[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 135 (Wednesday, September 23, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H9889-H9896]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the gentleman 
for yielding to me earlier in the hour. I think an open dialogue is a 
good thing, and I hope the gentlemen will be here to hear the rebuttals 
that I am about to provide to the statements that they made in the 
previous hour, starting with the bill that passed out of the Energy and 
Commerce Committee and other committees, H.R. 3200, which is the 
foundational bill to the health care act, the national health care act 
that Democrats are seeking to pass.
  And regardless of the statement that there is general language in the 
bill that says nothing in this bill funds illegals, the fact remains 
that the amendment that was offered by the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Deal), which was language that is tried and true, that existed in the 
Medicaid legislation that we have used for at least a decade that 
requires proof of citizenship, that amendment was voted down in Energy 
and Commerce 29-28, resulting in an open-door policy where there are no 
restrictions to keep the bill from providing access to benefits to 
illegals or to people who are here legally but are barred under the 5-
year bar.
  In fact, the standard that exists was a standard that required proof 
of citizenship. Democrats first took that apart when they passed an 
expansion of SCHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance Program. They 
took that from a 200 percent of poverty, and the first time it passed 
the House it went to 400 percent of poverty. Mr. Deal offered the same 
amendment in that bill to put in language that existed in law before it 
was struck out by the expansion of SCHIP, and it was voted down on 
almost a party-line effort.
  We know if there are not provisions which require proof of 
citizenship, then there aren't provisions that are going to prohibit 
illegals from getting benefits under the bill. The Congressional Budget 
Office knows that. They scored that language in SCHIP as costing $8.9 
billion to fund health insurance for illegals and to provide Medicaid 
to illegals because it removed the citizenship standard. Removing the 
citizenship standard, according to the Congressional Budget Office, on 
H.R. 3200, the health care bill, would provide for access to those 
benefits under the bill for as many 5.6 million illegals. And that's 
the score that came out from the Congressional Budget Office.
  Another nonpartisan organization is the Congressional Research 
Services, and they also concluded there weren't restrictions in H.R. 
3200, the health care bill, so that would result in those benefits 
going to illegals who would apply. And we know how fast the grapevine 
works and how effectively people can game the system, and no one should 
be in a position of responsibility in this Congress if they can't 
understand that equation, especially if they are on the committee.
  And it is not just Steve King making this statement. It is the 
Congressional Budget Office on at least two different occasions, 
rendering a judgment on that specific language of the Deal amendment, 
and it is Congressional Research Services. And by the way, it goes on 
down the line and a number of other entities, including the President, 
who finally had to address it and say we are going to have to write 
something in the bill to protect us so it doesn't fund illegals. And it 
also includes the Senate, which took the position that they would 
address the language.
  So why do you have to fix it if it doesn't fund illegals the way it 
is? And I believe that the President stood here and called a group of 
Members of Congress who were exactly right on their facts, I believe he 
accused them of not being honest. And directly, he said, We will call 
you out.
  Well, I'm saying this: The President got it wrong. Maybe he has it 
right now, but these gentlemen have it wrong, and they need to go back 
and check their facts. The amendment was voted down 29-28. The Deal 
amendment required proof of citizenship. When you remove the proof of 
citizenship requirement, the Congressional Budget Office and the 
Congressional Research Services and every nonpartisan, objective 
evaluation comes to the same conclusion: We will be funding illegals if 
we don't have the language in there. That is the only language that is 
going to be satisfactory. And by the way, I don't think Senator Baucus 
has it in his bill yet, although he has pledged to do so, and we will 
watch that language very carefully as it unfolds over in the Senate.
  So yes, illegals would get health care under this system unless we 
write the language in that sets the standard so that they don't.
  The statement that was made by the gentleman, Mr. Altmire, with the 
public option there would be no subsidies. The facts of the health care 
bill don't support that. First of all, it is going to take capital to 
set up the public option as a national health insurance company. If you 
set up a national health insurance company, it is impossible to do so 
without putting capital in, without injecting some billions of dollars 
to jump-start a national health insurance program that would compete 
directly with the 1,300 private health insurance companies that we 
have.
  That is not what you call a no-subsidy situation. That is called a 
subsidy situation. Putting capital in to compete against the private 
sector is subsidy.
  What do we suppose will happen if we put $10 billion into the front 
end of this national health insurance program and we find out that it 
becomes insolvent? Do we then let it collapse or does this Congress at 
a later date decide we are going to have to put some billions of 
dollars in there to keep the national health care plan up?
  Under these majorities, under this Pelosi Congress, I guarantee you 
they will borrow money from the Chinese, if necessary, in order to 
subsidize a national health care plan. It isn't going to go any other 
way. They have worked for 30 or 40 years to try to establish a national 
health care, and they are not going to allow it to go under because it 
falls a little short on some kind of promise that there won't be 
subsidies. Yes, there will be subsidies, and any rational person who 
understands history will know that.
  The argument that a national health care plan will compete on a level 
playing field, a level playing field with referees that will be chosen 
by the government, not by the private sector, and I will make a point.
  This, Mr. Speaker, is the formerly embargoed flowchart that actually 
depicts the language that exists in H.R. 3200, the national health care 
plan. We call it the Organizational Chart of the House Democrats' 
Health Plan. This is the government plan. This is the government option 
configuration. This creates at least 31 new agencies.
  Now, down here at the bottom, I just direct your attention to these 
two purple circles at the bottom. This is where the crux of the matter 
is. The gentleman, Mr. Altmire, made the statement that the public 
option, there wouldn't be any subsidies and they would compete on a 
level playing field. Well, here is how this field is regulated, and it 
will not be a level playing field.
  Oh, by the way, anything that is a white box is existing programs or 
agencies. There is Medicare, SCHIP, Medicaid. But the existing private 
insurers in this little box here, Mr. Speaker, once the bill is passed, 
these private insurers, this is 1,300 health insurance companies in 
this little box. That is how many private insurers we have. Those 
traditional health insurance plans, the policies, there are 
approximately 100,000 different varieties of policy combinations 
available across the United States. These policies would have to 
qualify to become qualified health benefits plans. Now, if there is 
going to be a qualification set up, I think it is not possible to 
presume that all 1,300 companies and all 100,000 policies will be 
qualified under this bill.

