[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 104 (Friday, July 19, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H4818-H4823]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WORLD EVENTS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, so much is happening in the world today, so
much that is really earthshaking in its potential effect.
In the Middle East, I've spoken before about the potential rise of a
new Ottoman Empire that, unfortunately, our own country, this Obama
administration, has helped jump-start.
In Egypt, we supposedly had a friend. There were comments to direct
attention to. Back on June 2, the BBC reported an interview in 2009
where during the interview the President was asked:
Do you regard President Mubarak as an authoritarian ruler?
President Obama said, in part:
He has been a stalwart ally in many respects, to the United
States. He has sustained peace with Israel, which is a very
difficult thing to do in that region. But he has never
resorted to, you know, unnecessary demagoguing of the issue,
and has tried to maintain that relationship. So I think he
has been a force for stability and good in the region.
He points out, obviously there have been criticisms, but he saw him
as a force for good in the region.
That's rather amazing when you look at what happened--we recall it
was an
[[Page H4819]]
Arab Spring, that we've later since realized was more of a nightmare
winter. Certainly, the people of Egypt did not see it as a ``spring''
after President Morsi got around 13 million votes from the potential,
as I understand, 50 million or more that could have voted. And he took
over; and he began creating problems; and he became dictatorial; and he
started violating his own constitution and taking actions that only a
monarch or a tyrant should be taking.
But going back to the disposition and deposal of Mubarak in Egypt, it
creates problems for a country when their leader on one occasion says,
as the President did:
He has been a stalwart ally in many respects, to the United
States. He has sustained peace with Israel, which is a very
difficult thing to do in the region. But he has never
resorted to, you know, unnecessary demagoguing of the issue,
and has tried to maintain the relationship. So I think he has
been a force for stability and good in the region.
What kind of message does it send to the world from what has been
referred to as the remaining superpower in the world when its leader
says to the world, this man has been a force for stability and for
good, and then, not so long later, the same U.S. leader says he's got
to go? He's got to go. He just needs to be done.
Well, if he was a force for stability and good, if you were accurate
in those comments, then one would think to get rid of him would bring
about instability and bad--to use the antonyms. But push, cajole, make
efforts to force Mubarak to leave, we did. And as the President said,
you know, he had been an ally.
{time} 1215
That doesn't look very good when other nations start trying to
determine how should we deal with the United States.
In one of my trips overseas meeting with foreign diplomats, I was
told that diplomats from China regularly stop by and ask, Have you
learned that you cannot trust the United States yet? Because one of
these days you are going to figure that out; you can't trust the United
States. They'll say they're your friend one day and then turn around
and be your enemy soon after. One of these days you're going to figure
out the United States can't be trusted, they're not your friend, and
we're ready to be your friend whenever that happens. Just let us know.
We're always ready to be your friend. You can trust us.
Well, I'm not so sure about that, but I am concerned about the U.S.
lack of credibility. So Mubarak was ousted and the Muslim Brotherhood
took over Egypt. The people of Egypt, on the whole, very good, decent
people. The moderate Muslims that reside there didn't want Muslim
Brotherhood, didn't want tyrants, but enough people didn't come out
early on.
The Muslim Brotherhood had the best organization, and anybody with
any intelligence in the region or anybody that watched news other than
CNN could figure that out, that the Muslim Brotherhood was going to
take over, but they were not what the rank-and-file people really
wanted. That became clear when the rank-and-file people saw Morsi, a
Muslim Brotherhood member who actually technically said he was
withdrawing since he was leader of Egypt. But his comments, so
disparaging and slanderous of Israelis and Jews, and certainly
uncomplimentary of Americans, did not make him someone that the United
States should endorse so wholeheartedly.
In Libya, though Secretary Gates, Secretary of Defense, said we have
no national interest in Libya at all, we had a President that decided
unilaterally--at least, unilaterally in this country. He did have the
support of the 57 States that comprise the organization Islamic Council
and he had support of some of the NATO countries that got a lot of oil
from Libya. He went in unilaterally, when it certainly did not appear
there was any will of a majority of Congress to use American assets,
military assets, to take out Qadhafi.
