just don't wait for the government to be competent. You're hoping they are competent. You're hoping they know what they are doing. Turn your television off 2 hours every night and start trying to understand the nature and the culture and the history and the intrigue and the complexity of the violence in the Middle East so you're better able to understand it.

Rudyard Kipling lost his son in France a long time ago, and to soothe his pain, he said, ``Why did young men die because old men lied?'' Today old people should talk before they send young people to die.

As we look back on the landscape of human tragedy, what and who in every instance was the enemy? What caused the violence? What caused the pain? What caused the despair? What caused the suffering? I will tell you we have three enemies in the landscape of human tragedy: ignorance, arrogance, and dogma. When you put those three things together, it leads to this monstrous certainty, this oversimplification of what the issues actually are, this monstrous certainty that comes out of al Qaeda that I'm right and you're wrong, this monstrous certainty that comes out of the Taliban, I'm right and you're wrong. A suicide bomber should do his job, that's what God wants. We know that's not right. We know that's wrong.

What's the antidote over history to ignorance, arrogance, and dogma? Knowledge to replace ignorance, humility to replace arrogance, and tolerance to replace dogma. We, as the policymakers, need to be knowledgeable and informed so we are competent to create a policy that will lead us out of this conflict, that will take us through the violence and understand the nature of this conflict so a resolution can come to the fore.

Mr. Speaker, I want to wish the American people well in their assignment to read these books that will bring knowledge to the fore: ``Violent Politics'' by William Polk, ``Fiasco'' by Thomas Ricks, ``All the Shah's Men'' by Steve Kinser, ``Treacherous Alliance'' by Trita Parsi, ``The Battle For Peace'' by Tony Zinni, ``Why Vietnam?'' by Archimedes Patti, and ``Human Options'' by Norman Cousins.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 25 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, April 16, 2008, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about Iraq tonight in the context in which historical incidents have created this most pressing and urgent situation, Iraq and the Middle East, to give the American people, Mr. Speaker, a frame of reference upon which to judge the way forward in this conflict. Are there solutions to this conflict? Is there something in our history or the history of the relationship of the international community that can resolve the present crisis that we are now experiencing?

So what I would like to do is during this next hour that I have is to break this topic down into a number of different areas, take a look at the United States and the Cold War, especially through the 1950s and the 1960s, take a look at what was happening in the Middle East during that same period of time during the Cold War, what was going on in the Middle East, and then look at the present crisis that we are now experiencing in Iraq and Afghanistan with a focus on Iraq. And then what are the solutions? Is there a way forward? Can we judge from past precedents, past crises, what we can do now to resolve this conflict. And I think there is a way forward.

So, to frame this discussion tonight, I would like to start off with a quote by a man named Norman Cousins, who was the editor of the Saturday Evening Post and wrote an extraordinary book, I believe it was about 1980, called ``Human Options.'' Whenever there is a crisis, there are always options. There are always things that we, as human beings, with initiative, ingenuity, intellect and courage can figure out. Here are the two quotes: ``Knowledge is the solvent for danger.'' ``Knowledge is the solvent for danger.'' If you're faced with a crisis, the more information you have, the more likely it is that you will make competent decisions.

The second quote is, ``History is a vast early warning system.'' There have been a number of crises in America's past where people said you have to wait 20 years to figure out what went wrong. People will always say, well, 20 years later we have hindsight that we didn't have during the incident or the crisis or the conflict or the war. Well, with this quote, knowing history, knowing where we were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, who lit the fuse that slowly

burned over decades to cause the present crisis, ``history is a vast early warning system.'' And the more we understand history, the better we will be able to deal with situations that we are presented with today.

I want to give another quote from a man, a British writer, Rudyard Kipling, whose son fought in World War I, died in northern France in that battle, and the distraught father said this, ``Why did young men die? Because old men lied.'' Let me paraphrase that today in the 21st century, nearly 100 years later. ``Old men should talk before they send young men to die.''

Let's take a look at the 1950s and 1960s, the Cold War, our successes and failures, just briefly. We know that the Soviet Union and the United States were Cold War adversaries. The Cold War brought about a nuclear arms race. The Cold War brought about a number of conflicts around the world. They separated the world into two camps, pro-Soviet, pro-U.S.A. We faced down the Soviet Union, they faced down us. Thousands upon thousands of nuclear weapons. There were crises and discussions and situations where we came close to a nuclear holocaust. It was a time when Khrushchev pounded his shoe in a podium at the United Nations and pointed his finger at the western diplomats and said, ``We will bury you.'' That was not the only time he said that.

But what was Eisenhower's view of the Soviet Union during the Cold War? He knew we needed a strong military; he knew we needed the best intelligence services to be objectively analyzed in the world; but he also had an understanding of consensus and dialogue. So, what did he do with his most fearsome adversary on a number of occasions? Invite him to the United States to tour our farms, our schools, our cities. Consensus and dialogue was one of the ways in which we resolved these most difficult times.

What did President Kennedy do when Castro and the Soviet Union actually had deployable nuclear weapons? Did we attack? Did we shut them off from the dialogue or discussion? Did we have preconditions before we talked to them face to face? No. We had an ongoing dialogue which resolved the crisis and prevented a nuclear holocaust, prevented a war.

