[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 25357-25362]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             WAR ON TERROR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Garrett of New Jersey). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. McCotter) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of 
the majority leader.
  Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to address the issue of Iraq, and 
specifically how our war on terror, a truly just war in the defense of 
American civilization, entailed the strategic imperative for Iraq's 
regime change and reconstruction, and now how in the war on terror we 
stand at a crucible for our country and civilization.
  On September 11, 2001, America was shaken by a sudden and concerted 
act of terrorism by fanatics who possessed no justification and our 
Nation no culpability for their willful, deliberate, and premeditated 
murder of innocents. Stunned, we resolutely marshaled our courage and 
solemnly accepted the duty to defend our country and human civilization 
from the atavistic nihilism of Islamic extremism which amorally and 
arbitrarily colors and conditions the unviable sanctity of human life 
within the skewed prism of its adherents' abject pursuit of power.
  This is neither the first nor undoubtedly the last time our Nation 
will be called upon to protect itself and all the world from an 
extremist enemy with inhuman aims. In our relatively brief existence, 
we have led the successful efforts to eradicate the evils of 
imperialism, fascism and communism; and, heartened by our storied 
tradition of valor and victory, our current efforts must and will 
continue to tighten nooses around the necks of the practitioners of 
terror until they have joined their extremist antecedents in the ash 
can of history.
  It will be a long, hard, bitter task to defeat these disparate, 
desperate denizens of terror, who skulk in the shadows and steep in the 
venom of their perverted political phantasms. Their strength is their 
stealth and ruthlessness which, in the absence of their own nation-
state, was spawned by their inability to wage conventional war upon 
traditional combatants. Their weakness, in turn, is their inability to 
subsist and act without sustenance from a cut-throat confederation of 
sheltering nation-states and sympathizers.
  These murderers are at once everywhere and nowhere; shrill in their 
threats, silent in their tactics; housed in the bosoms of evil and 
hunted in the citadels of freedom. They are the faceless foes of a 
million-mile front in a war without borders or bounds, but with this 
grim reality: they want to kill us. They want to kill our children. And 
to kill us, they will kill themselves, too. Make no mistake, the only 
way to stop them from killing us is to first kill them until they 
capitulate. The war is here. The war is now.
  And unless and until our victory is won, every American man, woman 
and child will live in a perpetual state of imminent threat from 
terrorists and their patrons because, as proven by the sneak attack on 
September 11, the extremists' existence is an imminent threat to our 
existence.
  Given this grim reality and our enemies' assets and liabilities, 
defeating terrorists requires severing them from their sponsoring 
states and sympathizers in tiered theaters of operations determined and 
devised as necessity demands and opportunity provides; and within these 
theaters of operations involved, diplomatic, economic and military, 
must each be tailored by time and circumstance for maximal advantage 
and efficiency. It is a root-and-branch approach. The U.S. and its 
allies must uproot regimes supporting terrorism; serve notice on other 
rogue regimes to cease and desist in their succor of terror, lest they 
suffer the same fate; and leave terrorists to die on the vine of their 
own dependencies and the steel of our resolve.
  Within this mission, theaters of operations must first be defined. 
Tragically, the tier-one theater has already been designated for us: 
the homelands of America and her allies. Tier-two theaters exist within 
those nations in which America and her allies must diplomatically, 
economically, and/or militarily act to end a rogue regime's 
intransigent sponsorship of terrorism.
  Prioritizing and selecting tier-two theaters is an agonizingly 
difficult task; but a practical, tripartite regime change, 
reconstruction calculus can be formulated from the factors of 
necessity, victory, and stability.
  First, necessity is determined by the rogue regime's continued 
support of terrorism, a question answered only by these nations' 
actions.
  Secondly, victory's viability is determined by the prospects for a 
successful regime change through diplomatic, economic, and/or military 
means.
  Third, stability is determined by the prospects of reconstructing 
within the newly liberated nation a stable, civilized, indigenous 
government opposed to terrorism.
  Regime change and reconstruction are the twin pillars of one policy: 
victory. Having effectuated a regime change, the U.S. and its allies 
cannot idly and anxiously await a newly liberated nation's indigenous 
developments in the areas of politics and economics for, devoid of 
stability and a steady progression toward democracy and prosperity, a 
deposed regime's vacuum will be filled by more ruthless rulers or by 
anarchy, and either outcome will foster terror's network.
  The U.S. and its allies must promptly and purposely act, even prior 
to the final ending of military hostilities, to commence reconstructing 
newly liberated countries and actively facilitating