[[Page H9890]]

                              {time}  2145

  This bill doesn't define what will be required necessarily in the 
health insurance policies. It gives that authority to the Health 
Choices Administration. The Health Choices Administration commissioner 
would run that shop with his commission, and they would make the 
decisions then on what would be the standards for the health insurance 
companies--these providers here--what would be the standards for the 
100,000 health insurance plans which would qualify to go into this 
purple circle here called qualified health benefits plans.
  So for all of this, the rules will be set by the Health Choices 
Administration commissioner. The new Health Choices czar will write all 
of those rules. If he has to write the rules, you don't get to call it 
a level playing field because the rules will be written so the Federal 
Government can compete. That's the difference in the approach here, the 
idea that it is a level playing field. It's not. My question was, why 
are you afraid of the competition? Well, I'm not afraid of the 
competition. I think we have competition in our health insurance 
companies. I think that they're afraid of the competition or else they 
would support the proposal that almost every Republican supports, and 
that is, allow Americans to buy health insurance across State lines. 
That expands the competition dramatically, Mr. Speaker.
  So there is a fear of competition. There is a fear of letting the 
free market provide that competition and giving people the portability 
that they need. There is a real fear also of addressing lawsuit abuse. 
Lawsuit abuse is the medical malpractice component of these costs that 
the industry places between 5.5 and 16 percent of the overall health 
care costs. The number that comes from the person whom I trust the most 
is 8.5 percent. If you multiply that 8.5 percent across the costs of 
providing health care in America, over the space of time, it's $203 
billion or $2 trillion for the sake of the budget window of 10 years 
that we deal with. That $2 trillion would pay for everything they 
wanted to do, but every one of them will stand in the way and block the 
lawsuit abuse that could actually fund their socialized medicine 
because the trial lawyers are telling them that they can't address it.
  So there are a lot of things that we would like to do. We would like 
to provide portability, and we would like to fix the lawsuit abuse 
problem, and we would like to be able to buy health insurance across 
State lines, provide full deductibility for everybody who pays a health 
insurance premium, provide transparency in the billing so we can 
actually have some real competition out there and allow people to 
expand the HSAs so that HSAs can transform themselves, under good 
management and good health, into retirement plans, pension plans when 
one reaches Medicare eligibility age. Those are some of the things on 
health care.
  Mr. Speaker, I feel compelled to rebut some of the statements that 
were made in the previous hour. And as much as I get along with the 
gentlemen that were making their presentation, I clearly disagree with 
a lot of their conclusions. But they have their talking points down 
pretty well, given what comes out of the DCCC.
  I came here tonight, though, to talk about the missile defense shield 
and the issue with Eastern Europe. I believe the President of the 
United States has bargained away a very, very important shield that was 
essential to the negotiations that were going on with Iran. And in 
their persistent and relentless effort to develop a nuclear capability, 
not only a nuclear weapon but a means to deliver it, and if they can 
develop that means to deliver it along with a nuclear weapon, they have 
said that they want to annihilate Israel, and they eventually want to 
annihilate the United States. This would put them very closely within 
the umbrella of being able to strike many places in Europe as well. In 
the chess game that is going on, in the poker game that's going on, and 
in the Monopoly game that's going on in the United States, it is 
something that is very high test. It's very high risk.
  We have with us tonight one of the real leaders in this issue who 
understands the physics, the technology, the politics, the global 
approach to this, Putin's involvement in this chess game, of him 
seeking to reconstruct the vestiges of the former Soviet Union, the 
dynamics of the psychology of the mullahs in Iran, the necessity for 
the Israelis to defend themselves, and the necessity and the 
constitutional responsibility for Americans to do the same. I am happy 
to yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arizona, 
Mr. Trent Franks. Thank you for coming down, Mr. Franks.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Thank you, Mr. King.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to express my gratitude to Steve King. The 
gentleman from Iowa is not only a precious friend, but I truly believe 
that he is a friend of freedom and a friend of America. All of the 
things that he has laid out related to the health care reform plan put 
forward by the majority I completely embrace. There are so many things 
that are important to discuss in the country today. I mean, one of the 
things that can be said for the Barack Obama administration is that 
they're moving fast in a host of different areas. I happen to disagree 
with the vast majority of those areas, and it makes it very difficult 
sometimes to pick the priority to speak to.
  But let me just say, the priority that I would like to speak to 
tonight, with the permission of the gentleman from Iowa--and maybe we 
can speak to it as we go here--is this whole issue of missile defense. 
Mr. Speaker, last week the Obama administration did something that 
could go down in history as a crossroads in European-American 
relations. I am afraid that this and future American generations may be 
gravely affected by his decision. The administration decided to abandon 
U.S. plans for a ground-based U.S. missile defense site in Europe, and 
I believe the President fundamentally disgraced this Nation by breaking 
his word to our loyal and courageous allies in the Czech Republic and 
in Poland. Mr. Speaker, for many reasons, America has become the 
greatest nation in the history of the world because our word has meant 
something. The announcement to abandon the protective missile defense 
shield in Europe has fundamentally altered that paradigm.
  After the decision was announced, the newspaper headlines in Poland 
and the Czech Republic stated the situation in the very starkest of 
terms. One Polish newspaper had the headline, ``Betrayed!''--betrayed, 
wow, that's heavy stuff, Mr. Speaker--``The USA has sold us to the 
Russians and stabbed us in the back.'' The Czech Republic, the daily 
Lidowe Noviny commented, ``Obama gave in to the Kremlin.''
  Mr. Speaker, President Obama's decision to abandon our faithful 
allies and, instead, to placate Russian belligerence came on the 70th 
anniversary to the exact day of the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland 
after two of humanity's most notorious monsters named Stalin and Hitler 
insidiously agreed to divide the Nation of Poland between themselves. 
Our allies deserve better than that, Mr. Speaker. After they stood 
bravely in the face of Russian aggression and paid a profound political 
price to stand by us, they had a right to expect America to keep her 
word and to stand by them.
  Mr. Speaker, ironically, Mr. Obama's terribly flawed decision for 
abandoning the European missile defense site has everything to do with 
primarily Russia. Russia has always hated the missile defense plan 
because they don't want an American presence in their former empire, 
knowing that this would diminish Russia's influence in the entire 
region, even though the European site would not threaten in any way 
Russia's military capability. There is no way that 10 ground-based 
interceptors can have any real effect on the Russian Federation nuclear 
strike, if they chose. Russia's leaders know that if an American radar 
is placed in the Czech Republic and American missile interceptors are 
placed in Poland, those two sovereign countries would be stepping 
further away from the shackles of Russian oppression in the East and 
joining with America in the West in the cause for democratic 
independence and human freedom.