What did we do with communist China during the period of time when we were bitter enemies, when Mao Tse-tung said it would be worth it if half the population of China died if we could destroy the imperialists in the United States. What did we do? We worked for years to figure out how we could go to China and resolve these conflicts through dialogue. Those were our successes during the Cold War period.

And I will always wonder, maybe with a little more research I could figure this out, why the United States did not have a dialogue with Ho Chi Minh. We talked to Khrushchev many times, we talked to many Soviet leaders. We talked to Mao Tse-tung, with no human rights etiquette, human rights violations that came close to some of the worst despots in the history of the world. We talked to them, we had a dialogue, but we didn't have a dialogue with Ho Chi Minh, and 58,000 Americans died, and their names are on a wall here in Washington, D.C. Thousands were wounded, and more than one million Vietnamese were killed.

What did he learn from that? Well, we learned that Ho Chi Minh wanted sovereignty from British colonial rule. He first approached the United States in 1918, and he relentlessly pursued the United States to be his ally to gain the kind of sovereignty, self-determination that the whole world fought for in World War II.

Let's take a look at the Middle East during the Cold War. The Middle East, throughout the Ottoman empire, throughout World War I, certainly after World War I, during World War II, but during the Cold War the Middle East continued to be a tangled web of complexity and intrigue, a difficult place to understand, tribal groups, religious groups, fundamentalists, moderates, secular leaders. 1953, the United States set a slow fuse that would erupt decades later.

In 1953, for a lot of reasons, John Foster Dulles said the Iranians may be toying with becoming communists with the Soviet Union. A number of other reasons. But the United States, along with the aid of Britain, pursued a very violent coup which overthrew an elected prime minister, a secular Muslim, Mohammed Mosaddeq, and installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah. We took away their officially, independently elected prime minister and put in the Shah, who was a dictator, and that lit a slow fuse that burned. And it exploded in 1979, when the Iranians took over our embassy in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution that put in power the Ayatollah, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. That was a slow fuse. That was a mistake that we made early in 1953 because of our fear of communism. We didn't pursue a dialogue with Mohammed Mosaddeq to talk about what his intentions were. We made a mistake, in a similar fashion that we did with Ho Chi Minh.

What was it like for the Soviet Union in the Middle East during the same period of time, the fifties, the sixties, the seventies? The Soviet Union was sometimes allied with the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Iraqis, and sometimes they weren't. This complexity, this intrigue ran in cycles. And Russia was almost never trusted. And sometimes they bought arms from the Russians, different Arab countries, and sometimes they chose to be allies with the United States.

Where was Israel during this period of time, and, let's say, the country of Iran, which is now considered a bitter enemy of Israel? From 1948 nearly to 1991, Israel, during the Cold War, was a quiet ally of the Iranians. Israel, during the Cold War in the Middle East, were quiet allies, the Israelis and the Iranians. Why? They were both enemies of the Soviet Union. They were both enemies of many of the Arab countries. They needed some form of economic viability in a very hostile region of the world. Israel needed oil, and Iran needed technology. And so, there was a constant trade between those two commodities for decades.

Now, Ruhollah Reza Pahlavi, the Shah, certainly seemed to condemn Israel at every point. That was the geopolitical way to survive in this region of the world. We know from 1980 to 1989, Russia was involved in a bitter war with Afghanistan which began to set the stage for more bitterness with presumed allies of the Soviet Union in the Arab world because of conflict with the Muslim world.

From 1980 to 1988, there was a terrible war between Iran and Iraq, as many as 2 million casualties between both countries. This is when Iraq began to use weapons of mass destruction. Given consideration you had two big oil-producing states at war with each other, where did the superpowers and where did European countries, where did the rest of the world ally themselves? They weren't going to stay out of this conflict, they were going to become a part of who was going to win this war, who was going to lose this war. Most of the big countries of the world, like Russia, the Soviet Union, European countries, including Japan and China, to a certain extent aided both of these countries. And as a result of that, the conflict went on for 8 years, and there were many, many, many problems, many casualties, and much bitterness that remains to this day.

1979 was a presumed bright spot when President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin of Israel got together and Egypt recognized the State of Israel. What happened with this in 1979, it pulled Egypt away from the Soviet sphere of influence. It brought more objectivity to how to deal with the country of Israel in a sea of hostile allies.

The Persian Gulf War in 1991, pretty much the end of the Cold War, was a conflict that the international community decided that they needed to get involved with, that is, if you recall, when Saddam Hussein decided that he wanted to invade Kuwait and take much of their oil and much of their land. But the international community, with the United States at the helm of leadership, saw the conflict, had very clear, defined objectives, created an international coalition, and some countries contributed troops, some countries contributed financial assets, and the conflict was resolved. But it was an international conflict that the countries made clear their objectives before they went in, they knew what the end result was going to be, and it was a success.

Now, that complex, brief history brings us to the present crisis in Iraq and the Middle East. This conflict started in 2003, it is now 2008. It has been going on for about 5 years. And what does it look like today? What does the conflict in Iraq look like?

