[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 51 (Wednesday, April 2, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H1961-H1964]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        IRAQ AND THE MIDDLE EAST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ellison). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about Iraq tonight 
in the context in which historical incidents have created this most 
pressing and urgent situation, Iraq and the Middle East, to give the 
American people, Mr. Speaker, a frame of reference upon which to judge 
the way forward in this conflict. Are there solutions to this conflict? 
Is there something in our history or the history of the relationship of 
the international community that can resolve the present crisis that we 
are now experiencing?
  So what I would like to do is during this next hour that I have is to 
break this topic down into a number of different areas, take a look at 
the United States and the Cold War, especially through the 1950s and 
the 1960s, take a look at what was happening in the Middle East during 
that same period of time during the Cold War, what was going on in the 
Middle East, and then look at the present crisis that we are now 
experiencing in Iraq and Afghanistan with a focus on Iraq. And then 
what are the solutions? Is there a way forward? Can we judge from past 
precedents, past crises, what we can do now to resolve this conflict. 
And I think there is a way forward.

                              {time}  1900

  So, to frame this discussion tonight, I would like to start off with 
a quote by a man named Norman Cousins, who was the editor of the 
Saturday Evening Post and wrote an extraordinary book, I believe it was 
about 1980, called ``Human Options.'' Whenever there is a crisis, there 
are always options. There are always things that we, as human beings, 
with initiative, ingenuity, intellect and courage can figure out. Here 
are the two quotes: ``Knowledge is the solvent for danger.'' 
``Knowledge is the solvent for danger.'' If you're faced with a crisis, 
the more information you have, the more likely it is that you will make 
competent decisions.
  The second quote is, ``History is a vast early warning system.'' 
There have been a number of crises in America's past where people said 
you have to wait 20 years to figure out what went wrong. People will 
always say, well, 20 years later we have hindsight that we didn't have 
during the incident or the crisis or the conflict or the war. Well, 
with this quote, knowing history, knowing where we were 10 years ago, 
20 years ago, who lit the fuse that slowly

[[Page H1962]]

