[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 20 (Thursday, February 5, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H838-H843]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MATTERS OF GRAVE CONCERN TO AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2015, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is
recognized
[[Page H839]]
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to have a discussion with
my fellow colleagues and with those people throughout the United States
who are watching this and reading this in the Congressional Record. The
issue I wish to discuss is a matter of grave concern to me and I
believe to the American people as well.
I came here 26 years ago. Prior to my arrival in the United States
Congress, I had served 7 years in the Reagan White House. I was a
speechwriter to President Reagan, and I was a special assistant to the
President, which was a designated rank at the White House.
I recall what it was like in the time leading up to Ronald Reagan's
election, and I recall specifically how Ronald Reagan dealt with the
great challenges he faced. Before Ronald Reagan came to the White
House, America was in retreat.
There was a sense of pessimism throughout our country. Our economy
was topsy-turvy. There were high levels of inflation and high levels of
unemployment. Our country was in jeopardy. Our country felt a danger
because while we were in retreat, communism--Soviet communism--was on
the offensive throughout the world.
Well, Ronald Reagan, in 8 short years, turned that situation totally
around. He turned the economy around, and he turned around the spirit
of the people. We went from being pessimistic to being the most
optimistic and forward-looking people in the world. Yes, he helped the
economy, but foremost, Ronald Reagan ended the cold war.
Mr. Speaker, I am 67 years old. During my life, most of us felt that
some day, we would be at war with the Soviet Union--a shooting war--and
that it might take the lives of millions of people. We were told to
hide under our desk when we were young and cover up our heads in case
there was a nuclear attack on our country.
Ronald Reagan expanded the United States military. Many times, when
people look back and they understand the success that we had in ending
the cold war, they believe that it was due to the increase in the size
of our military.
Let me note that did play a factor because it was a deterrent factor,
and it was a factor that awed many people in the developing world, as
well as our enemies in the communist world, but that is not what
switched and that is not what changed our retreat in the cold war to a
great victory and the bringing down of the Berlin Wall.
What changed it was a change in strategy that Ronald Reagan initiated
during the time that he was President. He was a strong leader. We came
into the White House and people asked: What is your strategy for
dealing with the Soviet threat to our freedom and the peace of the
world? He said: The strategy is very simple. We win, and they lose.
That is what he set out. The guidelines that he set out for us who
worked for him in the White House and throughout the administration
were that our goal was to be that the United States would win the cold
war and the Soviet Union would lose.
Well, during that time period, Ronald Reagan did not deploy American
troops overseas like people think that he did. Yes, he expanded our
military power, but he made very few deployments--major deployments--of
American troops.
In fact, in one deployment which he made to Beirut, where he sent
thousands of marines to Beirut, I personally was arguing against it in
the White House and went around finding out what it was all about.
After a few short weeks, it turned into a fiasco. It turned into a
tragedy, as well as a fiasco, I might add. 300 Americans, marines and
sailors, lost their lives when their headquarters was blown up--their
bunker, you might say. Their barracks in Beirut was blown up.
Ronald Reagan's advisers at that time advised him to send in tens of
thousands of more American troopers, send in the entire 2nd Marine
Division and show these terrorists they can't kill marines and get away
with it.
Ronald Reagan made his best decision as President at that time not to
make such a huge, major deployment of troops into Beirut; otherwise, we
would have been in a quagmire for the rest of his administration. They
would have been there, stuck in this war zone in Beirut, a no-win
situation. Reagan knew that.
He also knew when he told us, No, we are going to get out of there as
soon as we can rather than get stuck in the quagmire, he initiated
another policy, a security policy based on a different doctrine from
sending American troops to garrison in the world or sending American
troops to fight other people's battles.
What it was, was Ronald Reagan initiated the Reagan Doctrine. The
Reagan Doctrine was basically to recognize that the enemy of our enemy
was our friend and to do everything we could to identify our friends
around the world who would help us defeat the Soviet Union.
