[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 81 (Wednesday, June 21, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H4377-H4379]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               IRAQ PLAN

  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of 
order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from 
Washington is recognized for 5 minutes.
  There was no objection.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, for over a year, the American people have 
asked in increasing numbers for the Congress and the President to work 
on a real plan for Iraq. As we all know, the American people have been 
increasingly frustrated by the lack of progress both there and here.
  For one thing, the battle lines have grown beyond Iraq's borders. The 
continuing U.S. presence in Iraq has inflamed tensions throughout the 
Arab world, and hostile sentiment is growing. That makes it harder to 
deal effectively with Iran and harder to achieve stability and security 
for Israel and the Palestinian people. In other words, the

[[Page H4378]]

casualties in the Iraq war are spreading to U.S. strategic and 
diplomatic interests throughout the Middle East.
  The price we pay continues to escalate, and so does the violence. 
Iraq has become an unlimited front without battle lines and without a 
visible enemy. That is the Iraq war our soldiers face every single day.
  On any given day, the level of violence may be more or less than the 
day before, but no one doubts that the United States' soldiers patrol 
and rest a heartbeat away from certain violence and potential death. 
They live the Iraq war 24/7 and patrol an unlimited front in an open-
ended commitment of U.S. forces.
  While the President waits for the Iraqi clerics to declare themselves 
ready to take up government, some in the Iraqi Government itself are 
demanding to know when the U.S. forces will leave. Now, that might 
sound ungrateful after all the sacrifice by our soldiers and all the 
money we have spent. On the other hand, it may be the clearest sign yet 
that the Iraqi leaders are emerging who recognize that Iraq will never 
stand alone until it is on its own.
  They are not alone in this desire. It is what the American people 
want. It is what they want to see, an end to the unlimited sacrifice by 
U.S. soldiers, unlimited expenditures by the U.S. Government, and 
unlimited battle lines surrounding our troops.
  Despite the nature of last week's debate, the American people finally 
have begun to see this House take a step forward, with 153 Members 
voting in favor of the Murtha plan for strategic redeployment. It 
begins to address the military issues associated with projecting U.S. 
power in a region without keeping U.S. forces in the middle of Iraqi 
sectarian violence. The Murtha military option does something else. It 
offers a realistic opportunity for diplomacy to take root in ways both 
familiar and effective in the region.
  For some time I have urged the involvement of the United Nations as a 
first step to diffuse the focus on hostility directed towards the 
United States. The more the U.S. is seen as directing people, 
government, and events in Iraq, the more we prolong the violence. That 
has been a familiar theme in the Middle East and one that I heard 
repeatedly last August when I met with civic and business leaders at a 
prestigious Arab leadership forum in Amman, Jordan.
  Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as National Security Adviser under 
President Carter, has outlined a vision for Iraq that is a thoughtful 
roadmap for peace. The nations of the Middle East, including Iraq, have 
relied for centuries on a gathering of regional leaders to resolve 
conflicts. It is time to establish a way for that historical process to 
occur.
  Adopting the Murtha plan is the first step. U.N. leadership is 
second, because it sets the stage for the nations to become involved 
without military forces and without the balance tipping to any one 
ideology, including some we absolutely do not support.
  Finally, the roadmap leads to a regional conference where those 
closest to the problem have the most to gain and/or lose in solving it.
  Now, the role of the United States at this point would be a role the 
United States can play better than any other nation in the world. We 
can help broker peace from the sidelines instead of fighting the war on 
the front lines. U.S. diplomacy has accomplished miracles over the 
years. Israel today is better off than it was before President Carter 
called the parties to Camp David. It is time we make a similar 
commitment to a peace process in Iraq.
  Let the Murtha plan be the foundation block on the road to peace in 
Iraq. One hundred fifty-three Members of the House voted to support 
what the American people believe: We can protect the American interests 
without automatically ordering our soldiers into combat. We can project 
American military might without occupying a country.
  We have a realistic plan for Iraq and a growing desire to see it 
implemented. It may take an election to start the real discussion about 
Iraq, but the American people are ready, willing, and determined to 
have it. The election is coming.