Make no mistake about it, Qadhafi was a man who had blood on his
hands, there's no question. Qadhafi was a man who had been engaged and
supported terrorism. But interestingly, after 2003, when the United
States, under President Bush, went into Iraq because both Democrats and
Republicans, most of them, believed he was a threat, and according to
the CIA notes, some guy named Joseph Wilson also believed that they
were trying to get uranium, and even though there had been reports of
yellowcake uranium having been taken out of Iraq, President Bush went
into Iraq and in record time Saddam Hussein, his defense became the
mother of all weak defenses and he was ousted.
All of a sudden Qadhafi, in Libya, went from a man who had been
supporting terrorism to a man who was afraid of the United States and
all of a sudden wanted to be our dear friend. There was a document that
was made public that says the United States rescinded Libya's
designation as a state sponsor of terrorism in June of 2006. Libya
renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction in 2003 and has
continued to cooperate with the United States and the international
community to combat terrorism and terrorist financing.
On July 20, Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure confirmed to the
Malian press that Libya, Algeria, and Mali planned to coordinate
military and intelligence efforts to fight security threats linked to
al Qaeda in the lands of the Islamic Maghreb in the Sahel-Saharan
region.
Interestingly, Qadhafi had a true conversion experience when he
became afraid that the United States might invade him next because of
his support for terrorism, and he actually and legitimately did became
an ally in the war against terror. In fact, when we look at things that
the U.S. did--this is from The Washington Post, certainly not one of my
biggest fans. But July 9, 2009, they reported that:
Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi, who former President Ronald
Reagan once denounced as a ``mad dog,'' supped on pasta just
two seats away from President Obama at the Group of Eight
summit today and even secured a handshake with the U.S.
President.
It talked about Qadhafi attending the summit, and it said, as Obama
was shaking hands with Qadhafi, there were families of Pan Am 103
victims gathered at the British Embassy in Washington, it goes on,
because they still were concerned about the blood he had on his hands.
So that was rather interesting that all of a sudden this was a man we
could shake hands with, be friends with, and work deals with. Of
course, Senator McCain was one of those who had gone over and felt like
there was an opportunity to be friends. In fact, with regard to
Mubarak, Senator McCain, supportive of the Obama administration and
Secretary Clinton, had said this: the case of Mubarak is a great
example that Mubarak was a great friend of the United States. Mubarak's
predecessor concluded Camp David agreements and he stuck to it.
Basically, there was a stable relationship between Egypt and Israel.
With regard to Qadhafi, this article from Reuters from August 14,
2009:
Senator McCain and the delegation with him expressed their
deep happiness to meet the leader--
Talking about Qadhafi.
and praised him for his wisdom and strategic vision to tackle
issues of concern to the world in his efforts to sustain
peace and stability in Africa.
So there were bipartisan feelings when the Obama administration
started that, gee, Mubarak was an ally, Qadhafi had become an ally as
somebody who could be trusted, and all these things. They're easy to
find on the Internet, just a Bing search away from finding these
things.
So the world watches this and they look for consistency. Because one
of the things, for those who are fans of baseball, some umpires call
balls and strikes with a different strike zone. But having been an
umpire and having played baseball, you can live with somebody that
calls a ball just off the outside corner as a strike as long as he's
always consistent. So, you know, you can trust this umpire. He skewed a
little bit, but he's consistent, so you can always trust him.
Consistency is critically important in the area of foreign affairs,
yet we don't seem to have been very consistent when we used our
military resources to help oust Muammar Qadhafi after he had a
conversion experience and was doing what he could to help us fight
terrorism outside of Israel. Some referred to him as the best friend we
[[Page H4820]]
had in getting inside information on terrorism to help us combat it.
