[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 71 (Tuesday, May 13, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H4001-H4003]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   WINNING THE PEACE IN POST-WAR IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, this evening I would like to talk about the 
situation in Iraq and discuss whether or not we are taking the 
necessary steps to win the peace in that country. We have just seen a 
remarkable and important military victory in Iraq. We were successfully 
able to remove the threat posed by the regime of Saddam Hussein, remove 
his threat that was a direct confrontation with regional peace, and 
even world peace, due to his murderous regime and what we believe to be 
his possession of weapons of mass destruction. Our Armed Forces 
performed brilliantly. Our young men and women in uniform were brave 
and courageous, did everything that their military leaders and their 
political leaders asked them to do, and performed in an outstanding 
manner. We are proud of what they have done. All of America should be 
proud of our armed services today.
  While the military victory is ours, the military mission is not yet 
fully accomplished. While we have deposed Saddam Hussein, we have not 
yet found his weapons of mass destruction, weapons that he had in the 
early and mid-1990s. The United Nations inspectors were finding them 
then. We must find those weapons now and destroy them or find out where 
they have been taken or hidden and hold their new owners accountable 
for their safe disposal.
  But now that we have achieved this wonderful military victory, the 
question is, can we also win the peace. I think the answer right now is 
that we are not yet winning the peace in Iraq. Iraq is posing very 
significant challenges to its own people, to the coalition partners, 
and to everyone in the world interested in social justice and the 
creation of democratic countries with economic opportunity and freedom 
for people.
  In Iraq there are some major challenges today. Security remains a 
huge challenge. There has been looting, lawlessness, car-jackings, 
break-ins. Humanitarian aid is lagging. There is a great need for 
medicine, for clean water, electricity. Relief workers are reporting it 
hard to do their jobs because of the lack of their own personal safety 
in Iraq. The much-needed reconstruction has not started yet. The 
demands of religious and ethnic groups are loud and unresolved, and the 
advent of pluralism and self-government seems to be a very long way 
off.
  Two reports today help to illustrate these problems. The 
International Committee for the Red Cross, in an Iraq bulletin dated 
today, May 13, 2003, reports in Baghdad and central Iraq, under the 
general situation that security is, by far, the most important concern 
for Iraqis. Numerous security incidents happen daily in the capital: 
looting, banditry, ambushes, car-jacking, physical attacks and 
killings. Schools have reopened, which is very good news; but most 
parents are concerned about their children's safety.
  The International Committee for the Red Cross reports on the medical 
situation in Baghdad hospitals. Hospitals and health centers are open 
again, functioning at about 50 percent of their capacity; but in most 
places, the cleaning staff have not yet returned to work. The main 
needs at the medical facilities are fuel to run the electricity and to 
simply transport the staff to and from the hospitals. Salaries and 
specific medical and surgical supplies are in need. Water is being 
distributed and electricity is available in hospitals, but only for a 
few hours a day.
  In the community, reports the Red Cross, water and sanitation is a 
huge issue, again because of the lack of security. The looting of 
essential facilities is severely obstructing normal work. The Red Cross 
reports that one water plant recently visited had its generator and two 
main pumps stolen. Electricity production has not improved over the 
last 10 days, and there are huge problems in economic security as well, 
according to the Red Cross. They are delivering blankets and 
distributing food and nonfood items; market prices are much higher than 
they were before the war. Food stocks in average households could last 
for up to a month, but the average family has huge problems with a lack 
of cash income and the shortage of fuel and gas.
  Also today, Mr. Speaker, the BBC reported from Basra in a report 
dated May 13, 2003, of some of the problems they are having in that 
area. Cholera is endemic. There have been 19 cases identified in Basra 
in the last 2 days alone. Dirty water is being blamed for that 
outbreak. They have problems with a variety of gastroenteritis and even 
hepatitis. The BBC reports that doctors have to function and practice 
in ill-equipped hospitals where they have just barely enough drugs and 
intervenous fluids to treat the victims, but the victims are afraid to 
come to the hospitals because of the lack of security. Finally, in 
Basra, car-jacking is a crime described by the BBC as taking off. If 
people go out in a decent car, the chances apparently are good that 
they will be walking home after being car-jacked.