                   Brzezinski's Iraq Plan Makes Sense

       Former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski 
     suggests that the U.S. could leave Iraq now and create a 
     better and stronger situation.
       His simple four-point proposal is (essentially):
       1. Washington should quietly ask Iraqi leaders to publicly 
     ask the US to leave, rather than announce arbitrarily a date 
     for the departure. (The catch--If we had any diplomats left 
     in this administration, they could call Ali Sistani and the 
     Kurdish leaders and the top Sunni leaders and ask them to 
     agree to this easily--but the Dubya-Cheney administration's 
     diplomacy quotient is zero!)
       2. After such a public request, the US and Iraqi 
     governments would jointly consult on a date for ending the 
     occupation to allow a complete and orderly disengagement.
       3. After this, the Iraqi government--not the US--should 
     then also call for a regional conference of Muslim states, 
     some immediately adjoining Iraq, others more distant, to help 
     consolidate internal stability.
       4. On leaving, the US should convene a donors' conference 
     of Western states, Japan, China and others with an interest 
     in Iraq's future stability to help with the restoration of 
     the Iraqi economy.
                                  ____


                             Lowered Vision

                        (By Zbigniew Brzezinski)

       America's Iraq policy requires a fundamental strategic 
     reappraisal. The present policy--justified by falsehoods, 
     pursued with unilateral arrogance, blinded by self-delusion, 
     and stained by sadistic excesses--cannot be corrected with a 
     few hasty palliatives. The remedy must be international in 
     character; political, rather than military, in substance; and 
     regional, rather than simply Iraqi, in scope.
       Rectifying the increasingly messy Iraqi adventure requires 
     understanding its root: the extremist foreign policy pursued 
     by this administration. Its rhetoric has been demagogic, 
     especially at the very top. Its strategic content has been 
     manipulated by officials preoccupied more with reshaping the 
     security landscape of the Middle East than with maintaining 
     America's ability to lead globally. Domestic support for its 
     policies was mobilized by the deliberate exploitation, as 
     well as stimulation, of fear among the electorate. The Iraq 
     war is not only an outgrowth of this flawed approach to 
     foreign policy, but also its symbol.
       Unlike the 1991 war against Iraq, for which more than 80 
     percent of the cost was borne by America's allies, this time 
     American taxpayers must foot the bill, which is already 
     approaching $200 billion. The number of Americans dead and 
     wounded is in the thousands and climbing, and the number of 
     innocent Iraqis killed is considerably higher. America's 
     relationship with Europe--which is integral to global 
     stability and to the protection of U.S. interests--has been 
     badly strained. America's credibility has been tarnished 
     among its traditional friends, its prestige has plummeted 
     worldwide, and global hostility toward the United States has 
     reached a historical high.
       Most immediately dangerous, the war has focused Arab hatred 
     on the United States. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is now seen 
     by most Arabs as a mirror image ofIsrae1's repression of the 
     Palestinians. The Bush administration's unqualified support 
     for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's brutal treatment of the 
     Palestinians has created a political linkage between the war 
     in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is evident 
     to almost everyone in the world except the current White 
     House.
       The initiatives President Bush took this week point in the 
     right direction, but they are too late in coming and involve 
     too little change in substance. The president now accepts 
     implicitly what top-level administration officials explicitly 
     rejected when I spoke with them just a few months ago: the 
     need for a U.N. umbrella over the U.S. grant of even limited 
     sovereignty to the Iraqi government. The administration, 
     however, still refuses to bite the bullet and make difficult 
     decisions on the role and duration of the U.S. military 
     presence in Iraq or on the larger dilemmas of regional peace 
     in the Middle East.
       The administration has yet to confront squarely the fact 
     that the deteriorating situation both in Iraq and in the 
     region will not improve without a politically comprehensive 
     and coldly realistic revision of current policies that 
     addresses four key points: (1) The transfer of 
     ``sovereignty'' should increase, rather than discredit, the 
     legitimacy of the emerging Iraqi government, and hence it 
     should issue from the United Nations, not the United States; 
     (2) Without a fixed and early date for U.S. troop withdrawal, 
     the occupation will become an object of intensified Iraqi 
     hostility; (3) The Iraqi government should reflect political 
     reality, not doctrinaire American delusions; and (4) Without 
     significant progress toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace, 
     post-occupation Iraq will be both anti-American and anti-
     Israel.
       First, the transfer of nominal sovereignty to a few chosen 
     Iraqis in a still-occupied country will brand any so-called 
     ``sovereign'' Iraqi authority as treasonous. A grant of 
     ``sovereignty'' by the United States to the Iraqis--while an 
     American proconsul backed by an occupation army remains 
     ensconced in a fortress in the very heart of the Iraqi 
     capital--will have no political legitimacy. The president's 
     assertion (repeated more than once in his speech on Monday 
     night) that such a transfer will bestow ``full sovereignty'' 
     on Iraq is Orwellian artifice.
       The urgent need is to subordinate, as soon as possible, the 
     U.S. occupation--which is