There was the sense here in Congress we had no business getting
involved in Libya, especially as the reports emerged that al Qaeda was
backing rebels and we didn't know how extensive that al Qaeda
involvement was. But we knew it was there. We knew there were radical
Islamists that were trying to drive Qadhafi out, and this
administration did not pause long enough to get an answer to the
question: If we drive Qadhafi out, will we be more safe in America or
less safe?
Because, despite this desire to please the organization of Islamist
Council and others in NATO, the number one obligation of this Congress
and this President is to provide for the common defense of the people
in this country. We took an oath to support this country under this
Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.
The reasoned analysis of Libya during this so-called Arab Spring that
was really a freezing winter was that we are going to be in more
trouble if Qadhafi is thrown out than if he is kept there--at least,
those of us who looked at it besides the OIC and some that were getting
oil from Libya who felt otherwise. But most people could see you're
helping create instability into the region. If you look at the map of
the former Ottoman Empire, you can see it around north Africa coming
around up through the Middle East and Turkey, and you can see this
starting to take shape.
We helped get rid of Mubarak and all of a sudden we get a radical
Islamist in charge of Egypt. We helped not just merely with words and
coercion but with bombs to get rid of Qadhafi. Many believe it is
doubtful Qadhafi would have fallen, and certainly wouldn't have fallen
when he did, if it weren't for all our bombing and air support to help
the al Qaeda-backed rebels to throw him out and ultimately have him
tortured and killed.
So where was the reasoning about how much this would help America, to
allow radical Islamists to take Egypt and Libya? And then coming on
around, as things fomented in Syria, it looked like initially these
were not al Qaeda-backed rebels in Syria, and perhaps, as some believe,
if we had acted quickly enough, if we had someone that wouldn't vote
``present,'' if we had acted quickly enough, maybe we could have
supported rebels who were not al Qaeda rebels, not radical Islamist
rebels. But as it has degenerated in Syria now, and even as recent as
this week, people are admitting that it looks like Assad really is more
in control now.
It is degenerated to the point where our national security interest
is not to get into the middle of that fight. You have a tyrant of a
leader on one hand, and you have radical Islamists, most of whom would
like to destroy the United States as well, who are challenging him.
Where in the world is the interest in spilling American blood or
treasure in getting into Syria?
With regard to Syria, we can look at comments that this
administration had about Assad. CNSNews.com reported, March 28, 2011:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on Sunday, drew a
contrast between Syrian President Bashar Assad and his late
father and predecessor, and said U.S. lawmakers who recently
have visited Damascus regarded him as a ``reformer.''
She made the startling comment while explaining why the
United States will not intervene on behalf of Syrian
civilians revolting against the regime as it has done in the
case of Libya.
President Assad has been very generous with me in terms of
the discussions we have had.
This is Secretary of State Kerry, continued.
{time} 1230
``And when I last went to--the last several trips to
Syria--I asked President Assad to do certain things to build
a relationship with the United States and sort of show the
good faith that would help us to move the process forward.''
He mentioned some of the requests, including the purchase
of land for the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, the opening of an
American cultural center, noninterference in Lebanon's
election, and the improvement of ties with Iraq and Bahrain,
and said Assad had met each one.
``So my judgment is that Syria will move; Syria will change
as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United
States and the West and economic opportunity that comes with
it and the participation that comes with it.''
Also in March of 2009 from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
it says:
In early February, in a reversal of a longstanding U.S.
policy, the U.S. Department of Commerce approved a license to
sell Boeing 747 parts to Syria . . . A few weeks later, the
U.S. Treasury Department authorized the transfer of $500,000
to the Children with Cancer Support Association, a Syrian
charity associated with President Bashar Assad's wife, Asma.
Both decisions were seen as a softening of U.S. sanctions and
an important U.S. diplomatic overture.
So it goes on, our cozying up with Assad. Perhaps that's why, when
others around the world were saying that you have some moderates who
were rebelling against Assad and that perhaps we can help them, this
administration had already started having good feelings with the Assad
administration, and perhaps that contributed to the slowness to want to
move and act.
