[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 149 (Wednesday, October 3, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12454-S12456]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ACCOUNTABILITY IN IRAQ
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, the calendar has just turned to
October. The long-awaited month of September has passed. Why September?
September, the month of the Petraeus report, was to be the month of
accountability for Iraq, for its Government, and a time for
accountability of the President's policy in Iraq. Instead, the result
of the long-awaited month of September is that we are, once again,
staying the course, as the President would have us do. We were not able
to change course through the Defense authorization bill which passed
yesterday, though many of us tried. Our efforts to change the mission
away from deep involvement in Iraq's civil war and toward a more narrow
focus on fighting al-Qaida failed, by a narrow margin, but failed.
Efforts to enforce the transition with the power of the purse came up
short as well.
Tragically, for well over 4 years into this war, at a time when the
Army chief of staff is sounding the alarm about readiness of our Army,
the Senate was not even able to provide our troops and their families
with predictable deployment schedules--a stunning week. This is far
less than the American people expect from us, when they elected us to
do far more. Over the next few months, I implore my colleagues to use
this time well and to think deeply about what our commitment in Iraq
means to our future and the world. I especially want my colleagues and
the American people to think about what might happen if there is
another attack on the United States, which is always a possibility. The
fact there has not been says there has been some interdiction and a lot
of good luck, and al-Qaida takes its time in planning what it really
cares about.
What if that attack has nothing to do with Iraq? What if the next
attack is the result of planning and plotting
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from al-Qaida and its terrorist affiliates who live in a safe haven on
the Pakistani border? Will we regret that we did not do more to force
the President to focus on the real threat facing this country--the only
threat which wants to take us down in any way, shape, or form, which is
possible?
We cannot continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over. It is
past time for a thorough understanding of how we got to be mired in
Iraq's civil war, and why we must get out of it.
I am often reminded of a prescient quote from Sandra Mackey in her
book, ``The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein,'' which
was written, incidentally, before the war began.
Her book posed the central question: Would a future Iraq without
Saddam Hussein be even more unstable and more problematic for the
security of the United States itself?
Mackey did what this administration failed to do prior to the war and
continues to fail to do today. She studied the historical, religious,
ethnic, and political landscape that produced Iraq and the combination
of the above factors that produced Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and
allowed it to be sustained. She did her homework on the background and
the nature of the country and the people and the ebb and the flow of
the forces that have worked there for 1,500 years.
She predicted that we would pay a great price for our ignorance and
utter lack of understanding of Iraq as a country.
She wrote in her book, looking back to the first gulf war, and now
the future:
Then, in August of 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the
media turned its pages and air time over to Saddam Hussein.
Just say the word ``Saddam,'' and you had people's attention, at
least for a few moments.
Ever since, it has been Hussein, not Iraq, on whom
Americans and their [civilian] leaders have riveted their
attention. But the time is fast approaching when the United
States, for a series of perilous reasons, will be forced to
look beyond Hussein to Iraq itself. That is when all
Americans will pay the price for what has been a long night
of ignorance about the land between the rivers.
That being the Tigris and the Euphrates.
What a horrible price it is: 3,800 brave men and women killed; nearly
28,000 wounded, maimed, and scarred--most mentally and/or physically
for the rest of their lives. Families have been torn apart. Divorce and
suicide rates are climbing rapidly. Last year, 99 of our soldiers
committed suicide, which is the highest rate since the Army started
keeping records on that 26 years ago.
The war has cost us as a people and our security so dearly in lives,
resources, our standing around the world, our sense of ourselves, our
self-esteem, and our moral authority.
It tears my heart out that our troops are dying every day and
suffering from these horrific wounds which are the new property of the
recent years because of the White House's misguided policies from which
it will not move.
So I ask, why must we remain bogged down in Iraq--at such great
cost--when there is a far greater threat that we must face and are not
facing? Instead of focusing our resources on Iraq's civil war, we
should be focusing all of our efforts on the elimination of al-Qaida,
and, incidentally, doing something called protecting the American
homeland, which seems to be casually handled in budget and in action.
We must finally understand the fundamental fact that our brave and
highly skilled soldiers cannot resolve Iraq's internal political,
social, and religious fights--there is no argument about that--
particularly when enormous majorities of these people--98 percent of
Sunni Arabs and 84 percent of Shia--want our forces to leave the
country. That is more than a hint.
This is not defeat. It is not surrender. It is not retreat. It is
simply getting a grip on the problems we face.
The reality is, it is not our fight. We cannot contribute there.
There is very little we can do to affect it, if anything. Iraq is
chaotic and violent because of deep-seated, centuries-old disputes that
have nothing to do with us. It will likely remain chaotic and violent
for the long foreseeable future, whether our military is involved in
their dispute or whether it is not involved. It will not make any
difference.