[[Page H4379]]

     rapidly alienating the Iraqis--to the visible presence of the 
     United Nations, headed by a high commissioner to whom 
     effective authority should then be transferred. A genuinely 
     empowered U.N. high commissioner could, in turn, 
     progressively yield genuine sovereignty to the Iraqis with 
     much greater prospects of gaining Iraqi public support for 
     the interim government.
       The authority of any such high commissioner should extend 
     to the security sphere. The American military commanders in 
     Iraq should retain full discretion to respond to attacks upon 
     U.S. forces in the manner they deem necessary, but any 
     offensive operations they--or other coalition forces--conduct 
     should require explicit authorization from the high 
     commissioner, perhaps in consultation with the Iraqi leaders. 
     That change in command and control would automatically 
     transform the character of the U.S. presence in Iraq from a 
     military occupation to internationally supervised 
     peacekeeping. The U.N. resolution the Bush administration 
     proposed Monday makes token gestures to that end, but it does 
     not fundamentally alter the continued and overt supremacy of 
     the United States in Iraq.
       Second, the longer the U.S. military presence lasts, the 
     more likely it is that Iraqi resistance will intensify. It 
     is, therefore, in America's interest to credibly convey U.S. 
     determination to let Iraqis manage (however imperfectly) 
     their own security. Setting a reasonable deadline for the 
     departure of U.S. troops--far enough in the future not to 
     look like a pell-mell withdrawal but soon enough to 
     concentrate Iraqi minds on the need for self-sufficiency--
     could take practical advantage of the fact that the 
     countrywide situation on the ground is currently not quite as 
     bad militarily as necessarily selective TV images suggest.
       April 2005--two years after the occupation began--might be 
     the appropriate target for terminating the U.S. military 
     presence. A publicly known date for the departure of U.S. 
     troops would refute suspicions that the United States harbors 
     imperialist designs on Iraq and its oil, thereby diluting 
     anti-American resentments both in Iraq and the region at 
     large. Only a firm deadline for military withdrawal will 
     convince the Iraqis that we truly intend to leave. 
     Conversely, failure to set a date will encourage Iraqi 
     politicians to compete in calling for early U.S. departure.
       Admittedly, there is a risk that a U.S. withdrawal will be 
     followed by intensified instability, but such instability 
     would harm U.S. global interests less than continued (and 
     perhaps rising) resistance to a seemingly indefinite U.S. 
     occupation--which, in any case, has not suppressed low-level 
     but widespread crime, violence, and terrorism. That 
     resistance could take the form of intensified urban warfare, 
     such as that waged five decades ago by the Algerians against 
     the French. The United States could doubtless crush such an 
     insurgency with an intensified military effort, but the 
     political costs of such escalation--massive civilian 
     casualties, pervasive destruction, and the inevitable 
     exacerbation of national, cultural, and religious 
     indignities--would be colossal.
       The United States should consult with the principal members 
     of its military coalition about an appropriate deadline. A 
     set date of April 2005 could force other states, notably our 
     European allies, to focus on the need for a wider and more 
     ambitious effort to help the Iraqis stabilize and reconstruct 
     their country. The militarily significant members of the 
     coalition (those with 1,000 or more troops in Iraq) are Great 
     Britain, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, and the Netherlands. Their 
     views should be solicited, if for no other reason than 
     because the publics in these countries are increasingly 
     hostile to continued participation in Iraq's occupation, 
     while some of the officers commanding their contingents in 
     Iraq have been quite critical of heavy-handed U.S. military 
     tactics.
       Third, the internationalization of the supreme political 
     authority in Iraq and the setting of a date for U.S. 
