[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 7 (Monday, January 31, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S626-S628]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ELECTIONS IN IRAQ

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, some of my colleagues are suggesting 
that as a result of yesterday's election in Iraq, the United States 
needs an exit strategy, that we should begin to withdraw troops, and 
that we should set a timetable for bringing the rest of our military 
men and women home. That is a very appealing thought.

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  I can think of about 3,000 families in Tennessee of the 278th Cavalry 
of the National Guard whose husbands and wives and sons and daughters 
have interrupted their lives for up to 18 months. And they are now in 
northern Iraq. Their families would like to have them home. I can think 
of families around Fort Campbell and Nashville. They would like to have 
their loved ones home. I think of the $80 billion the President is 
going to ask us to spend, and I can think of 80 billion ways to spend 
it on education and improving our competitiveness. It is a very 
appealing thought--to bring the troops home.
  But we don't need an exit strategy in Iraq. The United States needs a 
success strategy in Iraq. If we are to succeed in Iraq, I am afraid 
that means those troops are likely to have to stay there for a while 
longer.
  Yesterday, the Iraqis did for themselves what we haven't been able to 
do for them in 22 months: they isolated the terrorists. The count was 
about 7 million or 8 million to 5,000 or 10,000--voting Iraqis versus 
terrorists.
  In October of 2003, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote a memorandum 
which was widely circulated around Washington. He said:

       It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in 
     Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a 
     long, hard slog.

  Concerning the overall war on terror, Secretary Rumsfeld went on to 
ask:

       Is our current situation such that ``the harder we work the 
     behinder we get?''

  The Rumsfeld memorandum leaked, and some accused the Secretary of not 
having all the answers. I am glad we had a Secretary who is willing to 
ask the questions that he didn't know the answers to. He was worried 
that our actions in Iraq and being successful in the war were, in the 
postwar time, inflaming Arab opinion in such a way that we were 
creating more terrorists than we were destroying.
  I know a lot of wise people around Washington, DC, who have been 
thinking about Secretary Rumsfeld's question since October of 2003. I 
have yet to hear one of them come up with a very good answer to his 
question.
  How do we in the postwar conflict keep from creating more terrorists 
than we are destroying? The answers to the question come from all 
sides.
  We in Congress have discussed, for example, more public relations, 
more television, more radio programming, more cultural exchanges. Those 
are all good ideas. They are important parts of effective public 
diplomacy. I hope we do them. But yesterday we witnessed a much better 
answer to Secretary Rumsfeld's question: elections; elections giving 
people a voice and a stake in the future of their own country. Those 
elections yesterday isolated the terrorists. That was the most 
important lesson of yesterday. It was 7 million or 8 million for 
democracy and 5,000 or 10,000 for the terrorists. It wasn't the 
Americans who were in the 7 or 8 million; it was the Iraqis. It was the 
Iraqis.
  We discovered that we know how to give people their freedom. We have 
a military strong enough to do that virtually anywhere in the world. We 
did it in Iraq, and with stunning success, in 3 weeks toppling Saddam 
Hussein's government. We can give most countries their freedom in a few 
weeks or a few months, but we are being reminded in Iraq that building 
a democracy takes a long time. And people have to build a democracy for 
themselves. We can't do it for them.
  We should know that from our own history. The Declaration of 
Independence was written in 1776. Our Constitution was signed in 1787. 
But women didn't receive the right to vote in America until 1920. It 
took 133 years. Blacks were enslaved and counted as three-fifths of a 
person by our Constitution until our Civil War, and they didn't receive 
full voting rights until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 180 years after 
the signing of our Constitution. Even today, the United States of 
America is still a work in progress. We are the oldest democracy in the 
world. There is no such thing as an instant democracy. We, of all 
democracies, should understand that.
  We also could learn some lessons from our role in nation building in 
the world. We spent 8 years in Germany and Japan. We are still in 
Bosnia and Kosovo.
  According to this book, ``America's Role in Nation Building: From 
Germany to Iraq,'' a RAND study by Ambassador James Dobbins and others, 
``There is no quick route to nation building. Five years seems to be 
the minimum required to enforce an enduring transition to democracy.''
  This is a book about nation building in Germany to Afghanistan with 
lessons for Iraq. We have plenty of experience in nation building since 
World War II, and the lessons from those experiences are documented in 
this book and many other places: Any time we decide to engage in nation 
building, it is going to take more troops, more time, more money, and 
certainly more sacrifice than we at first thought when we invaded Iraq.