The Reagan Doctrine had us helping people in Nicaragua who were
fighting against the Sandinista dictatorship which was allied with the
Soviet Union. It was in Africa where you had Cuban troops being
confronted by insurgency movements that we supported that were pro-
democracy, or at least anti-Soviet, and in Afghanistan where the Soviet
Army itself was being confronted.
The doctrine supported those who were struggling for freedom against
oppression. We helped people in Europe, the Lech Walesas and the
various leaders throughout Eastern Europe who organized resistance
against the Soviet domination of their countries. Whether it was Poland
or Czechoslovakia or Hungary, they received covert support from
President Reagan.
Reagan wanted, yes, to defeat the Soviet Union, and that is what we
did. We did it in a way by helping those who were on the front lines,
struggling against what we saw as an evil--that is, a government in
Russia that was controlled by an atheistic theory that an atheist
dictatorship imposed upon people could reestablish new values among
human beings and, thus, create a whole new world.
That monstrous philosophy--monstrous because it had monstrous
implications in terms of human freedom, but also in the control and
slaughter of those people who did not agree with that vision--that had
to be defeated because it threatened the entire world.
By the time Ronald Reagan was finished with his Presidency and the
leadership that he provided to the free world and all those who were
struggling against communism, we succeeded. The Berlin Wall came down.
This was done because of great leadership and a great strategy on the
part of this man.
Today, we look at a totally different world from the world that
Reagan left us. Unlike the world that he inherited from his
predecessor, President Carter, Reagan left us a world where the upward
trend toward our civilization was undeniable, that it looked like we
could have generations of peace and that our enemies respected us to
the point that they would not put us in jeopardy because it would be
putting themselves in jeopardy. Reagan gave us chances for peace,
prosperity, and freedom throughout the world.
Today, we face a totally different world. It is a frightening world.
We have, today, an adversary that is every bit as evil, potentially
harmful, and destructive to the people of the world as what we faced
when Ronald Reagan came to the Presidency at the height of the cold
war.
Yes, everything was dangerous at that time, and Reagan gave us peace
and security. Today, we are facing evil and danger as even before in
the cold war, but perhaps we can compare this even to the evil and
danger that America and the Western world faced in the early thirties
and the late twenties when nazism and fascism raised its ugly head.
What happened? During that time period, had we and the Western Allies
been able to deal with Adolf Hitler, perhaps there would not have been
this huge conflagration of World War II which took the lives of
hundreds of millions of people.
But they did not deal with that as Ronald Reagan dealt with communism
when he became President, and Hitler and the fascist threat eventually,
with their aggression, put the free world and those other people who
sought a better world in such a spot that war erupted and World War II,
that great conflagration, happened. It was avoidable.
[[Page H840]]
Well, today, we face a similar threat. We face an evil that, as I
say, is every bit as dangerous as the evil that was faced by Reagan and
faced before World War II.
It is a radical Islamic philosophy that will slaughter people in the
West without thinking twice about it or, what is even worse, will
slaughter people in great numbers in the West after strategizing of how
to do it more effectively--not only slaughtering Christians and other
non-Muslims, but this evil force is seeking to dominate that part of
the world in which the majority of people are of the Islamic faith.
This radical Islamic terrorist evil murders more Muslims than,
indeed, they murder Christians, although they have been very aggressive
in their murder of Christians in a very demonstrable way, in a way that
would try to intimidate the Christian world and the non-Muslim world,
but we have brave and courageous people within the Muslim world.
We must not let ourselves be brought to the point that the radical
Islamic movement wants us to be in, and that is to alienate the rest of
the billion of Muslims who occupy this planet and make them our enemy.
Like Ronald Reagan, we must seek out our friends throughout the world
who are struggling against radical Islamic terrorism and dictatorship
and make sure that we back them up, so they will have a chance to
defeat this threat and this ongoing murder and chaos that is engulfing
their own countries.