  But Russian belligerence notwithstanding, reports surfaced in March 
of this year, indicating President Obama had covertly offered Russians 
a promise that the United States would cease moving forward with the 
deployment of the ground-based missile defense site in Europe if 
Moscow--now this is unbelievable to me, Mr. Speaker--if Moscow

[[Page H9891]]

would commit to helping to discourage Iran's nuclear programs. Now let 
us just recall for a moment, Mr. Speaker, that it was Russia that 
actually delivered nuclear fuel to Iran, and Russia was paid $800 
million by Iran for its work on the Bushehr nuclear reactor, which will 
help Iran make their own nuclear fuel for weapons. Russia has been 
strongly suspected of aiding Iran's already advancing missile program 
itself.
  Moreover, just this week, Mr. Speaker, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez 
announced that they were purchasing more than $2 billion worth of arms 
from Russia, including rocket technology, and Mr. Chavez has already 
declared that Venezuela will get started on a nuclear program with 
Iran's help.
  Mr. Speaker, asking Russia to choke off Iran's nuclear program while 
ceding our only defense against Iranian long-range ballistic missiles 
is as illogical as a police officer offering his bulletproof vest to a 
gang of violent criminals in exchange for verbal assurances that they 
won't use their guns. Our allies, potential allies, rogue nations and 
terrorist groups all over the world were watching President Obama's 
capitulation. President Obama swore he would restore America's 
relationships in the world, relationships the liberal Democrats accuse 
the Bush administration of destroying. But instead of restoring 
America's relationships, he has diminished our credibility across the 
world and possibly beyond repair.
  Most importantly, Mr. Speaker, the American people deserve to be told 
the truth about what we actually lost when the President abandoned the 
European missile defense site in Poland and the Czech Republic. Today 
the nation of Iran is defying the Western world in its determined 
pursuit of nuclear weapons, which would allow Iran and its proxies to 
hold the entire peace-loving world under nuclear threat. The most 
devastating aspect of the President's decision--of course aside from 
forfeiting our ability to intercept long-range ballistic missiles aimed 
at the American homeland--is that it removed a strong disincentive for 
Iran to continue with its nuclear weapons program, and that was one of 
the critical purposes of the European missile defense site from the 
very beginning, Mr. Speaker. It was meant to create a strategic 
disincentive for Iran to develop a nuclear long-range missile 
capability. Iran would have had to face the fact that they were 
pursuing a long-range missile technology for which we already had a 
defense.
  In other words, it would have been like trying to spread a virus when 
we had already been inoculated against it. Instead, Mr. Speaker, we 
have forfeited that strategic advantage, and we have gained nothing in 
return. As timelines exist now--and this is such an important point--as 
timelines exist now, any alternative to the system the President 
abandoned will come too late to be a significant factor in preventing 
the nation of Iran from developing a nuclear missile capability that 
will threaten the peace of the entire free world and its children.
  Mr. Speaker, if Iran does achieve a nuclear capability, it will 
officially launch a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It will allow 
a corrupt regime--whose leader hates America, whose leader hates Israel 
and the Western world, and who considers Armageddon to be a good 
thing--to be able to hold the United States and our allies at risk from 
a ballistic missile carrying a nuclear warhead, much like the Soviet 
Union did during the Cold War.
  As former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton has stated, ``There is no harm 
in deploying our missile defenses before ICBMs can reach America. But 
there is incalculable risk if Iran is ready before we are.'' 
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, Iran may be ready far sooner than the Obama 
administration seems ready to admit. Recent reports state that Iran may 
reach a nuclear weapons capability within as little as 1 year, and The 
New York Times recently stated that Iran now possesses at least 7,200 
centrifuges capable of producing weapons-grade enriched uranium and 
that they have already produced enough low enriched uranium to make at 
least one nuclear warhead.
  Mr. Speaker, I sometimes have the hardest time just stating the facts 
as they are without sounding like an alarmist. But I truly believe 
this. And I will go on record to say that I hope that the listeners and 
anyone--including you, Mr. Speaker--are really paying attention. This 
needs to be said. If the Obama administration continues down this road 
of appeasement and denial, the nation of Iran will gain a nuclear 
capability, and they will pass that technology and those weapons on to 
the most dangerous terrorists in the world. And this generation and so 
many to come, Mr. Speaker, will face the horrifying reality of nuclear 
jihad.
  Those of us who have been blessed to walk in the sunlight of freedom 
in this generation will relegate our freedom to walk in the minefield 
of nuclear terrorism in the next generation. Mr. Speaker, the 
preeminent responsibility of the President of the United States and 
even of this Congress is to protect the national security of the United 
States. I believe that President Barack Obama's abandonment of the 
ballistic missile defense site in Europe fundamentally betrays that 
responsibility.

                              {time}  2200

  I am stunned that he does not seem to understand that, and I am 
sincerely in fear that our children and our children's children may pay 
a tragic price for that betrayal.
  I thank the gentleman for the time, and I will be glad to enter into 
any kind of colloquy or discussions. Thank you, sir.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Arizona, and I look 
forward to the colloquy that we will have, and I know I've asked the 
gentleman from Missouri to add a broad view to this.
  I just would recap the presentation that we've listened to here, 
which is precisely worded and is, I think, precisely accurate. It 
researches some conclusions that I don't think anyone who has followed 
this in a logical fashion can avoid:
  As I understand this, we have been setting up the nuclear shield in 
Poland and in Czechoslovakia. It takes about 5 years to get it set up. 
The anticipation was that the Iranians wouldn't be ready for about 5 
years. At about the time the President capitulated on this, we had a 
report that was leaked that maybe Iran could be ready a lot sooner, in 
maybe as soon as a year.
  So I'll just direct your attention to The Wall Street Journal, to 
Mark Helprin's article. He has a unique way of observing what, I think, 
the gentleman from Arizona has articulated so well.
  Helprin writes: What we have here is an inadvertent homage to Lewis 
Carroll. We're going to cancel a defense that takes 5 years to mount 
because the threat will not materialize for 5 years, and we will not 
deploy land-based interceptors in Europe because our new plan is to 
deploy land-based interceptors in Europe later.
  Does the gentleman from Arizona care to comment on the accuracy of 
that statement?
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, I believe that Mr. Helprin is exactly 
correct. These things don't happen overnight. It takes a certain 
timeline in order to build both an offensive capability and a defensive 
capability. We were on track to have our defensive capability in place 
by around 2012, which would have probably been before Iran could have 
actually launched a full-blown intercontinental ballistic missile 
against the homeland of the United States.
  As it stands now, the ostensible alternative that the President is 
offering will not even be in place until 2018 or until 2020, at which 
time the Iranians will be fully capable and will just be ignoring us at 
that point.
  It just gives us no real opportunity to use the European missile 
defense site as a factor to help play in the calculus or to prevent 
Iran from gaining that nuclear capability. Once they do it, it's just 
hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. In the gentleman's opinion, does this capitulation 
on the part of President Obama make it more or less likely that the 
Israelis will be compelled to strike at the capabilities of Iran?
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, let me just say this first with the 
gentleman's permission: I believe, if the free world places Israel in 
the untenable position of having to defend itself, which it will have 
to do if no one else has the courage to stand up to Iran, Israel will 
have no choice. It has no room for error.