We had an open intelligence hearing in which a number of experts,
Arabists came and told us that, in fact, America is marginal to what is
going on over there. It is all about Sunnis and Shias and Kurds, and
about their ancient fights going all the way back to the death of
Muhammad. So this sectarian war has nothing to do at all with the
United States, and it has nothing to do with our true enemy, al-Qaida,
which has only latched on to the sectarian competition to take
advantage of our own mistaken involvement in it.
The only thing that can change the course of Iraq is the Iraqi people
and their leaders, and only if they can make dramatic changes in the
way they view one another. I do not think that day will come. That is
this Senator's opinion. We have examples of people getting along on a
temporary basis when there are lots of troops around, other things, but
that is not in their nature. It is not in the nature of that part of
the world. We like to think it is because that is our nature. But it is
not their nature.
There is, however, a vital strategic and tactical role for our
military, and that is eliminating al-Qaida. But it first requires
understanding that global terrorism inspired by al-Qaida is a different
problem from sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia. That is what
you have to understand first--very simple, very plain. Our present
policy continues to follow al-Qaida's playbook by conflating these two
problems to create one single-minded ``enemy,'' thereby tying several
different strands of violence into a single tangled knot. We must untie
this knot and address these issues separately. And we must recognize
that our involvement with Iraq is drastically diminishing our ability
to do anything about al-Qaida.
The war against al-Qaida and affiliated terrorists has two key
components, in this Senator's point of view: a tactical component--
which is tracking, catching, and killing terrorists and disrupting
their plots--and a strategic component--which is addressing the
circumstances that produce terrorists and countering the ideology that
drives them.
Our war in Iraq diverts our military and intelligence resources from
the tactical component--it is very clear that al-Qaida is gaining
strength along with the Taliban in Afghanistan because we moved a lot
of people out to fight a war that we had no business being in, and so
we suffered where we originally were about to be strong--and it limits
the amount of money available to address poverty and evolution of
governments in the Muslim world.
But perhaps the most damaging effect of the war in Iraq is the war of
ideology. The Intelligence Committee has held several hearings this
year looking at the role of ideology in the struggle against violent
extremism. There is plenty of evidence, including unclassified
intelligence assessments, that al-Qaida has successfully exploited the
war in Iraq to recruit and train a new generation of terrorists--thanks
to us. We have made that a possibility for them. Civilian leadership
has handed them that golden gift, and they have made good use of it.
But there is longer term damage the war in Iraq is doing to our
counterterrorism efforts. It is making it impossible for us to make any
progress in the war of ideas throughout the Muslim world. It is clear
that winning this part of the war is the only way we will have an
effect in the long term on this kind of instability and chaos.
Al-Qaida wants us to stay in Iraq. As I said, we are following their
game plan faithfully because our presence validates everything about
their message of Westerners trying to dominate Muslims and occupy their
lands--all of which is sacred to them. As long as we are there, voices
of moderation toward the West will be drowned out.
The bottom line is this: Continued U.S. involvement in Iraq is in al-
Qaida's interest, not America's. The longer we stay mired in Iraq, the
stronger al-Qaida will grow.
Again, declassified intelligence reports and a broad spectrum of
experts have noted al-Qaida is as strong as any other time since 9/11--
this day--and growing stronger.
President Bush says we should not allow Iraq to become ``a safe-haven
from which they could launch new attacks on our country.'' Yet the
President has already allowed al-Qaida to
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create a safe haven, a huge safe haven on the Pakistani border. That
situation is deteriorating on a daily basis, and it allows al-Qaida to
continue to plan deadly attacks. And, believe me, that is their purpose
for existing and living, and that is what they want from us. We have
given them what they want from us.
Our struggle to eliminate global terrorism may remain a mystery to
our President, but it must not remain a mystery to us in the Congress
and to the American people. We do have a responsibility to act. Whether
history looks kindly on this Congress or not is not really so
important. But we must take every single serious measure available to
force the President to face reality and refocus America's mission in
that part of the world.
We have created deep and profound sadness and left thousands of
people sitting in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives with shards
of steel through their bodies that cannot be removed by surgeons. So
they sit in wheelchairs in agony for the rest of their lives. They
cannot take them out because they are too close to organs, arteries, so
they sit in agony, probably a great number of them wishing they had
just simply been killed.
I will end that part and simply say that I would also like to remind
the President of the United States that signing the CHIP bill won't
change anything in Iraq, but it may have a whole lot to do with
changing young people in America in the way they grow up, what their
opportunities are, and their sense of optimism and commitment to public
service and to the good of our country.
Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, would the Senator yield?
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I yield to the Senator from Florida.
Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I wanted to ask the Senator a
question, but first I want to thank him for his very thoughtful and
almost scholarly exposition of an examination of the situation in which
we find ourselves in Iraq. I thank him for the service to his country,
first in State government, rising to the position of Governor of his
State, and now these many years as the Senator from West Virginia.
