[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 36 (Monday, March 2, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2646-S2648]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN WARS

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have two topics I wish to speak about 
this evening: One on Iraq and one on higher education. First, on Iraq 
and Afghanistan. President Obama on Friday told marines at Camp Lejeune 
and the world how the United States plans to end the war in Iraq. The 
President's plan turns out not to be so different than the agreement 
President Bush signed with Iraq just before he left office. Add Senator 
McCain's name to the list because on Friday he generally supported 
President Obama's decision. For the first time, I think it can be said 
we have a bipartisan consensus--and a consensus between the Congress 
and the President--about how to honorably and successfully conclude the 
war in Iraq.
  Ironically, this is a bipartisan consensus that comes 2 years later 
than it could have. Because what President Bush and President Obama and 
Senator McCain seemed to agree on today is also a course that is 
consistent with the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group 
headed by former Republican Secretary of State James Baker and former 
Democratic House Foreign Affairs Chairman Lee Hamilton. That is not 
just my judgment. I asked Secretary Rice, the former Secretary of 
State, whether the agreement

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President Bush signed with Iraq is generally consistent with the 
principles of the Iraq Study Group, and she said yes. I asked Secretary 
Gates, who has been Secretary of Defense both for President Bush and 
now for President Obama and who, for a little while, was also a member 
of the Iraq Study Group, whether the direction in Iraq that President 
Bush had agreed to go in is approximately the same as the principles 
recommended in December of 2006 by the Iraq Study Group, and he 
answered yes.
  Unfortunately, instead of having, for the last 2 years, a consensus 
between the Congress--a Democratic Congress--and the President--a 
Republican President--we instead made it clear to our enemy and clear 
to our troops that we were divided in Washington about the course of 
the war and that we couldn't agree on how to conclude. I don't know 
whether we had reached agreement earlier by, for example, adopting the 
legislation that Senator Salazar and I and 17 Senators offered and that 
about 60 Representatives offered in the House, that would have made the 
principles of the Iraq Study Group the course upon which the United 
States would embark to successfully conclude the war in Iraq--I don't 
know whether, if we had done that in 2007, 2 years ago, the war would 
have been more successful or Iraq would have been better stabilized; if 
troops would have come home sooner and perhaps even American lives 
might have been saved; or if Iraqi lives might have been saved. I don't 
know about that. But I do know that we put in jeopardy--by our failure 
to agree between the Congress and the President over the course of the 
war in Iraq--we put in jeopardy the ability of the American people to 
have the stomach to see this mission all the way through to the end, 
which is an essential requirement, in my view, of any military endeavor 
in which the United States should engage.
  President Bush, nevertheless, persevered, and it became, in the view 
of many Democrats and others, Bush's war, and it seriously damaged the 
Bush Presidency. It seriously divided the country. At least we can use 
this failure to agree, this failure to come to some consensus, as a 
guide about how to conduct ourselves in future conflicts, starting with 
the war in Afghanistan.
  President Obama is sending 17,000 more Americans to Afghanistan. He 
is doing so after only a month in office. He says, quite candidly, he 
hasn't yet got a strategy, approved a strategy or, in his words Friday 
night in his interview with Jim Lehrer, an exit strategy. I assume that 
also means he hasn't yet decided upon what is even more important, 
which is a success strategy. The lesson of Iraq and of our failure to 
come to some agreement over the last 2 years is that we should give our 
new President time and support in his efforts to develop a strategy and 
then we should insist--we in the Congress--that we agree with him on a 
strategy; and if we can't agree with the one he comes up with, that he 
adjust it until we can, so we as a nation can have a compelling 
purpose, a clear set of goals, the money to supply more than enough 
force to reach those goals. So our enemies and our troops can hear 
clearly that the American people have the stomach to see the mission in 
Afghanistan all the way through to the end. In other words, it is 
important for our country not just for the success of the Obama 
presidency; it is important for our country that what some called 
Bush's war not be followed by what others might call Obama's war.
  The Iraq Study Group was created by Congress in 2006. It had a 
remarkable group of members, including Lee Hamilton and Jim Baker who 
both cochaired it. Ed Meese, the former Attorney General for President 
Reagan, was there. Vernon Jordan was a member. Secretary Gates was a 
member for a while. The first President Bush's Secretary of State, 
Larry Eagleburger, was a member. Leon Panetta, President Clinton's 
Chief of Staff and now CIA Director, was there. President Clinton's 
Secretary of Defense was a member. Sandra Day O'Connor, former Supreme 
Court Justice, was a member. They spent many months and went to Iraq, 
and they talked to a variety of people. They tried to see if they could 
come to a consensus about how the U.S. could honorably conclude the war 
in Iraq. They were bipartisan and unanimous in their 79 
recommendations, which would be boiled down to three major points.
  I remember being very disappointed in early 2007 when, following 
that, President Bush didn't take advantage of the opportunity during 
his State of the Union Address to embrace the report. He knew then that 
a majority of Americans didn't support his strategy. He knew the 
strategy would have a more difficult time being sustained without their 
support. I think all of us knew, then, if he could get Congress to 
agree, the American people would be more likely to agree.
  The President could have invited the distinguished members of the 
Iraq Study Group to sit in the gallery during his speech and, as 
Presidents do often, introduce them. The President could have said: 
This is not my recommendation, it is theirs. I accept it for the good 
of the country, and I ask the American people now to accept it.
  If one goes back and reads the recommendations of the Iraq Study 
Group report made in December 2006, here is basically what it said we 
should do: Get the U.S. troops out of the combat business in Iraq and 
into the support business in a prompt and honorable way--maybe over the 
course of a year, they said. General Petraeus amended that to a little 
longer than a year. The Iraq Study Group said reduce the number of 
American forces in Iraq. The Iraq Study Group said there should be a 
limited military presence for the longer term in Iraq, and that would 
signal to the rest of the Middle East to stay out of Iraq. It said it 
would give support to General Petraeus and his troops for a military 
surge to make Baghdad safer. This was before President Bush authorized 
the surge.
  It would expand diplomatic efforts to build support for Iraqi 
national reconciliation and sovereignty. The Iraq Study Group would 
recognize, as Prime Minister Blair said, that it is time for the next 
chapter of Iraq's history to be written by the Iraqis themselves.
  Democratic Senator Ken Salazar--who is now a member of the Obama 
administration as Interior Secretary--and I wrote legislation that 
would make the Iraq Study Group recommendations national policy. As I 
mentioned, it attracted about nine Democrats and eight Republican 
Senators. In the House of Representatives, there were 27 Democrats and 
35 Republicans.
  At that time, we were having vote after vote on Iraq. Some Senators 
said there should be an immediate withdrawal. Others wanted victory of 
the kind we had in Germany and Japan. I thought the Iraq Study Group 
recommendations made the most sense; and, apparently, today, so does 
President Bush, so does President Obama, and so does Senator McCain.
  Now, it is fair to say each of those men I just mentioned could find 
something in the Iraq Study Group report with which to disagree. I 
would respect those disagreements. But the 17 of us in the Senate could 
find within that report a course to agree about, just like the 
Commission itself of widely varying Americans could find enough 
unanimously to agree about, so they could say to the troops, to the 
enemy, and to the world: Here is our course forward.
  I suggest we would have been better off if we had done that. I 
pointed out that President Bush would not support the report. I 
respected that, but I disagreed with it. At the same time, Speaker 
Pelosi and the Democratic leaders would not allow our amendment to come 
to a vote. We asked and asked--but their reaction was, ``No, no, we 
won't do that.'' I guess they had their reasons. We don't question 
their motivation. President Bush persevered in the war, and Democratic 
leaders persevered with their opposition to the war. They didn't allow 
the Iraq Study Group resolution to come to a vote. So then we had an 
election.
  Senator Salazar said about the only way we could have united the 
President and the Democratic leaders was in their opposition to the 
Iraq Study Group--a set of recommendations that are now largely the 
principles upon which we are preceding as we seek to end the war in 
Iraq. But is the country better off for us not having had that 2 years 
of agreement?
  Here are some lessons: One, the Iraq war reminds us that nation 
building costs many billions of dollars and many lives. Whenever 
possible, we