[[Page 25358]]

their reentry into the community of civilized nations opposed to 
terrorism. Such reconstruction will not happen instantaneously; such 
reconstruction will not happen inexpensively. But happen it must, lest 
the war on terror never end.
  But strategic imperatives are insufficient rationales for Americans 
to wage war. As a civilized people, we will only fight a just war, one 
necessarily engaged and morally waged.
  In prosecuting the war on terror, America solidly stands on the moral 
high ground.
  The moral legitimacy of our war on terror is lost upon many amidst 
the fog of rhetoric surrounding the determination of which rogue 
regimes supporting terror must be changed through American military 
force. Regardless, the logic remains: as all civilized nations have 
allied to end terrorism, any contrary country harboring and helping 
these criminals is, itself, uncivilized and criminal; and such a rogue 
country's immoral regime is illegitimate within the community of moral 
nations.
  As for the moral legitimacy of unilateral American preemption of 
rogue regimes aiding and abetting terrorism, the United States, a 
sovereign Nation, cannot and will not delegate or subordinate to any 
country or international organization our morally justified duty of 
defend and deliver ourselves from evil. Having already been grievously 
wounded by an unannounced, unprovoked attack on our soil, the U.S. is 
already in a state of war against terrorists and their state sponsors, 
and is morally justified in speaking out and bringing to justice all 
who are, all who aid, and all who abet our self-appointed enemy. The 
doctrine of preemption, then, is both morally justified and wholly 
irrelevant, because the terrorists' insidious onset to this war means 
the war on terror is now. America is not arbitrarily or preemptively 
prosecuting a prospective war on terror; America is necessarily 
defending itself against terrorists and their state sponsors in a war 
which reached our shores over 2 years ago.
  In the final analysis, because America was immorally and unilaterally 
attacked, America can morally and unilaterally counterattack. We have 
the moral right to do so, and the moral duty to do no less. Throughout 
this just war on terror, America possesses a moral right to seek rogue 
regime changes; and America possesses a moral responsibility to 
reconstruct liberated nations. This is not a novel path to a just and 
equitable peace for Americans who, in rebuilding our war-torn enemies 
following World War II, honorably fulfilled the promise of their late 
President, Franklin Roosevelt: ``Freedom means the supremacy of human 
rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those 
rights to keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.''
  Presently, such unity of martial and moral purpose can only be 
fulfilled by rehabilitating the newly liberated countries of 
Afghanistan and Iraq into democratic Middle Eastern allies in the 
world's war on terror.
  Immediately following September 11, 2001, the United States and its 
allies against terror squarely set their sites upon Afghanistan, whose 
primitive Taliban regime repeatedly refused to terminate its assistance 
for the butchers of innocents.
  Affirmatively evaluating the necessity for and viability of a regime 
change, and the prospects for reconstruction and post-conflict 
stability within Afghanistan and the region, on October 7, 2001, 
America's initial tier-two theater of operations opened in Afghanistan. 
Then, targeting terrorist enclaves and training camps and various 
Taliban military and political assets, the U.S. and our allies, 
including indigenous anti-Taliban Afghans, struck with unprecedented 
speed and success and the rogue regime rapidly disintegrated and 
capitulated on November 13.
  Following the fall of Kabul, the U.S. and its allies have engaged in 
both military operations against terrorists and Taliban loyalists and 
reconstruction operations with the Afghan people. Militarily, there 
exists a NATO force of 5,000 troops in Kabul to provide security and 
stability to the fledgling government of President Hamid Karzai, and 
there remains a U.S.-led coalition force of 11,500 troops throughout 
the country to hunt down al-Qaida and Taliban diehards. In 
reconstruction efforts, the U.S. alone has contributed over $900 
million in assistance to the people of Afghanistan, including the 
rehabilitation of 72 hospitals, clinics and women's health care 
centers; the vaccination of 4.3 million children against measles; the 
treatment of 700,000 cases of malaria, the enrollment of 4 million 
children in school, the repatriation of 2.5 million Afghans to their 
homes, the commencement of 6,100 water projects to aid farmers, and 
commitment to rebuild the Kabul Kandahar road.
  To date, this concerted implementation of the regime change 
rebuilding nexus, still in its infancy, has been successful in 
eliminating the state-sponsored terrorism of the Taliban, facilitating 
a stable new government progressing toward democracy and prosperity, 
and increasing America's and the world's security.
  For the allied forces, this success in the Afghan tier-two theater of 
operations provided concrete milestones and guideposts along the path 
toward the next tier-two theater of operations, Iraq.
  Under the despotic direction of Saddam Hussein, Iraq long posed a 
danger to America and the international community. Suffice to say the 
threat was recognized by all nations after Iraq's 1991 invasion of and 
expulsion from Kuwait. Curiously, though, after the onset of the war on 
terror, minds have differed over whether or not Iraq's threat to 
America, in particular, and the world community in general, 
sufficiently existed to compel martial force be used to effectuate an 
Iraqi regime change.