burned over decades to cause the present crisis, ``history is a vast 
early warning system.'' And the more we understand history, the better 
we will be able to deal with situations that we are presented with 
today.
  I want to give another quote from a man, a British writer, Rudyard 
Kipling, whose son fought in World War I, died in northern France in 
that battle, and the distraught father said this, ``Why did young men 
die? Because old men lied.'' Let me paraphrase that today in the 21st 
century, nearly 100 years later. ``Old men should talk before they send 
young men to die.''
  Let's take a look at the 1950s and 1960s, the Cold War, our successes 
and failures, just briefly. We know that the Soviet Union and the 
United States were Cold War adversaries. The Cold War brought about a 
nuclear arms race. The Cold War brought about a number of conflicts 
around the world. They separated the world into two camps, pro-Soviet, 
pro-U.S.A. We faced down the Soviet Union, they faced down us. 
Thousands upon thousands of nuclear weapons. There were crises and 
discussions and situations where we came close to a nuclear holocaust. 
It was a time when Khrushchev pounded his shoe in a podium at the 
United Nations and pointed his finger at the western diplomats and 
said, ``We will bury you.'' That was not the only time he said that.
  But what was Eisenhower's view of the Soviet Union during the Cold 
War? He knew we needed a strong military; he knew we needed the best 
intelligence services to be objectively analyzed in the world; but he 
also had an understanding of consensus and dialogue. So, what did he do 
with his most fearsome adversary on a number of occasions? Invite him 
to the United States to tour our farms, our schools, our cities. 
Consensus and dialogue was one of the ways in which we resolved these 
most difficult times.
  What did President Kennedy do when Castro and the Soviet Union 
actually had deployable nuclear weapons? Did we attack? Did we shut 
them off from the dialogue or discussion? Did we have preconditions 
before we talked to them face to face? No. We had an ongoing dialogue 
which resolved the crisis and prevented a nuclear holocaust, prevented 
a war.
  What did we do with communist China during the period of time when we 
were bitter enemies, when Mao Tse-tung said it would be worth it if 
half the population of China died if we could destroy the imperialists 
in the United States. What did we do? We worked for years to figure out 
how we could go to China and resolve these conflicts through dialogue. 
Those were our successes during the Cold War period.
  And I will always wonder, maybe with a little more research I could 
figure this out, why the United States did not have a dialogue with Ho 
Chi Minh. We talked to Khrushchev many times, we talked to many Soviet 
leaders. We talked to Mao Tse-tung, with no human rights etiquette, 
human rights violations that came close to some of the worst despots in 
the history of the world. We talked to them, we had a dialogue, but we 
didn't have a dialogue with Ho Chi Minh, and 58,000 Americans died, and 
their names are on a wall here in Washington, D.C. Thousands were 
wounded, and more than one million Vietnamese were killed.
  What did he learn from that? Well, we learned that Ho Chi Minh wanted 
sovereignty from British colonial rule. He first approached the United 
States in 1918, and he relentlessly pursued the United States to be his 
ally to gain the kind of sovereignty, self-determination that the whole 
world fought for in World War II.
  Let's take a look at the Middle East during the Cold War. The Middle 
East, throughout the Ottoman empire, throughout World War I, certainly 
after World War I, during World War II, but during the Cold War the 
Middle East continued to be a tangled web of complexity and intrigue, a 
difficult place to understand, tribal groups, religious groups, 
fundamentalists, moderates, secular leaders. 1953, the United States 
set a slow fuse that would erupt decades later.
  In 1953, for a lot of reasons, John Foster Dulles said the Iranians 
may be toying with becoming communists with the Soviet Union. A number 
of other reasons. But the United States, along with the aid of Britain, 
pursued a very violent coup which overthrew an elected prime minister, 
a secular Muslim, Mohammed Mosaddeq, and installed Mohammad Reza 
Pahlavi, the Shah. We took away their officially, independently elected 
prime minister and put in the Shah, who was a dictator, and that lit a 
slow fuse that burned. And it exploded in 1979, when the Iranians took 
over our embassy in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution that put in 
power the Ayatollah, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. That was a slow 
fuse. That was a mistake that we made early in 1953 because of our fear 
of communism. We didn't pursue a dialogue with Mohammed Mosaddeq to 
talk about what his intentions were. We made a mistake, in a similar 
fashion that we did with Ho Chi Minh.
  What was it like for the Soviet Union in the Middle East during the 
same period of time, the fifties, the sixties, the seventies? The 
Soviet Union was sometimes allied with the Egyptians, the Syrians, the 
Iraqis, and sometimes they weren't. This complexity, this intrigue ran 
in cycles. And Russia was almost never trusted. And sometimes they 
bought arms from the Russians, different Arab countries, and sometimes 
they chose to be allies with the United States.
  Where was Israel during this period of time, and, let's say, the 
country of Iran, which is now considered a bitter enemy of Israel? From 
1948 nearly to 1991, Israel, during the Cold War, was a quiet ally of 
the Iranians. Israel, during the Cold War in the Middle East, were 
quiet allies, the Israelis and the Iranians. Why? They were both 
enemies of the Soviet Union. They were both enemies of many of the Arab 
countries. They needed some form of economic viability in a very 
hostile region of the world. Israel needed oil, and Iran needed 
technology. And so, there was a constant trade between those two 
commodities for decades.
  Now, Ruhollah Reza Pahlavi, the Shah, certainly seemed to condemn 
Israel at every point. That was the geopolitical way to survive in this 
region of the world. We know from 1980 to 1989, Russia was involved in 
a bitter war with Afghanistan which began to set the stage for more 
bitterness with presumed allies of the Soviet Union in the Arab world 
because of conflict with the Muslim world.
  From 1980 to 1988, there was a terrible war between Iran and Iraq, as 
many as 2 million casualties between both countries. This is when Iraq 
began to use weapons of mass destruction. Given consideration you had 
two big oil-producing states at war with each other, where did the 
superpowers and where did European countries, where did the rest of the 
world ally themselves? They weren't going to stay out of this conflict, 
they were going to become a part of who was going to win this war, who 
was going to lose this war. Most of the big countries of the world, 
like Russia, the Soviet Union, European countries, including Japan and 
China, to a certain extent aided both of these countries. And as a 
result of that, the conflict went on for 8 years, and there were many, 
many, many problems, many casualties, and much bitterness that remains 
to this day.
  1979 was a presumed bright spot when President Sadat and Prime 
Minister Begin of Israel got together and Egypt recognized the State of 
Israel. What happened with this in 1979, it pulled Egypt away from the 
Soviet sphere of influence. It brought more objectivity to how to deal 
with the country of Israel in a sea of hostile allies.
  The Persian Gulf War in 1991, pretty much the end of the Cold War, 
was a conflict that the international community decided that they 
needed to get involved with, that is, if you recall, when Saddam 
Hussein decided that he wanted to invade Kuwait and take much of their 
oil and much of their land. But the international community, with the 
United States at the helm of leadership, saw the conflict, had very 
clear, defined objectives, created an international coalition, and some 
countries contributed troops, some countries contributed financial 
assets, and the conflict was resolved. But it was an international 
conflict that the countries made clear their objectives before they 
went in, they knew what the end result was going to be, and it was a 
success.

