[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 44 (Wednesday, March 19, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E516-E517]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                SECURING PEACE THROUGH SHARED SACRIFICE

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 19, 2003

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, as we stand on the brink of an invasion of 
Iraq, we must ask ourselves if there are better ways to secure long-
lasting peace and prosperity in the Middle East.
  I invite you to read excerpts of my remarks against an invasion of 
Iraq and in support of national service that I delivered Sunday, March 
9, 2003 at Riverside Church. I was really moved by the sermon delivered 
by the Reverend Dr. James Forbes, Jr. that morning. The reading from 
the Bible was the parable of the weeds in the wheat field. It tells how 
the weeds will be destroyed but only after the weeds and the wheat grow 
up together and the wheat is allowed to mature. It was a great analogy 
as we take a look at a world today--a world that would have us believe 
that the weeds would be Saddam Hussein and that some are saying we have 
to destroy the entire wheat field in order to get him.

                 Understanding the Power of the People

       Every minute of every day of every year that we live is 
     actually part of history. We never really perceive what it is 
     we do, how important it is, what we could have done or what 
     we didn't do, until that day is over.
       Well, I can share with you now that I was not excited about 
     that trip. I didn't intend to walk and I asked Percy why 
     didn't he walk down there if he felt so excited about this? 
     But he said no and set it up with Andrew Young and John 
     Lewis. I was running for office and he said how important it 
     would be at least for me to go down and have my picture 
     taken.
       Well, having my picture taken seemed like it made a lot of 
     sense. So I got a roundtrip ticket, and took my cashmere 
     coat, my Stingy Brim hat, my Florsheim shoes, and went down 
     there to have my picture taken.
       I had bad feet so I knew I wasn't going to march. But when 
     the rain started coming. I saw these poor farmers, 
     sharecroppers and young people just finding plastic to wrap 
     their feet in. I heard them start singing the hymns and the 
     civil rights songs. When I saw and heard all this, I knew 
     that I just could not return to the airport. So I switched my 
     shoes with someone that was coming back to New York, got his 
     sneakers (kept my cashmere coat, however) and started that 
     march from Selma to Montgomery.
       I cursed every step of the way of that march, wondering why 
     in the world was I marching with no cameras, no TV, no 
     reporters, in the darkness with a group of white Southern 
     guardsman allegedly there to protect me. But it was only 
     after that event was over that I fully recognized the power 
     of Dr. Martin Luther King and fully understood the power of 
     people who believed that they could make a difference.
       How little did I know in marching in that march that, as a 
     result, Americans who had been treated as a fraction of a man 
     would be given the power to vote in the Deep South. It was a 
     country where lives could be taken through lynchings, where 
     people could be beaten to death and segregated, and people 
     would say there's nothing that we could do about it. This 
     march, and the subsequent incidents with dogs, allowed the 
     best of America to come out--and not only turn it around, but 
     provide for a kid from Lennox Avenue to succeed the late and 
     the great Adam Clayton Powell. It allowed me to be here today 
     and say that as a result of that Voting Rights Act, we now 
     have 39 African-American men and women serving in the House 
     of Representatives. God is good.
       It means that no matter how many weeds are growing that, if 
     we are strong enough to be the wheat to provide the light, 
     there is no sense in giving up on this country. It's all that 
     we got.
       We are the country. It is not just those people who come to 
     Washington. It is us who decide just how strong we're going 
     to be or how frightened we're going to be, or show silent we 
     will be against the injustices that are taking place under 
     our flag.