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should use our military forces to defend America and use our ``shining 
city on a hill,'' which President Reagan talked about so often, as an 
example to spread freedom. If we must become involved in another 
country, as we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, then we must have a 
compelling reason, a clear mission, an overwhelming force to make 
certain we reach our goals.
  The second lesson is this: In order to reach those goals, we have to 
persuade the American people to have the stomach to see the mission we 
have adopted all the way through to the end. It is much better if the 
President and the Congress, even if they are of different political 
parties, agree on that mission. Technically, the Commander in Chief can 
wage a war, leaving us not much to do but fund the troops, which almost 
all of us, regardless of party, do. We saw in Iraq the failure to agree 
between the President and the Congress--which made the war harder and 
longer and President Bush's presidency much less successful. We were in 
the position often of being the oldest democracy lecturing Baghdad, an 
infant democracy, for not coming up with a political solution when we 
ourselves could not come up with one.
  Finally, we learned a lesson in Iraq about how to honor those who 
serve our country. Sometimes in airports now--unlike in the Vietnam 
era--passengers burst into applause when a group of service men and 
women appear. A great many Tennesseans have been to Iraq and 
Afghanistan. More are going this week to Afghanistan. Many have served 
two or three tours already--including men and women from the Tennessee 
National Guard and the 101st Airborne--and 100 have given their lives 
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hundreds have suffered wounds that will change 
their lives. They have performed heroically. I am glad to see that 
after 6 years, we finally seem to be united on a path which will bring 
the war to successful conclusion and hasten the time when most of those 
serving can come home. But it is disappointing that we did not take the 
advantage 2 years ago when we might have done it to agree on the 
principles of the Iraq Study Group. We had that opportunity. It might 
have shortened the war. It might have stabilized Iraq more rapidly. It 
might have saved lives.

  We should remember that as we look ahead to Afghanistan. We do not 
want to succeed Bush's war with Obama's war. Whenever we go to war, it 
should be an American war and the President should make certain he has 
bipartisan support in Congress.

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