                              {time}  1615

  There should be no doubt. Applying the regime change-reconstruction 
calculus proves opening the Tier 2 Iraqi theater of operations was a 
strategic imperative in the war on terror. First, Iraq constituted a 
necessary Tier 2 theater of operations due to its refusal to stem and, 
instead, perpetuate its state sponsorship of terrorism. Interestingly, 
as early as 1998, the agreement on this point appeared nearly 
unanimous. ``The only answer to aggression and outlaw behavior is 
firmness. He Saddam will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass 
destruction and someday, some way, I am certain he will use that 
arsenal again as he has ten times since 1983.'' National Security 
Adviser Sandy Berger, February 18, 1998.
  From the same day I quote:
  ``Iraq is a long way from here but what happens there matters a great 
deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use 
nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the 
greatest security threat we face.'' Secretary of State Madeleine 
Albright, February 18, 1998.
  ``One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity 
to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver 
them. That is our bottom line.'' President William Jefferson Clinton, 
February 4, 1998.
  Given Saddam Hussein's unabashed and unabated hatred of Americans and 
his willingness to conspire with murderers of any stripe to kill 
Americans, the evidence of which continues to slowly but surely seep to 
the surface despite the old regime's attempts to bury and burn their 
intelligence records, the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, seemed 
to solidify the early consensus American national security required a 
regime change in Iraq.
  ``We know that he, Hussein, has stored secret supplies of biological 
and chemical weapons throughout his country. Iraq's search for weapons 
of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should 
assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.'' 
Former Vice President Al Gore, September 23, 2002.
  The necessity test met, what was the viability of deposing Hussein 
and his minions? While the level of U.S. and allied military force 
required was debated, especially in the absence of the United Nations' 
cooperation, the viability of successful Iraqi regime change

[[Page 25359]]