The question I want to ask the Senator is, in his statement about the
antipathy between Sunnis and Shiites--and he noted the historical
antipathy as it goes back, he said, to the time of Muhammad. Indeed, we
saw that first erupt from--I guess it was Muhammad's grandson at the
Battle of Karbala in 680 A.D., and as a result of the murder--or the
defeat of the grandson at that point, it was that group that was
defeated that went on, out of revenge, to become the Shiites--a
minority among all Muslims but nevertheless one that was potent and
built on revenge. Is this the understanding of history the Senator from
West Virginia recalls in his statement and why it is so difficult for
us as an outside power to come in, in the middle of that sectarian
strife, and try to bring about reconciliation?
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, the Senator from Florida, as usual,
is correct. I thank him for his kind comments; he is not quite so
correct about that.
But, yes, that is very much the case. It is simply an example of why
it is that America--why intelligence is the spear, the tip of the
spear, and that we never do anything ever again without listening to
our intelligence--not to Chalabi, not to Richard Perle, but to our
intelligence--which told us all of these things, which told us what
would happen, timidly at first but more boldly later on.
We just live in a different world. We are homesteaders. I have always
felt that way.
After the industrial revolution, the East got sort of flooded up with
folks who had come from other places, and they went out West with the
Gold Rush and the land rush, they got their 10 square acres and built
their houses and picket fences and went about educating their children
and doing good things but paying very little attention to the rest of
the world because there was no apparent reason to do so. We had never
been attacked since 1812, and that was marginal, and 1941 had not
arrived. This awakened us in many ways, but, in fact, it really didn't.
Conscription for World War II passed the Congress, I believe--or one
House of the Congress--I believe by one vote, after Pearl Harbor. We go
over and we fight just wars, and then we come back and we disarm.
It is not in our nature to know about the rest of the world. There is
not a profound curiosity factor that pulls us, now that we are very
much a part of the world, to understand what is going on in other parts
of the world and in specific countries where there happens to be a
threat of people who have come to see us as greedy, hate our green
lawns and picket fences, and think that our view of life and morality
is way off. They are very serious about that. We slough it aside, but
they are very serious about that.
So how we thought we could somehow do this, come in and mediate
something which had been going on I would say since the death of
Muhammad in 632--but that doesn't matter; it is a question of how his
succession would be carried out. That has lasted ever since. The
British and French came in and created a place called Iraq, but the
tribal people who kept living all through those years there were always
the same and their habits were always the same, and, in fact, it is
true throughout most of the rest of the world, if you go to the
Philippines, if you go to many places--revenge, tribal loyalties, as
opposed to central government loyalties. I have never been convinced
that a constitution or a parliament means a whit to the people of Iraq.
It meant everything to us because it is sort of the definition of
democracy on the rise, but I don't think it made any difference to them
at all.
So we misread because we don't read, we don't read and we don't
study, we don't go, we don't learn languages because we don't think we
have to, and we have not had to because the world has been very
simple--the Soviet soldiers in uniform versus American soldiers in
uniform, our various planes, tanks, and all the rest of it, but then a
red phone on each side to try to calm things down. The world is no
longer simple. Everybody looks like everybody else in very dangerous
places.
When we entered into Iraq, it was without thought, it was without
study. The decision was more or less made within 2 or 3 days of 9/11,
which, when you think about it, is rather silly. So there was no real
understanding of Iraq, even as there is no real understanding of Iran
today, no understanding of North Korea. There is a superficial
understanding, the dramatic parts--nuclear this, something else that,
starvation that. But who are they?
Why is it that North Korea and South Korea--44 million in the south,
22 million in the north--that amongst all of those people, 66 million
people, there are only 400 surnames--``Nelson'' being a surname,
``Rockefeller'' being a surname--there are only 400 surnames. The world
is mixed and varied.
Japan disappeared for 250 years during the Tokugawa era. Nobody could
get in, nobody could get out. That was just 150 years ago, and they
still bear some of that with them. Do we understand that? I don't think
we do. They are a democracy. Are they? They were handed their
Constitution by GEN Douglas MacArthur, and except for a period of 3
months--and I was there during those 3 months--in the last 60 years,
one party has controlled the country in its entirety.
So there are many things to understand in this world, but among those
places we did not understand and still do not are the vicissitudes of
Iraq, the Sunni and the Shiites, each of them bearing within them many
layers of competition, revenge, family feuds, all the rest of it.
Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, the Senate has just witnessed
one of the most insightful analyses by the chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee on the present-day changes on planet Earth and
how the United States should adapt to it by virtue of the fact of
recounting history. This Senator is grateful to his chairman for that
statement.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I thank the Senator.
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