[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 164 (Thursday, October 12, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H8026-H8029]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California
(Mr. Rohrabacher) for 30 minutes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, let me just note I believe that our
President is doing a terrific job. I think that the last Presidents of
the United States have left us an incredibly dangerous situation, and
this President is trying to deal with it with strength and purpose,
and, yes, being a forceful leader.
For example, during the Clinton administration, we provided $4
billion to $5 billion to North Korea, the same way the last
administration tried to provide funds for Iran.
What do we have now?
A crisis with possible nuclear weapons and missiles in North Korea.
That is called kicking the can down the road. They sure kicked it down
to us, and now the people want to kick the can down the road with the
Iranians. No, let's not do that again and leave future generations to
face the music that we left them.
Our President wants to make sure that Iran does not become a nuclear
power as long as it is controlled by radical, fanatic mullahs who don't
even represent their own people. In fact, if Iran was more peaceful and
actually more democratic, then we wouldn't have to worry about that
because they wouldn't want to have a wasteful program of nuclear
weapons.
Those are the type of issues we face today. We face a lot of
uncertainties at home and abroad, and it behooves us to look for
explanations for the shifts in power, the dangers, and the influence
that are taking place in the world today.
Europe, along with the United States, for five decades, seemed to be
the center of world order and progress. NATO, the European Union, and
the common market all seemed to be the epitome of sophisticated and
proper governance needed to offset humankind's destructive and
combative inclinations. World Wars I and II had undercut, if not
destroyed, the expansion of classical liberalism that was in the
process of retiring royalist and imperialist domination of the world,
which, of course, is where the world was at the turn and the beginning
of the 20th century as classical liberalism began to replace
imperialism and monarchy.
Yes, the two World Wars that we experienced were traumas that still
impact our lives. The Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I was
the last gasp of European colonialism.
{time} 1800
Maps drawn at that international gathering brought on World War II.
Some of those other lines that they drew on that map plague us to this
day.
Those national borders mandated by the Versailles Treaty made the
world temporarily tranquil. Maybe we just heard about that a few
moments ago, how we have got to overcome the tragedy right now, like we
did in Korea, by not having confrontations with those people who were
engaged in hostile activity.
Yes, the Treaty of Versailles gave the world temporary tranquility,
but doomed following generations to instability and conflict. Such
future challenges were left to the League of Nations. When that failed,
the baton was passed to the United Nations.
Humanity, obviously, hoped that global government, in one form or the
other, would solve everything. The EU, the common market, NATO, and
other multinational bureaucracies would demonstrate how nation-states
can cooperate and achieve a collective peace, freedom, and prosperity.
Well, just as things changed dramatically after the 19th century
turned into the 20th century, and it became a different world, so, too,
is our world changing. We must make sure that we have turned from the
20th century into the 21st.
The 20th century was dominated by the wars and by the defeat of the
Soviet Union. Yet we are plagued with conflicts and upheavals that can
be traced back to border and sovereign decisions made long ago by
people who are now dead, not only from the 20th century, but, as I
said, from the end of World War I.
Many of the confrontations between various nationalities that we face
today could be solved and the greatest threats of violence,
insurrection, and war itself could be defused if our world would again
recognize the right of self-determination.
It seems to have been forgotten that the United States was not only
founded on the principles of liberty and independence, but also of the
right of people to demand their rights, and, yes, that right of
independence. They had a right to declare their independence.
This was the revolutionary idea that people have a right to select
their government. This was the revolutionary idea that gave our
Founding Fathers and Mothers the moral high ground to free themselves
from the British Empire. Without this, they probably would not have
won, if it were just a battle between powermongers.
No. This was what the fundamental beliefs were: life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness, but also the right of people to declare
themselves free and independent to create a country based on shared
beliefs and shared ideals and values.
This is what we hope--those shared values and beliefs in liberty and
justice--are the things that unite us today. That is what united had
our Founding Fathers and Mothers and that is what made us a nation.