was little disputed by knowledgeable minds. Iraqi forces remained 
hobbled after their defeat during the liberation of Kuwait, and its 
economy languished under postwar economic sanctions. Still, it was not 
an easy decision and never is when sending good American sons and 
daughters into harm's way. But it was a decision which nearly all 
involved concluded would lead to a victorious military operation. 
Events, to date, have validated this original assessment.
  On March 20, 2003, the U.S. and its Coalition of the Willing allies 
launched military strikes against Iraqi leaders. By April 5, U.S. tanks 
entered Baghdad. By April 9, U.S. troops aided Baghdad residents in 
toppling a statue of Saddam Hussein, thereby symbolizing his removal 
from power. By April 14, the Pentagon announced it ``would anticipate 
that the major combat operations are over'' and it began the process of 
sending air and naval forces home. And finally on May 1, President Bush 
declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq. Yet even as the 
general assessment of the viability of an Iraqi regime change was 
upheld, significant opposition has arisen and jeopardizes the final 
stage of the operation, the reconstruction of a stable, democratic and 
prosperous Iraq.
  Initially, the postregime change reconstruction of Iraq portended a 
long, but ultimately successful, transition to a stable democratic 
state. The Iraqi people, though long oppressed by Hussein, remained a 
highly-industrious, highly-educated people, possessed of a long history 
replete with notable accomplishments in the areas of agriculture, 
commerce, science and scholarship. Once liberated, it was projected, 
Iraqis would seize upon their newfound freedoms to forge a new nation 
of equality and prosperity and join the league of civilized nations.
  According to the State Department, Iraq has experienced enormous 
post-Saddam progress in the areas of security, essential services, 
economics and governance. On the security front, significant 
accomplishments have occurred.
  More than 40 of the 55 most wanted former Iraqi officials have been 
apprehended by Coalition forces. Northern Iraq and the Shi'a heartland, 
running from just south of Baghdad to the Kuwaiti border, have been 
secured; and recruitment for the first battalion of the new Iraqi army 
has commenced, with 1,200 Iraqi being trained this year and 40,000 to 
be trained over the next 2 years.
  Essential services, too, have progressed. All of Iraq's hospitals and 
95 percent of its health clinics have opened and are providing 
services, including the dissemination of 22.3 doses of measles, TB, 
hepatitis B, diptheria, whooping cough, tetanus and polio vaccines 
required to inoculate 4.2 million children.
  More than 100 schools have been rehabilitated, with 600 more 
projected to be completed prior to the start of the school year. Ninety 
percent of Iraq's public schools and all of Baghdad's universities have 
reopened.
  Dilapidated and looted power, water, and sewage treatment facilities 
have been rehabilitated and electricity generation now nears 75 percent 
of prewar levels.
  Further, phone service has been restored to hundreds of thousands of 
customers; and massive cleanups of Baghdad's poorest neighborhoods have 
been completed.
  Economically, Iraq is beginning to flourish. The streets of major 
cities bustle with commerce, markets now access many previously 
sanctioned goods, including more than 150 Iraqi published newspapers. 
Long-term growth is being promoted through regional integration and 
increased trade.
  Banking reforms, including the unification of currency with new bank 
notes in circulation and new monetary policies based upon transparency 
and discipline are being implemented.
  And oil production has passed 1 million barrels per day and soon will 
reach 2 million barrels per day. And the governance of this once 
captive country is finally in the hands of the Iraqi people. Iraq's 
new, diverse, 25-member Governing Council was fully formed on July 13. 
All major Iraqi cities have city councils, and over 85 percent of Iraqi 
towns have town councils. All Baghdad neighborhoods have advisory 
councils.
  Eleven government ministry buildings have been rehabilitated or 
equipped, and dozens of nongovernmental organizations are being funded 
to deliver local services and build a civil society. As noted by 
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on September 25, when measured 
against past reconstruction efforts, specifically those in Germany 
following World War II, the progress in Iraq is striking:
  ``Within 2 months, all major Iraqi cities and most towns had 
municipal councils, something that took 8 months in postwar Germany. 
Within 4 months the Iraqi Governing Council had appointed a cabinet, 
something that took 14 months in Germany. An independent Iraqi Central 
Bank was established and a new currency announced in just 2 months, 
accomplishments that took 3 years in postwar Germany. Within 2 months a 
new Iraqi police force was conducting joint patrols with Coalition 
forces. Within 3 months we had begun training a new Iraqi army, and 
today some 56,000 are participating in the defense of their country. By 
contrast, it took 14 months to establish a police force in Germany and 
10 years to begin training a new German army.''
  Moreover, Iraqi reconstruction successes are especially striking when 
one realizes the new Germany's reconstruction only followed Nazi 
Germany's unconditional surrender and complete cessation of 
hostilities. In Iraq, while the major operational conflict is over, the 
Coalition is rebuilding a country with which we are still at war. The 
major military conflict phase ended with the fall of Baghdad. But the 
fall of Baghdad was not a surrender. It was a strategic retreat, one 
devised to commence the war's guerilla phase.
  Baathist diehards, Saddam loyalists and terrorists from or drawn to 
Iraq are employing terror's ruthless tactics to wage a guerilla war 
against American soldiers and a psychological war against American 
citizens. These cowardly criminals' ghoulish goal is to kill enough 
American soldiers to force a disheartened American public to demand a 
hasty withdrawal from Iraq. The criminals learned this lesson from the 
successful North Vietnamese military dictum asserting their war with 
the U.S. would not be won or lost on battlefields of Southeast Asia but 
in the streets of America. Thus, heartened by every politician's or 
pundit's groundless pontificating to the effect Iraq is our new 
Vietnam, these Iraqi extremists kill on as they cling to any false hope 
they will usurp power when a dispirited America retreats. They are, of 
course, wrong. America will not retreat from Iraq. America will 
reconstruct Iraq. And we will do so in the very face of this guerilla 
phase of the Iraqi campaign.
  Unfortunately, this act of humanitarianism is both unprecedented in 
world history and little noticed by the world community, including many 
Americans. The failure to fully recognize the context and accurately 
gauge the progress of Iraqi reconstruction forms a misguided basis for 
opposition to Iraqi reconstruction, jeopardizes the coalition's efforts 
to win the Iraqi theater of operations, and increases the odds of Iraq 
becoming the first setback in America's and its allies' war on 
terrorism. And it is not the only misguided basis for opposing Iraqi 
reconstruction. While subsequent events have so far vindicated the 
decisions dictated by the regime change-reconstruction calculus 
regarding the necessity and viability of regime change in the Iraqi 
theater of operations in the war on terror, the stability wrought only 
through successful reconstruction efforts remains elusive due to 
international, Iraqi and American opposition.
  In 1940, England's finest hour arrived as it singlehandedly fought 
off the Wehrmacht war-machine subjugating continental Europe, and its 
steadfast lion, Mr. Churchill, implored the United States to abandon 
its intransigent, antiquated isolationism and join the struggle to save 
civilization from Naziism. Ironically, we now find ourselves similarly 
situated in the concert of international events and the

