[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 8, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E311-E312]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              JEROME GROSSMAN CRITIQUES THE IRAQ ELECTION

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 8, 2006

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, for many decades, Jerome 
Grossman has been a leader in the fight for a rational, humane foreign 
policy for the United States. Alongside my predecessor in this body, 
former Congressman Robert Drinan, Jerome Grossman was one of the 
effective leaders of the opposition to the war in Vietnam. He has 
continued over his long career with undiminished energy to fight for 
the principles in which he believes and in which our country ought to 
act. On January 5, in the Wellesley Townsman, the weekly newspaper in 
the town where he lives, Mr. Grossman published an article on the 
election in Iraq. As the newspaper noted, Jerome Grossman is the 
Chairman of the Council for a Livable World, and in that capacity has 
been an insightful critic of the President's Iraq war from the earliest 
days of the Administration's initiation of this policy. In this 
article, he notes the problem of having a fully free election in a 
situation of military occupation.
  Mr. Speaker, although I greatly respect Mr. Grossman and I am one of 
many in Congress who have benefited significantly from his wisdom and 
advice over the years, I do not fully agree with the critique that he 
puts forward in this column. He is of course correct that there is not 
an autonomous government in Iraq, and it is also the case that the 
conditions in which the recent elections were held were far from ideal. 
But given all of those factors, I also believe that the elections were 
to a very significant extent an expression of the views of the Iraqi 
people.
  Unfortunately, what we have seen since that election is that those 
views fall far too heavily along sectarian lines, and the prospects for 
a genuinely democratic, functioning government coming out of this 
process is much more clouded than the President would have us believe. 
But despite this difference in emphasis between myself and Mr. Grossman 
on this particular aspect of the situation, I believe his article is a 
very useful contribution to the debate about our policy, and it is an 
important counter to the unrealistic optimism expressed by the 
Administration. I think it would be very useful for Members to read Mr. 
Grossman's viewpoint, drawing as he does on his decades of experience 
with these issues, and I ask that the article be printed here.

                   A `Free And Fair' Election in Iraq

       President Bush hailed the Dec. 15 parliamentary election in 
     Iraq as a ``landmark day in the history of liberty.'' It was 
     an election in which 11 million Iraqis voted--a 70 percent 
     turnout, which is remarkably high. But was it ``free and 
     fair?''
       It is impossible to have a ``free and fair election'' under 
     foreign military occupation, by definition. President Bush 
     himself pointed out this obvious fact at his March 16, 2005, 
     press conference on the election in Lebanon. ``Our policy is 
     this. We want there to be a thriving democracy in Lebanon. We 
     believe that there will be a thriving democracy, but only 
     if--but only if--Syria withdraws her troops completely out of 
     Lebanon, but also her secret service organizations . . . 
     There

[[Page E312]]

     needs to be a complete withdrawal of these services in order 
     for there to be a free election . . . '' Under strong U.S. 
     and United Nations pressure, Syria did remove its troops and 
     a free and fair election was held.
       The pressures on Iraqi voters were enormous. In the streets 
     were 168,000 heavily armed American soldiers, 250,000 Iraqi 
     troops and perhaps 100,000 Iraqi police. The survival value 
     of the blue stain on the index finger was apparent to all, as 
     was the voter's name at the polling place. They could be 
     insurance against being picked up on suspicion of being 
     insurgents and then languishing in Abu Graib. Or they could 
     be protection from the armed Kurdish and Shiite militias 
     roaming the cities in search of dissident Sunnis.
       In addition, leaders of the various tribal groups urged 
     their minions to vote their slates, in order to attain local 
     power for the coming struggle, widely expected once the 
     occupying Americans depart. And anyway, who will count the 
     votes?
       The United States as the occupier of Iraq has the power to 
     make elected Iraqis carry out U.S. political decisions. We 
     decided the time and place for elections, vetoed some 
     candidates, approved others and guided the writing of the 
     constitution. The U.S. Ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad--termed 
     ``The Viceroy'' around the world--virtually runs Iraq from 
     his fortified embassy with its staff of 5,000 and room for an 
     active CIA.
       Here is the real situation: Iraq has a puppet government 
     set up to keep order and to carry out American policies. This 
     is the logical and inevitable result of military conquest. 
     Any election held under such conditions--under the gun--
     cannot be called free and fair. The Iraqis are simply 
     choosing which of their number will enforce U.S. will and 
     help to crush the inevitable resistance to foreign 
     occupation.
       The Iraqis are not really governing themselves and we 
     should not pretend that they are. Authentic Iraqi democracy 
     with free and fair elections can develop only after complete 
     U.S. withdrawal.

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