[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 5 (Wednesday, January 10, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H330-H335]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE DEMOCRATIC AGENDA AND THE PRESIDENT'S AGENDA ON IRAQ
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mahoney of Florida). The gentleman from
Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address
you and of course all the Members here on this floor of the United
States Congress. I would point out here in the beginning that it is
about 8:15 here this evening, and the President will be giving his
major address on Iraq at about 9:01 and so I intend to be asking for an
adjournment just right before 9:00 so there is an opportunity to do
that transition and that the President does have an opportunity to use
this channel to speak to the American people.
To begin this presentation this evening, and we listened to the
members on the other side of the aisle talk about supporting the 100-
hour agenda, Mr. Speaker, I point out that this 100-hour agenda was a
number just kind of picked out of the air or off the wall and it turned
into a promise. And inside of that promise of 100 hours and to
accomplish these five or six things within 100 hours are a whole series
of other promises, and it appears as though the most important promise
of all is we are going to do all this in 100 hours. The 100-hour
promise. And not the promise for bipartisanship and not the promise for
the most open Congress in history, and probably not the promise for the
most ethical Congress in history. The jury is still out on that, Mr.
Speaker, but this thing that preempts all, that trumps all is this idea
of 100 hours.
Well, 100 hours to the American people might mean at midnight on
December 31 when the ball dropped and hit the bottom in Times Square,
the clock might start to tick on the 100 hours here in 2007, the new
110th Congress. But I don't take that position necessarily, Mr.
Speaker. I take the position that when we gaveled in and went to work
here, if you want to count 100 hours, that is fine; if you want to make
a promise to get something done in 100 hours, that is also fine. But
that 100 hours didn't start for the first week. It didn't start for the
first week because we were voting on things other than the six things
on the agenda to be accomplished in the 100 hours.
And so then the promise that it was going to be bipartisan and an
open process, we found out, I guess after Congress began, this 110th
Congress, that this open process couldn't be opened up until the 100
hours were over, or otherwise they couldn't get everything accomplished
in the first 100 hours. So bipartisanship went out the window a victim
of the 100-hour promise, and so did the open kind of a system. The
bills didn't go through subcommittee. They didn't go through committee.
They didn't go through rules. No amendments are allowed. And yet that
was all decided before the 100-hour clock began.
So we set up a clock, a legitimate clock, one that actually keeps the
time here that Congress is in session. From when we gaveled in this
110th Congress, we gavel in the morning, open with a prayer and the
pledge, and we gavel out in the evening. That clock has got a tick on
that. We are paying people here to work around this Capitol the whole
time the 100 hours is moving.
So I set up this clock so the American people can keep track of what
the hours are, and I point out this: When we started this morning, we
were at 31 hours that ticked away since. And these are just business
hours. It is not a stretch; it is not 24 hours a day. It is the hours
that this floor is in operation. In fact, yesterday, it was scheduled
to be at 10:00, so a lot of people made their plans to be here at
10:00. It didn't work on Monday because of the football game. And I
will just reserve my opinion of that tonight, Mr. Speaker. But the
10:00 time to start got moved back to 10:30, got moved back to noon and
then got moved back to first votes at 5:30 yesterday afternoon. So some
of that is not taken into account here, but as of about now, this 100
hours has clicked up to 42 hours, Mr. Speaker, have ticked away. And
there have been a couple of things that have been passed, and some will
claim that to be an accomplishment. And I don't intend to take up that
issue either tonight, Mr. Speaker. But I would point out to the
American people that we are at 42 hours and counting.
If you can't count time, you also can't count dollars or people. And
it is important to understand the cost to the United States of America
and the taxpayers that fund it. And we will be doing some of these
tallies after hours tonight to come back with some better numbers
tomorrow, and I will bring this chart then to the floor every day until
the 100 hours ticks over, and we can make this 100-hour promise
something that goes into the dust bin of history.