[[Page 25360]]

court of world opinion. Yet unlike the opposition Prime Minister 
Churchill faced from international appeasers and American isolationists 
in the nascent stages of World War II, in the war on terror no 
civilized country denies the danger and all demand its end. Still, many 
nations are reticent to make the hard sacrifices needed to end terror. 
This is thoroughly disgusting but hardly surprising. Nearing the close 
of World War II, a former isolationist and an eventual bipartisan 
leader in international cooperation, U.S. Senator Arthur Vandenberg, 
Republican of Michigan, squarely addressed the problem of international 
cooperation against common foes:

       It means the continued and total battle fraternity of the 
     United Nations. It must mean one for all and all for one, and 
     it will mean this unless somewhere in this grand alliance the 
     stupid and sinister folly of ulterior ambitions shall invite 
     the enemy to postpone our victory through our own rivalries 
     and our own confusion. The United Nations, in even greater 
     unity of military action than heretofore, must never, for any 
     cause, permit this military unity to fall apart. If it does, 
     we shall count the cost in mortal anguish even though we 
     stumble on to a belated though inevitable victory. This is an 
     obligation which rests no less upon our allies than upon us 
     and no less upon us than our allies. First things must come 
     first. History will not deal lightly with any who undermine 
     this aim ere it is achieved. Destiny will one day balance any 
     such ghastly accounts.
       Now I am not so naive as to expect any country to act on 
     any final motive other than self-interest. I know of no 
     reason why it should. That is what nations are for. I 
     certainly intend that intelligent and loyal American self-
     interest shall be just as vigilantly and vigorously guarded 
     as is amply obvious from time to time in their own behalf by 
     the actions of our allies. The real question always becomes 
     just this, where does real self-interest lie?

  Until last week, the answer was mixed, with too many nations cravenly 
calculating to meanly subsidize their security from terrorism with the 
blood of American and allied soldiers. Yes, the recent unanimous 
approval by the United Nations' Security Council of Resolution 1511, 
(2003) provides a faint, begrudging admission a democratic Iraq would 
benefit the world community.
  However, these nations' true test will come not through their 
delicate words, but through their concrete deeds. The international 
community's first concrete deed must be relieving the new Iraq of the 
debts amassed by the old Iraq. The resolution of this issue involving 
billions of dollars of debt, much of it munitions debts owed to members 
of the very United Nations Security Council which sanctioned Iraq, yet 
who continued to sell weapons and dual-use technologies to the former 
rogue regime until the removal of Mr. Hussein, will prove the real 
answer to where these nations believe their real self-interest lies. 
Regardless of their decision on the debt, and their track record does 
not portend a proper one, the U.S. and its allies must still fulfill 
the obligation of international etiquette to ask these other nations' 
participation and cooperation. But we must, throughout the process, rid 
ourselves of any delusion these nations will suddenly abandon their old 
greed and accept their true duty. And we must dedicate ourselves to the 
arduous task of reconstructing the new Iraq wherever these nations 
perceive their real self-interest to lie.
  This debt test also applies to American supporters of reconstruction 
efforts who advocate U.S. reconstruction funds to Iraq be tendered as a 
loan rather than a grant. If America shares the taint of short-term 
pecuniary interest, it will eclipse the faint hope the world's 
predator-creditor community will relent from their billions in claims 
upon Iraq. The death of this slim hope will then write its own wicked 
epithet by crushing this nascent democracy under oceans of red ink, 
precluding Iraqi prosperity, undermining Iraqi democracy, and spawning 
a new Iraq regime of the old Iraq regime, by the old Iraqi regime and 
for the Iraqi regime, or worse.
  Prior to determining where their real self-interest lies, these 
international amassers of Iraqi debt and American loan proponents 
should read an elementary treatise recording the mounting miseries of 
their philosophical predecessors beginning with the Treaty of 
Versailles up to the Weimar Republic and on through the rise of Nazi 
Germany. Then they might see their position may or may not ``saddle our 
children with tomorrow's debt''; but it will saddle our children with 
today's threat.
  Not surprisingly, active Iraqi opposition to reconstruction is 
comprised of the same thugs who opposed Iraqi regime change, namely, 
deposed members of the former Baathist regime, former soldiers who were 
disbanded under the first wave of de-Baathification, and terrorists 
both native to and newly arrived in the country. These bands' 
opposition to a new, democratic Iraq is self-evident. They will fight 
to the death to restore the old Iraq, for they have nothing to live for 
in the new Iraq. The larger, long-term obstacle to reconstruction is 
the passive nonparticipation of large segments of Iraq's general 
population. Typified by a reticence to assist Coalition forces and 
nongovernmental organizations in rebuilding efforts, this de facto 
opposition is a direct result of recent history. Too often Iraqis have 
witnessed Saddam's apparent demise only to see him resurrected; and, 
not illogically, a chary Iraqi populace will not risk life and limb in 
reconstruction efforts so long as there exists a glimmer of danger the 
Coalition will depart and Saddam will return.

