[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 130 (Monday, October 11, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11298-S11299]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
U.S. POLICY IN IRAQ
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, this evening on the campus of Michigan
State University in Lansing I will be speaking on U.S. policy in Iraq.
My conclusion is that just as it took a new administration to extract
the United States from Vietnam, it will take a new administration to
extract us from Iraq in a way which leaves that country stable and
democratic. We cannot leave Iraq as we did Vietnam.
Nor can we just continue a western occupation of a Muslim nation that
is the target and magnet for violence and terror, and that has become
more destabilizing than stabilizing. We must change course in Iraq--or
else Iraq's future is not likely to be stability and democracy, and the
legacy to the world of the Iraq war is likely to be greater turmoil and
terror.
I ask unanimous consent that the remarks I will be making this
evening be included in full at this point in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
``Iraq: What Next?''
Good evening. I am delighted to be here with you to discuss
where we are and where I think we need to go in Iraq.
This is going to be a pretty sober discussion, because I
agree with what Republican Senator Chuck Hagel said recently:
``We're in deep trouble in Iraq.'' Although President Bush
continues to say that things are going well in Iraq, even
Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged recently that
the situation is ``getting worse.''
And it is. American soldiers and Marines face an ever
strengthening insurgency that puts our troops, the Iraqi
people and a stable Iraq at increasing risk. Our troops
continue to die and suffer wounds at increasing rates.
American and other contractors are being taken hostage and
brutally murdered.
The lack of security is having a profound effect on
reconstruction and on the effort to establish a stable Iraqi
government. We are paying the price for a failed strategy
that included rosy pre-war assumptions and a rush to war
without first allowing United Nations weapons inspectors to
complete their work and without first building a credible and
effective international coalition, including Muslim
countries, as President Bush's father did in the first Gulf
War. This was compounded by the failure to plan for the post-
war period and the major mistake of abolishing the Iraqi army
rather than using it to help provide security after the
cessation of major combat operations.
President Bush said recently that ``It's hard to help a
country go from tyranny to elections to peace when there are
a handful of people who are willing to kill in order to stop
the process...'' Only a handful of people willing to kill?
That's not facing reality--that's ignoring reality.
Late last month, the Washington Post, quoting figures
released by Iraq's Health Ministry and the Pentagon, reported
that attacks over the previous two weeks had killed more than
250 Iraqis and 29 U.S. military personnel. Further, a
sampling of daily reports produced for the U.S. Agency for
International Development shows that such attacks now
typically number about 70 each day, in contrast to the 40
to 50 a day during the weeks prior to the transfer of
sovereignty from the Coalition Provisional Authority to
the Iraqi Interim Government. Those reports also indicate
that the attacks are wide-spread, with a majority
occurring outside the three provinces that have been the
principal locations for insurgent violence.
The security situation has deteriorated to the point that
there are cities and towns in Iraq where the U.S. and
Coalition forces do not go. In the absence of a presence on
the ground in places like Fallujah, which has been taken over
by insurgents, the U.S. military has resorted to air power to
strike safe houses and other places where intelligence
indicates the insurgents are located. These attacks have
caused death and injuries to innocent Iraqi civilians, and an
even greater lack of support for the U.S. presence in Iraq
and for the Interim Iraqi Government which supports and
relies upon our presence. Assassinations, kidnapings, and
beheadings are becoming more frequent. The result is that
Iraqis who would like to cooperate with us are deterred from
doing so, and we are denied the intelligence that we need to
fight the insurgency.
The President may say things are going well in Iraq, but
the U.S. Intelligence Community has a different view. The
July 2004 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq reportedly
sets out three possible scenarios for Iraq. The worst case
was developments that could lead to civil war, and the best
case was that the security environment would remain tenuous.
This pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate bears out the
analysis of former president George Bush in his 1998 book A
World Transformed concerning the question of whether to march
to Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War. He wrote that ``To
occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning
the whole Arab world against us. . . It would have taken us
way beyond the imprimatur of international law bestowed by
the resolution of the Security Council. . .'' He wrote
further that doing so would also commit our soldiers to an
``urban guerilla war'' and ``plunge that part of the world
into even greater instability and destroy the credibility we
were working so hard to reestablish.''
Sound familiar?
The President recently dismissed that pessimistic July 2004
analysis of the Intelligence Community, saying ``they were
just guessing as to what the conditions might be like.''
Conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote that ``for
President Bush to publicly write off a CIA paper as just
guessing is without precedent.'' Publicly stating so might be
unprecedented, but it appears that this is not the first time
the President has actually dismissed CIA warnings. According
to the New York Times recently, ``two classified reports
prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National
Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the
director of central intelligence . . . predicted that an
American-led invasion of Iraq . . . would result in a deeply
divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict.''