  So, Mr. Speaker, the problems are clear. And in the last several 
weeks the efforts by the United States on the ground in postconflict 
Iraq are certainly well-meaning, but they often seem poorly planned, 
reactive to events rather than anticipating events, and out of touch 
with the reality of post-Saddam Iraq. In every major area we seem to 
have problems. The major challenges are peace-keeping, humanitarian 
aid, reconstruction, and new governance. And in every area we have 
problems. We are not projecting the confidence or success that we 
should project with the quick and unanticipated rotation of American 
officials that we are seeing in and out of Iraq. Apparently, every day, 
changes are being made. Most of us were just getting used to the notion 
of Jay Garner running the American operation. Well, he is out and Paul 
Bremmer is in. And seven or eight of the American officials that came 
with Jay Garner are apparently on their way out of the country as well.
  Finally, there are obvious disturbing and harmful conflicts and 
jealousies between our own State Department and our own Department of 
Defense. We are not working from the same page.
  Now, what are we going to do about all of this? What has the Bush 
administration proposed lately to try to resolve and address all of 
these problems? Well, I believe they have made a startling proposal 
from the White House: a draft resolution asking the United Nations to 
recognize the United States of America and Great Britain as occupying 
powers in Iraq, occupying powers, for at least 1 year's duration and, 
most likely, far beyond. And the question is tonight, Do we want this 
country to be an occupying power in Iraq or anyplace else, for that 
matter?
  I think it is worth taking a look at some of the details of the draft 
proposal submitted by the United States last Friday to the United 
Nations, a proposal that the United States hopes the U.N. Security 
Council will approve after reflection and debate. It suggests that the 
United States of America and the United Kingdom, our great ally, be 
recognized as occupying powers under applicable international law. The 
resolution goes on to designate Great Britain and the United States as 
the authority and calls upon the authority to promote the welfare of 
the Iraqi people through the effective administration of the territory 
to restore conditions of security and stability so that the Iraqi 
people may freely determine their own political future.
  Now, those are worthy goals, goals that all of us can share. The 
question is, do we really want the United Nations Security Council to 
designate the United States and Great Britain as the authority 
responsible for making this happen, as occupying powers? The draft 
resolution goes on to suggest that the Secretary General work with this 
new authority, the United States and Great Britain and the people of 
Iraq, with respect to the restoration and establishment of national and 
local institutions for representative governance.
  The resolution further calls upon the Security Council to support the 
formation by the people of Iraq with the help of the authority of an 
Iraqi interim authority as a transitional administration. The 
resolution further says that

[[Page H4002]]

the U.N. Security Council should decide that funds in the Iraqi 
Assistance Fund shall be disbursed at the direction of the authority, 
that is, the direction of the United States and Great Britain as an 
occupying power. The Iraqi Assistance Fund would be set up by virtue of 
cooperation between the International Monetary Fund, the Arab Fund, the 
World Bank, and other donations. The draft resolution calls upon the 
Security Council to decide that all export sales of petroleum and 
petroleum products and all proceeds from such sales shall be deposited 
into the Iraqi Assistance Fund, that fund to be controlled by the 
United States and Great Britain as occupying powers.
  Finally, the draft resolution calls upon the U.N. Security Council to 
recognize Great Britain and the United States for the exercise of the 
responsibilities set forth in this resolution for an initial period of 
12 months from the date of adoption, to continue thereafter as 
necessary until the Security Council decides otherwise.
  So this resolution would have the United States and Great Britain 
deemed occupying powers, referred to as the authority, and given full 
responsibility to implement this resolution for at least 12 months, and 
to continue in that capacity unless the Security Council acts 
affirmatively to stop that grant of authority. Certainly this authority 
is considered by its proponents to be of duration well beyond 1 year.