                              {time}  1630

  Despite this indigenous opposition, the beneficent prospects for 
long-term reconstruction remain. The active opposition must and will be 
dealt with by both coalition forces and the new Iraqi security 
apparatus; while the defacto opposition must be dealt with through a 
firm coalition commitment to reconstruction, consistent progress 
towards democracy and prosperity, and by Saddam's corpse.
  Finally, there exists domestic American opposition to the 
reconstruction of postwar Iraq. Such opposition is fascinating, 
particularly when viewed in light of the President's $87 billion Iraqi 
reconstruction request, a reasonable request, the New York Post 
observed, as it was less than ``the sum to replace a chunk of 
Manhattan, which could easily top $100 billion, not to mention the toll 
on the broader economy.'' And not to mention the death toll of 3,000 
Americans on September 11.
  Why this domestic opposition? To begin with, all previous combatants 
in war utilized information, or more crudely, propaganda, to galvanize 
one's homefront and demoralize an opponent's homefront. In the war on 
terror, contrarily, and especially in the area of homeland security, 
unprecedented propaganda constraints severely delimit a nation's 
ability to broadcast its victories to its citizens.
  Practically and strategically, the U.S. and its allies cannot list 
all of the terrorist attacks prevented without jeopardizing precious 
and often scarce intelligence sources, instructing terrorists as to the 
real internal machinery of homeland defenses, and disconcerting and 
demoralizing our citizenry. The American public is reduced then to 
accepting the proposition ``no news is good news,'' equating government 
officials' silence with homeland security's efficacy, and all the while 
they are expect to remain fully engaged in the war on terror. It is a 
daunting chore and dangerous circumstance.
  In yet another dubious precedent of the war on terror, Americans 
rarely hear of our wins and our enemies rarely hear of their losses. 
The inverted equation becomes elementary and insidious: the more 
successful the effort to stop terrorist attacks on American soil, the 
more likely Americans are to believe the war has already been won or 
the threat significantly diminished. And for terrorism's adherents, one 
successful attack amidst a sea of defeats will delude them into 
believing they are winning and will lead them to ever greater depths of 
depravity.
  Exacerbating and intertwining with the ``no news is good news'' 
conundrum of the war on terror is the man-bites-dog dictum of 
journalism fostering a barrage of reports upon solely the setbacks in 
Iraqi reconstruction efforts. Such reporting has crafted an inaccurate 
public perception to the effect

[[Page 25361]]

