[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 115 (Wednesday, September 22, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H7407]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          WAR MEANS SACRIFICE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, as we contemplate what is happening in 
Iraq with the continued loss of life, the continued injuries, I would 
just remind my colleagues in this chamber that the only people who are 
being asked to sacrifice for this war are the soldiers and the people 
who love them. No one else is being asked to sacrifice for this war.
  We are not paying for this war. The President has decided that future 
generations should pay for this war, so we are using borrowed money, 
passing the bill on to the next generation. So the taxpayer is not 
being asked to pay for the war at the present time. Of course, future 
taxpayers will pay for it.
  The President is not sacrificing for this war. No one in this chamber 
is sacrificing for this war. No one in the Senate is sacrificing. Well, 
I think we may have two colleagues out of the 535 Members of both the 
House and the Senate who have active duty sons or daughters in the 
military, but most of us do not have anyone in our families that we 
know who are in harm's way or who have been killed or who have been 
seriously injured. Yet, we stand here in this chamber and the President 
stands and he talks in glowing terms about, we need to stay the course 
and we are totally committed.
  I wish we were totally committed. I wish the President was totally 
committed in terms of paying for this war without expecting future 
generations to pay. I wish the President was committed enough to 
continue to provide the money that our Veterans' Administration needs 
to provide adequate care for our veterans who are coming back from this 
war in desperate need of VA medical care. But no, only the soldiers and 
their loved ones are sacrificing or are being asked to sacrifice. I 
think that is very troubling.
  It is easy to make decisions when it involves someone else's child. 
Maybe the only thing that will bring common sense back to this chamber 
and to this administration is to have the burden shared by all of us so 
that all of us who have loved ones who may be subject to military 
service would be asked to serve. Would that make a difference in our 
thinking?
  I believe if the people who are so supportive of our current policies 
in Iraq so firmly believe that the direction in which we are going is 
the correct direction, I think they should be willing to see their sons 
and their daughters join the military, take up the battle, share the 
risk. And those who are not willing to have their loved ones put at 
risk should think very, very carefully about how enthusiastic they are 
about our current course of action.
  We voted in this chamber, 434 to 1, I believe, when we pursued the 
war in Afghanistan, because we all understood that was the war on 
terror.

                              {time}  2015

  It was Afghanistan and the Taliban regime and Osama bin Laden that 
attacked our country. And somehow there has been a bait and switch. We 
have taken the attack upon our country, and we have used it to go into 
Iraq.
  The President spoke for 63 minutes when he gave his acceptance speech 
at the Republican convention, and he never mentioned Osama bin Laden's 
name one time. All the talk there in New York about September 11, about 
the attack upon our country, but the man who was responsible for 
attacking our country was not even mentioned by the President. Saddam 
Hussein's name was mentioned many times, but not the one who was 
responsible.
  Tonight, somewhere on the face of God's good Earth, Osama bin Laden 
is walking free, planning the next attack upon our country. And our 
resources were diverted from Iraq and from the Taliban and stabilizing 
Afghanistan to Iraq. We need to rethink our policies.

                          ____________________