[[Page H1963]]

  Now, that complex, brief history brings us to the present crisis in 
Iraq and the Middle East. This conflict started in 2003, it is now 
2008. It has been going on for about 5 years. And what does it look 
like today? What does the conflict in Iraq look like?
  It is a place where the three great religions of the world were 
spawned, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is a place in the world 
where faith is a very important part of an individual's life. If you're 
a Jew, if you're a Christian, if you're a Muslim, you adhere strongly 
to your faith. It is a place where oil exports are extremely vital for 
economic viability. And every one of those countries knows it, whether 
it's Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Oman, Qatar, you name it, oil exports is 
a vital part of economic viability.
  Right now, however, as that economic process continues, the Middle 
East, as far as the balance of power is concerned, is fractured. And 
nobody in the Middle East, as a result of this conflict, knows which 
direction that balance of power is going to lead to.
  Now, the Middle East became an extreme focus for the United States as 
a result of 9/11. America responded; we sent troops to Afghanistan. The 
conflict there is still hotly contested. NATO forces are contributing 
troops, financial assistance. A number of allies outside of NATO are 
trying to work to resolve the conflict in Afghanistan. But Iraq became 
a focus because there was some question of whether or not Saddam 
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, whether or not Saddam Hussein 
was connected with al Qaeda, whether or not Saddam Hussein was actually 
going to deploy these weapons of mass destruction, was there a danger 
that the United States security was in jeopardy? And so, it was 
recommended in the beginning that America send between 300,000 and 
500,000 troops into Iraq because this was going to be a very difficult 
conflict. And so, with 300,000 to 500,000 troops, you could resolve the 
problems of convoys, you could resolve the problems that would 
inevitably come as far as looting was concerned, chaos was going to be 
dealt with, ammo dumps that proliferated the countryside would be a 
problem, border security was going to be a problem. A whole range of 
issues would be resolved if you could send in 300,000 to 500,000 
troops. Not to mention the fact that, I would recommend a book called 
``Fiasco'' by Thomas Ricks, that many of the military planners in the 
Pentagon did not want to go into Iraq in the first place. They saw the 
same kind of issues that they dealt with back in 1991, when many of the 
military people did not want to go to Baghdad after the first Persian 
Gulf War ended. They simply didn't want to go. That discussion was 
ended and military was asked to come up with a plan. They came up with 
a plan of 300,000 to 500,000 troops, but that was reduced to 180,000 
troops. The 180,000 troops were not sufficient to deal with the 
looting, with the convoys, with guarding prisoners, with border 
security, with eliminating the ammo ducts, et cetera, et cetera, et 
cetera.
  And so, the U.S. has been fighting a protracted war in Iraq for the 
last 5 years. What are the specific defined objectives?