[[Page H9892]]

  Ahmadinejad has said that they want to wipe Israel off the map. One 
warhead could virtually destroy Israel. We can put eight Israels in the 
size of my State of Arizona. They're only a one-bomb nation. They 
cannot abide an Iranian lunatic like Ahmadinejad, who has his finger on 
the nuclear button with a Shahab-3 that can reach Israel in about 12 to 
14 minutes. They cannot possibly abide that.
  We in the free world know that. If we stand by and force Israel to 
respond like we've done in times past, whether it be with Syria or with 
the nuclear power plant in Iraq sometime ago, the Orissa plant, if we 
put them in that position, then we really fail the whole world because 
that will enflame the passions of the entire Arab world; and it will, I 
think, set us on a path of great contention.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, as I look at this and at the 
strategic location of Israel and at the 12 to 14 minutes that it takes 
for a missile to get from Iran to Israel and at the 12 to 14 months for 
Iran to have the capabilities to do so, the odds of being able to slow 
Iran's development down of nuclear weapons because of any diplomatic 
maneuverings that might come with regard to sanctions--economic 
sanctions, negotiations, blockades, threats of anything--have 
diminished dramatically because the club has been laid down by 
President Obama; the shield has been laid down by President Obama, and 
it sends the message to Iran:
  Accelerate your efforts on the 17 to 200 centrifuges that you have.
  So, from my view, it puts Israel in a position where they may have no 
choice. If they wait 12 to 14 months to make their decision, the 
decision may be coming too late at that period of time.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Tragically, Mr. King, the Israelis will have 
almost no choice. This will be a defensive action on their part because 
they've already been told by the Iranian leaders that they intend to 
wipe Israel off the map. This would give them the capacity to do just 
that.
  I just think it's a tragedy, beyond my ability to articulate, that we 
don't have the understanding of what we're really facing here. I think 
Mr. Obama is simply naive as to the danger and as to the mindset of 
jihad and as to how serious they really are.
  You know, they played rope-a-dope with us in North Korea for many, 
many years; and now we know that they plan and continue to plan to come 
to a full-scale nuclear weapons capability. The same thing exists with 
Iran.
  Unfortunately, I believe only two things will stop Iran from gaining 
a nuclear capability: either military intervention or the conviction in 
Iranian leaders' minds that nuclear intervention will occur if they 
don't stop their march towards a nuclear weapons capability. I'm afraid 
that Israel understands that. If we don't respond or if some coalition 
of the Western World doesn't respond, then Israel will be left with no 
choice.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. A third alternative, I might suggest, would be if 
the people in Iran could successfully rise up, could take that country 
over and could move towards peace.
  I know the gentleman from Missouri has got an opinion on this subject 
matter. I would be very happy to yield so much time as Todd Akin will 
consume in laying out the parameters of the view of this as he sees it.
  Mr. Akin, thank you for coming to the floor tonight.
  Mr. AKIN. I thank my very good friend from the State next-door to the 
State of Missouri. I thank him for his common sense.
  I also thank my good friend from Arizona, a fellow member of the 
Armed Services Committee. He is both a statesman and is very good from 
an engineering point of view with the details of what is going on.
  I'd like to just try and say similar things but in a little bit more 
of a net fashion because he was so scholarly about it.
  Basically, what happened was the Obama administration made a 
decision, which was announced Friday, that they're abandoning missile 
defense in Eastern Europe. Those locations are chosen because 
of physics and geometry to protect Western Europe and the United States 
from a possible launch from Iran.

  Now, when you talk about missiles, it isn't too complicated. You've 
got little ones, medium-sized ones and great big ones. The way you stop 
great big ones, which we call intercontinental ballistic missiles--and 
they have three stages, and they go very high and very fast--is with 
other big, fast missiles called ground-based.
  The proposal was to put defensive locations in a couple of Eastern 
European states, the Czech Republic, among others, and to provide 
ourselves with a defense. The most fundamental purpose of a civil 
government is to protect their citizens, particularly to protect 
millions of citizens in the face of somebody who says, We're going to 
get you. They're building weapons that can only be used for that 
purpose. Nuclear bombs are not used to power a power plant. They're 
used to blow people up.
  So we have an administration which has stepped away from the 
fundamental purpose of any government to protect its citizens. So this 
is a regular head-scratcher of a decision. Not only that, but we 
betrayed the people who politically put their necks on the line with 
their constituents and with their citizens, making a controversial 
decision in Europe to be able to be part of this missile defense.
  This was Ronald Reagan's dream, and I don't see how anybody could 
have trouble with the idea of trying to protect oneself against 
somebody who is trying to ``nuke ya.'' I mean, to me, that just defies 
common sense.
  So what is going on here is we've seen the Obama administration 
stepping away from the requirement to defend ourselves. President Bush 
did the heavy lifting. He went into Europe, talked to the Russians, and 
told them, You've got 6 months, and we're going to develop missile 
defense. Everybody said you can't do it. The Democrats said, It's too 
expensive and you can't do it. We developed the technology, and we did 
it.
  Not only did we hit a missile with a missile, but we have 
demonstrated it time after time after time. At incredibly high speeds, 
we hit a spot on a missile with a missile. We can do that. We have the 
technical ability to do it and, yet, no will to follow through.

                              {time}  2210

  I don't understand that. What frightens me particularly, gentleman, 
is this decision is not made in a vacuum. It is a pattern that we are 
seeing on the Armed Services Committee and things, some of these things 
that from a security point of view we can hardly talk about.
  But this is not one decision by itself. We are also seeing a very 
strong weakening of resolve in dealing with what's going on in 
Afghanistan. Our troops on the ground are sending us signals, hey, 
guys, we are going to have to go out and get it. This isn't going to be 
easy. This is one of these, like Iraq, it's going to be one of these 
insurgent-like conflicts. It is going to take some time and effort and 
enough people to get it. We are seeing a waffling on the part of the 
administration in the face of the challenges facing us in Afghanistan.
  On a third point, which I would perhaps get in an argument with my 
very good friend from Arizona, that there is something even more 
upsetting to me, and that is the fact that Americans offensive 
capability has been based for many decades on the idea of a triad; that 
is big missiles that we launch from the land, big missiles that we 
launch from submarines. The third leg of the triad is a bomber, a 
bomber that can go over some potential enemy's territory with impunity 
and bomb them. With that offensive capability, we can live in peace, 
because we have no intent of wanting to drop missiles or bombs on 
anybody.
  But what has happened is this administration is walking away from one 
leg of the triad. I know my dear friend on Armed Services knows what I 
am talking about. I have to be careful about what I can say and not.
  But this is the bomber leg. Our bombers are currently old, some of 
them 50 years old. It is important that we do the planning now to 
develop the technology and the aircraft to maintain that leg. That also 
is being cut by the Obama administration, and that's something that has 
not received hardly any public attention. But this is a big deal, as 
big a deal as cutting missile defense.
  So this is a pattern, a pattern of not funding national defense, not

