[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 23 (Wednesday, February 7, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H1306-H1307]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE MIDDLE EAST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, the President and his administration 
would be wise to avoid making Iran the next Iraq. Despite that, the 
demonizing of Iran has begun as the President tries to divert the 
attention of the American people away from the Iraq debacle. Instead of 
advocating diplomacy in the region as recommended by the Iraq Study 
Group and countless leaders in both political parties, the President is 
making veiled threats that are becoming increasingly worrisome. The 
boiling caldron of violence in the Middle East is growing hotter, and 
to many people, the policies and pronouncements of the President 
concerning Iran are seen as throwing gasoline on the fire.
  As the situation worsens in Iraq, the President talks more and more 
about Iran, as if the attention of the American people and the world 
can so easily be diverted. That is not going to work this time. The 
focus of the American people, indeed the focus of the world, is on the 
U.S. occupation of Iraq and the disastrous war the President continues 
to wage and escalate. We know he is raising the stakes in Iraq. Many 
fear Iran is not behind. And we see an irony in that.
  Leaders in the Middle East I met with recently in Jordan blame Paul 
Bremer, the President's first administrator in Iraq, believing Bremer, 
unwittingly or otherwise, handed Iraq to the regime in Iran. He did it 
with disastrous decisions.
  First, he dismantled the Iraqi army. That left the border between 
Iraq and Iran unguarded and open to the infiltration of weapons and 
insurgents to foment violence in Iraq.
  Bremer gave the Shi'a effective control by mandating they receive a 
majority of seats in reconstituting an Iraqi government.
  These decisions opened the border and at the same time tightened 
relationships between Iranian Shi'a and Iraqi Shi'a. It set the stage 
for Iran's influence to grow stronger and stronger inside Iraq and 
unleashed a torrent of violence, pitting Iraqi against Iraqi with 
American soldiers caught in the cross fire. Is there any wonder that 
many Iraqis believe their nation is being handed over to Iran by the 
U.S.?
  Now, many believe the President's saber rattling toward Iran has less 
to do with its efforts to develop a nuclear weapon and more to do with 
his failure to understand the region and contain Iran from the outset 
of the war. Thoughtful people in the United States and around the world 
fear the President is compounding the trouble, not confronting the 
problems in a troubled region. Where does all this saber rattling go? 
History shows us the way.
  In less than one generation, we have done what we vowed never to do 
again: We have allowed a President to stampede the Nation into a 
hopeless war, not because we had to but because he wanted to. This 
President believed he could have victory by saying it was so. We have 
seen the tragic consequences of that.
  There are so many parallels between the Iraq debacle and Vietnam; it 
is unbelievable. The President and many

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people in America forgot the lessons of history when a blank check was 
given to a President in Iraq. There are still some lessons to learn.
  The Vietnam War was going badly, so much so that an earlier President 
did not merely escalate the war, he expanded it into Laos and Cambodia, 
secret bombing that did not shorten the Vietnam War or offer a path to 
resolution.
  My fear is that we will forget all the lessons of the Vietnam War. It 
is time to ask the question: Is Iran the next Laos or Cambodia?
  With things going badly in Iraq, will the President continue to 
ignore the lessons of history and order the American military not 
merely to escalate but to expand the war beyond Iraq? I wish a question 
like this did not have to be asked, but we cannot watch Iraq, consider 
Vietnam, and not worry that a President who refuses to learn from 
history or admit mistakes is not doomed to repeating the same mistakes.
  Military action is not the answer in Iraq, in Iran or Gaza, or any 
other flash point in the Middle East. We need to dispatch an army all 
right, an army of diplomats armed not with bullets but with ideas, with 
resolve and with a book of American history in every briefcase.
  The way out of Iraq must begin here on Capitol Hill, because down the 
street at the White House, they are only talking about more ways in 
and, we fear, other places to go. This war must end now, and there 
should be a binding resolution to indicate that to the President and to 
the American people.

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