[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 11 (Thursday, February 12, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S685-S686]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       ADDRESSING IRAQ IN CONTEXT

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we as a nation are obviously wrestling with 
the issue of how to address the events presently occurring in the 
Middle East, specifically as they relate to Iraq. The Congress has 
considered taking up a resolution, which has been passed around and 
reviewed by many of us, but for a variety of reasons it does not appear 
that we are going to take such a resolution up during this week, and 
since we are adjourning, we will not be taking it up next week either. 
So I did want to make a few comments on this issue, because it is 
clearly the question of most significance that faces our country at 
this time.
  I do not believe that we can address the question of how we deal with 
a dictator such as Saddam Hussein in isolation. We have to look at the 
question in the context of the other nations which surround Iraq and in 
the context of the history which has led us to this point. This is 
especially true when we deal with Iraq--or any nation in that region of 
the world--because the history of that region is so convoluted and 
involves so many crosscurrents, it being, quite literally, the crossing 
point of thousands of years, of generations of individuals, of numerous 
cultures both East and West, Bagdad specifically being the center, for 
literally centuries, of commerce from the east to the west and from the 
north to the south. As a result, it was a place where many cultures 
merged.
  Therefore, when we as a nation, a new nation in the context of 
dealing with the Middle East, set ourselves down in the center of that 
part of the world, I think we have to be aware of the variety of forces 
which come to bear as a result of the historical events and prejudices 
and attitudes and cultures and religions that confront us there. I am 
not sure that we have been, really, in dealing with this issue.
  For example, let's begin at the outer reaches of the question from a 
territorial or geographic perception. Let's look at Russia. Clearly our 
capacity to deal with Iraq requires our capacity to encourage support 
amongst other nations for our position. We have had fairly limited 
success in that. In fact, you might almost call this administration's 
approach to alliance relative to Iraq as the English-speaking approach, 
because, as far as I can tell, it appears to be only English-speaking 
countries who are supporting this administration's present policies in 
an open manner.
  There are a few of the gulf states that have supported us, which is 
something we should not underestimate. But as a practical matter, I 
have noted with a great deal of sadness, actually, that the White House 
was taking great pride in the fact that yesterday it had been joined by 
Australia in support of its position. That's what they were heralding. 
We greatly appreciate Australia's support and admire them as a nation. 
But I think we also recognize that in the issue of the Middle East, it 
is not Australia that is important; it is nations such as Russia and 
our former Arab allies. I say former Arab allies because it appears 
that that is no longer the case--such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who 
are critical, and Turkey.
  But in the area of Russia, for example, this administration appears 
to think that they can go to the Soviets--to Russia, my mistake--and 
demand that Russia follow our policies in Iraq and insist on their 
support on Iraq, but at the same time this administration proposes an 
expansion of NATO. You have to recognize, if you were a Russian leader, 
you would find a certain irony in a request that was coupled in that 
terminology. Because, of course, an expansion of NATO, especially to 
Poland, is an expression that can only be viewed in Russia with some 
concern and possibly viewed by some as an outright threat.

  NATO expansion is represented to us here in the United States as 
simply: Well, let's ask these three nice nations in Eastern Europe to 
join us in our alliance. But, of course, NATO is a security issue. It 
is an alliance made for the purposes of defending nations from threat, 
military threat. It is not an economic group, as everybody has noted 
for many years. As a practical matter, the capacity to expand NATO 
means that you are essentially saying to these nations that they are 
joining, for the purposes of their own national security, against some 
threat. What is the threat in Eastern Europe? Of course, the threat in 
Eastern Europe has always been either Russia or Germany. Since Germany 
is a member of NATO and is not a threat, clearly an expansion of NATO 
is addressing the threat from Russia. Therefore, when we ask Poland 
especially to join us in NATO, we are saying to Poland that we are 
giving you security against Russia, and clearly we are implying, 
certainly indirectly if not directly, that Russia may be the threat.
  So you can understand that Russia might view a push to expand NATO at 
the same time as we are asking them to support us in Iraq as being 
inconsistent and a bit ironic. And it reflects, unfortunately, I think, 
this administration's failure to understand the linkage--and linkage is 
the right term--between working with a nation like Russia and our 
capacity to do things in the Middle East and moving forward with the 
NATO expansion at the exact same time. Yet, if you were to listen to 
the leadership of this administration, they will tell you that there is 
no relationship, they have no overlap on those two issues. Of course 
that is not true, and that is one of the reasons we are having problems 
with Russia.