But this 100-hour promise has trumped the other promises. It has been
more important than an open system of government. It has been more
important than allowing anyone to offer a single amendment to any bill
that has come forward here, and each one of those bills are going to
change the destiny of America. Maybe a little bit, maybe a lot. But
each one will change the destiny of America some. And the people I feel
sorry for, all of those new freshmen Democrats, the ones that were
elected to office having promised that they were going to represent
their constituents here, they would have a voice, they would be
effective. They bring with them the vitality of America. They bring the
new ideas into this Congress, the fresh blood. The best responsiveness
to constituents that you ever will see on average comes with the
freshmen. We are glad when they come here every new Congress because it
adds new vitality.
But that large crop of Democrat freshmen and that smaller crop of
Republican freshmen I think have gotten their eyes opened up a little
bit. I think they believed they would come here and they would be able
to come to
[[Page H331]]
a subcommittee and do a markup on a bill and offer an amendment to
improve the bill and see it go over to full committee, offer an
amendment, improve the bill and bring it to the floor, where amendments
would be offered and the bill would be improved and perhaps perfected
and passed out of this Chamber, on over the Senate, where we would have
negotiations working with them and they would have done the same thing.
The sad news for those freshmen is that they don't have a voice in
this process. Not a single freshman had an opportunity to offer
amendment to engage in debate in a subcommittee, to engage in debate in
a committee; didn't have an opportunity to go before the Rules
Committee and make their argument as to why their amendments should be
made in order. None of that was allowed to the freshmen. And, in fact,
the small little group of people that put together this policy didn't
consider the wisdom of Congress; they considered the wisdom of the
people within that room, and I guarantee you, Mr. Speaker, that didn't
include the freshmen, either the Democrats or the Republicans, who now
have to reassess what kind of a system they thought they had gotten
elected to.
And I hope this 100 hours ticks away, and I hope it can be put away
into the dust bin of history, and I hope those other promises can be
rejuvenated and brought back to life, those promises about having an
open system, a system that is bipartisan and a system that allows for
amendments so that we can improve the legislation that comes.
We are at 42 hours, Mr. Speaker, and the clock will start again.
Actually, it will shut off when we adjourn here about 9:00 and it will
take up again tomorrow morning when we gavel back in.
But, Mr. Speaker, I come here to talk about a big subject. It is a
subject that has been consuming the thoughts and the prayers of the
American people since September 11, 2001, and that subject is a subject
the President will take up here in a little more than 35 minutes. It is
the subject of this global war on terror, and primarily the
battleground, the main battleground, which is Iraq, in this global war
on terror.
I have certainly been involved in this since the beginning of the
operations in Iraq. I have been over there four times. I have traveled
into Afghanistan as well. Each time I go over there, I always stop at
Landstuhl in Germany and visit our wounded troops there. And the last
time I was over was over Thanksgiving, just a little over a month ago,
when I ate Thanksgiving dinner with wounded troops in Landstuhl at the
hospital in Germany, and that was the most meaningful Thanksgiving I
have ever had in my life. I don't expect to ever top that for a moving
Thanksgiving where one can really be in awe of true courage, true
patriotism and true sacrifice.
And I believe we are going to hear a speech from the President in a
few minutes from now that is going to be, I think the tone of it could
have been written by those people that have sacrificed the most, our
soldiers and Marines and airmen that have perhaps given a limb, perhaps
been wounded and crippled for life. I have not yet met a wounded
soldier who said to me, ``This is a lost cause.'' They believe in the
cause. They want to get back to the fight. They want to get back to the
people they feel responsible for, and they want to complete the
mission.
The wounded troops will stand with the President in the speech he is
about to give and the families of those who have given the ultimate
sacrifice, the Gold Star families, the families that have traveled
across America and been here in Washington, D.C., a number of times and
were in my office a week before I went over to Iraq. Some of those Gold
Star families, those that have lost a son or a daughter over in Iraq or
Afghanistan, some of them have also traveled over to the Middle East,
also traveled into Iraq and got to visit the Iraqi people. And one of
the fathers who lost his son killed over there in Iraq said to me: ``We
cannot pull out of there. It is different now. We are committed to that
cause. Lives have been lost. The soil in Iraq is now sanctified with
American blood. It is not so simple that we could just walk away. We
cannot. We must stay. We must prevail. We made the commitment to go
there; we are invested in it; we must prevail.''