                              {time}  2015

  Mr. Speaker, this House has to decide whether it is in the best 
interest of the United States to be such an occupying power, for 1 
year, for 1 month, for 10 years. Do we want that role for this country, 
or do we want to internationalize operations in Iraq, seek help from 
allies, and turn to a multilateral rather than a unilateral approach to 
the challenges in Iraq?
  The morning after our military victory, we awoke to those four 
challenges I have referred to: peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, 
reconstruction, and governance. How we face those challenges will 
determine whether we win the peace, whether we win the battle for the 
hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, whether we enhance our status in 
the Muslim world and maintain our credibility as the leader of free and 
democratic nations.
  I fear we could fail to meet those challenges if we pursue an 
aggressive, antagonistic, confrontational diplomacy that makes demands 
on our allies, but does not listen to them. We could fail if we embrace 
unilateralism and abandon our traditional reliance on multilateralism. 
And we could fail if we allow the reality or even the appearance of an 
American military colonial government in Iraq. And certainly asking the 
United Nations to designate us as an occupying power comes very close 
to that military colonial government approach.
  Mr. Speaker, I suggest eight steps that we take as a House and as a 
country to deal with these challenges:
  First, the State Department, not the Defense Department, should now 
be in charge of American policy in Iraq. It is time to turn to the 
diplomats who have a history of working with other countries to try to 
foster democracy, to try to nation-build, a term President Bush used to 
disparage, but now he is jumping in with both feet to embrace. I think 
the State Department is better suited to our needs in Iraq now that the 
military victory has been so well won by the Defense Department.
  Secondly, we should internationalize the stabilization and 
reconstruction operations as much as we can and not try to do this all 
by ourselves or with Great Britain or just with our coalition partners.
  Thirdly, American troops in the field will certainly be needed for 
some period of time to help keep the peace; and, in fact, military 
operations on a, happily, much smaller scale are still occurring, but 
we should move quickly to spread the burden of peacekeeping in Iraq, 
and I suggest we turn to NATO. NATO is a robust military alliance that 
has the ability and the military punch to take on peacekeeping in Iraq. 
NATO defeated one tyrant in Kosovo and can surely keep order in post-
Saddam Iraq.
  Fourth, while emergency relief certainly must begin with the State 
Department and the United States Agency for International Development, 
which have decades of experience of relief operations, and which have 
strong relations with nongovernmental organizations around the world, 
there is no organization with more experience in humanitarian relief 
than the United Nations. It has vast resources, great experience and 
expertise. These attributes are unparalleled, and clearly the United 
Nations needs to be involved directly as the organization that would 
lead efforts for humanitarian assistance.
  Fifthly, we must engage expert multilateral organizations including 
the United Nations, certainly the World Bank, certainly the 
International Monetary Fund, in the reconstruction of Iraq's 
infrastructure. A debt restructuring meeting is needed to help deal 
with Iraq's estimated $383 billion of foreign debt, compensation 
claims, and pending contracts.
  Sixth, we should convene a donors conference soon after the military 
victory. Funds will be needed right away for quick-start reconstruction 
programs, and we ought to ask the donor nations of the world to come 
forward quickly for funding. And, incidentally, Mr. Speaker, this would 
be a wonderful opportunity for the Arab world to step forward with its 
resources and help to rebuild Iraq as part of this international 
effort.
  Seventh, Iraqis must establish corruption-free control over their own 
oil. We need to help them establish a transparent and reformed 
industry, transparent in that it accounts for oil revenues and the 
operations of the oil companies, and an operation that would devote the 
profits to rebuilding the country itself.
  Finally, we should urge the United Nations to sponsor a conference on 
the formation and direction of a transitional Iraqi-based government. I 
do not believe it is in our best interest for the United States to be 
the primary sponsor of an effort under way to set up an interim Iraqi 
authority. We ought to bring in our allies and our friends and ask the 
United Nations to do this.
  This was done with great skill in Afghanistan, our military victory 
in Afghanistan. We built on Afghanistan's history of what is called the 
loya jirga, or the Meeting of Councils, and we, the United Nations, 
sponsored this loya jirga, and from that operation President Karzai 
emerged as a leader. And I believe the same thing could be successfully 
done in Iraq with the sponsorship of the United Nations.
  Mr. Speaker, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, among 
many others, have pointed out that we needed to take a hard look at the 
reality of Iraq as a country. As Carnegie said, ``Iraq is not a 
political blank slate to be transformed at American will into a 
democratic, secular, pluralist and Federal state. Instead, Iraq is a 
difficult country with multiple social groups and power centers with 
conflicting agendas.''
  We need to recognize that difficulty, Mr. Speaker. We need to involve 
the United Nations in our efforts. We need to build the institutions of 
democracy. It is absolutely the right long-term goal to be advocating 
for self-government and the democratic selection of self-government in 
Iraq, but before we can have successful elections, we need to develop 
the institutions of democracy. Free press. We need to establish for the 
first time in Iraq's history the notion of a free press, free to 
criticize government officials, free to speak freely. We need the 
notion of free speech in Iraq. Iraq does not have such a history, and 
no democratic elections will succeed before we establish free speech. 
That must come first.