  It is equally a reason that we are having problems with our former 
Arab allies. Just yesterday or the day before yesterday--I lose track 
of the calendar here when we go to Egypt--but the Arab League met in 
Cairo, and they endorsed the French and Russian proposal, which was 
essentially a restatement, to a marginal degree, of the Iraqi proposal, 
as a league. The Arab League endorsed that as a league. Why would they 
do that? Because the Arab League essentially is dominated by Egypt, 
which has been our ally and which certainly, in many ways, is a friend 
of our Nation. I am a great admirer of the Egyptian people. They have 
certainly worked hard as a nation to try to bring about a constructive 
result, or progress in the Middle East in their relationship to Israel 
ever since President Sadat and through the present leadership in Egypt.
  You wonder why the Arab League would openly endorse the French and 
Russian program? Essentially, they do it because of the situation that 
presently exists in Israel and Palestine, the fact that the peace 
process is, for all intents and purposes, dead. Yet, if you were again 
to listen to this administration, as the Senator in the chair has 
pointed out in a number of conferences that we have had, this 
administration's attitude is that there is no relationship between the 
peace process in Israel and Palestine and the question of Iraq. Of 
course, there is. They are intimately related. In fact, if we were able 
to make progress or to get back on line the process of peace between 
Israel and Palestine, we would probably relieve dramatically the 
tension in that part of the world and it would inevitably lead to 
having support from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the key allies, on the 
issue of how we address Iraq.
  So the failure of this administration to understand, again, the 
linkage between those two issues is a failure of fundamental 
proportions in their capacity to address the Iraq issue.
  The third area that this also reflects is the issue of Turkey. Turkey 
is not

[[Page S686]]

discussed a great deal in our Nation and it should be discussed more 
because Turkey is a unique and special nation in relationship to 
ourselves. Throughout the cold war, Turkey was essentially the front 
line. It was a nation which did not really ask for much, yet gave us 
its alliance and its assistance. We have truly, as a nation, and this 
administration, as an administration, has truly treated Turkey poorly. 
This goes to the issue of Cyprus and it goes to the issue of Greece. 
Yet if you were to ask this administration, what is the relationship 
between the Turkish-Greek issue and the Cyprus issue and the capacity 
to deal with Saddam Hussein, they would say that there is none, that 
there is no relationship there. That is maybe why they have abandoned 
the effort to bring to resolution that very critical issue of 
international importance. Yet we find today that Turkey, again, is 
hesitant to allow us to use its bases in order to address the Iraq 
issue.
  So, three major elements of the capacity to address the Iraq issue in 
a coordinated and effective way are tied to a variety of different 
historical and geographic and national and international 
confrontations, which this administration either, No. 1, doesn't 
appreciate or, No. 2, is actively ignoring. As a result, our capacity 
as a country to unite a coalition which can effectively address Saddam 
Hussein has been undermined.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 10 minutes?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GREGG. Most critical, of course, to this is the issue of how we 
deal with Iran and the fact that, once again, this administration has 
failed to reflect effectively on the policy dealing with that nation. 
Iran, as we recognize, has been dominated by a fundamentalist 
leadership which has viewed its purpose as promoting an aggressive 
religious philosophy internationally. It has viewed the United States 
as its enemy in this undertaking. But this fundamentalism cannot 
survive forever. It is much like when we confronted the Communist 
leadership after World War II and President Truman and President 
Eisenhower recognized that, through the process of constructive 
containment, we would be able to bring down that system of government 
because it would fall of its own weight because at some point, after a 
certain period of years, the fundamental flaws of that system and that 
philosophy would simply undermine it and decay it from within. And that 
is true also of the fundamentalist movement in Iran.