As I looked him in the eye, I know what kind of pain he has been
through, that soaked in with me, Mr. Speaker. And so I traveled over
there in the aftermath of their trip, and as I went alone this time, I
didn't go with a congressional delegation, I just went alone, and I had
an opportunity to sit down with General Abizaid and close the door and
talk and ask questions and probe a line of reasoning and then take on
another line of reasoning. I had the opportunity to do the same thing
with General Casey, although staff was in the room for that one. I also
sat down with General Corelli and did the same thing. I had two
meetings with Ambassador Khalilzad. And then each time I walked into a
mess hall, or I would just holler out, ``Is anybody here from Iowa?''
And invariably there would be Iowans there. And there is an instant
connection between you and someone from your State. You know where they
are from. You know what they believe in. You have an understanding
about their background and where they come from. You know what sports
teams they support, or at least you can find out quickly, and we have
those little arguments, Mr. Speaker. But when I index the things that I
hear from our top officers that are in the field and what I hear from
the people on the ground, and as I talk to people through all ranks and
travel across Iraq and also Afghanistan in this last trip, put back
together a kind of strategy and come to a conclusion as to where we
need to go and what we need to do.
And let's look at this thing, Mr. Speaker, from two broad
perspectives. One of them is the idea that I am hearing over here on
this side of the aisle, and this is not a new idea from the people on
that side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker; they slipped language into the
Department of Defense appropriations bill that would have by now
prohibited all operations in Iraq. And that was Mr. Murtha's language
that went in there that prohibited any basing rights negotiations in
Iraq, which would have meant, had that language prevailed that when our
agreement on any of our bases in Iraq had expired, we couldn't
negotiate a new one. So, over time, we would have had to give up base
after base after base until we had to pull our troops completely out of
Iraq.
That is not a lot different than the amendment that came out of an
appropriations bill on this floor, Mr. Speaker, back in 1975 when a
large Democrat majority took over and decided that they would take us
out of the operations in Vietnam, and they introduced legislation
successfully that forbid a single dollar from being used to support the
South Vietnamese military. Not a dollar that can go for a bullet, for
food, for a helmet, for a pair of khaki uniforms, no air cover, and
nothing could go on offshore in South Vietnam either. So they shut down
their operations in South Vietnam. And the South Vietnamese had
defended their own country for 3 years, but when their resources dried
up, their military collapsed.
{time} 2030
Some of those things are being maneuvered right now, and I can hear
this come out of the debate on the other side of the aisle.
But here are the scenarios: One scenario is listen to the people over
here, Mr. Speaker, who would say, well, let's unfund this operation.
Let's bring our troops home now. Let's get out of there because it is
sectarian strife and you can't resolve a civil war and it is just
brother fighting against brother and why do we want to get involved in
a family feud? All of that that substitutes for rationale.
But what they are really looking at is if they get their way, the
reality in Iraq is different than their perception, I believe, and I
would like to have them pay a little more attention, maybe go over
there with a real intention to learn.
But a year ago in Iraq there was violence over most of the entire
country scattered around. And the argument I heard from this side of
the aisle over here was, well, let's get out of there right now, get
the Americans out because, after all, they are the targets and Iraqis
just want to have their own country. They object to Americans walking
on their soil. So if we would leave, there would be nobody for them to
shoot at, and then peace would
[[Page H332]]
break out all over Iraq, and the government would take over, and
everything would be peaceful and fine. That was their argument then.
Well, it was flawed, of course. But there was violence over most of
Iraq.
A year later, now, most of the violence is confined to Baghdad.
Eighty percent of the violence is in the Baghdad area. So peace has
broken out over most of Iraq. And if you talk to the soldiers that have
been over there that are running missions and convoys and doing
patrols, they will tell you that most of Iraq seems very, very normal,
that you go down the street and off on the road and the Iraqi kids come
out and wave and the Iraqi people are open and friendly. The men are
open and friendly. The women are a little more shy and a little demure.