Today, we have such heroes overseas. Let us note, in the last 6
years, this threat has grown, has gone from miniscule to being a threat
that, if we do not deal with it, could erupt into the same type of
global conflagration that we saw in World War II and perhaps--or at
best--would leave us with a war, with a global split in the world like
happened under communism that we defeated under Ronald Reagan.
{time} 1245
Yes, we could see, if this threat of radical Islam is not confronted
with American leadership, 10 years down the road, there could be a
massive conflagration that would encompass, for example, what would
happen if we do lose total control and things go totally out of control
into the gulf areas, in the Persian Gulf and in the Arab world. If that
part of the world becomes dominant, if the dominant force in that part
of the world becomes this radical Islamic philosophy, it will then move
to the ``stans.'' It will then move to the great parts of Africa and of
Central Asia, and that will tip the balance of power in this planet and
will lead to the type of global conflagration that all of us want to
avoid and to prevent.
But we must have the type of decisive leadership and the type of
actual commitment to winning this battle against the radical Islamic
dictatorship that these people are trying to superimpose upon the
world. We need the strong commitment that we saw under Ronald Reagan.
We need that, and we do not have it. We do not have the leadership we
need or the type of chaos that is now erupting in the Arab world would
not be happening.
What is happening in this chaos that we see is this rise of ISIL, a
group of people who are so committed to establishing a Muslim
dictatorship throughout their part of the world and throughout Africa
and, yes, even throughout the rest of the world where other non-Muslim
communities live. These people are dedicated to terrorizing the world
into submission to their authority, and they see their authority as
coming from their radical version of God, through their radical version
of Islam.
Again, most Muslims deny and reject that type of Islam. But let us
not forget, let us not ignore the fact that this radical philosophy is
based on their interpretation of Islam. That it is a religious
fanaticism that could, just like communism was a religious fanaticism--
it was an atheism fanaticism. And we have seen Christian fanaticisms in
the past, and they did great damage and cost the lives of great numbers
of people in their day. This radical fanaticism, unless we defeat it
now, will perhaps drag the entire planet into a World War II-like
conflagration. How do we stop that? How was Ronald Reagan able to stop
the rise of communism, the Soviet expansionism that he faced when he
took office and, in 7 or 8 short years, managed to turn that around and
defeat that very enemy?
First, he had the commitment to defeat it. And I will say today that
I don't believe our President has the commitment to defeat and destroy
radical Islamic terrorism and the radical Islamic dictatorship that
these fanatics would superimpose upon us. Instead, I think our
President believes, in good faith, that he can reach an accommodation
with these folks, with these fanatics, that an accommodation can be
reached and that we should try to prove to them that we are not their
enemy.
Well, they know they are our enemy because they get their word from
God, not from the President of the United States. That is what they
believe. They see these overtures, the fanatic radicals like in the
Taliban, they see it as a weakness, and it only encourages the radical
Islamic movement for our President to try to reach accommodation or to
say pleasant things to them without being aggressive, with seeming to
be unwilling to actually draw a line in the sand.
Our President, as most people know, has trouble even uttering the
words ``Islamic terrorism'' in one sentence. We are not going to be
successful in defeating this threat that would murder us by the
millions of people if they get the chance if our President is not even
willing to utter the words ``Islamic terrorism'' in the same sentence.
We have a President that, after our Ambassador was murdered in
Benghazi, tried to foist off on the American people the false story
that our Ambassador was killed because a demonstration against a movie
that insulted Islam got out of control and the demonstrators killed our
Ambassador. For weeks, this President himself participated in spreading
that lie.
Now, what message does it give us? First of all, my gosh, our
President isn't going to tell us the truth about radical Islam. But
what did the Muslim terrorists think? At that moment, the Muslim
terrorists were thinking: My goodness, we have a guy that is so weak
that he can't even condemn us and condemn the killing of his own
Ambassador by our movement. This emboldened them.
And that is why, we heard early on support for various ``reform
movements,'' and we all hoped that the Arab Spring would be a reform
movement. Instead, our President, unlike Ronald Reagan, who sought to
help those people who were the most aggressive opponents of Soviet
communism, this President has tried to seek out those people in the
Muslim Brotherhood and elsewhere and reach an accommodation with them.