[[Page H9893]]

prioritizing the protection of our citizenry, and I am very 
uncomfortable with it.
  I would like toss those thoughts out for a little discussion.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. As I listen to the descriptions that have been 
delivered here in ways by the three of us tonight, it takes me back to 
a memory that I believe 1984 was the year, if I remember correctly, 
that Jeane Kirkpatrick stepped down as the Ambassador to the United 
Nations. It wasn't a very big article. It was a little thing, about 
page 3 or 4, and it was in the Des Moines Register. I read that, and it 
stuck with me all that time.
  I should go back and get it verbatim, but I am very close. She said 
we are in the middle of the cold war. If you remember, it was the 
height of the cold war at that time and Reagan's first term.
  She said, what is going on in this cold war, this great clash of the 
two titan superpowers, is the equivalent of playing chess and monopoly 
on the same board. The only question is--remember the arms race? The 
only question is will the United States of America bankrupt the Soviet 
Union before they checkmate us militarily? Do we bankrupt the Soviet 
Union economically before the Soviet Union checkmates us militarily?
  We know what happened as it unfolded. On November 9, 1989, 20 years 
coming up here in a month and a half will be the celebration of 20 
years of the Berlin Wall come crashing down. That wasn't just the 
symbol of the Iron Curtain, that was the Iron Curtain. The Soviet 
Union's economy couldn't sustain this.
  Well, Putin has said that's the greatest disaster of his time. Now we 
have watched him out on this chessboard seeking to checkmate the free 
world. It's very early in Putin's game, however, while he understands 
the monopoly game a little better, having actually built some wealth at 
least temporarily with the high energy prices that he has. We have 
watched Putin maneuver around the globe.
  I would point out that the Russians went in and essentially made an 
offer in Kyrgyzstan that they couldn't refuse. They are in Kyrgyzstan. 
They cancelled the lease that we had on our airstrips that were there, 
which shut off our ability to be able to freight military supplies into 
Afghanistan. The Russians did that.
  Then they had the temerity to turn to us and say, oh, never fear. We 
will be happy to haul that freight in for you for a price, and you can 
always trust us to do that in a reliable fashion. With a straight face, 
go in and interfere in our relations with Kyrgyzstan and make them a 
better offer than we are making, then turn around and say now that we 
have this under control, we will make sure that we will freight this 
equipment in, and you can trust your military operations are going to 
continue. That's one piece of the chessboard.
  Another piece of the chessboard that Putin is playing is a little 
over a year ago he went in and invaded Georgia. He shut down the oil 
that went through Georgia. If I remember right, it's 1.2 billion 
barrels of oil a day that goes through Georgia on a pipeline. There is 
a train that hauls crude oil through Georgia. They have got natural gas 
pipelines that go through Georgia. The nation of Georgia is, if you are 
a chess player, it is the square on the chessboard that if you will 
notice, in a highly contested game, it almost invariably comes down to 
where you have a whole series of pieces that are focused on one square.
  Someone will put some pressure on a square on the board, and the 
other--the opponent will have to put a competing piece to cover that, 
and then you back it up with another, another, another. That square 
becomes the whole game that is going to be fought out in that single 
square.
  Georgia is the square. It's the square that energy has to go through 
from the energy that's on the east side of the Caspian Sea to get 
through Georgia to get over to the Black Sea where it can go on out and 
then into the shipping lanes in the rest of the world and go on around 
Europe and everywhere else. Natural gas and lots of it, oil, and a good 
supply of it, and Putin went in and controlled it. Now he has backed 
off a little bit, but he has said he can do whatever he wants to shut 
that oil off.

  What do we hear from the Germans, for example? They say, well, of 
course a nuclear powered Iran is preferable to a military strike to 
take it out, as if that was an unquestionable fact. In reality, they 
haven't done the calculation what Mr. Franks calls nuclear jihad.
  Additionally, the Russians shut off the fuel going through, the gas 
going through to Germany a year ago. It was a year ago January that 
happened. The Germans said, well, don't worry about that, that's only 
about 30 percent of our overall gas supply so it really doesn't put 
that much of a crimp in us. And, by the way, we have created some 
alternatives. We are going to build another pipeline that comes through 
in the north. From where? Russia, to make themselves more dependent on 
it.
  As I watch Putin make these moves around the world and bring the 
resources into Iran that Mr. Franks has talked about, and we are naive 
enough, myopically naive enough to accept or even consider that there 
is a rational argument that somehow the President capitulated on 
missiles in Eastern Europe and he got a quid pro quo of some kind for 
it. I would pose this question beyond rhetorical: Is there anything in 
either one of your gentlemen's imagination that would be worth pulling 
the missiles out of Eastern Europe and capitulating and betraying the 
Poles and the Czechs and the rest of the region when they say that we 
have sold them out and stabbed them in the back, sold them out to the 
Russians and stabbed them in the back? How could a President get a 
trade, a quid pro quo? What could it possibly be?
  I had one of the defenders of the White House say to me, well, it 
would be because surely the President got something for it. Maybe he 
got a promise that Putin would help negotiate with Iran to slow down 
their nuclear development capability.
  Really. It's been expanded.
  Mr. AKIN. You know, that's kind of interesting, because the missile 
technology that Iran has gotten came from the Soviet Union. So if the 
Soviet Union were really serious about reducing Iran's capability, at 
least in the area of delivering large missiles, then they are certainly 
approaching it from a rather unique point of view of selling missile 
technology to Iran. I don't think your proposition seems to make sense.
  If the President got something for giving up missile defense in 
Europe, it wouldn't make sense that he got something from the very 
country that had been giving Iran the missile-building capability.
  I don't know anything that he got for that. I am not sure that maybe 
he didn't just do it just to be a nice guy or something. I don't see 
anything that he got that would be valuable enough risking our 
population to the population of Western Europe. So you have really 
caught me. I really don't know the answer to your question.
  I hope the gentleman from Arizona knows what the President got.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I am looking for some imaginary response. What 
could the quid pro quo be? What would be worth giving up a shield, a 
shield against the nuclear capability of Iran, and diplomatically, 
economically, tactically, strategically? Does the gentleman from 
Arizona have any ideas?
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, I guess my first postulation here was 
that Iran, having a nuclear capability, changed everything, because it 
potentially worked on this coincidence of jihad and nuclear 
proliferation, where it empowered Iran to give nuclear weapons to 
terrorists. It's so hard for me to see a world like that, that I guess 
that's my central focus.

                              {time}  2220

  The only thing that I can put forward at all is that the President 
was somehow assured by Russia that that wouldn't happen if we work with 
Russia. But the problem is that Russia has sold us their influence 
about half a dozen times now--and we've gotten nothing for it.
  And, secondarily, the most critical component in a nuclear program is 
not missile technology. Missile technology is beginning to proliferate 
the world over. I mean it is astonishing how much missile capability 
even smaller countries are beginning to have now. That mule is out of 
the barn, as they say.