                     An Unjust and Unwise Invasion

       On September the 11th, when enemies of the United States 
     struck the World Trade Center, I think all Americans put 
     aside whether they were Republican or Democrats, liberals or 
     conservatives. For the first time in our history we felt the 
     pain of hatred attacking us, and the things that we believed 
     in. For the first time in my congressional career, New York 
     City members were treated as members of Congress, and not 
     merely as members of the New York delegation. We sang, ``God 
     Bless America'' and said, under the President's leadership, 
     that wherever this threat had come from, we were prepared to 
     do whatever was necessary so that we would never feel the 
     pain the way we did then.
       However, soon the President started talking about ``the 
     axis of evil.'' He spoke about North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. 
     And somewhere along the line, it was forgotten that our 
     attackers were funded and had come from Saudi Arabia. Also 
     lost was the fact that Osama bin Laden was the person we were 
     searching for. Somehow the message got blurred. Soon, the 
     President started connecting--without facts--Osama bin Laden 
     with some force on television. And before you knew it. Saddam 
     Hussein was transformed into the link to the tragedy that 
     befell us at the Trade Center.
       Let me tell you, I have listened to President Bush 
     privately and publicly. I have heard from the CIA and the 
     FBI. And I can tell you without fear of contradiction that 
     the President of the United States, has not given one 
     scintilla of evidence to connect the actions of Saddam 
     Hussein with the tragedies that struck us here in New York 
     City, And, if Colin Powell, the CIA, and the FBI have 
     evidence that Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass 
     destruction, why in the heck didn't they give it to the U.N. 
     inspectors so they could get these weapons out?
       I want to make it abundantly clear that what I learned on 
     Lennox Avenue applies to me today. If somebody is around the 
     corner waiting to hit me in the head with a pipe, I want him 
     taken out right away. Preemptive strikes don't bother me. But 
     for this great country, without any evidence that we're in 
     imminent danger, to select a developing country that's 
     defenseless against our power, and deliver in ultimatum that 
     they must show evidence of how they disposed weapons of mass 
     destruction, or we will drop bombs on them until they're 
     sensless--3,000 high tech bombs in 48 hours--that's not the 
     great America that I'm proud to be a part of.
       An attack against Iraq would be the first time that our 
     country has ever struck another country without provocation. 
     Doing so, we will lose the moral authority to tell other 
     countries that God made us to live and work together. If 
     Pakistan and India decide that they don't trust each other, 
     if the Taiwanese and the Chinese don't trust each other, if 
     the North Koreans fear that they're going to be attacked by 
     South Korea, do they also have the right to a preemptive 
     attack? What international body could we appeal to in good 
     faith and say that they were wrong?
       They tell me that there will be little collateral damage, 
     but how much is ``little'' when you're talking about the 
     lives of people? They tell me we have the technology to 
     reduce the loss of life of Iraq's people--mothers and 
     children, innocent people. But if we have that technology to 
     determine where the innocent people are in Iraq, why couldn't 
     we use that technology to locate the weapons?

                          Let's Talk About Oil

       Why Iraq? Why now? Why the rush? At the end of the day, the 
     question has to be: Will we in New York, will we in the 
     United States, will we on this planet, feel any safer after 
     bombing Iraq senseless?
       It goes beyond Iraq or weapons of mass destruction. It has 
     to, because we know as a fact that weapons of mass 
     destruction are in North Korea. And take my word for it, 
     these people in North Korea are the meanest people in the 
     world. I know. I've dealt with them. You can't imagine people 
     starving to death in North Korea, with 40,000 American troops 
     in South Korea, being isolated by their former friends, the 
     Russians, who have collapsed, the Chinese, who look at them 
     suspiciously, the Japanese, who have had problems with them 
     historically. The only thing they got are these dangerous 
     weapons which they're selling, and we are saying that we got 
     to negotiate with them while we bomb Saddam Hussein.
       It would seem to me if we're prepared to go to the 
     international community to contain North Korea, that that is 
     the least we can do for civilization and the United Nations 
     to contain Saddam Hussein.
       But let's think about it, because we have to be practical 
     about it. There ain't no oil in North Korea.
       Now, let's talk about oil, because some of my colleagues in 
     Washington may be listening to me here, not just because I'm 
     at The Riverside Church, but because C-Span is here, and we 
     like to watch each other. So, to my colleagues that may be 
     watching, let's talk about oil. For years we have been 
     addicted and dependent on foreign oil and gasoline. 55-
     percent of the oil that we consume today comes from foreign 
     countries. We have been promising ourselves since the days of 
     sweater-wearing Jimmy Carter that we were going to do better. 
     But each year we import more and more oil from abroad.
       Any economist will tell you--and those of you that came to 
     church late may have seen some of them on TV this morning--
     that the one thing that could possibly turn this economy 
     around would be cheaper oil prices. That, if the price of oil 
     continues to rise, then what we know in our community to be a 
     recession could become a depression for us and a recession 
     for other people in this country.
       The largest reservoirs of oil are in this region, with Iraq 
     controlling most of it. But the countries in the region that 
     do have oil have joined together in order to make certain 
     that they keep the price of oil high so that they would get 
     an income. They have decided that they will control the 
     supply of oil from the region in order to get what they think 
     would be a fair price for oil.
       Now, the President of the United States has said to me 
     privately and, if you listen to him carefully, he has said it 
     publicly, that we have to have as our first mission to seize 
     the oil wells in Iraq. That we will be sending airborne 
     troops there to prevent Saddam Hussein from destroying them. 
     Once we seize those oil fields, he has said, we will bring in 
     American and European technology. To do