The Administration disregarded that warning, insisting that
an American invasion would be welcomed by the Iraqis with
open arms. The violent bottom line is that when we attacked
Iraq, we blew the lid off the boiling Iraqi pot without a
plan to keep the contents from boiling over.
General Franks, the former Commander in Chief of U.S.
Central Command, told Senator John Warner and me that he had
been told to focus on the combat phase of the war plan and to
leave the planning for the stability phase, the aftermath, to
the Pentagon's civilian leadership. Then that leadership
failed to ensure an adequate number of troops were committed
to provide for security, prevent looting, and nip the
resulting insurgency in the bud. Back in April of 2003 at the
height of the looting in Iraq, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld
dismissed newspaper reports of chaos, violence and unrest in
Iraq by saying ``it was just Henny Penny--the sky is
falling.'' Eighteen months later, it is still falling.
These failures to adequately plan for the post-combat
stability phase and to ensure that adequate numbers of troops
were on-hand were compounded by the Administration's
disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi Army, thereby
forcing the U.S. military to begin from scratch to build a
new Iraqi security force, and throwing thousands of trained
Iraqi military men into the ranks of the unemployed and many
into the arms of the insurgency's recruiters.
It is difficult to discern a strategy that is being
followed for Iraq today. Marine Lieutenant General Jim
Conway, then Marine Corps commander in Iraq, publically
criticized the conflicting orders he received with respect to
Fallujah--first the initial order to go in and remove the
insurgents, which went against the Marine Corps' strategy
of engagement with the civilian population; and then the
subsequent order to withdraw, after the Marines had only
partly secured the city and after the loss of Marines.
Once the orders were reversed, the Marines were withdrawn
and control of the city was turned over to a local
security force which quickly lost control to the
insurgents.
The chaos in Iraq puts the Iraqi elections scheduled for
next January at great risk. The UN Special Representative for
Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, reported to the Security Council on
September 14 that the ``vicious cycle of violence'' and the
lack of security was undermining the world body's efforts to
assist in elections set for January. UN Secretary
[[Page S11299]]
General Kofi Annan told me last week that the United Nations
had supervised many elections in the past, but never one in a
war zone like Iraq. He is concerned that the lack of security
and the tight time-table will be major impediments to a
successful election.
This is compounded by the fact that the Administration has
so far been unable to convince any country to provide troops
needed to protect the UN presence in Iraq. According to
Secretary General Annan, they will be unlikely to do so and
the UN will have to depend on the United States and British
forces now in Iraq to provide that security. That will mean
about 5,000 troops being diverted from fighting the
insurgency to protecting the UN presence. Secretary General
Annan told me that an American general committed to do that.
This failure to convince any other nations to contribute to
a UN security force is a direct consequence of the
Administration's alienation of large portions of the world
community by its go-it-alone approach to the war in the first
place.
The unfortunate result is that a scant four months before
nation-wide elections in Iraq, there are only 35 UN staff
members in Iraq--far short of the 200 required to support the
U.N. staff so essential to a credible election. Just as
troubling, virtually none of the 120,000 Iraqis needed to run
the 20,000 to 30,000 polling places have been identified and
trained for the task.
In the upcoming election, seats in the 275-member National
Assembly will be allocated based upon a percentage of overall
votes received throughout Iraq. The Secretary General told us
that it is not possible to have a credible election in Iraq
if parts of the country are not able to participate because
of an on-going insurgency. Apparently Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld does not share that concern. In recent testimony
before the Senate Armed Services Committee he said, ``Let's
say you tried to have an election and you could have it in
three-quarters or four-fifths of the country. But in some
places you couldn't because the violence was too great . . .
Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an
election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not
having an election? You bet.''
Well, maybe it is not better than not having an election--
in fact, it very well might be worse. How would people in
Lansing, Detroit and Traverse City feel about the legitimacy
of a state-wide election for Governor that they couldn't vote
in? A single district election in which large numbers of
Iraqis are unable to participate is not likely to move Iraq
forward toward a stable political system but toward civil war
because it would further alienate a significant portion of
the population from the Iraqi government.
The first step in dealing with the problems in Iraq is to
face reality. If we insist things are going fine, or if we
pretend, as the President incredibly enough put it, that we
are dealing with just a ``handful of people who are willing
to kill,'' we will be less willing to search for ways to
change the negative dynamic and downward spiral which have
been unleashed in Iraq. And we will be less willing to search
for ways to motivate Iraqi factions' leaders and Islamic
countries to become more involved in and be willing to take
the risks necessary to build a democratic nation in Iraq.
Surely, unless Iraqis want a democratic nation for themselves
as much as we want it for them--unless they suppress the
violent ones inside their own communities and the terrorists
who want to prevent the election in January from happening--
our presence will continue to be more destabilizing than
stabilizing.