It is a place where the three great religions of the world were spawned, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is a place in the world where faith is a very important part of an individual's life. If you're a Jew, if you're a Christian, if you're a Muslim, you adhere strongly to your faith. It is a place where oil exports are extremely vital for economic viability. And every one of those countries knows it, whether it's Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Oman, Qatar, you name it, oil exports is a vital part of economic viability.

Right now, however, as that economic process continues, the Middle East, as far as the balance of power is concerned, is fractured. And nobody in the Middle East, as a result of this conflict, knows which direction that balance of power is going to lead to.

Now, the Middle East became an extreme focus for the United States as a result of 9/11. America responded; we sent troops to Afghanistan. The conflict there is still hotly contested. NATO forces are contributing troops, financial assistance. A number of allies outside of NATO are trying to work to resolve the conflict in Afghanistan. But Iraq became a focus because there was some question of whether or not Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, whether or not Saddam Hussein was connected with al Qaeda, whether or not Saddam Hussein was actually going to deploy these weapons of mass destruction, was there a danger that the United States security was in jeopardy? And so, it was recommended in the beginning that America send between 300,000 and 500,000 troops into Iraq because this was going to be a very difficult conflict. And so, with 300,000 to 500,000 troops, you could resolve the problems of convoys, you could resolve the problems that would inevitably come as far as looting was concerned, chaos was going to be dealt with, ammo dumps that proliferated the countryside would be a problem, border security was going to be a problem. A whole range of issues would be resolved if you could send in 300,000 to 500,000 troops. Not to mention the fact that, I would recommend a book called ``Fiasco'' by Thomas Ricks, that many of the military planners in the Pentagon did not want to go into Iraq in the first place. They saw the same kind of issues that they dealt with back in 1991, when many of the military people did not want to go to Baghdad after the first Persian Gulf War ended. They simply didn't want to go. That discussion was ended and military was asked to come up with a plan. They came up with a plan of 300,000 to 500,000 troops, but that was reduced to 180,000 troops. The 180,000 troops were not sufficient to deal with the looting, with the convoys, with guarding prisoners, with border security, with eliminating the ammo ducts, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And so, the U.S. has been fighting a protracted war in Iraq for the last 5 years. What are the specific defined objectives?

Where is the international coalition that can deal with this conflict in a much more cogent fashion?

Who are we fighting? Are we fighting al Qaeda? Are we fighting a criminal element? Are we fighting the different factions within the Shiite groups? Are we fighting the Sunnis? Where do the Kurds enter into this picture? What is the defined end to this conflict? These are all questions that are really not resolved yet. It's a very difficult place.

Let's take a look at Iraq's neighbors. We have a tendency to look at Islam or the Muslim world as being all the same. And yet there are very, very distinct differences between the different factions in the Shiite world, in the Sunni world, in the Allawi world, in the Wahabi world. There's many, many different sects within Islam. Some are moderate, some are secular, and some are more fundamentalists, and some are terrorists like al Qaeda. Some are brutal like the Taliban.

If we look at Saudi Arabia, they're a fundamentalist country. If we look at Iran, which is a Persian country, not an Arab country, but a Muslim country, Iran, if you are a woman, you can drive a car. But if you're a woman in Saudi Arabia, you cannot. If you're a woman in Iran, you can run for political office. You can own property. You can be educated. You can be a doctor or a lawyer or a schoolteacher, or a member of their parliament. That's our enemy. In Saudi Arabia you cannot do those things.

Syria, it's a secular country. Syria, women can be educated. They can drive cars. In Saudi Arabia, our ally, that's a completely different situation.

In Qatar, the U.S. has a massive military base there, provides security. It's a good arrangement with the small country of Qatar. Oil is an important commodity for them. The U.S. has a base there; it's convenient for us and our relationship with Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's a mutually agreeable situation.

But what's interesting about Qatar is that they own al Jazeera. Most of us have heard of al Jazeera, the news media outlet which predominates the Middle East, and which pokes their finger in the eye of the United States just about every single day. It's a pretty strange relationship. It's the conflict without a resolution.

Is there a resolution for the conflict in Iraq? Is there a way forward?

U.S. troops are stunningly competent at what they do in Iraq; stunningly competent, whether it's in Mosul, Anbar province, the ancient city of Babylon, Kirkuk, Baghdad, you name it, U.S. troops are stunningly competent. And what they deserve and need and must have from us, the Government, the Congress, the people that make the policy, which, to a large extent has been flawed in the past, they need for us to be knowledgeable in order to be competent to create a policy that is also worthy of those soldiers that have put their lives on the line and continue to do so every single day.

So where are we in Iraq? Is there a way forward? Let's take a look at the present crisis, the present situation. And what do we see?

We know that in Iraq right now, the U.S. military is the skeletal structure upon which the entire Iraqi society depends. Would it be a good idea to withdraw our troops precipitously? Absolutely not. We have a responsibility to the Iraqi people and to our soldiers.

Iraq. What is Iraq's position within the region? What is Iraq's position within the region as far as its relationship with its neighbors is concerned? Does Iraq have any security alliances with any of its neighbors?