an ungrateful Iraqi people are bent upon killing the very American 
infidels who liberated them. This public perception is demonstrably 
false. Polls consistently prove the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are 
grateful for their liberation, and once the threat of a Baathist 
resurgence is finally vanquished, Iraqis will prove the ultimate 
architects of their own emancipation and realization of democracy. 
Nevertheless, an American public bombarded by no news or negative news 
will not prove easily disabused of this misconception, and it will 
continue to prove a formidable obstacle to garnering domestic support 
for Iraqi reconstruction efforts.
  Finally and most formidably of all domestic opposition to 
reconstruction stems from America's still retaining a strong current, 
however scattered and misdirected, of isolationism, comprised of the 
twin branches of traditional isolationism and, ironically, liberalism's 
post-Cold War hyperglobalism. Liberalism's post-Cold War hyperglobalism 
is, in reality, a thinly veiled venture to delegate and thereby 
subordinate America's national interests to international 
organizations. Inveterately, such hyperglobalist requests for 
international aid or assistance or cooperation or partnership on issues 
affecting American national security are but a pretext to providing an 
international veto prior to America's defending its interests. In doing 
so, hyperglobalism would alienate America from its own national 
security interests by subordinating America to the United Nations. 
This, in effect, would isolate America from its supreme sovereign duty 
to defend its own interests and from its especial role to defend 
freedom and democracy throughout the world.
  Naturally, while America must still always welcome international 
support to defend freedom and ourselves, in the war on terror where 
America is the enemies' primary target, isolationism disguised as 
hyperglobalism is ridiculous and dangerous: if we surrender our self-
defense to the whims and good wishes of the U.N., soon we will never be 
more loved and never more dead.
  The separate branch of the same tree, traditional isolationism, once 
thought as ideological casualty of Pearl Harbor, has never expired 
because of its emotional, albeit fanciful, appeal: Who would not want 
to avoid foreign wars costing the lives of Americans? Of course, so few 
people argue against a wish so enticing, and this of course is why so 
many politicians propound isolationism, be it however subtly or less 
than subtly.
  For example, consider these excerpts from a certain Senator's radio 
address:
  ``My friends, it is this satanically clear, clever propaganda that 
appeals to Christianity, the idealism, the humanity, and the loyalty of 
the American people that takes us into war.
  ``Do not let yourselves be swayed by mass hysteria.
  ``Warmongers, sordid romanticists, reckless adventurers, and some 
whose sympathies and sentiments are stronger than their reasoning 
powers would plunge this Nation into war. Plunge us into a war from 
which we would gain nothing.
  ``Don't let yourselves be misled by the so-called notables . . . they 
do not represent labor, the farmer, the youth and the mothers or 
fathers of America.
  `` . . . Americans in greater numbers must firmly resolve and express 
themselves that we will fight no offensive war.''
  The Senator continued: ``America's war ought to be against industrial 
unemployment and low farm prices . . .''
  ``We sympathize with the oppressed and persecuted everywhere. We also 
realize that we have great problems at home, that one third of our 
population is ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-clad, and unless and until 
this situation is corrected, our democracy is in danger.''
  He then concluded: ``I cannot help but feel that we should settle our 
own problems before we undertake to settle the problems of Asia, 
Africa, Australasia, South America and Europe. As Americans interested 
first in America, what is our present stake?''
  This isolationist ode to only spending Americans' money solving 
Americans' domestic problems comes not from the current Iraqi 
reconstruction debates. They were the remarks of U.S. Senator Burton 
Wheeler, Democrat, Montana, in opposing the Roosevelt administration's 
lend-lease proposal with England.
  Still, the crude crux of the matter, originally posited by Wheeler 
and later by his isolationist ilk from the debates over aid to Greece 
and Turkey through the Marshall Plan right up to today's debates over 
Iraqi reconstruction remains: What is in it for us? A bitterly ironic 
inquiry from baby boomer Democrats who once applauded JFK's inaugural 
challenge to ``ask not what your country can do for you,'' but I 
digress.
  What is in it for us is what is in it for everyone: a stable, 
democratic, and prosperous new ally in the war on terror serving for 
generations to come as a bulwark in the struggle for the survival of 
our Nation and world civilization.
  True, some isolationists find the survival of freedom and 
civilization far less tactile goals than, say, a new road or free 
condoms, but the survival of freedom and civilization must suffice as 
our abiding cause in this time of national crisis.
  Seriously, what is more presently pressing: erecting schoolchildren 
new classes or eradicating schoolchildren's killers? Where must we must 
urgently expends our resources: finishing the liberation of Iraq and 
standing tall at the front door of terrorism, or spending ever more 
money at home so when terrorists blow in our back door, they can admire 
our compassion as they kill us?
  Right now, more than ever, we must resist all of isolationism's 
shortsighted and selfish special interest appeals, lest America 
asphyxiate upon its tissue of lies. And may God spare the souls of 
those who do partake of the isolationism's fools gold only to find its 
blood money, blood money borrowed at the collateral cost of future 
Americans killed.
  This we will not do to our children. This we will not do to our 
civilization. This we will not do to ourselves. History is a harsh 
mistress, beautifully chaste in her truth, but brutally cruel in her 
treatment of fools who fail to learn her lessons. So while many today 
may not recall Senator Burton Wheeler's name and many presently reprise 
his siren song of isolationism, for both, history will record and 
return an equally ignominious and indelible indictment. Or worse, for 
our contemporary isolationists.
  After all, the isolationist Wheeler railed before 2,300 Americans 
were killed at Pearl Harbor. The new isolationists rail after 3,000 
Americans were killed on 9-11.
  Mr. Speaker, waging and winning the war on terror requires the 
arduous global eradication of terrorists through diplomatic, economic, 
and military operations, often including the concomitant tactics of 
rogue regime change and reconstruction, in tiered theaters of 
operations. To do so throughout this unsought struggle, we must 
mobilize our Nation's greatest resource: ourselves.
  For while our path is clear, our road is hard. But we must trod it 
ever bravely to a better world for ourselves and our children. There is 
no turning back to await an ignoble death.
  In his December 26, 1941, address to a joint session of Congress, 
Prime Minister Winston Churchill warned another shocked generation of 
Americans sucked into a world conflagration to firmly press on: ``Some 
people may be startled or momentarily depressed when, like your 
President, I speak of a long and hard war. But our peoples would rather 
know the truth, somber though it be. And, after all, when we are doing 
the noblest work in the world, not only defending our hearths and homes 
but the cause of freedom in other lands . . . Sure I am that this day, 
now we are masters of our fate, that the task which has been set us is 
not above our strength, that its pangs and toils are not beyond our 
endurance. As long as we have faith in our cause and an unconquerable 
willpower, salvation will not be denied us.''
  Once again ambushed but unbowed, we heirs of Franklin Roosevelt and 
Winston Churchill have again allied and formed a coalition of the 
willing to

