[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 18]
[House]
[Page 25270]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       LET IRAQ TAKE CARE OF IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, many Americans today may not be familiar 
with Will Rogers. However, Will Rogers was at one time considered by 
many to be the most popular man in America. He once said, ``America has 
a great habit of always talking about protecting American interests in 
some foreign country.'' Then he said, ``Protect them here at home. 
There is more American interest right here than anywhere.''
  The passage of an additional $87 billion for an operation in Iraq 
seems to many to be anything but fiscally conservative. The request 
includes, among many other things, $5.7 billion for a new electric 
power system; $3.7 billion to improve drinking water; $856 million to 
upgrade and repair three airports, rail lines, and phone service; 
$240,000 each for 1,500 police trainers to train Iraqi police; $1.71 
per gallon for gas that they are then selling to Iraqi citizens for 
$4.15 per gallon, according to The New York Times.
  Earlier billions have been used to build or rebuild thousands of 
Iraqi schools, give free health care to many Iraqi citizens, make 
backpayments to the Iraqi military and Iraqi retirees, and even send 
60,000 soccer balls there. Our Founding Fathers could not have imagined 
all this in their wildest dreams.
  A distinguished Member of the other body, the gentleman from Ohio, 
Mr. Voinovich, said, ``Look at the needs we have here at home, with our 
roads, sewers, and water projects. It is hard to tell people there 
isn't money for sewers and water and then send that kind of money to 
Iraq.'' Another distinguished Member of the other body, Mr. Hagel, the 
gentleman from Nebraska, said, ``There is a great unease about all this 
reflected across this land. We are getting deeper and deeper into 
something we have never been in before in this part of the world. This 
is complicated, dangerous and uncertain.''
  Conservatives, Mr. Speaker, have never believed in massive foreign 
aid, yet our occupation of Iraq has become the largest foreign aid 
program in the history of the world. Conservatives, Mr. Speaker, have 
never believed in huge deficit spending, yet we are now told that our 
deficits for just this year and next will reach close to an astounding 
$1 trillion.
  Supporters of the war scoffed at the predictions that we would spend 
between $200 billion to $300 billion in Iraq over the next 10 years. 
Now, by the most conservative efforts, not counting many things that 
should be counted, the Iraqi operation will cost $167 billion in just 
the first 2 years.

                              {time}  2030

  And because we are in such a deep fiscal hole already, we will have 
to borrow all these billions we are spending there.
  Conservatives have never believed in world government, and have been 
strong critics of the U.N. Yet, some prominent war supporters, while 
criticizing the U.N. in one breath, will say in the next we had to go 
to war to enforce all the U.N. resolutions Saddam Hussein had violated. 
Most conservatives surely do not believe it is fair to place almost the 
entire burden of enforcing U.N. resolutions on American taxpayers and 
the U.S. military. Most conservatives, while believing strongly in 
national defense, have never believed the U.S. should be the policeman 
of the world. Most conservatives believe we would not have nearly as 
many enemies around the world if we followed a noninterventionist 
foreign policy and did not get involved in so many religious, ethnic, 
and political disputes around the world.
  Now, we are following a so-called neoconservative foreign policy that 
is anything but conservative. This interventionist policy is breeding 
resentment, creating more enemies, and putting our children and 
grandchildren into a financial black hole, and worst of all killing 
many young American military.
  Fortune magazine in its November 25 issue, long before the war 
started, printed an article entitled, ``Iraq--We Win, What Then?'' The 
article said a ``military victory could turn into a strategic defeat,'' 
and an American occupation could turn U.S. troops into sitting ducks 
for Islamic terrorists. These predictions have turned out to be deadly 
accurate.
  The columnist Georgie Ann Geyer wrote, ``Critics of the war against 
Iraq have said since the beginning of the conflict that Americans, 
still strangely complacent about overseas wars being waged by a 
minority in their name, will inevitably come to a point where they will 
see they have to have a government that provides services at home or 
one that seeks empire across the globe.''
  Saddam Hussein was an evil man but he had a military budget only 
about two-tenths of 1 percent of ours and was never any real threat to 
us. Everyone knew we would win the war quickly and easily.
  Winning the peace, everyone said, would be much more difficult. Now, 
we are hearing noble-sounding cliches like ``we have to get the job 
done'' and ``we must stay the course'' and ``the American people must 
be willing to sacrifice.'' Well, we should all be asking why?
  Mr. Speaker, it is clear that the Iraqi people do not want us running 
their country, they only want our money. Any country would want all 
these billions. Now war supporters seem to be criticizing the media for 
reporting all the killing but failing to emphasize all the good that is 
going on there. For all of the billions we are spending there, I 
certainly hope some good things are going on, but these good things 
should be paid for by the Iraqi citizens with their own oil wealth. Let 
us leave Iraq to the Iraqis.
  A very small minority of very powerful Neo-Cons have apparently 
dreamed of war with Iraq for many years. They got their wish. But what 
they may have thought would be their crowning achievement may instead 
lead to their downfall.
  So many people in the United States and around the world feel that 
they were misled about the need to go to war in Iraq that they almost 
certainly will be much harder to convince the next time around.
  No matter who is President, almost all the leaders of the Defense 
Department, the State Department, the National Security Council, and 
our intelligence agencies are going to advocate more and more 
involvement in foreign affairs, even those which should be none of our 
business or even when there is no threat to our vital interests.
  This is because all their power and glory, and most importantly, 
their funding are determined in large part by our involvement in the 
affairs of other nations. These people are not seen as men and women of 
action and world statesmen when they urge that we do more and more in 
other countries.
  I wish more of our leaders would heed the advice of President Kennedy 
who said in 1962: ``We must face that fact that the United states is 
neither omnipotent nor omnisicient--that we are only six percent [now 
four percent] of the world's population--that we cannot impose our will 
upon the other 94 percent of mankind--that we cannot right every wrong 
or reverse each adversity--and that therefore there cannot be an 
American solution to every world problem.''
  There is nothing conservative about the U.S. policy in Iraq.

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