Remember, after World War II we created NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization. We created the Organization of American States in Latin America. We created Southeast Asia Treaty Organization in Southeast Asia. The United States reached out for regional security. The United States reached out to integrate our security needs with friends and allies.

What is the European Union doing right now? Besides NATO, the European Union is creating a region in the world that provides security through an integrated economic system.

Now, I'm not saying that the Middle Eastern countries should or may form a North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But I'm saying it's important for Iraq to begin looking with, certainly our help, at security arrangements within the region of the Middle East.

The United States is the skeletal structure upon which all of Iraqi society rests. We're integrated with Iraqi society, with their economy, with their culture, with their educational institutions, with their military, with their political institutions. So for us to begin to break away from that, slowly leave, we must do it in a very responsible fashion.

And we can't just focus on Iraq, because the region is one region, and it's interconnected in a very complex web. So let's take a look at the region in the context of the present crisis.

The United States needs to be an objective arbitrator, and I mean objective, in the Palestinian-Israeli question. And the Middle Eastern countries and the rest of the world need to see that the U.S. is an objective arbitrator in that particular conflict. And when we are seen that way, the reduction of al Qaeda recruits will drop like a stone.

Our discussions with Saudi Arabia have to be as far as a regional resolution to this conflict in Iraq is concerned. And Saudi Arabia has some

fear of Iraq being an Iranian satellite. That's a real fear.

The geopolitical balance of power in the Middle East right now is fractured, and no one knows in which direction it's going to go, who's going to have more influence, where the military power will be, where the economic power will be, and so Saudi Arabia needs to have a discussion with the United States, where they see the United States having some integrity and objectivity in that part of the world.

Syria needs to be brought into the loop of conversations about what's happening with the Palestinian-Israeli problem, what's going on in Lebanon, what are our objectives in Iraq. The Syrians can be a positive element in our conversations. The Syrians can be a positive element. If they would sign a non-aggressive pact with Israel and have all the parties sign it, they could get the Golan Heights back.

The Iranian historic fears. Iran has a fear of Iraq. They lost about a million people in that 8-year conflict. So Iran has a natural fear that if certain elements in Iraq come back to power, they could have security concerns. So we need to have conversations and dialogue with the Iranians, a conversation and a dialogue with no preconditions, we just sit down and talk.

Did we have preconditions when we talked to Mao Tse-Tung? We didn't. They were established after the conversation started.

Did we have preconditions when we talked to Khrushchev or Brezhnev or Kosygin? No, it was an ongoing dialogue. The conditions were set after the conversation started.

So it's important for the Iranians, I think, in this region to begin resolving some of these conflicts, to begin talking, especially to the Syrians and the Iranians.

No one in the Middle East wants Russia to have a sphere of influence there. No one in the Middle East wants the Chinese to have an economic sphere of influence there. The objective history of the United States in this region is one that still is respected.

Eisenhower, during his administration, said we need a strong military. We need a strong intelligence service with their analysis being objectively viewed. But we need consensus and dialogue.

What is in America's arsenal? We have a strong military. We have the best intelligence services in the world. But as Eisenhower and Nixon and Ford and Kennedy and past presidents saw, it was more than just a strong military, more than just good intelligence, it was diplomacy, it was trade. It was exchanges of education, science, technology, social and cultural exchanges. These are the things that brought countries together. These are the things that integrated nations.

The way forward in Iraq is to begin setting up a string, a series of dialogue with all of Iraq's neighbors, including Syria and Iran, with no preconditions. The conditions can come as soon as the best diplomats in the world begin those conversations, and that's American diplomats.

And Iran was an enemy of the Soviet Union for years. They were enemies of many countries in the Middle East, many Arab countries. They had a strong, quiet, but strong relationship with Israel. It's a country that can be a part of the solution in this troubled part of the world.

Knowledge is the solvent for danger, so said Norman Cousins. And knowledge, in this instance, can help us resolve the danger in the Middle East.

History is a vast early warning system. What is the history of all these countries? Whether it's Israel or Egypt or Lebanon or Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and so on, if we understand how they view the world, and we understand our place in that region, we can go a long way to resolving the conflict.

Sam Rayburn, famous congressman, the building that I work in is named after him, said an interesting thing while he was a Member of Congress, this great institution. Any mule can kick a barn door down; but it takes a carpenter to build one. And we need carpenters now. We need the best carpenters, the best diplomats, the best people with an understanding of the history of this region to begin, in a political, diplomatic fashion, taking the burden off the 1 percent of Americans who are now, almost alone, fighting the problems in the conflict there in Iraq.

Remember Rudyard Kipling. Why did young men die? Because old men lied nearly 100 years ago in Northern France. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling today, old people should talk before they send young people to die. That's a pretty urgent message.

In the landscape of human tragedy, in the history of the human race, who has been our enemy almost all the time, almost exclusively? Who is the enemy on the landscape of human history? Ignorance, arrogance and dogma.

Ignorance, arrogance, and dogma inevitably leads to monstrous certainty. And monstrous certainty from any source leads to conflict, leads to war.