In a recent interview, President Musharraf of Pakistan was
asked whether the world is a safer place because of the war
in Iraq. He replied, ``No. It's more dangerous. It's not
safer, certainly not.'' President Musharraf continued, ``I
would say that [the war] has ended up bringing more trouble
to the world.'' President Musharraf concluded that the war in
Iraq has ``complicated'' the war on terror and ``has made the
job more difficult.'' The leader of a pivotal Muslim nation
and one of America's key allies in the fight against al Qaeda
has concluded that the Iraq war has made the world more
dangerous and complicated the overall war on terror.
On September 12, 2001, the day after the 9/11 attack upon
us, headlines in European newspapers proclaimed ``We are all
Americans.'' The world community united behind America in
the effort to destroy al Qaeda and remove the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan that supported it. But the
President's unilateralist policies and cocky ``bring 'em
on'' rhetoric squandered that good will and undermined
that spirit of cooperation by terminating UN inspections
and invading Iraq without any Islamic nations' support--
thereby diverting the focus from the real terrorist threat
of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The
western invasion and occupation of an Islamic country has
swelled the ranks of terrorists.
We would be compounding that strategic blunder by leaving
Iraq as an unstable, failed state dominated by Islamist
extremists and a haven and breeding ground for even more
terrorists. To succeed we must be willing to change direction
to seek an alternative third path to the two stark choices
the President offers--of staying the course or cutting and
running.
The alternative is to change our course with an
Administration that sees the reality on the ground; that is
open to new approaches and isn't locked in to a course of
action that isn't working; and that hasn't dismantled bridges
to the international community, particularly Islamic
countries, whose support we need.
President Bush is incapable of rebuilding the bridges to
the international community which he dismantled. A poll by a
Canadian company found that only 20% of the people in the
countries surveyed overseas support President Bush's
policies.
Loss of public support in other countries isn't simply a
matter of losing a popularity contest--it is a direct threat
to our security. The leaders of those countries are far less
likely to take the political risks that are entailed in
joining us in Iraq with troops or police if their publics
strongly oppose their doing so and strongly disagree with the
policies of the American administration. Listen to what the
Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Admiral Lowell
Jacoby, told the Senate Armed Services Committee about how
America is viewed in the world:
``Much of the world is increasingly apprehensive about U.S.
power and influence. Many are concerned about the expansion,
consolidation, and dominance of American values, ideals,
culture, and institutions . . . . We should consider that
these perceptions mixed with angst over perceived `U.S.
unilateralism' will give rise to significant anti-American
behavior.''
So what should we do in Iraq?
We need an Administration which can rebuild those bridges
to the international community, so we can ``de-Americanize''
this conflict and move towards a stable and democratic Iraq.
To do that, we need additional international troops,
particularly from Muslim nations, which this Administration
has proven incapable of obtaining.
We also need to train and equip Iraqi troops more quickly
and more throughly than we are currently doing. It is
particularly critical to provide these Iraqi troops far more
quickly with the equipment that will instill in them a
confidence in their abilities to defeat insurgents.
Creating a secure environment is not only a military task,
but a political one as well. We must make it clear to all
segments of Iraqi society that the U.S. has no design on
Iraqi oil or other resources and has no intention of creating
a long-term base structure or military presence in Iraq.
The reconstruction effort must be brought back on track.
According to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, ``The lack of sufficient electricity
in major cities continues to undermine public confidence,
fueling worrisome discontent in cities like Fallujah and
Mosul, which were favored under Saddam and now receive
considerably less power than in prewar days. Sewage systems
are worse that they were under Saddam, causing spillover
health and environmental problems.''
Eleven months after Congress approved the money, only 6% of
the $18.4 billion for Iraq reconstruction has been spent. And
recently the Administration asked Congress for permission to
transfer nearly $3.5 billion from Iraqi water, sewer and
electricity projects to security and electoral efforts.
Unfortunately this needs to be done, but it is another
example of how the failure to properly plan for the post-
combat stability phase and the failure to ensure the
necessary troop levels to ensure security has hampered
reconstruction and the creation of a stable Iraq.
The Republican Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee,
Senator Dick Lugar, recently blamed the mismanagement of the
whole Iraq reconstruction effort on ``incompetence in the
administration''. The focus of the reconstruction effort must
be shifted from large projects awarded to U.S. and other
foreign companies to those that will employ the greatest
number of Iraqis, giving Iraqi society at large an economic
stake in the post-Saddam Iraq that will contribute to a
politically stable state.
None of this will be easy. But we are where we are in Iraq.
Just as it took a new administration to extract the United
States from Vietnam, it will take a new administration to
extract us from Iraq in a way which leaves that country
stable and democratic. We cannot leave Iraq as we did
Vietnam.
Nor can we just continue a western occupation of a Muslim
nation that is the target and magnet for violence and terror,
and that has become more destabilizing than stabilizing. We
must change course in Iraq--or else Iraq's future is not
likely to be stability and democracy, and the legacy to the
world of the Iraq war is likely to be greater turmoil and
terror.
____________________