[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 107 (Tuesday, September 5, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8918-S8920]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONFRONTING TERRORISM
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I was delighted to hear my friend and our
colleague from Delaware speak a few moments ago. I like and admire him
a great deal. I take him at his word when he says we ought to work more
closely together in a bipartisan spirit to solve the Nation's problems.
While I have said how much I have admired and respected him, I
disagree with him. That is what we are certainly at liberty to do in
the Senate. I hope we do not degenerate into disagreements being
personal or that disagreements, particularly when it comes to security
matters, cast aspersions on one's patriotism.
I certainly do not doubt the patriotism of those who disagree with
our current policy in the global war on terror, but there are some
important reasons why their policies would lead us down a path--
assuming they have a policy or a plan--dangerous to this country's
security.
It is imperative for Members of the Senate, those who have been
entrusted with this sacred responsibility to represent the American
people, the people of my State of Texas, all 23 million, it is
imperative to explain to the American people the threat that confronts
our Nation today from a national security perspective and the
consequences of our failing to deal with that threat in a way that will
be likely to accomplish peace and stability in troubled regions of the
world such as the Middle East.
I fear the big disagreement between some of my colleagues and I on
this issue has to do with a different perception of the threat and
perhaps a different perception of what the consequences would be for
failing to deal with that threat, so I will talk about that for a
moment.
Contrary to what some of our colleagues have said, this threat that
our Nation confronts is not limited to Iraq. It is not limited to
Afghanistan. Indeed, some have spoken about the need to bring our
troops home from Iraq, as if, if we did so, all of our problems would
go away and the threat with which our Nation is confronted would simply
evaporate. That is simply wishful thinking.
Indeed, some have said this is not a war at all, this is more of a
police action; this is something that is certainly not like World War
II, when we knew who the enemy was and we knew the threat, or at least
after a while we finally learned what the threat was to civilization as
we know it.
This war is not limited to Iraq. So if we were to leave Iraq, the war
would not be over but merely take place in a different location--
unfortunately, right back in the United States.
The threat is that of those who believe in an extreme version of one
of the world's great religions and who believe this extremism--some
have called it Islamic fascism--this hijacking of one of the world's
great religions has justified in their minds the killing of innocent
men, women, and children and the establishment ultimately of a
theocratic or religious State. It does not respect individual rights.
It does not respect the right to worship according to the dictates of
your own conscience. It certainly does not recognize freedom of speech
and freedom of expression and certainly does not recognize the rights
of women as equal members of society.
The important point I make is that some of our colleagues on the
other side of the aisle who doubt we are at war, who doubt the global
nature of the war, and who say if we were merely to bring our troops
home from Iraq the threat would evaporate, one of the mistakes they
make is they fail to perceive when this war started.
If you were to ask, I bet many of them would say the war started on
September 11, 2001. However, the war had long been raging against
America before September 11, 2001; America had simply failed to realize
it. One useful date for identifying when the start of this war began
would be November 4, 1979. That was the date that 66 American citizens
were kidnapped and held hostage in the American embassy in Iran for a
period of 444 days. Or you might say the war started in 1983, when 241
marines were killed in the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, by
Hezbollah--the same terrorist organization, a proxy of Iran through
Syria, that recently rained down Katyusha rockets on northern Israel,
this same terrorist organization that has killed more American citizens
than any other in world history, save and except for al-Qaida. Or you
could say the war started in 1993, when al-Qaida engineered the bombing
of the World Trade Center in a failed attempt to bring down that trade
center, which they successfully accomplished 8 years later.
You could say part of that war that started, perhaps as far back as
1979, continued when 17 American sailors were killed when the USS Cole
was bombed. And yes, the date we focus on the most, that had the most
dramatic impact on us right here at home, was September 11, 2001, the
fifth anniversary of which will be coming up in the next few days.
