[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 17, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H635-H636]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      EVEN THE SOLDIERS WILL TELL YOU: ``NOTHING'S GOING TO HELP''

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cardoza). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 
minutes.

[[Page H636]]

  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I voted against going to war in Iraq when 
Congress voted on this in October of 2002, and I am opposed to sending 
more troops there now.
  President Bush has said that he is going to listen mainly to his 
commanders. I wish he would listen to Specialist Don Roberts, 22, of 
Paonia, Colorado, now on his second tour in Iraq, who told the 
Associated Press, ``What could more guys do? We can't pick sides. It's 
almost like we have to watch them kill each other and then ask 
questions.''
  Sergeant Josh Keim of Canton, Ohio, also on his second tour said, 
``Nothing is going to help. It is a religious war and we are caught in 
the middle of it.''
  Saddam Hussein was an evil man, but he had a total military budget a 
little over two-tenths of 1 percent of ours, most of which he spent 
protecting himself and his family and building castles. He was no 
threat to us at all.
  But even before the war started, Fortune Magazine had an article 
saying that an American occupation would be ``prolonged and expensive'' 
and would make U.S. soldiers sitting ducks for Islamic terrorists.
  Now we have had more than 3,000 young Americans killed, many 
thousands more wounded horribly, and have spent $400 billion and the 
Pentagon wants $170 billion more. Most of what we have spent has been 
purely foreign aid in nature: Rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, giving 
free medical care, training police, giving jobs to several hundred 
thousand Iraqis, and on and on.
  Our Constitution does not give us the authority to run another 
country as we have in reality been doing in Iraq. With a national debt 
of almost $9 trillion, we cannot afford it. To me, our misadventure in 
Iraq is both unconstitutional and unaffordable.
  Some have said it was a mistake to start this war, but now that we 
are there we have to ``finish the job'' and we cannot ``cut and run.'' 
Well, if you find out you are going down the wrong way down the 
interstate, you get off at the next exit.
  Very few pushed as hard for us to go to war in Iraq as did syndicated 
columnist Charles Krauthammer. Last week, he wrote that the Maliki 
government we have installed there cares only about making sure that 
the Shiites dominate the Sunnis. And he wrote, ``We should not be 
surging American troops in defense of such a government,'' Krauthammer 
wrote. ``Maliki should be made to know that if he insists on having 
this sectarian war he can well have it without us.''
  There is no way we can keep all of our promises to our own people on 
Social Security, veterans benefits, and many other things in the years 
ahead if we keep trying to run the whole word.
  As another columnist, Georgie Anne Geyer, wrote more than 3 years 
ago, ``Americans will inevitably come to a point where they will see 
they have to have a government that provides services at home or one 
that seeks empire across the globe.''
  We should help other countries during humanitarian crises, and we 
should have trade and tourism and cultural and educational exchanges, 
but conservatives have traditionally been the strongest opponents to 
interventionist foreign policies that create so much resentment around 
the world. We need to return to the more humble foreign policy 
President Bush advocated when he campaigned in 2000.
  We need to tell all these defense contractors that the time for this 
Iraqi gravy train with its obscene profits is over. It is time to bring 
our troops home, Mr. Speaker.
  I wrote that in a column that ran last Friday in Tennessee's highest 
circulation newspaper, the Nashville Tennessean, but let me just add 
this: William F. Buckley, who has often been called the Godfather of 
Conservativism, wrote about 1\1/2\ years ago, ``A point is reached when 
tenacity conveys not steadfastness of purpose but misapplication of 
pride.''
  Mr. Speaker, we cannot win a civil war between the Shiites and the 
Sunnis. There can be no victory for us in such a war.
  Mr. Speaker, as a teenager I sent my first paycheck as a bag boy at 
the A&P grocery store as a contribution to the Barry Goldwater 
campaign. I have been a staunch conservative since high school. This 
war in Iraq went against every conservative position I have ever known. 
We need to return Iraq back to Iraqis and start putting our own people 
first once again.

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