That is their culture. But they travel where they want to go, and the
only thing that makes them realize that there is a war is when an IED
goes off. So we are getting there, and the Baghdad area is the area
that needs to be controlled and pacified. The rest of the country is
pretty good.
If we pulled out now or if we pulled out in the near future, the
involvement and the interference that comes from Iran would be imposed
on the Shiia section of Iraq, which is actually a little more than the
southern area of Iraq, which has got most of the oil in it. It would be
Baghdad and some of the areas to the north of there and all the way
south down to Basra, into the hands of the influence of the Iranian
Shiia, who are right now funding and training, equipping and arming
terrorists in Iran and sending them into Iraq and supporting some of
the militia personnel there like Muqtada al Sadr.
I happen to have his picture here. This fellow has been a nemesis for
a long time. And I put the date down here. That was the date that I was
sitting in a hotel in Kuwait City watching Al Jazeera TV. Muqtada al
Sadr, the head of the Mahdi militia, came on Al Jazeera TV, and as I
watched that he said in Arabic with the English crawler underneath:
``If we keep attacking Americans, they will leave Iraq the same way
they left Vietnam, the same way they left Lebanon, the same way they
left Mogadishu.'' Muqtada al Sadr.
Now here he is being supported by the Iranians, funding his militia,
helping to train his militia, and paying some of them to plant IEDs and
attack Americans. Iran is conducting a proxy war against the United
States from the sanctuary of their sovereign nation of Iran and sending
in the munitions and the militia and the insurgents to attack Americans
there, and this man is their surrogate, and he must go.
It is more complicated than the people on the other side of the aisle
would say. They would argue that it is just Shiia and Sunni that are
fighting each other. There are six to eight different factions fighting
each other there. Sadr is one. The Badr Brigade is another. Al Qaeda is
another. There are Sunni criminal groups that are fighting. There are
other groups, the former Baathists, that are fighting.
You can add these pieces up, Mr. Speaker, but in the end it is more
complicated than just simple sectarian strife. It is a power struggle,
a power to provide security and safety within some areas of the
community, the effort on the part of Muqtada al Sadr and others to
drive some of the Sunnis out of Sunni sections of Baghdad so that they
can have their internal hegemony within the city of Baghdad.
But this all happened because there was somewhat of a vacuum there
and we didn't go in and take this man out when we needed to do that.
And he has been to some degree protected by Prime Minister Maliki, who
this afternoon made a statement that essentially puts Muqtada al Sadr
on notice. He tells the Shiite militias to give up.
``Prime Minister al-Maliki has told everyone that there will be no
escape from attack,'' said a senior legislator who is close to Maliki.
``The government has told the Sadrists,'' Muqtada al Sadrists, `` `if
we want to build a state, we have no other choice but to attack armed
groups,' '' this being the armed groups, Mr. Speaker.
So I will say there are two main points that I want to hear the
President address tonight, and one of them is militias must be taken on
and taken out and they are getting an opportunity to surrender right
now because Prime Minister Maliki has put them on notice. They must be
taken on and taken out if they don't surrender. This is the lead that
has got to go.
The second one is Iran must cease and desist from their proxy war
against the United States from the sanctuary of the sovereign nation of
Iran by sending in insurgents who are trained, equipped, funded, and
armed by the Iranians.
And, by the way, IEDs that are being detonated that are blowing up
Americans and killing Americans are being made in Iran and smuggled
into Iraq. If we pull out of Iraq now without a successful safe country
there, the result will be Iran will control the Shiia section of Iraq.
They will control most of the oil in Iraq. They control the Straits of
Hormuz now. They would control the outlet, the mouth of the Tigris and
Euphrates River, the Umm Qasr ports, the export area for Iraq's oil.
They would have a stranglehold on 40 percent of the world's oil, which
is a death grip on the world economy.
They would be in a position to continue to enrich themselves, and
their money chest would be pouring over. They could then accelerate
their nuclear weapons development. They could either build more and
build them faster or buy them where they could get them, perhaps from
North Korea, and you would see Iran much more quickly become a dominant
nuclear power with an ability not just to put a nuclear missile into
Tel Aviv but the ability to do so into Western Europe and within just a
few years the ability to do so clear into the United States of America
with a death grip on the oil and the world, 40 percent of the oil,
which controls the market, Mr. Speaker.