One thing is very clear at this point--it should be to anybody who
looks objectively--Syria is not a place the United States should be
involved in right now because, when the winner between two forces
fighting is not going to be helpful--no matter who it is--to our
country and when our oath and obligation is to this country, we should
not get involved in that.
There are stories about gunrunning, running guns from Libya to Syria.
Hopefully, at some point, we'll know exactly what the story was on that
and is on that. Was it ongoing? Was it going on when Chris Stevens was
involved? Hopefully, our leadership will allow us to pursue that
properly and get the information so that we know exactly what happened,
because we still have not gotten to the bottom of what happened in
Benghazi, and there are families of dead patriots who died in Benghazi
who deserve to know the answers.
So we supported and were thrilled--I say ``we,'' meaning this
administration, not the Congress, necessarily--and seemed to be pretty
impressed with Morsi's taking over. Though reports came out of the
slanderous things he said about Jews and Israelis and Americans, this
administration seemed to be thrilled with his taking the position that
he did, and seemed to be comforted by his saying--this is a Texas
paraphrase--You know, I may have been part of the Muslim Brotherhood,
but I'll kind of back off of that for a while.
If you look at what he did, here are developments as reported by FOX
News in Cairo in 2012:
In June: Morsi was elected President with 51.7 percent of
the vote. He was sworn in. He became Egypt's first civilian
Islamist ruler;
In August: A gunman kills 16 guards near the border with
Israel; Morsi scraps a constitutional document which handed
sweeping powers to the military, and he ousted Field Marshal
Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who was Head of State after Hosni
Mubarak's fall in February of 2011;
In November: Morsi decreed that he would have sweeping new
powers for himself. Later that month, the Islamic-dominated
constituent assembly adopted a draft constitution after a
process boycotted by liberals and Christians;
In December: Morsi annulled the decree of giving himself
increased powers after all of the rancor and the people began
to rise up in Egypt. Later in the month of December, 64
percent of the voters in a two-round referendum backed the
new constitution in a vote that was marred by low turnout.
The people of Egypt could see what was going on. Egypt
plunged into political crisis with demonstrations by Morsi
supporters and opponents, and they sometimes turned deadly;
Coming through April 2013: Sectarian violence north of
Cairo kills four Christians and a Muslim;
In May: Morsi carried out a cabinet reshuffle, which fell
short of opposition demands. Later in May, gunmen kidnapped
three policemen and four soldiers in the Sinai peninsula.
They were freed on May 22;
In June: Egypt's highest court invalidated the Islamist-
dominated Senate, which assumed a legislative role when
Parliament was dissolved and a panel that drafted the
constitution. The Presidency says the Senate will maintain
its powers until a new lower house is elected;
Later in June: Egyptian and foreign nongovernment official
employees were given jail sentences, ranging from 1 to 5
years, from working illegally, causing international outrage.
We know there were some good people who were jailed for
nothing except trying to help people;
On June 15: Morsi announced the ``definitive'' severing of
relations with war-torn Syria;
On June 21: Tens of thousands of Islamists gather ahead of
a planned opposition protest;
On June 23: Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi warns the
army will intervene if violence erupts;
[[Page H4821]]
On June 28: The U.S. says nonessential Embassy staff can
leave after an American is killed during protests;
On June 29: U.S. President Barack Obama urges Morsi to be
more ``constructive'' as the death toll rises. The Tamarod
``rebellion'' campaign, which called rallies for June 30,
says more than 22 million have signed a petition demanding
Morsi's resignation and a snap election. The reports are that
the largest demonstration may reach 33 million.
There had never been a demonstration in the entire world of as many
as 20 million people, but the people of Egypt rose up. They recognized
that radical Islamists in charge of their country were not a good thing
even though the leaders of our country and the executive branch could
not see the obvious.
In having talked to Egyptians who were furious with CNN--because most
of them don't get FOX News, and so they're relegated to CNN. They were
furious at how CNN seemed to take the side of the Muslim Brotherhood
over and over, and they related that CNN was basically a part of the
Muslim Brotherhood, at least as conveyed to me. There were people very
upset.