And so how do we resolve the enemy on the landscape of human tragedy? How do we resolve that?

We replace ignorance with knowledge. We replace arrogance with humility. And we replace dogma with tolerance. It takes courage to do that, but those young men and women fighting in Iraq deserve nothing less.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you very much, Mr. Bartlett, for letting me share your hour here this evening. I think you are doing an extraordinary service, not only to we Members of Congress, but to the public at large, to understand the nature of the energy crisis and how it is inextricably linked with global warming.

If we take a look at both of these issues, especially the issues that Mr. Bartlett raises about energy security and what is in the future for our energy needs, which is the basis for a prosperous economy, there are many changes coming based pretty much on these two issues: Energy and climate change. As far as energy security and the economic viability of this country, environmental issues and ethical issues for future generations, these two issues are inextricably linked. They are issues for the most part that are still misunderstood by the public, and they are issues that are not in the headlines every day for the news media and elected officials to do their own research, like Mr. Bartlett has done, and voice this issue to the public so that they become much more educated as a result of it.

If these issues are handled appropriately, and that means if we the government and the public at large become informed about these issues, they can then become much more competent in dealing with these issues and there will be a bright future. If these issues of energy and climate change are not handled appropriately, if the focus is on the wrong priority, then energy security and climate security for this country will be severely jeopardized.

Mr. Bartlett talks about peak oil. The United States peaked in 1970 and the world at large is about ready to peak. We looked at in just the last couple of years more than a doubling of the cost for a barrel of oil.

The issue is similar in global warming, which is called today climate change. Why is there a difference in the verbiage on discussing global warming? The difference in verbiage is that global warming will cause the climate to change, disruptions in the climate.

Is there global warming? Well, there is a 90 percent certainty among the American scientists and international scientists that global warming is linked to human activity. That means the burning of fossil fuel.

Let's take a quick look at one example as to why we link global warming to human activity. We can go scientifically back 20,000 years at the height of the last ice age and we can test through a number of different means, especially ice cores, 20,000 years ago.

I want to make one other comment also. If you look over the past 20,000 years, you will see a fluctuation, a variation in climate change, and you will also see a fluctuation in variation of temperature. The temperature corresponds to the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. The more greenhouse gasses over the eons of time, the warmer the climate.

If we go back 20,000 years to the height of the last ice age, carbon dioxide, which is the chief greenhouse gas, one of the chief greenhouse gasses, there was 180 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. As a result of that small amount of CO2, we were in an ice age. It was very cold.

As climate variability changes over the course of time, we come to 1890 when we could evaluate how much CO2 was in the atmosphere. 1890, a little over 100 years ago, there was 280 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. It took basically nearly 20,000 years to go from 180 parts per million of CO2 to 280 parts per million, an increase of 100 parts per million over 20,000 years.

Well, what were we really involved in in 1890? The industrial revolution, the burning of coal, the early stages of the age of oil.

It is 2008. There are 380 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. What does that mean? That means the natural cycle took 20,000 years to increase CO2 by 100 parts per million, and during the industrial age, it took just 100 years to increase CO2 by 100 parts per million. The correspondence to warming is linked to the amount of greenhouse gasses. So we are warming.

There are many, many other examples of this; receding glaciers worldwide, shrinking ice sheets on Greenland, temperature of the air and temperature of the water.

Another problem is the acidification of the oceans. The point here is that we are facing enormous changes in a very short period of time. Will we be ready? We are facing peak oil.

In some sense, in maybe less than 100 years, we will be at the end of the Asian oil, and what will we replace this enormous source of energy with? We are facing enormous changes in the next few decades with the climate changing as a result of human activity.

Let's take just a brief look at some of the issues of a changing climate. What will it do to agriculture in the United States with the drought and rain cycles changing, and we are already beginning to see that. What will it do to our national forests and forests globally with the infiltration of pests that weren't there before? We see that now in the northern regions of Alaska and wild fires; fresh water, quantity and quality with changing rain cycles; coastal zones, flooding areas, more hurricanes. We have already seen more tornadoes.

What about sea level rise? This is an important aspect of global warming. If sea level rose just a couple of feet, and there is a good chance it will rise more, what will happen to New York City or Miami or New Orleans or a town close to me called Chestertown? How will the eco- systems change? What will diseases be like in areas that are a lot warmer?

We only need now to look at some of the areas of central Africa or Central America or South America. Ocean acidification is an issue with the kinds of marine life that will be in the world's oceans. Ocean acidification has a direct impact on the spawning activities of all the sea mammals and the other marine creatures in the ocean.

Global warming, 90 percent assurance from the world's scientists that human activity is causing it to change. It is changing the face of our planet, the link with the other issue of energy. The lack of it will change dramatically the face of our planet if we don't select the right priorities as soon as we can.

What are some of the questions we ask about this scene, this relatively confusing scene of an energy crisis with nothing right now to replace it, and a global warming climate-change crisis, some of the confusing issues. Are we in just another cycle of high energy costs and different climate? We

know that climate cycles change, and we know that energy costs change over a period of time.

Are we not just in another cycle? Well, this time we are not just in another cycle. But if you want to say we are in a cycle, this cycle is being dramatically affected by human activity.

