[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16046]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          WAR SHOULD NOT BE FIRST INSTRUMENT OF FOREIGN POLICY

  (Mr. DOGGETT asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, overshadowing all of our hopes and dreams 
for our families and for our country is the daily talk of war. This 
Administration's apparent intent to launch a go-it-alone invasion of 
another country is unprecedented in American history, it is 
unprecedented in ignoring the warnings of military experts, it is 
unprecedented in rejecting the advice of our allies and, most 
importantly, unprecedented in the dangers posed for the safety of 
American families everywhere.
  At one time ``regime change'' was the now-abandoned goal of our 
foreign policy toward an island 90 miles off our shores. Immediate 
success is even less certain for a regime on the other side of the 
world through a means uniformly rejected at present by the countries of 
the region. Of course, Saddam Hussein is a menace, as was Libya's 
Muammer Qaddafi, as was Josef Stalin. But able policymakers of both 
parties found ways to contain such threats without starting what could 
become another world war.
  Mr. President, unite our country and the world to eliminate weapons 
of mass destruction; do not divide us by making war the first 
instrument of your foreign policy.

                          ____________________