After all, we don't have one race or one religion or one ethnic group
to identify us as being Americans and create that unity.
But that said, there are many other countries of the world whose
nationalism and patriotism are based on the fact that they have an
identity with other people that share their cultural and racial
identities. This is what unites them as a people. They are ethnically
the same, they are culturally the same, and they have the same type of
national and racial roots in their past.
Yes, this is what most countries are like. That is what defines a
nationality. Recognizing that people of similar values and culture do
not want to live in the subjugation of others has been ignored and/or
rejected by the powers that be throughout the world.
So we live in a world where this idea of just recognizing that people
want to be like people with similar people. For example, you have
differences between Catholics and Protestants in many areas of the
world.
Yes, they like to have people who maybe speak their same language and
have the same culture, enjoy the same music. There is nothing wrong
with people identifying others as being part of their national family.
We should promote that as a positive, rather than as a negative. We
should encourage people to work together.
There are many, for example, Jewish charities, which is wonderful
that Jewish people now, because they have gone through a certain amount
of oppression throughout the world, take care of each other in Jewish
charities. We have that. We have Catholic schools and different things.
Yes, it is meant because people do share certain values that they can
work together on. That is a good thing. However, the idea that people
like that might want to be in their own country, which is what our
Founding Fathers said, because it was only shared values, it wasn't
specific that we wanted freedom of religion for all people.
Well, today the world is threatened by people who want to be
independent of domination of others who don't share their same values
and their nationality. The reason why it is being rejected is basically
by the power brokers throughout the world because it threatens those in
power with losing authority over people who don't want to live under
their domination.
That is what self-determination is all about: letting people decide
their own fate. If a majority of people in an area want to be
independent of a country, that is what they should be, according to our
Declaration of Independence. And this is something that brings a
[[Page H8027]]
more peaceful world, rather than trying to have subjugation of one
people by another.
There has been a major cause of conflict in the world today when
people don't recognize that, yes, there are others who feel that they
are being oppressed by being forced under the jurisdiction of a
particular government. They would like to have their own independence.
This, of course, has been especially true where people, since the end
of the Cold War, have started looking at their own self-identification.
When the right of self-determination is recognized, disputes are
usually settled peacefully, as happened when, for example, after the
fall of communism, the Czechs and the Slovaks, who had one country
before, under the Treaty of Versailles, Czechoslovakia became the Czech
Republic and the Slovak Republic. Well, that is fine. It is a good
thing that they were able to separate. Now they can be friends.
But when they were one country, if the Czechs and Slovaks felt like
they were being oppressed, they weren't satisfied. It was a good thing
to permit them right off the bat: If you don't want to be part of the
country with us, yes, you can be a separate country. Otherwise, there
would have been turmoil at one level or another.
We also saw a peaceful solution in countries like Slovenia.
Yugoslavia was breaking up, Tito was dead, the Cold War was over, and
guess what. Slovenia and a bunch of other republics within Yugoslavia
wanted to be independent, and they were able to do it.
Well, perhaps they were able to do it because the Serbs had already
launched attacks on the Croatians and the Kosovars and other people in
Yugoslavia that now was splitting apart because these people wanted to
be independent and free, but the Serbs attacked them.
They didn't attack Slovenia, because I think by that time they
realized that they could not succeed going to war with all of these
various groups. Had the Kosovars and the Croatians been free to go and
separate and become independent countries--as Croatia is today, and as
the Kosovars would like to be, and as we are trying to help them to
be--that would have been better for Serbia. It would have been better
for everybody. There would have probably been by now an agreement for
some kind of free trade zone.
Instead, when the Serbs used force to keep those people under its
jurisdiction, we had violence throughout the Balkans that has lasted
for several decades. That is a tragedy. We should be working today in
the Balkans.
Let me just note that the Serbs today are an example of people who
are reaching out, for example, to the Kosovars and others to try to
find peaceful solutions and trying to come to some agreements that will
make peace more likely.