That is what we are looking at if we pull out of there. The stakes
are too high, and that is why the President rejected, I will say
politely ignored, the Iraq Study Group's recommendations.
But we should keep in mind, Mr. Speaker, that there was a million
dollar appropriation here that went to the United States Institute for
Peace and out of that came the Iraq Study Group. Now, why, if we wanted
to figure out how to win a war, would we go to the United States
Institute for Peace and ask them to give us some advice? That makes
about as much sense as going to the Syrians or going to the Iranians
and saying, can you help us solve this problem? Why don't you give us
some constructive recommendations?
It is not in their interest to give us constructive recommendations.
It is in the interest of the Iranians and the Syrians to undermine our
effort there so that they can get us out of the Middle East and they
can impose their influence on Iraq, not the other way around. We will
not get constructive advice from Iran or from Syria any more than we
got advice on how to win a war from the Iraq Study Group because I
believe that they thought that their charge was how do we get out of
this? Let's figure out how to get out of this. Not how do we win?
But the President, to his credit, went to the Pentagon and said, I
don't want to hear from you how we get out of Iraq. I want to see a
strategy for victory.
I wish he had done that a couple years ago, but I am glad he did it
now. I am looking forward to his speech; and, as I said, I will be sure
we adjourn here before the President's speech that will happen right at
9 o'clock.
But, at this moment, I would very much like to yield to my friend
from Tennessee, Mr. Zach Wamp.
Mr. WAMP. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for yielding.
And I just want to open by saying how encouraging it is to see a
Member like yourself take such a hands-on interest in the affairs of
the Middle East, and I think anyone here tonight or watching these
proceedings would understand your perspective and how informed it is.
Plus you approach it from the purity of an Iowan. And I am very
grateful for your due diligence and for the work that you have done and
the way that you understand these threats.
I was reminded, as you were speaking, that just a couple of years ago
you and I were in Africa together talking about these threats and how
we were concerned that Africa was also at risk with some of the areas
like Somalia, which is in the news again this week, where these
international terrorist networks are, frankly, looking for another
sovereign nation from which to
[[Page H333]]
operate, as they had with Afghanistan, and how global this threat
really is.
I did not come, Mr. Speaker, to the floor tonight to in any way
alienate or accuse anyone here or the other party in this case, because
if ever there was a time in my life where we need Democrats and
Republicans to come together on an issue of national/international
importance, it is this issue. This is where I hope that there are never
partisan motives attached to anyone's position on matters of war and
peace.
I want to go back to the very time when we voted in the House and the
Senate to remove Saddam Hussein by force and remind everyone that over
half of the Democrats in the Senate voted to do so and almost half of
the Democrats in the House voted to do so. And they can say now, oh,
but we didn't have good information or whatever their rationale is for
wanting to pull out abruptly now, but the truth is we are where we are
and this situation is as it is and we are in it together. And if ever
there was a time where Americans need to meet again at the water's
edge, it is now.
I don't want to preempt what the President says tonight. The
President is in a very difficult place because the war has not gone
well. We have made mistakes. We have not implemented certain policies
to the best of our ability. And I think it is important for him to
recognize those flaws and those shortcomings with the mission to this
point because, in my opinion, all great leaders at some point say we
are on the wrong road and we need to get to this road or we have made
this mistake or that mistake and if you will join me, we can rectify
this problem. Because the stakes are enormous, as you said.
The great football coach Vince Lombardi, and football is just
meaningless compared to these matters of war and peace and life and
death, but he said once that fatigue makes cowards of us all. We need
to remember that as a people, as a Nation, because we are all tired of
this. I mean, I am weary of attending funerals in my district. I
attended one with my wife again Monday, another one of a young soldier
who died in Iraq over the holidays. His son was born the day after he
died. We are all sickened by this sacrifice and this loss. But I have
got to tell you if that collectively causes us to lose our passion for
freedom or our will to carry on our way of life, it will be a tragedy
in American history, and these are the decisions of the moment.