[[Page H9894]]

  But the fissile material or the material for making nuclear weapons 
is really the crux here. And Russia has delivered nuclear fuel to Iran 
already. So how do we somehow take their word for this situation? It's 
always amazing to me.
  I think that Mr. Obama, in all deference to the President, is somehow 
ignoring the lessons of history. Where we see malevolent individuals or 
countries push forward to try to push back the forces of freedom, and 
someone blinks, as Mr. Halpern put it. Someone blinks.
  There was a time when Gorbachev stared in the eyes of Ronald Reagan. 
And Gorbachev had to blink because Ronald Reagan didn't. He transcended 
hundreds of millions because Reagan had the courage to stand strong, 
even above the din of the liberal media in his own country.
  There was a time when one of the other Russian premiers tried to 
stare down President John Kennedy. John Kennedy stood strong and 
wouldn't back up. Where would we be had that not happened?
  In just recent days, Mr. Putin stared President Obama in the eye--and 
Mr. Obama blinked. And it has historic and grave consequences, I 
believe, for the free world, and especially for America and our future 
generations. And I am just very concerned as we go forward now that 
this President is going to somehow say, Well, Iran probably can have a 
peaceful nuclear program.
  Well, let me just say to you, by the way, that Iran has so much 
natural gas that it would be scales of 10 cheaper for them just to 
produce their electricity with natural gas than to build a nuclear 
power plant to produce electricity. So that's a completely ridiculous 
notion.
  But here's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid this President is either 
going to naively or somehow, in the hope that he, in his 
broadmindedness, will convince jihad to change their mind, which they 
have had for hundreds of years, to change theirs--and it's just not 
going to happen that way.
  I fear that he is going to allow Iran to go forward with a so-called 
peaceful nuclear program that will allow them in a very short period of 
time to become a nuclear weapons power in the world and translate that 
to not only proliferation to other rogue states, but to terrorists and, 
again, take us into that Samarian night when our children may have to 
face nuclear terrorism.
  I just feel like if we let this happen now, that we're making a 
terrible mistake, and future generations will pay that price.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I just contemplate sometimes 
the naivete that can take place when you look around the globe. I 
remember going up to Canada and picking up some of their history books 
and reading the things in history from a Canadian perspective versus an 
American perspective. That's the first time I realized that everybody 
doesn't understand history the same in the world. You understand it 
from your own perspective.
  I took a legal trip down to Cuba and traveled there with a professor 
of Cuban history for several days, and he began to tell me about the 
Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1898. I never thought Cuba had anything 
to do with it. I thought it was the Spanish-American War. So there's a 
couple little snapshots.
  I take you back to late February of this year, sitting in Moscow with 
former Prime Minister Gorbachev, who gave a lecture to me and a number 
of Members of Congress that he could still be ruling Russia and the 
Soviet Union and could have held the entire USSR together if he'd 
chosen to do so.
  But he identified the German will for unity, and so he decided to go 
forward with glasnost and perestroika and open up the borders and bring 
about what was--let me say the ``devolution'' of the Soviet empire 
willingly. What a breathtaking view of history. He said the United 
States had nothing to do with it. And I'm sitting there listening to 
that.
  He also wanted to know if there were any Republicans in the room, so 
he identified me right away. He accused me of going hunting with Dick 
Cheney.
  In any case, the philosophy that the United States had nothing to do 
with ending the Cold War, that that clash of titans wasn't resolved in 
that economic and military tactical arena that Jeane Kirkpatrick talked 
about, but only because of the good will of Mikhail Gorbachev 
recognizing the desire for German unity, when you see that and you look 
at the European philosophy that dialogue is progress.
  They came to this Capitol in September of 2003, the ambassadors to 
the United States from France, Germany, and Great Britain, to plead 
with us--wasn't quite a plea--to argue to us and try to sell us on the 
idea that we should open up dialogue with Iran to talk them out of a 
nuclear capability. At that point I said, What are you willing to do? 
They said, We want dialogue to open.
  Okay, then what? Are you willing to go to the United Nations for 
resolutions, are you willing to do sanctions, are you willing do 
blockades? Are you willing to lay the ``or what'' line out there that 
says if you cross this line, then we will by force resolve this issue? 
And if that happens, where are you going to be on that day and with 
what? And they just backed away from that like they had seen a ghost. 
Their entire mission was, dialogue was progress.
  Now if we've got a viewpoint, a European viewpoint that dialogue is 
progress and you can always talk away your differences, that's a 
philosophy that doesn't fit the American viewpoint. We don't go to the 
Neville Chamberlain School of Diplomacy, as perhaps Obama did.
  Then you have to also put into that the mindset of Putin, the 
Russians, Gorbachev, the mullahs in Iran, the Islamic approach, the 
nuclear jihad approach. We can't measure this on the part of just 
simply the good will of the United States controls missiles in Iran. 
And I'm afraid the President has come to that conclusion--that his good 
will will control missiles in Iran.
  The gentleman from Missouri.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, I'm inclined to, as you start reminiscing that we 
don't learn from history, one of the things that I remember hearing 
about is when I was first elected to Congress in 2001, I was on the 
Armed Services Committee and we made the votes to fund the building of 
missile defense. But there was also a guy by the name of Rumsfeld who 
was Secretary of Defense. He came in and spoke to us on some pretty 
clear kinds of lines of reasoning.
  He stated, If you're Secretary of Defense, there's kind of three 
situations. There's the things that you know about that you should 
worry. And those are things that are of concern to us. But the things 
that are particularly of concern are the things we don't know about, 
that we should worry. And then he gave an example of that.

  One of the examples was, we had a treaty with the Soviet Union. And 
the treaty said that nobody is going to build biological weapons. And 
what had come out was in fact that the Soviet Union had all kinds of 
missiles pointed at America with biological weapons in those missiles, 
including smallpox. And so we didn't have a clue because we took their 
good will that they certainly wouldn't violate a treaty.
  It seems to me that a more American way of thinking is if you're 
worried about somebody shooting a nuclear missile at you, maybe we just 
ought to have the capability of shooting it down before it even gets 
over our ground. That seems to be an awful lot more dependable mindset 
than trusting people who have systematically lied to us in the past.
  This was a terrible decision by our administration. It can be viewed 
in no other light. It can only be viewed as stepping away from the 
responsibility of defending American citizens and Western European 
citizens and creating a less stable world.
  This is not a decision that the American people should let stand. 
This is something that must be reversed. It requires action on the part 
of people who are patriots and people who love this country, who love 
life and freedom itself.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming from the gentleman from Missouri, I 
refer to a statement made by John Bolton, before I yield to the 
gentleman from Arizona. John Bolton, a former ambassador to the United 
Nations and a solid, very brilliant, tactical-thinking man, 
diplomatically tactical-thinking man.

[[Page H9895]]

  He said that the President's decision not to deploy antiballistic 
missile defense is unambiguously wrong. It reflects a concession to 
Russian belligerence and an embarrassing abandonment of two of 
America's strongest allies and an appalling lack of understanding of 
the present and future risk posed by Iran.