But, again, if you would have had people who were under their thumb,
nobody would be talking to them because they would be afraid of them.
No. People who treat other people as equals and have rights as people
in the world, they are more likely to reach understandings that are of
mutual cooperation that will bring peace to the world.
I am not trying to say you have to submit yourself to some other
group of people. The former Soviet Union, Ukraine, and other of the so-
called Soviet republics were actually permitted at the end of the Cold
War to, basically, peacefully establish their own independence. I know
it is not as simple as that, but it happened in a peaceful way in which
thousands of lives were not lost trying to force groups of people who
do not want to be under Moscow's control.
Those people, whether Ukraine or elsewhere in the Baltics or the
Balkans, had the right--and also in Central Asia--and people were
permitted to have, basically, an independent government free from being
only suppressed by Moscow and have to follow its orders.
That happened relatively peacefully. Had that not happened, there
probably would be conflict throughout that part of the world today.
There certainly would have been, as communism faltered in Russia
itself.
So it took a lot of prodding for us to make sure that the Russians in
the Soviet Union, in Moscow, understood that they could not keep people
under their thumb. It was the Cold War.
Thank God, we ended the Cold War peacefully, because that was the
great gift that Ronald Reagan gave to us. I am very proud to have
served with Ronald Reagan for 7 years in the White House as a senior
speechwriter to the President for 7\1/2\ years, as well as being a
Special Assistant to the President and very involved with his efforts
to try to move peace in the world. A lot of it was peace by recognizing
people's right to independence.
Look back, for example--Ronald Reagan was an Irish American--at the
needless violence that the British perpetrated and what happened in
Ireland because the British insisted that the Irish be kept under
British rule for so long, when it was clear that the Irish people
wanted to be independent of Great Britain.
Look at what happened, in contrast, in Singapore and Malaysia, where
the British just peacefully permitted those countries that were
basically under the domination--they were part of Great Britain and the
British Empire--to leave and establish their independence peacefully.
Then Malaysia and Singapore separated from Great Britain, and then
separated from each other, peacefully.
But in any one of these cases, if somebody demanded that these people
stay in this particular status within this particular government, there
would have been a lot more violence.
When self-determination is respected, peace is more likely. When a
people are subjugated to the orders of a government in a country they
don't want to be part of, violence is more likely.
How easy is that?
Special interests and power elites throughout the world are not so
inclined to this obvious reason.
Why?
Because it is not in their interest to let people just go when they
have them right there under their control.
So let's look at a few examples where self-determination has manifest
itself in conflict.
Today, one of the greatest conflict areas of the world is the Middle
East. Again, many of the conflicts that we have seen, if not a
majority, can be traced right back to the Treaty of Versailles, right
back to World War I, and the decisions of colonialists and imperialists
and royalists to draw borders in the Middle East, just as they did in
Africa and elsewhere, which made no sense.
Yes, we ended up separating whole nations. For example, one nation of
people that we are aware of today are the Kurds. The Kurds were
separated into various countries in the Treaty of Versailles by these
British and French colonialists.
And we are supposed to just abide by their decision of what the
borders should be today, 100 years later?
No, I don't think so.
{time} 1815
The Kurds, of course, were not living just subjugating themselves to
what they had been dictated. No, the Kurds have been our greatest ally
in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism, and what they are doing
today and what they just voted on recently was they had a vote to
determine if their people wanted self-determination and wanted to be an
independent country from Iraq.
Yes, that was a good thing, and we should recognize that. They won
overwhelmingly, and we should look at the map of--we should say a map
of the Middle East needs to be changed so you can have a Kurdistan that
flows all the way from Turkey and Iraq and Iran and Syria. There are
more, for example, Kurds in Iran than there are in Iraq. In Turkey,
there are more Kurds, and, of course, in Syria.
This should be a modern country. Why are we letting this turmoil go
on when our greatest allies are looking for their own self-
determination and these other countries are becoming or are already our
enemies? Yes, it will behoove the United States to support the
independence of Kurdistan and all the Kurds. We should support in
bringing together these Kurdish people as a nation, because that is
what they are. They are a nation without a state. Let them have their
country.
