[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 4 (Tuesday, January 9, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S249-S250]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     CONCLUSION OF MORNING BUSINESS

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Morning business is now closed.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the Oxford English Dictionary defines the 
word ``surge''--s-u-r-g-e--as ``a sudden large temporary increase.'' 
Note in particular the word ``temporary.'' President Bush's rumored new 
strategy on Iraq--a surge of U.S. troops intended to quell the violence 
in Baghdad--is both wrongheaded and headed for failure.
  As outlined, the surge envisions clearing all violent factions out of 
Baghdad in an effort which is to be led by Iraqi security forces. 
Apparently, U.S. forces will provide indiscriminate firepower in 
another attempt to establish democracy by brute force. This does not 
seem to me to be the way to win hearts and minds in Iraq.
  I oppose any surge in Iraq. Only days ago, just days ago, we passed 
the grim milestone of 3,000 American dead in Iraq. There are few firm 
numbers on Iraqi lives lost, but estimates are in the tens of 
thousands. I am reminded of one definition of ``insanity'': making the 
same mistake over and over while continuing to expect a different 
result. We have surged before. Still the violence in Iraq worsens.

[[Page S250]]

  We are close to the beginning of the fifth year--the fifth year--of a 
war which should never have been started by an administration that fed 
the Congress and the public false information. This is an 
administration which has learned nothing--nothing, zilch--nothing more 
about the country of Iraq than it knew before it launched an unprovoked 
U.S. attack.
  Our stated purpose for continuing to occupy Iraq is to help the Iraqi 
people build a stable democracy. But the difficulty of that task should 
have been clear before we invaded. It was clear to me. Iraq is a 
country that was only held together by a brutal strongman, Saddam 
Hussein. And without the strongman to force cohesion, it is a country 
with deep ethnic and religious divisions and no central loyalties. 
There is no tradition of constitutions or equal rights, no unifying 
common beliefs about individual freedoms or governing with the consent 
of the governed--none of that commonality of thought that reinforces 
governing principles in the society at large.
  The al-Maliki Government would never survive on its own outside the 
Green Zone in Baghdad, and indeed the point of a surge is to secure 
only the capital. But what then? After accelerating the violence, even 
if we are able to lock down Baghdad, what will transpire to keep the 
insurgency from regrouping elsewhere, possibly fed by Iran or by Syria? 
How will we then establish the legitimacy of a shaky Iraqi Government?
  In my view, we may be about to make a critical mistake by moving in 
exactly the wrong direction in Iraq. Instead of a surge, we ought to be 
looking at a way to begin orderly troop reduction. The folly of the 
surge idea is apparent. The insurrection in Iraq is a civil war. The 
conflict is among warring factions battling for some measure of control 
over the others. U.S. involvement on one side simply further energizes 
all the other sides. This surge will only energize them, further 
provoking a likely countersurge of violence. If it is a true surge--in 
other words, temporary--the insurrection factions will only work harder 
to maim and kill our troops and claim victory if we reduce forces. So, 
in fact, there will probably be no surge but, rather, a permanent 
escalation of the U.S. presence, which is simply being sold to the 
American public as a surge. Once again, we get obfuscation and spin 
from a White House that seems incapable of careful thought and 
analysis.
  Any plan to increase troops in President Bush's new strategy is 
simply a plan to intensify violence, put more American troops in harm's 
way, risk the lives of more innocent Iraqis, engender more hatred of 
U.S. forces, and embroil U.S. forces deeper in a civil war.
  I would like to see a clear defining--a clear defining--of our 
immediate challenges in Iraq; a realistic discussion about short-term 
achievable goals; an admission that we cannot remain in Iraq for much 
longer because the American public will not tolerate it; and benchmarks 
for beginning an orderly withdrawal conditioned on actions by the Iraqi 
Government.
  So, Mr. President, the al-Maliki Government has been duly elected by 
the people of Iraq. It is time we let them take charge. Let them, Mr. 
President. Let them take charge. As long as we prop them up and inflame 
hatred, they will never have the legitimacy they need to make the 
political decisions that may ultimately save Iraq. In short, it is time 
to take the training wheels off the bike. Do you know what that means? 
It is time to take the training wheels off the bike.
  Our blundering--and it is nothing less--our blundering has inflamed 
and destabilized a critical region of the world, and yet we continue to 
single-mindedly pursue the half-baked goal of forcing democracy on a 
country which is now embroiled in a civil war. Our blinders keep us 
from seeing the regional problems which are bubbling and which soon may 
boil. The real damage to the United States is not only the loss of life 
and the billions of dollars expended, it is also the diminution of our 
credibility around the world as a country with the will and the vision 
to lead effectively.
  Serious diplomacy is clearly in order on the matters of Lebanon, the 
Israel-Palestinian conflict, and on Iran. Multinational talks were part 
of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, but diplomacy usually ends 
up at the bottom of the administration's option list, and that is where 
it has landed again.
  If the ``shoot first'' crowd in the White House continues to stick 
its chin out and believe that bullets and bombast will carry the day, 
soon--very soon--our ability to mediate the morass of difficulties in 
the Mideast and elsewhere may be permanently damaged. Pariahs do not 
usually carry much weight at negotiating tables. If the lesson in Iraq 
teaches anything, it is that military might has very great limitations. 
But then that is a lesson we should have learned many years ago from 
Vietnam--many years ago from Vietnam.

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