                              {time}  2230

  ``Worse, this unforced retreat of American hard power clearly signals 
what may well be a long American recession globally.''
  That is a chilling analysis.
  I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Thank you, Mr. King, for yielding.
  I guess you said it best a moment ago when you just talked about 
history. Someone a long time ago said that those who don't learn from 
the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. Someone said that 
the only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from 
history.
  But Dostoevsky said it this way: he said, He who controls the present 
controls the past and he who controls the past controls the future. And 
I think he capsulized what the liberal intelligencia have done today. 
They have tried to rewrite history in order to try to shape the future.
  And it concerns me greatly because if you look just in a cursory 
glance at history, especially since the nuclear age came upon us, when 
we had a great enemy in the Soviet Union, they had thousands of 
warheads aimed at us with nuclear missiles; we had thousands aimed at 
them. There was almost a fearful tension there because they knew if 
they launched against us that we could launch against them while the 
missiles that they'd launched were still in the area and we would 
destroy each other. So we called this ``mutually assured destruction,'' 
and there was a kind of a grim peace that was achieved because we put 
our security in their sanity and they did the same for us.
  But some things have changed in history since then. First of all, 
terrorism has come upon us, and, second of all, nuclear proliferation 
has begun to make a march across the world. And now we live in a 
generation that sees terrorism or this jihad coming together with 
nuclear proliferation. And when you put those two things together, all 
of the historical precedents seem to fade because now you face an enemy 
with an ultimate capacity, whether it be just a nuclear warhead in one 
of our cities or launching a missile at us or even launching an EMP 
attack, that we haven't talked about tonight, but I hope that Members 
really try to learn about that. We face a situation where an enemy that 
has no regard for its own life, that they will be willing to kill their 
own children in order to kill ours, are eventually, if we continue down 
this path, going to find their way to the nuclear button. And if they 
do and terrorists the world over gain this technology, it will change 
our concept of freedom forever.
  I am convinced that there's nothing that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda 
would like to do more than put a nuclear weapon about a hundred yards 
off the steps of this building and decapitate this country. And you 
say, well, that's an impossible scenario. It's an unthinkable scenario, 
but I assure you it's not impossible.
  And to somehow blink and take away our capability to devalue nuclear 
programs in the world, as missile defense does, or to stop an incoming 
missile when we have to, to somehow blink in that situation is to 
hasten a day like that. I hope that somehow we regain our sanity in 
time and realize how serious the equation really is.
  I appreciate so much the gentleman yielding to me tonight.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I appreciate the gentleman's coming to the floor 
and the background and the effort that he has put into this thing for 
all of these years and having emerged as one of a small handful of 
leaders on nuclear technology and the missile defense shield, as Mr. 
Akin has as well.
  I want to reiterate a statement that you made: we put our security in 
their sanity. That being the Russian's sanity, not the mullahs' sanity 
because the mullahs have a different level of rationale if you would 
like to call it rational at all.
  Mr. Speaker, I will include in the Record the two articles that I 
addressed in my statement.

              [From the Washington Times, Sept. 22, 2009]

                    Erring on the Side of Incaution

                          (By John R. Bolton)

       President Obama's decision not to deploy anti-ballistic 
     missile defense assets in Poland and the Czech Republic is 
     unambiguously wrong. It reflects an unrequited concession to 
     Russian belligerence, an embarrassing abandonment of two of 
     America's strongest European allies, and an appalling lack of 
     understanding of the present and future risks posed by Iran. 
     Worse, this unforced retreat of American hard power clearly 
     signals what may well be a long American recessional 
     globally.
       First, Mr. Obama's capitulation was about Russia, not about 
     Iraq. Russia has always known that former President George W. 
     Bush's national missile defense project was not aimed against 
     Russia's offensive nuclear capabilities, neither in scope nor 
     in geographical deployment. To the contrary, our common 
     interests in defending against threats from rogue states 
     should have led to missile-defense cooperation, not 
     antagonism.
       What has really agitated Russia was not that the sites were 
     for missile defense, but that they were an American presence 
     in former Warsaw Pact countries, Russia's now-defunct sphere 
     of influence.
       Now, without anything resembling a quid pro quo from 
     Moscow, Washington has dramatically reduced its presence and 
     isolated its own friends. In Russia and Eastern Europe, the 
     basic political conclusion is straightforward and worrying: 
     Russia, a declining, depopulating power, growled, and the 
     United States blinked. This devastating reaction extends 
     worldwide, especially among our Pacific allies, who fear 
     similar unilateral U.S. concessions in their region.
       ``It is far better to err on the side of U.S. security than 
     on the side of greater risk of nuclear devastation. There is 
     no harm in deploying our missile defenses before Iran's ICBMs 
     can reach America, but incalculable risk if Iran is ready 
     before we are.''
       Second, Mr. Obama's proposed new missile defense 
     deployments will not protect the United States against 
     Iranian ICBMs, for which the Eastern European sites were 
     primarily intended. Protecting Europe was only an ancillary, 
     although welcome side effect, one intended to help calm 
     European concern that the United States would abandon Europe 
     and embrace isolationism behind national missile defenses.
       Western Europe, not surprisingly, seems largely content 
     with the Obama-projected alternative, which, if implemented, 
     would protect Europe, but would have few tangible benefits 
     for America.
       Thus, despite Mr. Obama's rhetoric about replacing one 
     missile defense design with a more effective one, the systems 
     in question are aimed at two completely different objectives. 
     Of course, it also remains to be seen whether and exactly how 
     the administration will actually implement its projected 
     deployment, and what new risks are entailed.
       For example, U.S. ships deployed in the Black Sea would be 
     fully exposed to Russia's naval capabilities, in contrast to 
     more secure bases in continental Europe. Failure to implement 
     the new plan aggressively will be seen as yet another failure 
     of American will.
       Mr. Obama's public explanation omitted any acknowledgment 
     that the Eastern European deployments were never intended to 
     counter existing Iranian threats, but rather were to protect 
     against threats maturing in the future. Obviously, to be 
     ahead of the curve and ready before Iran's threat became 
     real, we had to begin deployment now, not in the distant 
     future. Instead, Mr. Obama's decision effectively forecloses 
     our ability to be ready when the real need arises.
       Third, although purportedly based on new intelligence 
     assessments about Iran's capabilities, Mr. Obama's 
     announcement simply reflected his own longstanding biases 
     against national missile defense. He has never believed in it 
     strategically, or that it could ever be made operationally 
     successful.
       The new intelligence ``estimate'' agreeably minimizes the 
     threat posed by Iranian ICBMs, thus facilitating a decision 
     to cancel that had been all but made during last year's 
     campaign. The assessment, as briefed to Congress immediately 
     after the president's announcement, involved no actual new 
     intelligence, but only a revised prediction of Iran's future 
     capabilities.
       The new ``assessment'' also confirmed the administration's 
     often-expressed and so far frustrated desire to negotiate 
     with Iran over Tehran's nuclear weapons program. That 
     schedule has slipped badly, leaving Mr. Obama running out of 
     time for diplomatic endeavors.
       Moreover, stronger economic sanctions, his fallback 
     position, are increasingly unlikely to be comprehensive or 
     strict enough to actually stop Iran's nuclear program before 
     completion. How convenient, therefore, to suddenly ``find'' 
     more time on the missile front, thus facilitating a 
     diplomatic strategy that had been increasingly headed toward 
     disastrous failure. Moreover, whatever the available 
     intelligence, it does not determine what levels of 
     international risk we should accept. Mr. Obama has too high a 
     tolerance for such risk.
       He is too willing to place America in jeopardy of Iran's 
     threat, a calculus exactly opposite from what we should use. 
     It is far better to err on the side of U.S. security than on