[[Page 25362]]

defeat the common enemies of our countries and our civilization, while 
much of the world stands mute or worse and seems blithely ambivalent to 
the arrival of the terrorists upon their doorsteps. But we cannot evade 
this crusade. We cannot wish the world away. Today's war on terror will 
yield either a bitter death or a better day. And thusly does our 
generation of Americans face our fiercest foe and our finest hour.
  As Americans, we are honor bound to defend freedom for ourselves and 
all the world. And no one more ably embodied and expressed this grim 
acceptance of our sacred duty than our valiant wartime Commander in 
Chief, whom I quote: ``There comes a time when you and I must see the 
cold, inexorable necessity of saying to these inhuman, unrestrained 
seekers of world conquest and permanent world domination by the sword: 
`You seek to throw our children and our children's children into your 
form of terrorism and slavery. You have now attacked our own safety. 
You shall go no further.'
  ``Normal practices of diplomacy, note writing, are of no possible use 
in dealing with international outlaws who . . . kill our citizens.
  ``One peaceful nation after another has met disaster because each 
refused to look the danger squarely in the eye until it actually had 
them by the throat.
  ``The United States will not make that fatal mistake . . . ''
  Our President continued: ``I have no illusions about the gravity of 
this step. I have not taken it hurriedly or lightly. It is the result 
of months and months of constant thought and anxiety and prayer. In the 
protection of your Nation and mine, it cannot be avoided.
  ``The American people have faced other grave crises in their history, 
with American courage, and with American resolution. They will do no 
less today.
  ``They know the actualities of the attacks upon us. They know the 
necessities of a bold defense against these attacks. They know that the 
times call for clear heads and fearless hearts.
  ``And with that inner strength that comes to a free people conscious 
of their duty and conscious of the righteousness of what they do, they 
will, with Divine help and guidance, stand their ground against this 
latest assault upon their democracy, their sovereignty, and their 
freedom.''
  Those were the inspirational words our wartime President, Franklin 
Delano Roosevelt, which he used to conclude his fireside chat on 
national defense. The date: September 11, 1941.
  Be it September 11, 1941, or September 11, 2001, our Nation, founded 
as a revolutionary experiment in democracy and remaining so to this 
day, so too remains the primary target of all would-be world despots. 
Consequently, as every generation of Americans inherits the blessings 
and the burdens of our liberty, every generation of Americans has the 
right and responsibility to defend our Nation and civilization against 
every tyrant and terrorist who knows they cannot enslave and 
exterminate humanity so long as the United States and its people 
breathe and fight on against them.
  Mr. Speaker, in this, our moment, such is our duty, we must accept. 
And it will be met, in this, our finest hour, until tomorrow where a 
finer, kinder day awaits. May God continue to grace and guard and bless 
our United States of America.

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