[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5070-5071]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       ACTING UNILATERALLY NOT IN BEST INTEREST OF UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to state that 
unilateral military action by the United States against Iraq at this 
time is not in our best national interest.
  Certainly Saddam Hussein must be disarmed and Iraq must be rid of 
weapons of mass destruction. Equally clear is our power to act 
unilaterally and successfully against Iraq, or any other country for 
that matter. I am proud we have that power, and we must sustain it. But 
the question is not whether we will prevail against Iraq. We will, with 
or without help. The real question is whether it is in our best 
national interest to unilaterally use our awesome power against Iraq. I 
believe it is not.
  We may not need help to win a war, but we will need help the day 
after the war is won, and that help must come from a multinational or a 
United Nations effort. We need our friends to help with peacekeeping, 
with rebuilding and with international credibility, and that support 
will be absent if we take unilateral action.
  This is not about winning United Nations permission to protect 
ourselves. We do not need that permission. This is about winning United 
Nations support to protect all civilized countries from the Iraqi 
threat. President Bush must forge a strong coalition through continued 
diplomacy before using American military power. If he does not, we will 
be isolated and less secure, and that is not in our national interest.
  President Bush very skillfully won unanimous Security Council support 
last fall to restart the arms inspections, and he deserves great credit 
for that. After the initial success, however, the administration has 
not been able to maintain that unity and cannot even muster unity today 
among the five permanent nations of the Security Council.
  What is the problem here? We are talking about an isolated country 
with a fourth-rate military and a leader who is a murderous tyrant that 
has no support and no friends in the United Nations. Yet the Security 
Council is split. Why is that? I believe it is because of the inept, 
bungled, cowboy diplomacy of the President of the United States and his 
senior advisers.
  Six months ago, after a great deal of soul searching, I voted to give 
the President military authority to use force to rid Iraq of the 
weapons of mass destruction. The President asked for that authority and 
said he would exhaust all diplomatic options before using it. And his 
strategy worked. The inspections were restarted.
  I am convinced that while those inspections have not been met with 
enough cooperation, the inspectors' presence in Iraq has made Saddam 
Hussein less dangerous for the time being.
  The administration has had much less success since then, and the root 
cause is simple: cowboy diplomacy from this administration. Every 
diplomatic thrust has been met with rhetoric that belies and often 
contradicts the diplomatic efforts. Administration spokesmen speak 
nearly every day with rhetoric that implies we are bent on war, with or 
without U.N. support, with or without our traditional and closest 
allies. The implication is that diplomacy is just something to take up 
time and distract attention until all of our troops are in place.
  The Bush administration spent much of its pre-9-11 days acting 
unilaterally on a variety of fronts, the environment, the ABM Treaty 
and many other ways, even though promising a new foreign policy run 
with humility during the 2002 election campaign.

                              {time}  1930

  In that broader sense, it comes as no surprise that so many of our 
allies are not joining us now.

[[Page 5071]]

  Then last week, in the middle of this diplomatic standoff, the 
administration released its plans for a post-Saddam Iraq, which 
included the possibility of a civilian American government. I think 
that is a great mistake. It will certainly be necessary, if we invade 
Iraq, for there to be military occupation to keep people from murdering 
each other for a time. That occupation will be essential; but we should 
not impose an American civil government.
  We should be looking for a multinational or a United Nations program 
to provide an interim civil government, and certainly our goal has to 
be to establish a representative and stable Iraqi government itself. 
The Bush plan smacks of colonialism, and could give ammunition to those 
who question our motives in seeking to disarm Hussein in the first 
place.
  It is dangerous to conduct a unilateral invasion of Iraq. It will 
undermine our credibility and legitimacy that this country has built up 
over decades of global leadership. We must realize that when we 
question the motives of countries like Germany and France, they 
question ours. We must work with them.
  I call on the Bush administration to renew its efforts to secure a 
broad multinational coalition or U.N. mandate to disarm Iraq.

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