                              {time}  1915

  Where is the international coalition that can deal with this conflict 
in a much more cogent fashion?
  Who are we fighting? Are we fighting al Qaeda? Are we fighting a 
criminal element? Are we fighting the different factions within the 
Shiite groups? Are we fighting the Sunnis? Where do the Kurds enter 
into this picture? What is the defined end to this conflict? These are 
all questions that are really not resolved yet. It's a very difficult 
place.
  Let's take a look at Iraq's neighbors. We have a tendency to look at 
Islam or the Muslim world as being all the same. And yet there are 
very, very distinct differences between the different factions in the 
Shiite world, in the Sunni world, in the Allawi world, in the Wahabi 
world. There's many, many different sects within Islam. Some are 
moderate, some are secular, and some are more fundamentalists, and some 
are terrorists like al Qaeda. Some are brutal like the Taliban.
  If we look at Saudi Arabia, they're a fundamentalist country. If we 
look at Iran, which is a Persian country, not an Arab country, but a 
Muslim country, Iran, if you are a woman, you can drive a car. But if 
you're a woman in Saudi Arabia, you cannot. If you're a woman in Iran, 
you can run for political office. You can own property. You can be 
educated. You can be a doctor or a lawyer or a schoolteacher, or a 
member of their parliament. That's our enemy. In Saudi Arabia you 
cannot do those things.
  Syria, it's a secular country. Syria, women can be educated. They can 
drive cars. In Saudi Arabia, our ally, that's a completely different 
situation.
  In Qatar, the U.S. has a massive military base there, provides 
security. It's a good arrangement with the small country of Qatar. Oil 
is an important commodity for them. The U.S. has a base there; it's 
convenient for us and our relationship with Afghanistan and Iraq, and 
it's a mutually agreeable situation.
  But what's interesting about Qatar is that they own al Jazeera. Most 
of us have heard of al Jazeera, the news media outlet which 
predominates the Middle East, and which pokes their finger in the eye 
of the United States just about every single day. It's a pretty strange 
relationship. It's the conflict without a resolution.
  Is there a resolution for the conflict in Iraq? Is there a way 
forward?
  U.S. troops are stunningly competent at what they do in Iraq; 
stunningly competent, whether it's in Mosul, Anbar province, the 
ancient city of Babylon, Kirkuk, Baghdad, you name it, U.S. troops are 
stunningly competent. And what they deserve and need and must have from 
us, the Government, the Congress, the people that make the policy, 
which, to a large extent has been flawed in the past, they need for us 
to be knowledgeable in order to be competent to create a policy that is 
also worthy of those soldiers that have put their lives on the line and 
continue to do so every single day.
  So where are we in Iraq? Is there a way forward? Let's take a look at 
the present crisis, the present situation. And what do we see?
  We know that in Iraq right now, the U.S. military is the skeletal 
structure upon which the entire Iraqi society depends. Would it be a 
good idea to withdraw our troops precipitously? Absolutely not. We have 
a responsibility to the Iraqi people and to our soldiers.
  Iraq. What is Iraq's position within the region? What is Iraq's 
position within the region as far as its relationship with its 
neighbors is concerned? Does Iraq have any security alliances with any 
of its neighbors?
  Remember, after World War II we created NATO, North Atlantic Treaty 
Organization. We created the Organization of American States in Latin 
America. We created Southeast Asia Treaty Organization in Southeast 
Asia. The United States reached out for regional security. The United 
States reached out to integrate our security needs with friends and 
allies.
  What is the European Union doing right now? Besides NATO, the 
European Union is creating a region in the world that provides security 
through an integrated economic system.
  Now, I'm not saying that the Middle Eastern countries should or may 
form a North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But I'm saying it's 
important for Iraq to begin looking with, certainly our help, at 
security arrangements within the region of the Middle East.
  The United States is the skeletal structure upon which all of Iraqi 
society rests. We're integrated with Iraqi society, with their economy, 
with their culture, with their educational institutions, with their 
military, with their political institutions. So for us to begin to 
break away from that, slowly leave, we must do it in a very responsible 
fashion.
  And we can't just focus on Iraq, because the region is one region, 
and it's interconnected in a very complex web. So let's take a look at 
the region in the context of the present crisis.
  The United States needs to be an objective arbitrator, and I mean 
objective, in the Palestinian-Israeli question. And the Middle Eastern 
countries and the rest of the world need to see that the U.S. is an 
objective arbitrator in that particular conflict. And when we are seen 
that way, the reduction of al Qaeda recruits will drop like a stone.
  Our discussions with Saudi Arabia have to be as far as a regional 
resolution to this conflict in Iraq is concerned. And Saudi Arabia has 
some