Why are they not more objective?
And I tried to explain to them, Look, you have to understand that CNN
has gotten such low ratings at times in the last couple of years that
sometimes we've got more people watching C-SPAN--they're that bored--
than watching CNN. Even though we're not part of the Nielsen ratings
with the coverage here in the House, there are estimates. How sad is
that for the once great Cable News Network?
What's even sadder is that this administration, with all of its
assets and intelligence ability at its fingertips and disposal and with
supposedly all of the people it could ever want--the people they
thought were the best in the world at analyzing foreign situations--
they thought Morsi was a good thing. Then, as you look at the map and
as you see this jump-start of an Ottoman Empire having developed, wow,
a problem occurred.
As I've said on this floor, Egyptians have caught me and have said,
Hey, you're in Congress. Quit helping the Muslim Brotherhood. They're
not good for Egypt. We don't like their tyrannical nature. We want to
have a government where we have some say. We don't want tyrannical
people who are Muslim. We don't want that.
Just as in Afghanistan, moderate Muslims say, We don't want radical
Islamists, like the Taliban, controlling our country.
I can't blame the administration for the constitution that was forced
on Afghanistan--that forced shari'a law, that forced a centralized
nation. Many of them I've met with over in Afghanistan. Together with
the Northern Alliance leaders we've met with, they've said, Look, if
you could just give us a more federalist government like you're
supposed to have in America where States have more power; if you could
let our regions elect our governors instead of the President appointing
them and elect our mayors instead of the President appointing them; if
you could let us have more control, we can keep the Taliban from taking
over. We're Muslim, but we don't want the radical Islamists. Don't
leave us in a situation where that's what we have.
That's what we left them with and appeared to encourage in Egypt.
It's certainly what we left Libya with, and four Americans were dead in
Benghazi as a result. Bad decisions, unfortunately, at the level of the
highest positions in the United States of America have terrible
consequences all around the world.
As I've mentioned, an elderly African from west Africa told me before
I left a couple of years ago, We were so excited when you elected a
Black President in America, but we've seen America. It appears to be
growing weaker and weaker, and you're not taking the strong stance you
used to. We're concerned because, if America does not stay strong, we
will suffer around the world, those of us who count on you to stand for
freedom and what's right. Please don't get any weaker.
There are people around the world pleading that, and they don't even
ask us to be the world's policeman. They just ask us to stand strong so
that, if we were needed to stop an outright injustice that could
threaten the world, including us, we could step in. But unfortunately,
in the Middle East, nobody fears the United States and nobody is
threatened by the United States. They see us as a paper tiger.
It has been amazing, though. If you just watch certain cable news
networks--and even FOX I don't think has done quite an adequate job of
really capturing what has been going on in Egypt. This is for the whole
history of mankind. We are talking about a major, incredible,
earthshaking revolution that has gone on in Egypt. These are people--
moderate Muslims, combined with Coptic Christians, coupling themselves
with liberal secularists--who don't want radical Islam running Egypt.
So this grand scheme of building a great caliphate, a new Ottoman
Empire--whatever you want to call it--ran into a huge problem when
these incredible, freedom desiring Egyptians rose up in greater numbers
than has ever arisen anywhere in the world in the whole history of
mankind.
This is incredible--incredible--and people need to recognize and need
to be encouraged, not by the Arab winter that was originally called an
Arab Spring, but by the true spring that is now happening in Egypt as
moderate Muslims and Coptic Christians and caring secularists have
arisen together and said ``no'' to radical Islam. We want freedom. We
want a say in our government.
In having visited with a friend who has been over there and has taken
pictures and talked to people, she said it was amazing to see the
Egyptian pope have people--Muslims--come up and say, We are so sorry
for the way Christians are being treated in Egypt by the Morsi
administration. We are so sorry. We hope we can change this to where we
can live together in peace.