  That doesn't mean we should reconsider our presence in Iraq. We are 
there. We need to finish what we started. We need to get the job done. 
It does suggest that in the future we should think carefully about the 
number of troops, the amount of time, the amount of money, and the 
amount of sacrifice it takes when we engage in nation building.
  I believe the Bush administration as well as the Congress has some 
responsibilities going forward. First, as far as the administration 
goes, I would like to see the administration be more specific about its 
success strategy in Iraq. I mentioned last week in the Senate the 
Washington Post op-ed by two former Secretaries of State, Henry 
Kissinger and George Shultz. They argue, eloquently and in detail, that 
we should not set, as some of my colleagues have suggested, a specific 
timetable for pulling out our troops. We do not need an exit strategy. 
But they went further than the administration has gone so far in 
outlining the framework for a success strategy. These are the kinds of 
questions they ask in their framework.
  Are we waging ``one war'' in which political and military efforts are 
mutually reinforcing? Are the institutions we are helping to build 
sufficiently coordinated? Is our strategic goal to achieve complete 
security in at least some key towns and major communications routes as 
opposed to 100 percent in every town and 100 percent security on every 
communication route? Do we have a policy for eliminating sanctuaries in 
neighboring territories, such as Syria and Iran? Are we designing a 
policy that could produce results for the people and prevent civil 
strife for control of the state and its oil revenue? Are we maintaining 
public support of the United States? Are we gaining international 
understanding?
  They went on to conclude:

       An exit strategy based on performance, not artificial time 
     limits, will judge progress by the ability to produce 
     positive answers to these questions.

  That is the administration's responsibility at this stage. We have a 
new Secretary. We have a new election. We are being asked to 
appropriate 80 billion new dollars. I would like to hear a more 
specific success strategy.
  We have our own responsibilities in the Congress. Our responsibility, 
now that we have authorized this war--we authorized it with 77 votes in 
this Chamber. Now that we have authorized this war, we have the 
responsibility to have the stomach to see it through to the end and not 
begin talking about premature exit strategies before we finish what we 
started.
  The focus should not be on what day in July or August we will get 
out. Instead, we should be asking, for example, what are we willing to 
do to help provide the security needed so that elections in October and 
December are successful?
  Yesterday's election was the first election. It was the first strong 
signal from the Iraqis that by a vote of 7 or 8 million to 5,000 or 
10,000, they prefer democracy to terrorism. It did something that we 
could not do ourselves in 22 months: It isolated the terrorists in 
public opinion. There will be another election in October. There will 
be another election in December. And we should be talking about what we 
can do to help those elections be successful. Let's send another 
message isolating terrorists--not the United States, but the Iraqis. We 
will give them that opportunity two more times.
  What can we do to train Iraqis to take over their own defense and to 
establish a constitutional government? What can we do to encourage 
Iraqi neighbors to allow a success strategy

[[Page S628]]