In the energy crisis arena, we are burning more oil than we have in reserves. In the climate crisis arena, we are burning fossil fuel, infusing greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere in the last few decades that it took millions of years for the natural processes to lock up.

Now, one last comment, and then I want to go back to my good friend from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) who will go over some of the issues that can ameliorate the problem with the climate crisis, the problem with the energy crisis. Both these issues, energy crisis and climate change, are going to take something in the order of magnitude that we dealt with in the Manhattan Project and sending a man on the Moon.

This is an economy-wide issue. The economy issue and the global warming issue are economy-wide, and they are international in scope. One of the suggestions for the global warming issue is an economy-wide cap and trade program, similar to what we dealt with from sulfur dioxide and acid rain from power companies a little more than 10 years ago, which has been very successful, a cap and trade program, economy- wide, where you actually trade carbon in a similar way that you would trade stock on the stock market.

You place a cap on the emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. You incrementally implement this over a period of 40 years and gradually, by the year 2050, you can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent below 1990 levels by finding alternatives to fossil fuel.

What is at the bottom of the bottomless pit? We used to think it was oil, that we could burn it forever and it wouldn't hurt the environment.

But we now know it's not oil. What needs to be at the bottom of the bottomless pit is ingenuity, good old-fashioned American ingenuity.

I want to thank the gentleman from Maryland, my good friend Mr. Bartlett for recognizing me for this time.

I'm not on the committee of jurisdiction where the HOPE project originated, but I'm interested in this issue because I was born in what would now be called a housing project, 62 years ago. It was a housing apartment complex built many decades ago, a few years before I was born, for young families, for soldiers serving in World War II and certainly then, for the baby boom generation, for military people coming home looking for places to live.

This place was called Cora Place. Now I still don't know to this day whether it was a K or a C, Cora Place. But it was a vast housing unit apartment complex for young families. I was born there 62 years ago, and there's still young families there. That place has still survived all these decades. It was built adequately. It was built with good construction techniques. It was built with good standards. It was not rebuilt. It was not demolished and rebuilt. It was built in a way, in a form, in a complex where it became a community, not an isolated pocket of poverty. It was built for a community. There are small businesses there. The standards of construction were fine. You don't waste heat. You don't waste water. You don't waste electricity. It was built for young American families. It was built for a community where there could be dignity, where there could be small businesses, where people could come together and exchange information and feel like they belonged. That's what we need to do today. That's what HOPE VI is all about. That's what this committee, in a bipartisan fashion, wants to pursue.

I also want to talk about one of the provisions in this bill called ``green buildings and technical assistance.'' And I want to say that what this does to today's communities is what happened 62 years ago. We want to do it right the first time, not the second time. The Federal Government is not requiring one standard. The Federal Government, in this bill, is requiring a standard that is flexible so it can change and provide for new technology.

This is a standard that reduces and eliminates waste. It's a standard that promotes local businesses and local communities. It's a standard that provides adequate housing for those who otherwise would not have adequate housing. The high cost of housing has increased the high cost of renting, and the peripheral outside effect is that it has increased homelessness.

So HOPE VI goes a long way into eliminating that problem in our communities. It is not a mandate to comply with one standard. It does not, this text in this bill, create a monopoly. It does not require certification fees. You save way more energy, way more energy than up- front costs. And it uses standards of efficiency that are off-the-shelf technology. So I encourage my colleagues to vote for the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1205 today, and I want to thank my good friend from American Samoa (Mr. Faleomavaega) for his effort in reauthorizing the Coral Reef Restoration Act.

I want to thank the chairman of the subcommittee, Ms. Bordallo, for her work in helping us facilitate a number of provisions in this bill; Mr. Rahall, of course, and certainly Mr. Young and Mr. Brown. This Coral Reef Restoration Act brings a number of different agencies; once again to thank Mr. Faleomavaega for helping make this happen. The coordination between various Federal agencies in ensuring that the restoration process continues and does so in a very timely fashion is admirable.

For example, ship strikes pose, used to pose somewhat of a danger to coral reefs because of the various levels of bureaucracy. This bill codifies the Coral Reef Task Force, which coordinates those various Federal agencies to more quickly implement policies that can deal with the restoration process.

Mr. Speaker, 20 percent of America's coral reefs are dead. They are destroyed. 50 percent of America's coral reefs are in danger of dying for various, various reasons, and it is so important at this critical time that we understand the nature and the importance, the value to the ecosystem, the value to marine biological communities, and the economic value to all those States and areas that live next to coral reefs and depend upon them for their fisheries, for tourism, for coastal protection and so on.

Coral reefs do protect coastlines, and they're valued for supporting rich biological diversity that is of immense economic value to a number of regions throughout the United States. Half of the federally managed fish species, that equals billions of dollars, spend much of their life cycle in coral reefs.

But coral reefs, as a result of coastal runoff, Overharvesting, and now the effects of climate change, these particular areas of degradation act in a phenomenally coordinated fashion to degrade our coral reefs. And so this type of legislation can ameliorate the effects of the anthropogenic onslaught to coral reefs; that's the human activity that degrades coral reefs.