That's what they want. Twenty, thirty million people coming out in
protest? That would scare the little, puny Occupy Wall Street people to
death. It's incredible.
{time} 1245
The people of the United States, Mr. Speaker, need to understand we
are living in a time that we are witnessing extraordinary international
events, even when people at the highest levels of this country do not
recognize how extraordinary it is. Perhaps they do, but perhaps they're
embarrassed because radical Islam, through the Muslim Brotherhood, is
now taking over Egypt and Libya and trying to take over Syria and
putting our allied King Abdullah in Jordan in the hot seat, trying to
force agreements out of him over the threat of deposing him.
People over in the Middle East get it. The people in Russia and
China, leaders there, they get it. This is a big deal. But perhaps our
administration has been embarrassed by not recognizing the real truth
of what was going on.
I thought it would be helpful to just look at some of the photographs
just recently taken during these demonstrations to get more of a
feeling of where the Egyptian people are as this most extraordinary of
revolutions is taking place. And it's important to note that you can
talk to people in Egypt that say, Look, we want to be friends with the
United States. We like the United States, but we cannot stand the fact
that your government, we believe, really helped force us into having a
Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist in charge of our country. We
didn't want it. You forced the elections on us before we were ready.
Some would say, Well, they chose their own elections. We were helping.
We could've delayed them until more people had time to participate. But
all the information that I was hearing here on the Hill, that was
nonclassified, indicated that if elections occurred when they did, the
Muslim Brotherhood would win. They were the most organized. And if they
could be delayed to a time where the people themselves had a chance to
organize and be heard, that there really would be a good turn in Egypt.
But this administration did not help, did not delay the elections
long enough to allow the true Egyptian people to be heard, and as a
result, no matter how unfair it may be or how fair it may be, the
Egyptian people, millions and millions of them, have a terrible
perception of the leadership of the United States. They make clear they
like America, they like the United States, but the leadership currently
did them great harm.
We know that when the President was elected, as he went around and
[[Page H4822]]
spoke in the Middle East, some said that this was going to really
increase the love and affection between the United States and majority-
Muslim countries. The polling data seems to say just the opposite: that
our country, because of the leadership of this administration, is
respected and admired far less than it ever was even under the Bush
administration, because at least under the Bush administration they
knew that Bush would be consistent, whether they liked him or not.
So I think it would be helpful to look at some of these pictures, one
of the big posters that was being used during the revolution. Make no
mistake. When the Egyptians put messages in their big banners and signs
in English, they want the message coming to America. The message these
Egyptians had:
Egyptians spoke. Al-Sisi listened. We the people have
spoken.
So they're appreciating the military leader that--after 20 million,
30-plus million Egyptians arose that dwarfed the small number of votes
that Morsi got in the early election, the people of Egypt spoke. This
was a revolution, an uprising by the people. And the military heard and
witnessed the people rising up, and it answered and said, Okay, Morsi
goes, because they recognized, as did the vast people across Egypt,
that he had violated the Constitution. He had become a tyrant. He had
become a dictator, and he had to go. Our administration here was slow
to recognize. It's very sad because we do have a very intelligent
President in the United States. Yet, the image they have in Egypt is
that he sided with the wrong people, that the masses in Egypt did not
want.
So on this same poster where they're praising the leader of the
military in Egypt for listening to the majority of adults in Egypt and
doing the right thing for democracy, they have a red ``X'' through our
great President's face. It's terribly unfortunate. It does not actually
do what this President and most of us in this country hoped--well, at
least majority-Muslim nations will look on us more favorably, and this
is what we're seeing.
I have another poster here during the massive protests. From what I
was told by people that were there, they got really upset as CNN kept
saying this is a coup, this is a coup, trying to diminish the
importance of what was happening with 20 million, 30 million Egyptians
rising up. So obviously they mean this for United States consumption.
But these are things that massive numbers of people in Egypt were
supportive of. It's a revolution, not a military coup, 33 million
Egyptians protesting peacefully against Morsi, the tyrant and
terrorist, who was supported by the USA. They want to make sure that we
understand this is the real people of Egypt rising up. We need to be
supportive of that.