There has been so much bloodshed in trying to repress the Kurds from
the Iranians, from the mullah regime, but also the Shah before him. The
Kurds were oppressed by Saddam Hussein,
[[Page H8028]]
and right now, what we have is a repression of people even in Iran
where the mullah regime is oppressing not only the rest of its people,
not only the other people who make up Iran, but the Kurds, in
particular.
Look at what is going on with the Baloch, for example. Now, a small
group--there are groups of people. There is an area in Iran where the
vast majority of people are of the Baloch extraction. They would like
their independence. They deserve their right to self-determination, and
they are not suffering from the oppression of Iran.
By the way, if we are going to try to deal with Iran, let's not
ratchet up our military and threaten to attack them that way. Let's
ratchet up our support for people like the Kurds and the Baloch and the
Azaris and other people who live in Iran who don't like the oppression
of the mullahs, and we can even be supportive of the Persian people who
hate the mullah regime.
These are not our enemies in Iran. It is the mullah regime, the
fanatics that would drop a bomb on us and not even think twice because
they think they are doing God's work. They are the enemy. So we need to
be supporting, for example, the Baloch, when I talk about in Iran. The
Baloch are also persecuted, mainly persecuted by the Pakistanis who
have them under their thumb, and they murder people constantly. They
pick these young people up and they murder them, and then they drop
their bodies in little villages just to show people what is going to
happen to them if they try to resist Pakistani authority.
This is the history of Pakistan. Right now they are doing it to the
Baloch, to the Sindhis, to the Singhs, you name it. You have got just a
group of people--except for, of course, the Punjabis and then others,
the Pashtuns who control that Government in Pakistan.
Well, remember what happened before. We have seen it before. When the
people of Bangladesh wanted to be a little independent of the Pakistani
Government, have some way to, you know, control their own lives and
control their own government, they were brutally repressed by the
Pakistani Government, and that is what led to, basically, the uprising
of the people in Bangladesh when they freed themselves.
Remember, that same type of oppression is continuing not only on the
Baloch, but, for example, the populations that came over from India,
after India and Pakistan split. A lot of them went to Karachi. Those
people in Karachi now, there are people who want to have Karachi--it is
like a Singapore of that part of the world, an independent. That is
what they want to do because they have a right of self-determination.
They don't want to be subjugated by this corrupt, militaristic,
proterrorist Government in Pakistan. We should be siding with people
like that who want their independence and believe in these same values
that we believe in.
Another example of that, of course, is what we see in Spain today.
Today, of course, now there are groups of people who live in Catalonia.
Catalonia is a province with a long history in Spain. People identify
themselves as Catalonians. Yes, Spanish, but also Catalonians. They
should have a right to vote on whether or not they want to remain part
of Spain, whether or not they give up their sovereignty to a central
government in Madrid or do they want to have a government of Catalonia
that they can have their own government, and yes, their own
sovereignty.
Well, the Spanish overreaction to the efforts of the Catalonians just
to have a poll--basically it was a vote on independence, but it was--
you know, basically it had to be recognized for it to have effect. But
instead of letting them do this and just saying, ``Well, it has no
legal effect,'' instead, the Spanish Government came down with brute
force and conducted violence, as you would think violence coming from
terrorists would exert on a group of people in Spain. It was their own
government that was exercising violence and force and intimidation
against the people of Catalonia.
Now, of course, the people of Catalonia are united because they know
the brutality and subjugation of what is going on with Madrid.
Now, the British knew how to do it. Unlike Madrid and Spain, the
British permitted their people in Scotland to have a vote, and that was
a wonderful thing. The Scots had their vote, there was no interference,
and if they didn't want to be part of Great Britain, they didn't have
to be, and that was a wonderful example to the world of how you should
do this.