[[Page H9896]]

     the side of greater risk of nuclear devastation. There is no 
     harm in deploying our missile defenses before Iran's ICBMs 
     can reach America, but incalculable risk if Iran is ready 
     before we are.
       Mr. Obama's rationale for abandoning the Eastern European 
     sites ignores the important reasons they were created, 
     underestimates the Iranian threat, and bends the knee 
     unnecessarily to Russia. This all foreshadows a depressing 
     future. Our president, uncomfortable with projecting American 
     power, is following the advice of his intellectual 
     predecessor George McGovern: ``Come home, America.'' Both our 
     allies and adversaries worldwide will take due note.

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 23, 2009]

Obama and the Politics of Concession--Iran and Russia Put Obama to the 
                  Test Last Week, and He Blinked Twice

                           (By Mark Helprin)

       During last year's campaign, Sen. Joe Biden famously 
     remarked that, if his ticket won, it wouldn't be long before 
     ``the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy'' 
     on foreign affairs. Last week, President Obama, brilliantly 
     wielding the powers of his office, managed to fail that test 
     not just once but twice, buckling in the face of Russian 
     pressure and taking a giant wooden nickel from Iran.
       With both a collapsing economy and natural gas reserves 
     sufficient to produce 270 years of electricity, the surplus 
     of which it exports, Iran does not need nuclear electrical 
     generation at a cost many times that of its gas-fired plants. 
     It does, however, have every reason, according to its own 
     lights, to seek nuclear weapons--to deter American 
     intervention; to insure against a resurgent Iraq; to provide 
     some offset to nearby nuclear powers Pakistan, Russia and 
     Israel; to move toward hegemony in the Persian Gulf and 
     address the embarrassment of a more militarily capable Saudi 
     Arabia; to rid the Islamic world of Western domination; to 
     neutralize Israel's nuclear capacity while simultaneously 
     creating the opportunity to destroy it with one shot; and, 
     pertinent to last week's events, by nuclear intimidation to 
     turn Europe entirely against American interests in the Middle 
     East.
       Some security analysts may comfort themselves with the 
     illusion that soon-to-be nuclear Iran is a rational actor, 
     but no country gripped so intensely by a cult of martyrdom 
     and death that to clear minefields it marched its own 
     children across them can be deemed rational. Even the United 
     States, twice employing nuclear weapons in World War II, 
     seriously contemplated doing so again in Korea and then in 
     Vietnam.
       The West may be too pusillanimous to extirpate Iran's 
     nuclear potential directly, but are we so far gone as to 
     foreswear a passive defense? The president would have you 
     think not, but how is that? We will cease developing the 
     ability to intercept, within five years, the ICBMs that in 
     five years Iran is likely to possess, in favor of a sea-based 
     approach suitable only to Iranian missiles that cannot from 
     Iranian soil threaten Rome, Paris, London or Berlin. Although 
     it may be possible for the U.S. to modify Block II Standard 
     Missiles with Advanced Technology Kill Vehicles that could 
     disable Iranian missiles in their boost phase, this would 
     require the Aegis destroyers carrying them to loiter in the 
     confined and shallow waters of the Gulf, where antimissile 
     operations would be subject to Iranian interference and 
     attack.
       Interceptors that would effectively cover Western Europe 
     are too big for the vertical launch cells of the Aegis ships, 
     or even their hulls. Thus, in light of the basing 
     difficulties that frustrate a boost-phase kill, to protect 
     Europe and the U.S. Mr. Obama proposes to deploy land-based 
     missiles in Europe at some future date. If he is willing to 
     do this, why not go ahead with the current plans? The answer 
     is that, even if he says so, he will not deploy land-based 
     missiles in Europe in place of the land-based missiles in 
     Europe that he has cancelled because they are land-based in 
     Europe.
       What we have here is an inadvertent homage to Lewis 
     Carroll: We are going to cancel a defense that takes 
     five years to mount, because the threat will not 
     materialize for five years. And we will not deploy land-
     based interceptors in Europe because our new plan is to 
     deploy land-based interceptors in Europe.
       Added to what would be the instability and potentially 
     grave injury following upon the appearance of Iranian nuclear 
     ICBMs are two insults that may be more consequential than the 
     issue from which they arise. Nothing short of force will turn 
     Iran from the acquisition of nuclear weapons, its paramount 
     aim during 25 years of secrecy and stalling. Last fall, 
     President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad set three conditions for the 
     U.S.: withdrawal from Iraq, a show of respect for Iran (read 
     ``apology''), and taking the nuclear question off the table.
       We are now faithfully complying, and last week, after Iran 
     foreclosed discussion of its nuclear program and Mojtaba 
     Samareh Hashemi, Mr. Ahmadinejad's chief political adviser, 
     predicted ``the defeat and collapse'' of Western democracy, 
     the U.S. agreed to enter talks the premise of which, 
     incredibly, is to eliminate American nuclear weapons. Even 
     the zombified press awoke for long enough to harry State 
     Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who replied that, as Iran 
     was willing to talk, ``We are going to test that proposition, 
     OK?''
       Not OK. When Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich at 
     least he thought he had obtained something in return for his 
     appeasement. The new American diplomacy is nothing more than 
     a sentimental flood of unilateral concessions--not least, 
     after some minor Putinesque sabre rattling, to Russia. 
     Canceling the missile deployment within NATO, which Dmitry 
     Rogozin, the Russian ambassador to that body, characterizes 
     as ``the Americans . . . simply correcting their own mistake, 
     and we are not duty bound to pay someone for putting their 
     own mistakes right,'' is to grant Russia a veto over 
     sovereign defensive measures--exactly the opposite of 
     American resolve during the Euro Missile Crisis of 1983, the 
     last and definitive battle of the Cold War.
       Stalin tested Truman with the Berlin Blockade, and Truman 
     held fast. Khrushchev tested Kennedy, and in the Cuban 
     Missile Crisis Kennedy refused to blink. In 1983, Andropov 
     took the measure of Reagan, and, defying millions in the 
     street (who are now the Obama base), Reagan did not blink. 
     Last week, the Iranian president and the Russian prime 
     minister put Mr. Obama to the test, and he blinked not once 
     but twice. The price of such infirmity has always proven 
     immensely high, even if, as is the custom these days, the 
     bill has yet to come.

                          ____________________