Now, this bill, and I'll close with this, affects coral reefs in this manner, because there's multiple effects on coral reefs: Overharvesting, climate change, acidification of the ocean, runoff, pollution in our oceans, debris in our oceans, and a whole range of other things. That means that we have to approach this from a multiple- stressor effect. How do we deal with all these things?

To account for future effects of human activity, including climate change, this bill enables us to manage the coral reefs in something that we will call ``ecosystem resilience,'' the resilience of an ecosystem. If you look at the human body--your lungs, your liver, your kidneys, your bloodstream, your heart--the human body functions in an extraordinary coordinated fashion. It's our own personal ecosystem.

And in the ecosystem abroad, in the Nation's oceans, that ecosystem can function, if it's restored, understanding that concept of an ecosystem, of a metabolism, if you will, to restore it so it is resilient, just like the human body can be restored. But unless you have a process where you're healthy, where you exercise, where you have a good diet, et cetera, et cetera, then you will run through cycles of health and ill health.

The ecosystem of coral reefs will be managed for its resiliency so it can come back after an onslaught of overharvesting; it can come back after an onslaught of pollution; it can resist and be resilient to this unknown factor of climate change.

So for all these reasons, and for all the help we've had from the staff and the Members, I heartily endorse H.R. 1205, and ask the Members to vote in favor of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Israel for yielding, and this evening we are here as Members of Congress. Mr. Israel from New York, Mr. Lampson from Texas, Mr. Dent from Pennsylvania, myself from Maryland and other Members will be here shortly from the various corners of this country, and we're here because we know that tonight a young American soldier may be on patrol somewhere in Iraq and there may be a landmine that he will run over. There will be Iraqi children that may get caught in the terrible crossfire. There may be Iraqi students on their way to a school or university that may be caught in a horrific explosion from a suicide bomber. Those kinds of things are unfolding in Afghanistan and, to some extent, those kinds of things are unfolding throughout the very difficult places in the world.

This institution, the House of Representatives, has a history of integrity. This Nation is based on the philosophy of integrity, and American citizens, the broad breadth of humans across the globe have, for centuries, had an assumption that this institution was competent, informed and rested on that philosophy of integrity that buttressed the concept of freedom and justice and dignity.

This cannot happen with a partisan divide. This cannot happen with people talking about the Democrats or the Republicans. We are not Democrats. We're not Republicans. We are Members of Congress representing constituencies that assume or, at least up until recently, they assumed that we were here for that philosophy of integrity. We were here to work hard, to work together, to integrate that integrity amongst the vast areas of this country, not just to be a Republican and find some mythical icon Republican that you are supposed to obey or some mythical icon Democrat that you were supposed to obey.

But Americans need more than that. Americans deserve more than that. That young soldier in that armored vehicle riding down the road in Iraq right now deserves more than that, and each of us, not only should, we must have a sense of urgency to fulfill our obligation and responsibility.

Mr. Israel and Mr. Lampson and Mr. Dent will talk about that we have come together here fairly recently in the Halls of Congress to represent the sense that this institution is going to have an impact in a very positive way on this world that's laying out before us, and as we progress this evening as each of us discusses these issues, we will talk specifically about Iraq. But I want to make sure, Mr. Speaker, that as we speak about Iraq and this war, this is not our grandfather's war of World War I. This is not our grandfather's war of World War II, where you had a million Russian soldiers moving toward Berlin, you had a million American and Canadian and British soldiers moving toward Berlin, where the public could follow it on little wiggly lines in the newspaper every day to see how they were advancing. This is a war of insurgents where there are no cities to firebomb. There are no million troops to deal with this particular issue.

This is a war of insurgency. And how have these wars gone on in the past? They are wars that are complex and need the initiative, the ingenuity, the utmost intellect and courage of this institution to bring it to a successful conclusion.

I would agree with many Members who have talked about this, that we can't have 535 Secretaries of Defense. That's true. We should not have 535 Secretaries of State, and that's true. But this is not our grandfather's war. This is a war where Members of Congress need to know their counterparts in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Israel, in Jordan and Syria and Saudi Arabia, in Iran. This is a war where the integration of integrity of people from across the world need to understand each other in an ongoing deep and abiding dialogue.

This is so important for Members of Congress to be involved in this kind of conflict because it's not a million-man army against a million- man army. This is a war that involves culture, ancient cultures. This is a war that involves politics. It's a war that involves economics. It's a war that involves geography. It's essentially a war where there's very little understanding. There's almost complete misunderstanding.

So an institution like the House of Representatives, working together can resolve this conflict. This conflict cannot be resolved, there is no reconciliation, without a dialogue of integrity across these great divides.

I want to thank Mr. Israel and the other gentlemen that are here tonight to bring this dialogue, raise this discussion, this debate about this war to a new and higher and much-needed level.

I'd like to thank the gentleman from New York. And what you're describing, Mr. Israel, is exactly the right thing that Members of Congress can do, certainly in a bipartisan fashion, to help facilitate the conflict in Iraq.