[[Page H1964]]

fear of Iraq being an Iranian satellite. That's a real fear.
  The geopolitical balance of power in the Middle East right now is 
fractured, and no one knows in which direction it's going to go, who's 
going to have more influence, where the military power will be, where 
the economic power will be, and so Saudi Arabia needs to have a 
discussion with the United States, where they see the United States 
having some integrity and objectivity in that part of the world.
  Syria needs to be brought into the loop of conversations about what's 
happening with the Palestinian-Israeli problem, what's going on in 
Lebanon, what are our objectives in Iraq. The Syrians can be a positive 
element in our conversations. The Syrians can be a positive element. If 
they would sign a non-aggressive pact with Israel and have all the 
parties sign it, they could get the Golan Heights back.
  The Iranian historic fears. Iran has a fear of Iraq. They lost about 
a million people in that 8-year conflict. So Iran has a natural fear 
that if certain elements in Iraq come back to power, they could have 
security concerns. So we need to have conversations and dialogue with 
the Iranians, a conversation and a dialogue with no preconditions, we 
just sit down and talk.
  Did we have preconditions when we talked to Mao Tse-Tung? We didn't. 
They were established after the conversation started.
  Did we have preconditions when we talked to Khrushchev or Brezhnev or 
Kosygin? No, it was an ongoing dialogue. The conditions were set after 
the conversation started.
  So it's important for the Iranians, I think, in this region to begin 
resolving some of these conflicts, to begin talking, especially to the 
Syrians and the Iranians.
  No one in the Middle East wants Russia to have a sphere of influence 
there. No one in the Middle East wants the Chinese to have an economic 
sphere of influence there. The objective history of the United States 
in this region is one that still is respected.
  Eisenhower, during his administration, said we need a strong 
military. We need a strong intelligence service with their analysis 
being objectively viewed. But we need consensus and dialogue.
  What is in America's arsenal? We have a strong military. We have the 
best intelligence services in the world. But as Eisenhower and Nixon 
and Ford and Kennedy and past presidents saw, it was more than just a 
strong military, more than just good intelligence, it was diplomacy, it 
was trade. It was exchanges of education, science, technology, social 
and cultural exchanges. These are the things that brought countries 
together. These are the things that integrated nations.
  The way forward in Iraq is to begin setting up a string, a series of 
dialogue with all of Iraq's neighbors, including Syria and Iran, with 
no preconditions. The conditions can come as soon as the best diplomats 
in the world begin those conversations, and that's American diplomats.
  And Iran was an enemy of the Soviet Union for years. They were 
enemies of many countries in the Middle East, many Arab countries. They 
had a strong, quiet, but strong relationship with Israel. It's a 
country that can be a part of the solution in this troubled part of the 
world.
  Knowledge is the solvent for danger, so said Norman Cousins. And 
knowledge, in this instance, can help us resolve the danger in the 
Middle East.
  History is a vast early warning system. What is the history of all 
these countries? Whether it's Israel or Egypt or Lebanon or Syria, 
Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and so on, if we understand how they view the 
world, and we understand our place in that region, we can go a long way 
to resolving the conflict.
  Sam Rayburn, famous congressman, the building that I work in is named 
after him, said an interesting thing while he was a Member of Congress, 
this great institution. Any mule can kick a barn door down; but it 
takes a carpenter to build one. And we need carpenters now. We need the 
best carpenters, the best diplomats, the best people with an 
understanding of the history of this region to begin, in a political, 
diplomatic fashion, taking the burden off the 1 percent of Americans 
who are now, almost alone, fighting the problems in the conflict there 
in Iraq.
  Remember Rudyard Kipling. Why did young men die? Because old men lied 
nearly 100 years ago in Northern France. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling 
today, old people should talk before they send young people to die. 
That's a pretty urgent message.
  In the landscape of human tragedy, in the history of the human race, 
who has been our enemy almost all the time, almost exclusively? Who is 
the enemy on the landscape of human history? Ignorance, arrogance and 
dogma.

                              {time}  1930

  Ignorance, arrogance, and dogma inevitably leads to monstrous 
certainty. And monstrous certainty from any source leads to conflict, 
leads to war.
  And so how do we resolve the enemy on the landscape of human tragedy? 
How do we resolve that?
  We replace ignorance with knowledge. We replace arrogance with 
humility. And we replace dogma with tolerance. It takes courage to do 
that, but those young men and women fighting in Iraq deserve nothing 
less.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________