That is why today we see enormous chaos and the rise of a radical,
fanatic Islamic movement, ISIL, that will burn people alive, that will
recruit people throughout the West to murder people in a newspaper,
like we just saw in Paris, for drawing a cartoon that in some way made
fun of their beliefs, as if people aren't free to make fun of other
people's beliefs. No, they think it is all right to murder those
people, and that is less civil--that is not even a sin, that is a
mandate, as compared to murdering unarmed people.
An unarmed cartoonist, newspaper cartoonist in France and his
colleagues, a policeman who happened to be a Muslim, laying there
helpless on the ground, and they murdered him outright. This is
fanaticism. This is part of a fanatic, radical Islamic movement that
has to be stopped. They will not stop at killing one policeman who
happens to be a Muslim on the ground. They will murder millions of
others if they get the chance. They are trying to establish themselves
throughout the Arab world right now. We need to make sure we stand by
our friends.
Yet, unlike Ronald Reagan, and there was no doubt he was standing
behind our friends who opposed Soviet communism, but what are we
projecting to those people who are standing firm against this fanatic,
radical Islamic movement that would put an Islamic dictatorship on the
people? What are we telling our friends who are standing up against
that?
Well, how about President el-Sisi of Egypt? El-Sisi was a general who
stepped in at a time when Egypt could have gone either way. We had a
radical Islamic movement going there. Yes, there was an elected
President, and he
[[Page H841]]
broke his word to his own people in trying to institute a caliphate in
Egypt. They rose up against him in an aggressive shout from the people
of Egypt, saying: We will not let our country become an Islamic
caliphate. This is Egypt. We believe in a democratic government here,
and we believe in an Egyptian government--not some radical, fanatic
Arab government that was superimposed on them by members of some Muslim
Brotherhood that operates behind the scenes.
Well, we almost lost Egypt. And if Egypt would fall today or would
have fallen then, there would be no chance of stopping this fanatic
movement that threatens the world and threatens especially other Muslim
countries. There would have been no chance at all. President el-Sisi is
a courageous man who has stepped forward, and our President took a long
time and is still taking a long time in getting solidly behind the
effort to prevent Egypt from becoming a bastion of fanatic
Islamic radicalism that would threaten the world.
General el-Sisi, I visited him a year ago, and he expressed: My
goodness, we bought all of these helicopters from the United States,
and we need them now because there is an insurgency going on with
radicals out in the Sinai desert. We need these helicopters. And it
took forever for our administration, this government, to provide them
the spare parts, the spare parts for that effort. They have jumped
through hoops. We were doing them a favor. No, we should look at these
people as doing us a favor. They are on the front lines battling this.
And President el-Sisi just recently did something that all Americans
and peace-loving people throughout the world should applaud, and that
is he went directly to Muslim groups in Egypt and spoke to them and
spoke on the record saying we have got to cleanse ourselves from this
fanaticism in which we are intolerant of other people's religions,
these people who would murder other people and commit acts of
terrorism. President el-Sisi, that was courageous of him. We need other
leaders to follow in his footsteps.
Has our administration done anything to congratulate President el-
Sisi in making that incredible stand? What type of things have we done
to prove that we are behind him in this effort? He also did something
else. President el-Sisi was the first President of Egypt ever to visit
a Coptic church, a Christian church in Egypt. Yet this administration
has been just so-so when it comes to el-Sisi. Yes, we have not
undermined him, but we have not given him support, which would have
been a signal to all of the other leaders there to stand firm and
America will stand behind you.
We have people like, for instance, the King of Jordan, who was only
here just a few days ago, and what happened? A Jordanian pilot was put
into a cage and burned to death as a public spectacle. A Jordanian
pilot. Why did they do that? Why did these fanatics do that? Because
they meant to terrorize the people of the world, terrorize the people
of Africa, terrorize other people who would stand up against them. And
what was Abdullah's reaction to that? He left his meetings in the
United States and flew back to Jordan. It is now being said that he
personally flew a bombing mission against the ISIL people who burned
that man alive. Now there is a leader, and we should be backing him up.