Now I know that our friends from time to time quote people, but one
of the people, ironically to me, that serves as kind of the conscience
of some of these international issues is Senator Lieberman of
Connecticut, who ran against, with my fellow Tennesseean Al Gore, the
President and the Vice President. He just returned from this area and
he came back in support of not only continuing our efforts until we can
prevail in Iraq but, if necessary, and I am not endorsing increased
troops tonight and I think the President is going to make his
presentation and he has got a long way to go to convince the country
and the Congress that this is necessary, so I am not endorsing that.
But I am saying that Senator Lieberman came back and effectively
endorsed, in order to control these areas of insecurity particularly
within the 30-mile radius of Baghdad, increasing troop strength and he
talked about ``greatly advancing the cause of moderation and freedom
throughout the Middle East and protect our security at home.'' And I am
very concerned that if we retreat into the 1990 style complacency that
9/11s will continue.
One of the problems is that we did not have enough troops on the
ground, and one of the expressions I wish hadn't been uttered was
``Mission Accomplished'' because there were many difficult days ahead
of us following that unfortunate time. We didn't have enough troops to
secure the area in and around Baghdad, and that is where 80 percent of
the violence is taking place.
{time} 2045
Sending more troops to Iraq will not help unless it is coupled with a
concrete and feasible plan and a new strategy that requires the active
participation of the Iraqi government. And the goal should be clear, an
Iraq run by, secured by and governed by the Iraqi people.
Frederick Kagan from the American Enterprise Institute wrote this
week that, ``The real choice we face is this: Is it better to accept
defeat than to endure the pain of trying to succeed.''
I will say it again. ``The real choice we face is this: Is it better
to accept defeat than endure the pain of trying to succeed.''
I don't think we can accept defeat. I don't think we can be seen as
in retreat, and I want to explain why. For one, all of those troops
that have given their lives that I have been with the families of say
to me, We must prevail. We must continue on. My son, my husband, my
father, believed very much that this was a just cause and the right
thing to do, and we must succeed. They have suffered great loss, and
they believe that it is the right thing to do.
But I want to say this, this cannot be George W. Bush's war. This
must be America's fight. We must see people in a bipartisan way come
together around a plan. I don't know if 20,000 troops is the right
number, or 5,000 or 100,000; but we need to come back together because
we are where we are and it is what it is, and if we are ever going to
bring troops home in victory in 18 months or 24 months, we may have to
put our foot down in the short run. Senator Lieberman believes so. The
President believes so. And I hope that the case is made clearly so that
more and more Americans understand this.
Over the last few days, Zawahri, who is now the commander effectively
of al Qaeda in the Middle East, has encouraged these terrorists to go
to Somalia, as I said earlier, in northern Africa to fight the fight.
The truth is this: If we were out of Iraq tomorrow, this threat
continues. This threat did not just happen. September 11th was not the
beginning of this. It was the culmination of them attacking us and our
interests around the world and our sovereign land around the world, at
our embassies. The same people, the jihadists, the extremists.
Read the book ``Hatred's Kingdom'' about wahabism, Qutubi and Azzam.
In the 1950s, they began indoctrinating people on this unbelievably
radical element in Islam to oppose anyone who did not believe as they
believed, and that is the Hezbollah foundation out of Iran, as you say.
When people say these connections were not in place before September
11th, these connections with these terrorist elements have been in
place for years. Don't deny that. You are burying your head in the
sand. Read ``Londonistan'' and how they have infiltrated London. Read
``While Europe Slept'' and how they have infiltrated Europe. Read
``America Alone'' or ``Looming Towers'' and understand that these
threats are our generation's call to courage, and we cannot grow weary
such that we retreat. Too much is at stake.
The President is trying to get us back on the right road. One speech
is not going to do it. Tonight is not going to do it. But I am hopeful
for our country's sake, not my party's sake, not the Democrat's sake,
but for our country's sake so we can find a path forward together. This
cannot be the President's war. It has to be our country's fight against
the jihadists wherever they go, and Iraq is one theater, and they want
to fight us, and we need to defeat them. Let's meet together and send
them back to their caves or into eternity so that our way of life is
carried forward to the next generation.