Now, the Scots decided to stay part of England, part of Great
Britain. That is fine, but they had their chance. The people in Spain
weren't given that chance. No, instead their government came down and
beat them up when they tried to go to the polls. And let's say also,
the British seemed also to be demonstrating, they believe, in self-
determination.
They are exiting--they are taking the Brexit issue of whether or not
you should have Britain as part of the EU and the common market. That
vote that they allowed their people to decide, it wasn't decided by an
elite. The Brexit vote let all the people of Britain decide whether or
not they were going to be basically part of a subjugated people in
Europe or whether they were going to be an independent force and a
nation, which is their history as a people of Great Britain.
I am proud that they permitted Scotland to vote, and I am also proud
that they voted not to subjugate themselves to the EU and to the common
market, et cetera.
We need to make sure that we stay true to our principles and have a
vision about what this world will be. If you are just looking at things
of what we can do every day, Ronald Reagan succeeded because he had a
vision of a peaceful world based on those individual rights and those
concepts of freedom and democracy that were at the heart of the
American experience, but also an America that encompassed people from
all over the world.
Reagan had a vision, and it wasn't to get into a war with the Soviet
Union and destroy communism. Reagan's vision was let's have--yes, we
have to have strength in our military in order to defeat this enemy of
Soviet communism, because it was threatening the world peace. It was
taking over countries and overthrowing governments and replacing them
with atheist dictatorships. Reagan knew we had to stop that.
Just like today, our primary enemy today is no longer the Soviet
Union because Reagan helped eliminate the Soviet Union, the communist
threat. The threat today is radical Islamic terrorists who will murder
our people and are murdering people all over the world and murdering
people in their own countries in order to terrorize them into
submission.
Well, the bottom line is, Ronald Reagan's vision succeeded with
Russia because, at that time, it was the Soviet Union, and now we have
a Russia that we have so much more potential.
Now, there are a lot of flaws. There are a lot of flaws in the
Russian Government, and there are things that we have to make sure that
we are taking care of and standing firm on, but, by and large, we have
to understand that they, today, are being attacked and murdered by
radical Islamic terrorists as well. They know that, and they know the
dangers that we face because they face a common danger.
We need to work to build a new alliance because what is happening is,
Islam is making such inroads into the stupidity of our western European
allies that the western Europe that we know--here again, time is going
on, 19th century into the 20th century. Now we are in the 21st century.
The 21st century will see that Europe becomes a whole different place
than what it has been for the last 150 or 200 years.
There will be Islamic countries in Europe, and they will be, then,
either part of or they will not fight against a radical Islamic
terrorist threat that today threatens the peace of the world just as
the Soviet Union did that 10 years, or I should say, 10 decades ago.
So with that, we need a vision, and one vision that we should have
is, number one, a vision of self-determination that we all agree on.
Number two, let's make sure that we ally ourselves in a positive way
with people who are not going to be weakened by the onslaught of Islam.
I would suggest that America will be a more peaceful place and our
country will be more secure and the world will be more peaceful and
secure if we establish a new relationship in which we are
[[Page H8029]]
watching out for each other with four countries. The United States, of
course; the other one is India, and I will soon be going to India. In
fact, I will be going to India tomorrow. And number three, Japan; and
number four, Russia.
Now, there is some work that needs to be done to make a coalition
like that real, but a coalition of those countries working together,
not mandated that we have to do this and we have to subjugate ourselves
to decisions of what the four say, but, instead, seeking out
cooperation with those countries where there is mutual benefit to do,
we can make this a better world. We can secure our prosperity and
secure the peace of our own country and the security of our own
country.
So with a vision and with a recognition of fundamental things like
the right of self-determination and the right of life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness that our Founding Fathers talked about, and
limited government where they said government only derives its just
powers from the consent of the governed, let us champion these values
and these ideals.
Let us have a vision for the future, as Ronald Reagan did, and we can
make this a more peaceful world as we side with people all over the
world who want to control their own destiny by having their own nation
rather than being subjected to someone else.
Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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