  We need to create a civil society in Iraq. We need to establish 
justice, trained lawyers and honest judges, and a justice system that 
works successfully to redress grievances for average citizens. There is 
a rule of law vacuum in Iraq, and we must fill that vacuum before we 
can credibly hold national elections.
  We need to create economic opportunity in Iraq to help give people 
hope and give them a stake in society.
  Mr. Speaker, we have got great challenges in Iraq, and I do not mean 
to minimize those challenges, but we will do best if we call upon our 
friends, if we institutionalize and internationalize our efforts to 
bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. We should not do this in a 
unilateral way. We should do

[[Page H4003]]

it in a multinational way, and we must surely guard against being 
perceived as a colonial military power or an occupying power in Iraq.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, in Iraq and in the rest of the Middle East and 
throughout many areas in Europe, there is a great need for economic 
assistance, and I would suggest this House consider the establishment 
of a modern-day Marshall Plan, a plan modeled after our great success 
in Western Europe after World War II in which over 4 years we helped 14 
countries with $13 billion of assistance to get those allies and former 
enemies of ours in World War II back on their feet economically. That 
$13 billion in the 1940s would be the equivalent of $100 billion today. 
That is a great deal of money, but that is an amount of money over 
several budget years, and with the help of our allies around the world, 
that is certainly achievable.
  And what we can achieve with a modern-day Marshall Plan in Iraq and 
the rest of the world that has those kind of challenges is the 
establishment of not just economic opportunity where there is now 
grinding poverty, but the recognition that there is a sense of 
hopelessness among many in that part of the world, a sense that life 
cannot possibly be better for them as the future comes forward, a sense 
that many people have that things can only go downhill, and that their 
children will be born into more poverty with less opportunity and more 
hopelessness than they are currently experiencing.
  It is that sense of hopelessness that we have got a moral obligation 
to try to change, and it is in our own national security interest that 
we would do so, because if we truly want to win the war on terror, 
which we desperately want to win, and which is certainly the greatest 
challenge facing us internationally today, we have to make sure we can 
offer hope and opportunity along with the rest of the civilized world 
to those countries that have such despair and hopelessness that some 
people turn in completely irrational ways to the life of suicide bomber 
or the terrorist rather than turning to a belief in social justice and 
a pluralistic society.
  That is the goal we have for ourselves. That is the challenge we have 
now. We have an opportunity in Iraq to show that we believe in a 
multilateral approach to international challenges. We have an 
opportunity to say we believe in a pluralistic society that gives 
economic opportunity and creates social justice for people; that we 
will do so in a thoughtful way that avoids colonialism, avoids 
occupying power status, but rather turns in collaborative ways with 
allies in a multinational approach to give hope and opportunity to the 
people of Iraq and all people in the world that believe as we do in 
freedom and justice and democracy.

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