But what do we hear just in the paper the other day? That Jordan is
having difficulty in getting the supplies of weapons and arms that they
need to make sure that they can stand firm against ISIL and this
horrible, radical fanatic movement that is sweeping through their part
of the world.
Ronald Reagan knew that we needed to support great leaders who would
help us end the cold war. We will bring about war if leaders like King
Abdullah in Jordan and President el-Sisi in Egypt--if people think we
won't get behind them, how can we count on others to take that stand.
How about the Kurds up in northern Iraq? They are the ones bearing
the burden, bearing the brunt of all of the fighting that is going on
now in Iraq. The other people, when we tried to work things through
Baghdad and tried to accommodate leaders who were halfheartedly in this
battle and really weren't committed, what happened? We gave them
enormous amounts of military equipment that ended up in the hands of
radicals, ended up being used as vehicles and guns to destroy and kill
people who want the type of world that we want to live in, which is a
world of tolerance and freedom and peace and prosperity, not radical,
fanatic Muslim dictatorship.
{time} 1300
Instead, the Kurds have stood firm. The Kurds are the one group in
Iraq that have stood firm and are the one group that has received the
least support from the United States as compared to the others.
Now, Baghdad, which wants to put their thumb down on the Kurds, we
are going along with a demand with those people that all our aid that
goes to the Kurds goes to Baghdad first. That is recognizing the people
who are not really on our side, their power, over the people who are on
our side.
In fact, there was a meeting in London just in the last few days--I
guess it was last week--to determine what would go on in Iraq. The
United States was, of course, maybe not sitting at the table, but
helped organize this and were part of the process of trying to get this
meeting together. We didn't even insist that the Kurds were there. The
Kurds weren't even at the table.
This is a betrayal of the people who are on the front lines fighting
the big fight of today against radical Islamic terrorism. We betrayed
them. This is horrible.
What kind of message does that send to other people around the world
who have to stand up against this onslaught of radical fanatic Islamic
terrorist dictatorship that would be superimposed on them?
We have got to make sure that these people understand--whether it is
Abdullah--or how about the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, for example? Here
is a man who is so strong in his conviction and leadership in that part
of the world to try to stop this terrible threat. Yes, he is treated
well. We should be honoring him.
Our administration should be leading the efforts to take the
Abdullahs and the Crown Prince there in Abu Dhabi and President el-
Sisi. These people deserve demonstrable support, not just sort of
halfheartedly getting behind them.
What about, for example, even Qatar today? Qatar is trying to make a
decision as to what to do in the face of this. For example, they permit
us to have airstrikes against ISIL--this radical Islamic group up in
Iraq--they are permitting us to use an air base in Qatar to launch
those attacks, but we should make sure people understand and are
grateful to them for it and be demonstrable about it.
Part of it is, yes, stand up with your friends. If somebody does
something good, like Qatar has just done and wants to go back--and, by
the way, has taken some steps in the right direction after taking some
steps in the wrong direction--they lost faith in us, I believe, and
now, they are coming back in our direction. We should encourage that.
The other half of the equation is we need to be tough on the guys who
are our enemies, who are going the wrong way, who are supporting
radical Islamic fanatic terrorism, like, for example, Pakistan.
We are still giving billions of dollars over a 10-year period to
Pakistan. We are giving hundreds of millions of dollars of military
equipment and foreign aid to a country that is, yes, supporting the
Taliban.
Almost all of the people that we have lost in Afghanistan can be
traced back to terrorists who are using Pakistan as a home base, but
not only as a home base, the ISI have been actively involved in helping
these fanatic terrorists that our people were up against in
Afghanistan.