  The Muslim religion is an extremely powerful and great religion, and 
it is a religion that is based on some very wonderful precepts. But the 
fundamentalism that captured a certain element of the Muslim believers 
is, as it is practiced in Iran, inherently self-destructive. If we are 
able to contain Iran but at the same time encourage within Iran the 
more moderate elements, we will, over a period of time, see, I believe, 
a collapse of the fundamentalist energy from within and a rising of a 
state which will be responsible. But this administration has passed 
over a series of opportunities to promote that option, which has been 
unfortunate.
  If you are going to contain Iraq, then you must understand that in 
the process of containing Iraq, you must neutralize Iran as a threat to 
the region. Because if you were to eliminate Iraq as a force within 
their region, you would create a vacuum into which a fundamentalist 
Iran would step and be a threat to its neighbors of even greater 
proportions--greater proportions--than Iraq is. So, reflecting 
adequately on how we deal with Iran, and approaching Iran as part of 
the solution to how we deal with Iraq, is critical, critical to the 
capacity to take on the Iraqi issue. Yet this administration, in my 
opinion, has once again left the ball on the side of the field when it 
comes to understanding or pursuing that course of action.
  So, where does that leave us? Unfortunately, where it leaves us is 
with a 19th century dictator who has 20th century weapons of mass 
destruction, in Saddam Hussein, an individual who lives by a code which 
is horrific to the sensibilities of a civilized world. It is a code 
that follows in the course of people like Adolph Hitler and Mussolini 
and others, who sought to promote themselves in the name of some cause 
which was really just superficial to their own megalomania.
  But our capacity to address Hussein and to be able to deal with the 
situation in Iraq is fundamentally undermined by our inability, one, to 
focus on the situation with an international alliance and, two, to have 
the capacity, because we do not have an international alliance, to take 
action which will end up being definitive.
  So we find ourselves with this administration stating that we are 
building up an arms capability to make an attack on Iraq without an 
alliance supporting it with a stated objective that nobody understands, 
because Secretary Cohen has said that a military attack will not 
replace Saddam Hussein, and the President said it is not our goal to 
replace Saddam Hussein. Secretary Cohen has stated that a military 
attack will not eliminate the weapons of mass destruction, and we know 
that to be the case. So what is the result of the military attack?
  There is no clear understanding as to what it is. It will not be that 
Saddam Hussein is replaced. It will not be that the weapons of mass 
destruction are eliminated. It will not be that the alliance we had in 
the gulf war of 1991 are being reinstated. I have no idea what the 
conclusion of a military attack would be.
  I think the unintended consequences of it will be dramatic. Some may 
be positive. We may successfully eliminate some weaponry that might 
otherwise be used against our neighbors. Some may be horrific. We may 
find that Saddam Hussein uses his weaponry in some other theater or 
some other place. It may even be here in the United States. But those 
are unintended consequences, because there appears to be no intended 
consequences.
  Literally, there are no intended consequences. If the intended 
consequence is not to replace him and the intended consequence is not 
to destroy the weapons, what is the intended consequence of military 
action? I don't know what it is. Therefore, before we go forward with a 
resolution in this body--and I understand that we are not going to do 
that this week--before we go forward with a resolution in this body, I 
believe we have to bring some definition to the purpose of the process.
  I believe, first, we have to recognize and we have to retouch our 
allies and our friends and people who should be our allies and our 
friends. We have to go back to Russia and understand their concerns. We 
have to go back to Turkey and understand their concerns. We have to go 
back to Egypt and understand their concerns. We have to go to Israel 
and talk about the need to get the peace process started again and to 
return to the concepts of Rabin as versus the concepts of Netanyahu.
  More important, we, as a nation, have to know what is our purpose and 
what is our goal.
  I believe our purpose and goal should be, first, to create a united 
approach on this to bring into the effort an alliance which is broader 
and more substantive than what we presently have, something more than 
an English-speaking alliance.
  Second, it must be to remove Saddam Hussein and his government. We 
should have as our stated goal and purpose of any military action that 
we intend to have a democratic government in Iraq.
  And, third, it should be that the weapons of mass destruction are 
destroyed; not that they will survive, but that they are destroyed.
  These should be our goals, and I hope as we move down the road to 
considering the issue of what we do in Iraq and before we move forward 
with military action that we at least get some clarity of the process, 
hopefully along the lines I stated.
  I appreciate the patience of the Chair, and I especially appreciate 
the patience of the Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Santorum). The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in 
morning business for 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________