But some people act as if September 11, 2001, was the single and
solitary event that defined this war of Islamic extremists who hate our
way of life and simply want to eliminate it from the face of the Earth,
along with our ally in the Middle East, Israel. They do not connect the
dots to what happened in Beslan, Russia, at that school; Bali; Madrid;
London; Mumbai--places where individuals, driven by this extremist
ideology, which says that men, women, and children are simply fair game
in pursuit of their agenda--are driven with such hatred that they will
make no distinctions between armed citizens, military, people who can
defend themselves or not--and, yes, these are the same individuals
driven by the same ideology that recently rained down more than 2,000
rockets out of southern Lebanon into northern Israel. Hezbollah,
supplied by Syria and Iran, delivered these very rockets.
Some wonder why America is so determined to make sure Iran does not
get nuclear weapons. One reason why it is so critical we stop President
Ahmadi-Nejad and his regime from getting nuclear weapons is: Do you
doubt for a minute that if Iran had nuclear weapons they could have
supplied Hezbollah to carry out those attacks on Israel they would have
withheld their hand, that they would have failed to use them? I have no
doubt in my mind that, based on this war against the West and against
America, and specifically that has been raging since 1979, that if
terrorist states, and those who support Islamic extremism, Islamic
fascism, if they had it within their power to supply biological,
chemical or nuclear weapons to terrorists in order to accomplish their
goals, they would use them.
That is the challenge we must meet. A few months ago, my wife and I
visited the battlefield at Gettysburg,
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where 50,000 American casualties suffered from wounds. Many died as a
result of that great conflict so many years ago. I was reminded at the
time that one of the greatest challenges Abraham Lincoln had at the
time of that battle was convincing the American people that the desire
to maintain the Union, the need to maintain the Union, justified
continuation of war until it was successfully concluded.
Our job, in some ways, is exactly the same today because there is no
military force on the face of the Earth that is more powerful than that
of the U.S. military. We are simply the best, and no one else even
comes close. The only way the U.S. military can be defeated is if they
lose the support of the American people and we simply tell them to quit
and to withdraw.
I believe the consequences of our quitting and withdrawing or giving
up in Iraq and in fighting this global war against Islamic extremism
would be disastrous to the American people. Rather than celebrating the
5-year anniversary since September 11 with no other terrorist attacks
actually successfully occurring on American soil, I am sure the tale
would be far different because we have chosen, through a number of
different measures, that we have undertaken--whether it is passing the
PATRIOT Act; whether it is through the use of a terrorist surveillance
program that intercepts international phone calls between terrorist
organizations and their allies in the United States; whether it is
rooting out terrorist financing networks, which take the money out of
the networks that actually fund terrorist attacks; whether it is the
capture and interrogation of unlawful enemy combatants and getting good
actual intelligence from them in the Guantanamo Bay facility; whether
it is the information gathering, intelligence gathering and sharing we
have done--all of these efforts since 9/11 have, I believe,
contributed, in large part, to America not suffering another terrorist
attack on our own soil in the last 5 years.
I also believe the fact we are fighting this radical ideology abroad
in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq is part of the reason we are not
fighting that battle right here at home.
I believe we are in a time of choosing, certainly in a time of
testing. But we simply have a choice whether we want safety or we are
willing to live with the danger of terrorists able to strike at
virtually any time they wish, whether we believe strongly enough in our
American values of freedom or whether we are willing to cower under
this threat and live under tyranny, whether we believe strongly enough
that open, transparent societies and self-determination are important
or whether we are willing to live in some sort of prisonlike lockdown.
This is a time for testing our determination. And this is a time of
choosing what kind of America we want.
I know one of the most basic impulses of every parent is to hope for
a better life for their children and grandchildren than they themselves
perhaps had. That is one of the reasons why parents have worked so hard
and pushed their children so hard to achieve and be successful, so that
they may enjoy the standard of living and the opportunities that living
in the United States has to offer.
I certainly know that was the reason my parents worked hard, that my
father flew B-17s in World War II and knocked out Hitler's war machine
before being captured as a prisoner of war. I believe the threat
confronting our country and our way of life--indeed, the entire Western
civilization--is equally as great as the threat faced by the ``Greatest
Generation,'' people such as my mother and father.