Another sign:
New supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood. Anne
Patterson, hands off Egypt.
There were multiple of those signs around as people were gathering.
They've seen what this administration did, and they didn't like it.
These were the masses. The symbol of the Muslim Brotherhood was in the
same circle with CNN because they began to feel in Egypt that CNN was
not reporting accurately, that the people did want to live in peace
with Christians and did want to live in peace with secularists, and not
at the hands of a Muslim Brotherhood tyrant.
This sign, in both English and their language, says, ``Obama supports
terrorism.'' Well, of course President Obama doesn't support terrorism.
Of course he does not. But the way it looked to Egyptians when we were
supporting a terrorist, they presume we must and our President must
support terrorism. We know he doesn't, but they don't know that because
this Nation, this administration has supported terrorists in Libya and
Egypt, and is now trying to get support for terrorists in Syria.
Another sign during the demonstrations obviously for U.S.
consumption:
My dear American friend, when you get killed by terrorists,
do not blame anyone but your President Obama and his
administration.
Well, that's ridiculous. When we're killed by terrorists in America,
we should not blame the President. There may be negligence in America
by many people when it occurs, as I believe happened with the Boston
bombing. We were given information that was not properly utilized
because of the handcuffing that has gone on within our FBI, within our
intelligence community, within our State Department, and the purging of
training material to keep us, as one intelligence officer said, from
being able to see who our enemy is. We have hurt ourselves in a
terrible fashion in our ability to understand who wants to kill us.
I don't support any of these signs. I don't think they're proper. But
I think it's important to understand what the people in Egypt are
seeing and thinking so that we can give them the proper perspective on
American people.
You can't really read the whole thing on this one, but it is
basically making it clear this is not a coup, it's the people:
Thanks to our great Army that supports our great
revolution.
In the October Revolution in the Soviet Union, Lenin appeared there
in St. Petersburg and persuaded some people to support his revolution,
but that revolution, that little gathering would not have done any
good, as historians know. It was not until Trotsky went across to the
military, across the river--I've been there--and he got up on something
and he starts speaking eloquently to the military. Once he convinced
the military to side with Lenin, then there was a true revolution that
occurred. Nobody called that a coup. It was a small handful of people
around Lenin rising up, but they convinced the military to support the
October Revolution. As a result, there was a revolution and not just a
tiny little uprising, which it would have otherwise been without
Trotsky's eloquence.
That's why it's important to understand that when 33 million in Egypt
rise up, this is not an in-house coup. This is the masses of a great
country rising up to say, We yearn to be free, and we don't want a
radical Islamist controlling our country. And it's important for people
of the United States to understand this is where we are. And 33 million
people, the vast majority of the adult voters in that country, want to
make clear they want to live in peace with Christians, secularists.
Those are the people we can hold accountable and trust more that they
will do the right thing because the support for the persecution of
Christians around the world, the persecution and the killing of
Christians, the torturing of Christians around the world, is growing
like never before, and this great nation that arose based on Judeo-
Christian ethics stands idly by as the last public Christian church in
Afghanistan closed, as the last Jew, publicly admitting Jew, leaves.
That's when Afghanistan still had vast American presence. Even today,
we could still turn the tide if we choose to, but we are not. And there
may be an accountability issue some day with the judge of all judges.
Because as John Quincy Adams argued, right down here below us in the
old Supreme Court chamber downstairs, in the Amistad case, as he stood
there representing Africans who were free Africans, but then they were
wearing chains, and they were said to be slaves because they had been
captured by other Africans and sold and brought to the Caribbean and
then put on the Spanish ship the Amistad, and then they landed in
America by mistake, and the Africans wanted to be free and the Spanish
said, No, they're our property. Ultimately, the Supreme Court
downstairs--you can find online, Mr. Speaker, the last part of John
Quincy Adam's oral argument as he was literally frightened because he
knew if he had not done an adequate job to argue his case, that those
Africans would wear chains for the rest of their lives, and their
children would and possibly their children, if he did not do an
adequate job in representing them.