This is a generational challenge. We can't deny from time to time in
history you have to step up and these brave sons and daughters have
done just that, and they have volunteered to serve. We honor their
sacrifice, but please, House and Senate and country, come together and
find a path forward as one Nation.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee for his
commitment to this country and the passion that he brings to everything
he does. I point out, that meeting in Africa, we arrived from different
locations and almost by coincidence, by providence, we arrived at the
same location to address the things we were concerned about in South
Africa at the time. I also note that Mr. Wamp shows up to address these
issues spontaneously on occasion. I very much appreciate your
leadership, Zach.
As we sit here tonight, I will review some of the things that Mr.
Wamp addressed. He listed a number of books that he recommended that we
read.
[[Page H334]]
Among them was the book ``While Europe Slept'' by Bruce Bawer, and that
is, I think, one of the most profound reads I have ever gone through.
It tells the story how the author has traveled from New York City into
Holland to make his life there, and realized he could never become a
Dutchman in Holland the same way you can become an American in the
United States. So he moved to Norway to become a Norwegian and found
out that although he could develop his language skills and understood
the culture and history of Norway, he would never be a Norwegian
because they don't have a system of assimilation that we have or at
least had in the United States.
So he traveled throughout the countries in Europe and gathered
anecdotes and data and studies and compiled an understanding of what is
happening with the ethnic enclaves that have been created in Europe,
those enclaves that are Muslim enclaves.
Our idea has been in this country to promote assimilation. Everybody
can become an American. That, we have considered to be
multiculturalism. But the multiculturalism in Europe is different. That
is, let us create an ethnic enclave here, and look at us. We are no
longer this blue-eyed, blond society, or whatever it happens to be in
the Scandinavian north or whatever the complexion might be in some of
the other areas in Europe. We now have multiculturalism by ethnic
enclave, and the ethnic enclaves being primarily Muslim have not
integrated into the rest of society, and they have brought more and
more from their home country and grown their enclaves to the point
where Bruce Bawer's analysis comes down to that skepticism that France
will ever be French again within the next generation, and that the
takeover that takes place without the assimilation by rejecting the
host country's culture and importing the culture of the newly arriving
immigrants transforms these countries and explains why you can see
second generation British of Pakistani descent setting off bombs in the
subways in London.
It explains that, and it shows what is happening to the culture in
Europe because they have opened up their borders and not promoted
assimilation. When it is done, Bruce Bawer's analysis comes down to the
choice for Europe will be either one of two things: total capitulation
or mass expulsion. That is what Europe is faced with, and I am not
optimistic that Europe will recover and come back to being a partner
for the free world again because the people that are in those countries
that are slowly by birth rate taking over don't believe in the freedoms
that we believe in, Mr. Speaker. They reject them. They reject Western
civilization and our Christian culture. The reject the Judeo-Christian
belief system. The wahabists that Mr. Wamp talked about, they believe
they have an obligation or at least a right to annihilate those who
don't believe like they do.
That is the enemy that we are up against. And this geopolitical
dynamic needs to be understood by the Members of this Congress, and I
am thinking the best way they can understand it is when the American
people study it and get their voice into the ears of their
representatives, the 435 here in the U.S. States House of
Representatives.
But to take on a little more of this, I would point out that a major
question needs to be asked and answered, and I hope the President has
asked the question and I hope he has answered the question, and that
is: Can we live with, here in the United States, a nuclear armed Iran?
That is part of this overall equation. It isn't just confined to Iraq.
As I spoke earlier, Iran is conducting a proxy war against the United
States in Iraq by training and funding and harboring terrorists and
sending them munitions and equipping them and also making IEDs and
other munitions that go into Iraq that are being used against Iraqis of
all stripes and being used against Americans. That has to stop.
But can we tolerate a nuclear-powered Iran, an irrational nuclear-
powered Iran that has Ahmadinejad who is fuming and making allegations
about the annihilation of Israel and the annihilation of the United
States.