[[Page E517]]

     what? To develop the full potential of the production of oil 
     in this area. By doing this, he shatters the restriction on 
     the supply of oil that OPEC has put on and shatters any idea 
     that the reduction in the supply of oil would increase the 
     price of oil.
       Is the President saying this so that America would no 
     longer have to depend on Middle Eastern heads of nations for 
     higher oil prices? Is he saying this in order to get us out 
     of the recession? Is he saying this because we are so 
     dependent on foreign oil that we would want a stable supply?
       No. The President doesn't say that at all. This is what the 
     President says. We have to increase the supply of oil out of 
     Iraq so that we can get the money to restore peace and 
     harmony to the people of Iraq to build their schools and to 
     give them health care. That is what the President is saying 
     that we must do.
       The President is also saying something else. He is saying 
     that after we liberate Iraq--and, there is no indication that 
     we're going to met with kids and women with little American 
     flags waving for us--but after we liberate Iraq, that that 
     will be the beginning of bringing democracy to all of the 
     countries in the region.
       Now, I don't know that much about the Islamic faith, but I 
     hardly think they're waiting for born-again Bush to be 
     bringing his type of democracy to that area.
       If we hit Saddam Hussein, he will want to be remembered by 
     the people in the region. Knowing that they are no friends of 
     Israel in the region, it would seem to me that we're 
     jeopardizing our friends and brothers and sisters in Israel 
     from a preemptive strike by Iraq. Since they can't reach us, 
     they will reach for our best friend, Israel. Israel will be 
     forced to strike back with force--one, to show that she can 
     sustain the hostility from the region and, two, because of 
     the internal politics that exist between the hawks and the 
     doves there. You tell me how it will not be perceived as the 
     United States and Israel not having a ``holy war,'' 
     especially with our President saying he's going to bring 
     democracy to the region of the Muslim states there.
       Instead of us bringing a sense of peace and confidence, 
     we're creating an atmosphere that could be chaotic as 
     Americans go to the Middle East and Americans go abroad.