If we fail to point out to the American people what the threat is and
give it a name and to let the American people understand how the
various conflicts in the Middle East and the terrorist attacks that
occur around the world are not disparate and isolated events but,
rather, part of the threat of Islamic extremism that will endanger the
next generation--which will change the very way of life of our children
and grandchildren--unless we meet that threat, we will have failed to
live up to our responsibilities.
Some of our colleagues say we should merely leave Iraq, bring our
troops home as soon as possible. There is no one who wants our troops
home any faster than I do. But we have to do so based upon the ability
of the Iraqis to provide their own security. That is why we continue to
train hundreds of thousands of Iraqi police officers and soldiers so
they can provide that security. Sure, we could leave. We could leave
today. But as General John Abizaid said, the head of Central Command:
If we leave now, they will follow us here.
If we were to leave before we had a reasonable opportunity for the
Iraqi people to provide for their own security and provide for their
own government and self-determination, what would that say about the
sacrifices of so many who have given so much to liberate the Iraqi
people from a terrible dictator, to provide the people of Afghanistan
an opportunity to vote in free and fair elections for their own
leaders? Would that have all been in vain?
What would come of America's word and our commitment, when we ask
brave Iraqis to step forward and to volunteer to serve in the police or
in the army or to try to go about their life as much as possible by
participating in free and fair elections, if we were to leave
prematurely before they were able to provide for their own security,
before they would be able to continue on the glidepath to self-
determination and a better life?
Does anybody have any doubt that the criminals, that the jihadists,
that the sectarian violence would lay claim to those individuals, those
brave individuals who have allied themselves with America in an attempt
to provide a peaceful and democratic Iraq?
What would it mean if we left immediately? Well, I think it would
mean that, like Afghanistan--which was the launching pad for al-Qaida,
with a friendly government such as the Taliban--we would have another
failed state where terrorists could plan, finance, train, and then
export their terrorist attacks to places such as the United States.
Yes, I believe this is the test of our generation, just like my
parents' generation, the ``Greatest Generation,'' met their test in
World War II. And for the sake of the next generation, and generations
beyond, I pray we pass that test.
Some have said, and our colleagues earlier today said: What do we
want? We need to change. But they ask for change without any plan,
without articulating what they would do differently, other than to
criticize the hard effort being undertaken by our men and women in
uniform to bring about a peaceful and secure Iraq.
They say we need a new direction, but they are unwilling to identify
what direction we ought to go. They claim the President has politicized
the war on terror. Well, I beg to differ. I believe this President has
done what he believes is his duty by identifying the threat and
confronting the threat and trying to make America a safer place. That
is not politicizing the war on terror. That is telling the American
people what the facts are.
Some have suggested we ought to sit down with the terrorists and talk
to them. Well, I think we have seen what kind of threat this ideology
breeds and why that is not an idea likely to be successful.
Some have gone so far as to say what has happened in Iraq has not
made us safer. But as I went down the various places where terrorists
have hit since September 11 all around the world, is there any doubt,
but for the efforts we have undertaken in this country, both here and
abroad, and taking the fight on the offensive, that we would not be
celebrating the fifth anniversary of September 11 without another
terrorist attack but, rather, we would be looking backward and saying,
if we had only taken the threat more seriously, maybe we would have
avoided that terrorist attack which would have occurred but for those
acts?
Some have said there have been a lot of mistakes in Iraq. Well,
perhaps that is true. I am not sure of any war plan that survives the
first shot. I know we are fighting an intelligent and adaptive and
resourceful enemy who manipulates the media, who has learned how to use
the Internet to communicate, and who has attempted to attack our
country and other countries time and time again.
I hope over this next month, before we recess for the November
election season, we are successful in identifying the nature of the
threat that confronts
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our country, indeed, the free world, and we describe with clarity the
consequences of our failing to deal with it and that we demand that
those who are critical of what we are doing in fighting the global war
on terror explain to us precisely: What would you do differently and
how do you believe that would make us safer.
That is the debate I believe we owe the American people. That is the
debate I believe we owe the next generations that come after us. And
that is the debate we owe those who have worked so hard over the last
200 years to make America the place it is today.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and 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. WYDEN. 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. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning
business until 2:20 p.m.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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