The military is doing a stunningly competent job at what they do. But this is war that is multidimensional. It's myriad complexities does not lend itself to, for example, that million-man Russian Army, that million-man Allied Army heading toward Berlin. This is a

multidimensional complex insurgency, a difficult cultural conflict, a geopolitical conflict, an economic conflict. And it takes a united institution like the House and the Senate, to deal with the many different levels, for example, besides the Status of Force Agreement that we've been talking about here tonight that will give the Iraqi community, the Iraqi country, some dignity, about dealing with the issues of the day on a level playing field. The issue of an Iraqi interpreter trying to get to the United States can be effectively dealt with by the legislation that Mr. Israel described. The Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds in Iraq have very different views, perspectives on how to govern their country. Each of them comes to this conflict, this political reconciliation debate from very different perspectives.

This past August, August 26, there was a Unity Accord Agreement signed between these three factions in Iraq. But that Unity Accord Agreement has not been carried through yet. What is the status of that?

Now, it's very difficult for that political process to be understood and then pursued by our military. It is something that Members of Congress can do.

What about the oil law, the hydrocarbon law, how to share the oil in Iraq? That is a political question. It's a question that we, in this House, can deal with much more effectively than the military can because it's a political process. We cannot deal with that in a political way if we're divided in a partisan way.

But the integration of our understanding that we represent America, as Members of Congress, not as political parties which, by the way, are not mentioned in the Constitution, that can effectively deal with this issue.

The British are leaving Basra. They are basically going to turn Basra over in a short period of time to the Iraqi Army. This is a predominantly Shiite region of Iraq. What is the relationship of the various Shiite groups in and around Basra with Iran?

Now, General Petraeus is responsible for the military activities inside Iraq. Who is responsible for the intergovernmental relations of various countries around the world, especially in the Middle East, and especially between Iran and southern Iraq where the Shiites are dominant?

It's a political process. We, as Members of Congress, must understand how we can individually continue to probe to have a dialogue with Iran.

The issue of the surge bringing greater security, has it brought greater security? What does greater security mean when you have security forces on the ground if you're going to go beyond that? It's a political process, a greater political process than I think we have understood.

General Petraeus cannot call for Dayton negotiations where you bring the warring factions, like we did in the former Yugoslavia, to the United States to Dayton, Ohio. The political process of reconciling those vast differences is a political process of this institution.

This institution doesn't represent 535 Secretaries of Defense or Secretaries of State. We represent the philosophy of integrity where dialogue is way more important, under these circumstances, than continued violence.

What about the refugees in Jordan and Syria, 2 million refugees, not to count the displaced persons in Iraq? Do we just ignore that? Do we say, well, that's the administration's problem, that's a military problem? No. We get together with dialogue with Assad and Syria, with the King of Jordan. We talk to people in the Middle East that have resources that can effectively deal with those people who may be starving to death.

Another thing, just to add to the complexity of it, one of the military strategies in the war in Vietnam by this country, a military strategy to achieve victory in Southeast Asia, was attrition. Is attrition a part of the military strategy in Iraq with the vast array of complex insurgencies? Some al Qaeda, some Sunni, some Shia, some from various other sects coming from Saudi Arabia or Iran or Jordan or Hezbollah? Attrition cannot be a strategy now. Attrition doesn't work. It didn't work in Vietnam.

How do we reconcile American military strategy? We do it in a debate on this House floor. The difficulties of an insurgency, the difficulties of culture, primitive, ancient cultures sometimes that we're dealing with, the economics, the resources, the religious differences, this is a political solution that General Petraeus has said many, many times. And where does that political reconciliation, the resolution of those vast myriad of problems begin? It begins here on the House floor. It begins with Members of Congress that we see here tonight, Mr. Israel, Mr. Lampson, Mr. Dent, myself and many other Members, there's quite a few. I think Mr. Israel and I talked about the potential for 70 Members in a bipartisan working group that can bring, through dialogue, through ingenuity, through information, through intellect. Somebody once said that history is a vast early warning system. We should not complain about having hindsight. We have hindsight. If we have a dialogue, we understand history and we're going to make this work. This group here tonight can certainly lead the way.

I yield back to Mr. Israel. Thank you very much.

Could I just very quickly, one second on the point that Mr. Lampson made. That's one thing that's critical for this debate.

In World War II, 25 percent of the soldiers had what was called shell shock. That's 25 percent. In the Vietnam War era it was the same. In this war, it is the same. Of the hundreds of thousands of young men and women that travel through Iraq, not on one tour or two tours, sometimes three and four tours, the kind of traumatic stress that they

experience is horrendous. It's not only the psychological stress; it's the number of young men and women coming back with concussions. And that debate needs to take place. That resolution to that problem cannot happen with the military alone. It has to happen with a dialogue here about how we send our forces into harm's way and how much time they need for that break back home.

And the other issue with the problem of traumatic stress, when you're in combat and you experience that, it can expose itself in the individual with serious depression. And are our soldiers in Iraq being treated when they have those symptoms of depression? Are they given medication? These are a lot of questions that need to be answered that haven't been, I think, addressed clearly enough from, I use the term, because of the partisan cacophony of chaos that has happened here for such a long period of time.