     withdrawal will require a redefinition of the oft-proclaimed 
     (but largely illusory) goal of transforming Iraq into a 
     democracy. Democracy cannot be implanted by foreign bayonets. 
     It must be nurtured patiently, with respect for the political 
     dignity of those involved. An assertive and occasionally 
     trigger-happy occupation is no school of democracy. 
     Humiliation and compulsion breed hatred, as the Israelis are 
     learning in the course of their prolonged domination over the 
     Palestinians.
       Post-occupation Iraq will not be a democracy. The most that 
     can be practically sought is a federal structure, based on 
     traditional, often tribal, sources of authority within the 
     three major communities that form the Iraqi state: the Shia, 
     the Sunnis, and the Kurds. It would be unwise, however, to 
     demarcate these communities into three territorially defined 
     regions, for that would almost certainly produce intense 
     border conflicts among them. Until the dust settles from 
     Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and the U.S. military 
     intervention, it would be wiser to rely on the traditional 
     arrangements within the more numerous existing provinces--a 
     strategy that could promote political compromise across 
     sectarian lines. The result would likely be a somewhat 
     Islamic Iraqi national government that roughly reflected the 
     country's demographic, religious, and ethnic realities.
       Fourth, but far from least, the United States must 
     recognize that success in Iraq depends on significant 
     parallel progress toward peace between the Israelis and 
     Palestinians. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the single 
     most combustible and galvanizing issue in the Arab world. If 
     the United States disengages from Iraq before making 
     significant headway toward settling that dispute, it could 
     face a sovereign Iraqi government that is militantly hostile 
     to both Israel and the United States.
       Therefore, the United States--if it is to gain any 
     international (and especially European) support for remedying 
     its Middle Eastern dilemmas--will have to clarify its stand 
     on the eventual shape of an Israeli-Palestinian peace 
     settlement. It should by now be clear that the conflict will 
     never be ended by the two parties on their own. U.S. 
     unwillingness to define, even in broad terms, the 
     fundamentals of a peaceful outcome abandons those Israelis 
     and Palestinians who genuinely desire peace to the mercies of 
     their extremist leaders. Furthermore, endorsing Ariel 
     Sharon's goals but ignoring the Palestinian side of any 
     compromise is delaying, rather than accelerating, the peace 
     process--while compounding the suffering on both sides.
       To mobilize those Israelis and Palestinians who seek peace, 
     and to convince the Middle East that U.S. occupation of Iraq 
     is not simply a conspiratorial extension of Israeli 
     domination of the West Bank, the United States should more 
     explicitly state its position regarding the six key issues 
     that a final Israeli-Palestinian peace will have to resolve: 
     not only (as Israel demands) that there can be no right of 
     return for Palestinian refugees, and that the 1967 lines 
     cannot automatically become the final frontier, but also that 
     there will have to be equitable territorial compensation for 
     any Israeli expansion into the West Bank; that settlements 
     not proximate to the 1967 line will have to be vacated; that 
     Jerusalem as a united city will have to be shared as two 
     capitals; and that Palestine will be a demilitarized state, 
     perhaps with some NATO military presence to enhance the 
     durability of the peace settlement.
       A fundamental course correction is urgently needed if the 
     Middle East is to be transformed for the better. Slogans 
     about ``staying the course'' are a prescription for inflaming 
     the region while polarizing the United States and undermining 
     U.S. global leadership. A bold change of course--given the 
     gravity of the situation confronting the Iraqis, Israelis, 
     and Arabs more generally, as well as concerned Europeans--
     could still snatch success from the tightening jaws of 
     failure. But there is little time left.

                          ____________________