                   The Burden Must Be Carried by All

       Now, whenever a nation, a community or your home is in 
     danger, it seems to me that we all have an obligation--if 
     we've enjoyed the benefits of living in this great nation--to 
     say, ``What can we do to help?'' But there's a strange 
     atmosphere that exists in Washington, that people talk about 
     war without talking about the sacrifices of war. You don't 
     have to be in combat, you don't have to be shot, to 
     understand that not all of the people who go to Iraq are 
     coming back--that families suffer the pain of losing their 
     loved ones, and that you're going to kill people whose lives 
     you have no right to take away.
       It reminds me so much when I was in P.S. 89, where there 
     were groups of people that would say, ``Let's fight. Someone 
     said something about your mamma. Someone offended your 
     sister. Let's go fight. I'll hold your coat.'' You know.
       We got a lot of people in Washington that want to hold 
     people's coats.
       I listen to these people talking about how we should have 
     taken out Saddam Hussein a long time ago. ``We have to teach 
     these people a lesson. We have to demonstrate the power of 
     the United States. We have to force the United Nations to 
     respect us.'' But we do this by sending people into harm's 
     way.
       There has never been a war in which we have not said that, 
     at least in terms of financing it, that we're going to have 
     to pay for it through taxes. Yet this President has said, 
     through Rumsfeld, that we can have two and three wars going 
     on at the same time. We already have troops in Korea, Japan, 
     Europe and Afghanistan. We're sending troops to Colombia and 
     the Philippines. We're deploying 300,000 troops in Iraq. God 
     knows how many more it will take for the occupation of Iraq. 
     The President has asked for $90 billion to pay for the first 
     month of the invasion while advocating a $674 billion tax cut 
     for the wealthiest people in the United States.
       When you take a look at who the liberators will be, who 
     will be put in harm's way, it won't be the sons and daughters 
     of members of Congress or the President's cabinet. It won't 
     be the rich and affluent who insist that we ``take them out 
     now.'' No. It will be good Americans, patriotic Americans, 
     who evaluated the economic situation in this country, and 
     decided that the military gave them a better shake than they 
     could get in the private sector.
       And so they, like me and so many others, go into the Army. 
     When the flag goes up, they salute it because they made a 
     contract to fight--if they were called on. Don't tell me that 
     they'll be checking out who is in the foxhole to see whether 
     they were drafted or volunteered. Don't tell me that, in this 
     great country, only those who can't do better economically 
     should be forced to carry the burden of being killed in war. 
     I refuse to accept that.
       So some people have accused me of introducing legislation 
     to reinstitute the draft just to embarrass the President or 
     because I am against the war. Others say I did it to deter 
     people from talking about going to war because of concern 
     that their loved ones would be placed in harm's way.
       And I tell them, ``You're darned right, those are some of 
     the reasons why I introduced it.''
       It makes sense to me that, if we're going to determine that 
     we're going to attack a nation, if we're going to determine 
     that we're going to take a preemptive strike, if we're going 
     to determine that no matter what the United Nations says, 
     that we will go it alone, we have to find out who ``we'' are. 
     And the closer that ``we'' are to our families, the less 
     likely we are to say that we're going to war.
       We have a situation where the President believes that God 
     has given him a mandate to attack Iraq. It seems that there 
     is nothing that Saddam Hussein could ever have done to 
     prevent war. It went beyond Saddam Hussein showing where the 
     weapons are or proving that there are no weapons. This 
     President is bent on getting rid of Saddam Hussein; the goal 
     is to take him out.
       And so, as people were ridiculing me, I got a call from the 
     senior senator from South Carolina. He told me, ``Charlie, I 
     am so sick and tired of all this minority stuff.'' He said, 
     ``While it is true that minorities find themselves in the 
     service and in harm's way more than the general population, 
     while it is true that they seek safe haven from the economic 
     oppression in the military, what about some of my 
     constituents. No one ever talks about them.''
       Poor whites in rural areas face the same challenges. They 
     love the uniform and the opportunity to serve. But it doesn't 
     mean that they want to carry the full burden of fighting wars 
     all over the world. He told me about the National Guard. We 
     have 800,000 people, dedicated people, in the Guard. Many of 
     them have already served their full careers in the military, 
     and they have decided to live the rest of their lives in 
     South Carolina. So they join the reserve. They join the 
     police department. They join the fire department. They want 
     to increase their skills in the military reserves. They want 
     promotions. They want to increase their pensions. But they 
     have been called up, not once, not twice, but three times. 
     We've been pulling up the reserves, breaking up marriages, 
     breaking up families, causing people to lose homes, and pull 
     kids from schools.
       He said that it was time that the burden of fighting wars 
     be not restricted to those people who find themselves without 
     financial or political influence. So Senator Fritz Hollings 
     introduced my draft bill in the other chamber.

                 Make History--Let Your Voice Be Heard

       I didn't believe that my bad feet and me could make any 
     difference in bringing about the Voting Rights Act. 
     Sometimes, some of you may believe that the power of the 
     United States is just so overwhelming that your voices can't 
     be heard. But let me say this to you: At some time, at some 
     place, somebody may just ask you, ``When your country decided 
     that it was going to have a preemptive strike against a weak, 
     undeveloped country to prove a point, did you say anything? 
     Did you do anything? DId you demonstrate?''
       We have a responsibility as Americans not to wait for 
     things to happen, but to be involved in those happening 
     things. We are America. We are history. Your voice really 
     counts.
       The silence has been deafening. Why? No one wants to 
     challenge a President after the attack of September 11, 2001. 
     No one wants to be perceived as being unpatriotic. No one 
     wants to be perceived as if they are not supporting our brave 
     men and women that are stationed in the Middle East.
       But I tell you what. Your support of me has given me the 
     power and the incentive, not to be classified as a profile in 
     courage, but to represent your sentiment as you have 
     expressed it--at the Riverside Church, in front of the United 
     Nations, all over New York, and as we see it all over the 
     country. You just can't be blinded by your own prejudice when 
     the whole nation is saying that we will not be safer if we 
     attack Iraq.

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