How do we know that? Well, we do know that it is known, but maybe
just the fact that they were giving safe haven to Osama Bin Laden--the
murderer of 3,000 Americans on 9/11--they gave safe haven to this man.
This was, ``Oh, we didn't know.'' No one believes that. They knew.
Now, to add insult to injury, they have taken the doctor who gave us
the location of Osama Bin Laden and helped us bring Osama Bin Laden to
justice, that doctor, Dr. Afridi, is now languishing in a dungeon, in a
10-by-10-foot cell in Pakistan.
[[Page H842]]
That act by Pakistan is a hostile act to the United States, and for
us to walk away and ignore it is to encourage others to treat us in the
same way.
We must be tough on our enemies and friends to our friends. Is that a
difficult formula? Is that too difficult for people to understand?
We are losing today because I believe this President has been
treating our enemies better than he has been treating our friends in
many cases, in terms of willing to reach out to them. We should be
reaching out and trying to do everything we can to help the friendly
countries rather than reaching out to seek accommodations with these
evil countries.
Nowhere is that better demonstrated than the announcement that we had
secretly negotiated a deal with Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba--secretly
negotiated. Congress didn't know what was going on, and now, he has
announced by edict his executive orders.
Here is a President--maybe he likes Castro a little bit because
Castro, after all, he could rule with edicts, just like our President
now likes to rule with edicts, rather than go through what we call your
regular order as seeking the legislative branch and seeking compromises
and establishing policy in that way.
Instead, this President reversed 50 years of American policy towards
Cuba on his own rather than coming here to Congress and working out
something with us and trying to find what was the best way and opening
up Cuba to having the beginning of an economic relationship and having
Americans go freely there and then to come to the United States.
Well, he did that, and there were no concessions, none, that the
Cubans made for this President to give up that 50 years, 50 years of
``this is what our policy is, you are going to have to do this--free
elections, opposition parties, et cetera--then we will recognize you.''
This President gave it up and no concessions on the other side.
Now, by the way, what message does that send to all these other
countries? Again, it is not just Cuba. What message does that send to
all these other countries when we complain about human rights or we try
to set a standard, some standard, that will, indeed, take that country
in the right direction?
We end up giving up a 50-year policy with no concessions; thus every
little petty dictator in the world or, even worse, every group that is
out there who is trying to decide whether or not to go with radical
Islamist terrorism or not, they know they can make whatever decision
they want and eventually the United States is going to cave in because
we are projecting weakness.
As I say, the one thing Ronald Reagan did that was terrific was to
rebuild our military, and it did--it created a sense of awe, but it was
a sense of strength. He used that sense of strength, but it was his
strategy in helping those people throughout the world who are our
friends and the friends of things we believed in and the enemy of our
enemies. That is what worked. We are sending the wrong message to the
people who will be the enemy of our enemies.
We are undermining by not providing positive and forceful support for
those people who are standing up--the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and
these others and Abdullah and Jordan and President el-Sisi in Egypt--by
not demonstrably standing with them, we send the wrong message
throughout the world. That is why things are falling apart. That is why
things are not going in the right direction.
This isn't we just happen to live in a time when things are chaotic.
That is not the case. Just like Ronald Reagan didn't just live in the
times when there was a Soviet communist threat that was undermining the
peace of the world. That didn't just happen. It was the basis of things
that, yes, what they did, but also our response to that threat.
Today, this administration, I believe, has led us down a path that
has created the chaos that we now see, created a situation where you
have a radical fanatic Islamic dictatorship movement that not only
tries to take over and dominate the Islamic part of the world, but is
threatening terrorist acts and has engaged in terrorist acts.
We will have more and more bombings like we saw at the Boston
Marathon. We will have more and more terrorist actions taken in Western
Europe as we saw in Paris or in Africa, unless we step forward and let
the world know that we are strong, we are strong in our commitment, and
we stand by those who will help us in this battle.
I recently visited New York City, and I had not been there for a long
time. I had never gone to the 9/11 Memorial. I visited the 9/11
Memorial, and I would advise anyone who has not been there to go there.