He didn't feel good about the first 2 days of his argument. So he
finishes by asking, Where is Chief Justice Marshall? And he ran through
the names of every justice that had been on the court and was dead.
{time} 1300
One of the Justices of that nine-Justice Court had died during oral
arguments one night. It was not during the arguments themselves, but
during the course of the arguments. So they were down. He asked where
he was. He asked where the solicitor general was that
[[Page H4823]]
had last argued a case against him in the early 1820s. And he ends up
pointing out, in essence, they've all gone to meet their Judge, and the
biggest question about their lives is did they hear, Well done, good
and faithful servant?
John Quincy Adams won the case, and those Africans left as free as
they should have been.
But some of us have a fear that if we do not do more to support truth
and justice and the American ideals that this country was founded on,
there will come a day of judgment; and but for grace, it would be a
horrible thing. But we still have an obligation to do the best we can,
to meet our sworn obligations, and to let people like this in Egypt
know that we want to stand with free nations and be friends of free
nations.
Here's another big banner that was there during the Egyptian protest:
Egypt will remain a civil state. Live, freedom, social
justice.
And then with an American in the picture, the caption says:
We know what you did last summer.
They've gotten the wrong impression of the people of America, and
it's up to the Americans to demand our leadership give the people of
Egypt the proper impression that we do care about freedom-loving
people.
Here's another one. It's hard to read, but:
Obama and Patterson support terrorism in Egypt.
Well, we know that's not true, but there are masses over there that
believe that. We've got to correct that, and the way you do that is by
supporting people who really do want to be free.
And another picture that just came from Egypt, I was told the
Egyptians love America, but they don't trust our leadership.
We have an obligation. Our obligation is to the United States of
America. And in this Congress, our obligation is to our oath, to
fulfill our oath. And those of us who are Christians, to whom oaths
mean so much more, we owe everything we have, owe everything we can do
to support our Constitution and to protect people in this country from
all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to protect our Constitution from
all enemies, foreign and domestic.
And there are some who would say, you know, the Muslim Brotherhood,
they got pretty violent over to Egypt and Libya and other places, and
there are Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States. As one
Egyptian article pointed out with pride, gee, they can be proud, they
have six Muslim Brotherhood members who are high level confidants in
this administration, in important positions of really advice in this
administration.
The Muslim Brotherhood members here in America, as I understand it,
did not support the Boston bombing because their position is we are
doing such a great job of infiltrating and getting key positions of
advice where we can monitor and watch and talk people into doing what
we believe should be done, we don't want to stir up violence in the
United States now; but maybe at some point it'll be necessary, but
right now we're doing so well helping infiltrate the government and
take over that we don't want violence right now. It may wake up the
American people.
But the truth is anyone in this country or around the world that
wants to subvert our Constitution to sharia law is an enemy of the
United States. Whether they live here domestically or they live abroad,
if their allegiance is to subvert the U.S. Constitution to sharia law,
they are our enemy. And they are people from whom we took an oath to
protect our Constitution and this country. The people of Egypt, God
bless them, they have arisen and made clear, we don't want radical
Islamists running our country. We don't want to see Christians
persecuted and killed and tortured, as has been going on. Those are the
kind of people this Nation should befriend and not try to rush in and
shore up those who would persecute, torture, and kill Christians and
Jews and secularists that just want to be free.
Mr. Speaker, we have an awesome obligation. We have an obligation to
the people of the United States of America to get things right around
the world so we do not put Americans at risk. And for those who would
try to put a racial label on anything, there's nothing racial about
wanting right and truth and justice. And I wonder where they were when
I was supporting Alan Keyes. It's not about race; it's about truth,
justice. It's about the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness with
which we were endowed by our Creator. But just like any inheritance,
any endowment, if we're not willing to protect it, if we're not willing
to fight for it, we will lose it.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________