to continue? Those are the questions we should be asking, and the 
answers to those questions will produce a success strategy.
  At some point, one thing we can do to isolate terrorists in the 
Middle East is to leave Iraq. Then Iraqis are defending Iraq. All of us 
want that as soon as possible. Iraqis want that as soon as possible. 
But to abandon Iraq before we have implemented a success strategy is 
abandoning a country we have led to risk its lives in order to vote, 
and abandoning the brave Americans and those from other countries who 
have fought, bled, and died to give Iraqis their freedom and to give 
them an opportunity to govern themselves.
  In 1994, I met a man named Larry Joyce in Chicago. He worked for the 
American Heart Association. Larry Joyce had been in Vietnam. He was 
about my age. He sought me out because he wanted anyone who might be in 
public life to learn the lessons he and his family had learned in 
Somalia. Larry Joyce's son, Casey Joyce, had been killed in Somalia. 
The lesson Larry Joyce wanted me to know and wanted every Member of 
this Senate to know and every policymaker to know was this: Before we 
engage in a military mission, we should do three things: One, we should 
have a specific mission; two, we should have more than sufficient force 
to complete the job; and he said, three, most importantly, we should 
have the stomach to see the mission through all the way to the end.
  His greatest complaint about the American Government in Somalia was 
not the mission, not the force, but that we did not have the stomach to 
see all the way through to the end the mission in which his son was 
killed.
  Larry Joyce himself has now died, but I remember that conversation. I 
think of his son. When I think about this war and committing American 
men and women to Iraq or any other place in the world, I think about 
seeing that mission all the way through to the end.
  That is why I react badly to the talk of my colleagues who suggest an 
exit strategy based on some artificial date. Leaving Iraq prematurely 
would undermine every objective we have in the war on terror and in the 
Middle East. I am disappointed to hear talk of an exit approach. I 
would like to hear more in this Chamber and more from the 
administration and more in this country about a success strategy in 
Iraq.
  Yesterday's election was a thrilling event. For the first time in 22 
months it answered Secretary Rumsfeld's question of October 2003, How 
do we isolate the terrorists? If we do not do it, the Iraqi people do 
it, 7 or 8 million of them, versus 5,000 to 10,000 terrorists. They 
isolated the terrorists.
  We should not be talking about leaving Iraq before we are finished. 
We should be talking today about those October elections, about those 
December elections, and what we can do in our country and in Iraq to 
help the Iraqis have the opportunity to build a constitutional 
government and to be in a position in October and December to once 
again send a message to the world that they prefer democracy to 
terrorism and that they, the Iraqis, are isolating the terrorists by a 
vote of millions of Iraqis to a few thousand terrorists.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday freedom took a giant step 
forward.
  History will rank January 30, 2005, alongside November 9, 1989, the 
day the Berlin Wall fell, as a day when man's innate desire to be free 
broke the shackles of tyranny.
  Millions of Iraqis stood up to the terrorists and told them: We 
reject your credo of violence. We reject your claim that Iraq cannot 
join the democratic family of nations. We reject your belief that 
Iraqis deserve nothing more than to live in fear of oppression.
  One Iraqi voter, a businessman named Samir Sabih, put it better than 
any of us could. Of yesterday he said:

       Fear has no place in our hearts anymore. We became free.

  The Iraqi elections for the National Assembly must be heralded as a 
major success. Turnout has been reported as being anywhere from 60 to 
70 percent, defying all expectations. Thanks to the dedication and 
bravery of our troops, and the Iraqi police that we have trained, there 
was much less violence than expected. We were all moved by the courage 
of so many ordinary Iraqi citizens, each one risking their life to 
proudly display a purple ink-stained finger.
  While we do not yet know the results of the election, we can name the 
winners--the people of Iraq--for enthusiastically embracing democracy; 
the nations of the Middle East, that can now look to Iraq as a model; 
and the people of every country, who now live in a world more favored 
toward freedom.
  Some cynics have missed the point of this election. For instance, 
some say the vote is illegitimate if not enough Sunnis chose to 
participate. But by all reports, the Shiite majority will not let this 
stop Sunnis from having a voice. There will be a place for all 
religions and ethnicities in the government. Interim Prime Minister 
Iyad Allawi, himself a Shiite, has said:

       Let us work together toward a bright future--Sunnis, 
     Shiites, Muslims and Christians, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen.

  I also heard a news reporter ask yesterday whether the election 
results were good for President Bush. In case this reporter missed it, 
President Bush was not on the ballot. Yesterday's historic achievement 
was not about which party can collect political points. It was about 
the march of freedom.
  There is still a lot of hard work ahead before Iraq becomes a stable 
democracy. America must stay committed. The Iraqis are counting on us 
to help them in their quest for freedom, and we cannot, and we will 
not, let them down. We must do what it takes for our security's sake, 
so that Iraq never again becomes a cauldron of terrorism.
  Many Americans and Iraqis risked everything to help realize the first 
free vote in Iraq since 1953. Some gave their lives. We should offer 
our thanks and our prayers to those who valiantly sacrificed. We can 
honor their deeds by completing our task in Iraq.
  Amidst the joy and celebrations yesterday, one Iraqi woman actually 
gave birth at her polling station. She gave birth at her polling 
station. Despite her pregnancy, she was determined that nothing would 
stop her from casting her ballot. She named the child after the word 
``election'' in her native language.
  Mindful of the hard work still ahead, I hope and believe this baby 
will grow up never knowing tyranny and oppression, never living under 
totalitarian fear, never seeing a family member spirited away to be 
murdered.
  I hope and believe this child will grow up in a free society, with 
the power to make his own destiny. Let's finish the job and ensure that 
is so.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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