This is a memorial to the 3,000 Americans who died on 9/11, most of
them there at the World Trade Center in those two great towers that
were brought down on that day. You should go. Anyone hearing my voice--
my colleagues, others--should go and see this.
They have managed to get a picture of almost every one of the victims
who died that day. Many, of course, were firemen and policemen who,
when the airplane struck that building, instead of running away and
rushing away, they ran towards the building, they ran there to see what
they could do to help, and they gave their lives, these heroic people.
We have to have a government as heroic as our own people if we are
going to triumph over the people that slaughtered those people today.
They slaughtered them in 9/11, and they will slaughter them today.
I looked at those pictures of those 3,000 people--and I was in the
government when that happened, and I worked with Reagan before that,
but on 9/11, we had been here a long time, and we are all part of this.
We owe it to the people of the United States, all of us on both sides
of the aisle and in the executive branch and whoever else who is the
government of this country, we owe it to our people to make sure we are
doing the right thing--and I looked into their faces, and I brought my
children with me to see this, and I said: Look, all of those people, do
you know what they are telling us? They are telling us, to me and to
all of us here in this body, you let us down, you let us down.
Don't do it again. Don't let there be another wall in another city
with 20,000 pictures on it because they have got some sort of dirty
bomb or something. These people that we are facing today are capable of
that.
I am not arguing for major deployments of military units overseas,
occupation, garrison in the world, like we did for too long, and I do
not think it was right for us to go into Iraq in the first place.
I do argue that when we find people on our side, like Ronald Reagan
did, we need to have a strong military, and we need to make sure that
the world respects us.
Then we need to have stands and activities and actions that win their
respect, them knowing that we stand with those people who will stand
firm against this threat to the world.
Otherwise, some day, there could be another World War II-like thing
10 years down the road when we say: Why didn't you stop that fanatic
Hitler when he was just walking around, goose-stepping around in these
towns in Germany when he could have been stopped? Why didn't you stop
him then?
Then there was hundreds of millions of people. This could lead to
that type of conflagration.
One thing we know, unless we stop this radical movement there now,
they will find ways of killing thousands of Americans, and there will
be other walls, with other pictures, saying: Why didn't you do
something?
I call on my colleagues now to seriously look at this challenge that
we face. My negative comments about what I believe is the President not
dealing with this situation in the right way is something that I am
saying from the heart, and I am not doing this for political reasons.
{time} 1315
Let me just say today that we see examples of where we need to take
stands. We need to make sure, for example, that the nouveau regime in
Iran is facing a President of the United States and an American
Government that are making demands that they do not use this system
that they are developing now. They have signed a treaty saying they
would not have a nuclear weapon. We should hold them to that treaty,
and we should be helping
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the people in Iran, who are struggling against that nouveau regime. I
do not say we should attack Iran with American military might. We
should be supportive, and we should have been so all along.
There were demonstrators in the streets of Tehran, and there was no
message. There was no message at all of support from our government at
that time. That was one of the first things this President did--he
refrained from helping and supporting those young activists for
democracy in Iran. The Baloch people are fighting against the
corruption and oppression of the Pakistani Government, which is
dominated by these radicals. We should be helping the Baloch, who can
also be active in Iran, I might say.
There are options that we can have throughout the world today--
actions both in terms of policy and in terms of actually helping people
struggle for freedom--that will ensure the peace of the world 10 years
down the road, as Ronald Reagan did when he took over. He left us a
better world. We need to take the steps now to make sure that, when we
leave this body, when we leave Congress--and whoever becomes President
the next time around--that we leave this government so that our people
have a greater chance for freedom, a greater chance to live in peace.
We need to make sure that our people can live in peace and prosperity.
Those pictures on the wall at the 9/11 Memorial shout out to us: Do
your duty. You didn't do it. You let us down. Don't do it again. Make
sure the American people are safe. You have a challenge now. Meet that
challenge. Stand firm. Stand strong behind those who are with you.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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