All we have to do is listen to these tyrants and believe what they
say. Every action that they make makes it clear that they will develop
a nuclear bomb. They will develop more than one. They are developing
the means to deliver it now, as they are developing a bomb now. Why
would we disbelieve them? Why would we think that we could talk them
out of it? When you go into negotiations, you never get something for
nothing. You have to have something to offer.
I ask the President, and I hope he will tell us tonight, that he has
put the cross hairs on Iran, and directly on their nuclear capability
and sent through a back-channel message to Ahmadinejad and the mullahs
that run him that Iran's nuclear days are numbered and that there is a
decision that has already been made that they will not have a nuclear
capability. And if they cease and desist from their proxy war against
the United States that they are conducting within Iraq, then they will
be allowed, perhaps, enough negotiation time that they can save some
face before they dismantle their nuclear endeavor.
Should they proceed, then the decision needs to be made whether to
take out Iran's nuclear capability. We saw 4 days ago, there was
intelligence or I will say a press leak that came out of Israel that
they have a contingency plan to take out Iran's nuclear capability with
limited tactical nuclear weapons. If they have to do that, I am afraid
there is an all-out conflagration in the Middle East, and all Arab
countries will descend upon Israel. If somebody has to do it, it is
better if we do it. It is better if Ahmadinejad dismantles his nuclear
capability.
That is where I would start: Cross hairs on Ahmadinejad, put the
cross hairs on their nuclear capability, and then if they back out of
Iraq, then we can have a peaceful Iraq. We still have to remove Muqtada
al-Sadr and some other militia leaders. If those two things happen,
that shuts off the money, the munitions and the operations of violence
that are there. As long as there is money there, somebody is going to
set an IED. I can see that. But most is controllable by the Iraqis.
I have watched as thousands of Iraqi troops have been trained, lined
up in ranks. I first saw them and reviewed those troops in October
2003. Those troops were trained by General David Petraeus. He headed up
the Iraqi military training operations when he was over there during
the last deployment, and now he has been appointed to command all
military operations within Iraq. He is the most impressive military
person I have met in my life. If anyone can run this operation in Iraq
successfully, it is David Petraeus. He has the love and respect of many
of the Iraqis, the Kurds and Sunnis and Shias. And in Mosul, where the
101st Airborne, which he commanded when they went in to liberate Iraq,
there in Mosul, they went in and liberated Mosul in the latter part of
March 2003. By the end of May 2003, General Petraeus had held open
elections in Mosul in those three provinces there, and elected a
governor and a vice governor, and I also recall a business
representative at the table in those discussions that we had. That was
an impressive means to win the hearts and minds of the people, and also
from a military tactical perspective.
But to give you an understanding of how effective General Petraeus
has been, there is a sign, and I have a picture of it as a street sign
on a broad street in the city of Mosul in Iraq, and it said: 101st
Airborne Division. They misspelled ``airborne'' and ``division'' so I
was pretty sure that it was a sign put up by the Iraqi people in
appreciation for the 101st Airborne led then by General Petraeus who
will be taking over and commanding all military forces within Iraq.
We can win this. We must win this. We do not have a tactical threat
against us. We can and will prevail. The American people need to stand
together. Mr. Wamp said that, and I agree with him.
{time} 2100
We need to stand with our Commander in Chief. It isn't really up to
the President to convince the American people that we should move
forward on this, but it is up to us to support our military. And if we
are going to support our military, we must support their mission, Mr.
Speaker.
So I look forward to the President's speech. It is a pleasure for me
to have the honor and privilege to turn over, I will say this network,
to the President of the United States as he lays out a
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plan for victory in the battlefield of Iraq, which will take us on to a
final victory in the overall global war on terror.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter),
who was the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend for yielding.
In a few minutes the President will address the Nation about his
plans for Baghdad and the fact that he needs reinforcements, some of
them to go to Anbar Province, some of them to work on a three-to-one
basis with the Iraqi forces, three Iraqi battalions in each one of
these sectors in Baghdad for each American battalion standing behind
them.
The President has asked for reinforcements, and it would be
outrageous if the Democrat leadership in this House denied this country
reinforcements for a military operation in a shooting war which
continues to this minute.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Hunter. I yield back the
balance of my time.
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