[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5373-5375]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             WAR WITH IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bishop of Utah). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Obey) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, in the conduct of foreign affairs, every 
President deserves the benefit of the doubt.
  I am standing here today in an empty Chamber because these special 
orders are simply the time in the House's schedule when after 
legislative business is concluded Members can gather or take the time 
to get something off their chest, and so I am here today to get 
something off my chest about the coming war with Iraq.
  As I said, in the conduct of foreign affairs, I think every President 
deserves the benefit of the doubt, and on a number of occasions, I have 
worked with Presidents, regardless of party, on foreign policy issues. 
Sometimes I have honestly differed.
  Iraq, in my view, is a close call. There is no doubt that Saddam 
Hussein is a pathological thug. We have lived with and contained other 
sociopaths before. Example, Joseph Stalin, whose 50-year anniversary of 
his death we just celebrated yesterday. It is hard to believe he has 
been gone 50 years, but we did not attack the Soviet Union, even though 
Stalin was probably one of the two greatest sociopaths of all time, the 
other being Hitler.
  We have also seen groups like the Khmer Rouge systematically butcher 
their own people, and certainly, the administration has not, in any 
way, demonstrated or tried to demonstrate that Saddam had anything to 
do with the attack of September 11.
  But it may very well be that we need to remove him at some point, and 
that point may be soon. My purpose today is not to talk about that. My 
purpose is to talk about what condition America will be in both at home 
and abroad if we take on that task, because if we do it, we have an 
obligation to go after Saddam in a way that does not weaken our ability 
to lead the world in dealing with future challenges that will certainly 
confront us.
  My concern is that this administration has demonstrated such 
shortsighted arrogance that they have made it more difficult for the 
United States

[[Page 5374]]

to retain its leadership ability and to see that the U.S. has the 
support it needs in this coming endeavor.
  Now, it is obvious that President Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. 
Wolfowitz and a number of others in the administration have intended to 
attack Saddam since the moment they took office, but if that is so, you 
would think that the administration would have done anything that they 
could do in order to build allies for the coming effort, both at home 
and abroad. Instead, the administration has dealt with Congress and 
with the international community in a my way or else approach.
  At home, after September 11, the Congress in total bipartisanship 
fashioned an initial $40 billion package to deal with the immediate 
response needs of the administration, but then when Members of the 
House and Senate attempted to talk to the administration about the need 
to do more to build up our homeland security efforts in our ports, on 
our borders, in our local communities. We were told, in essence, if you 
allocate or if you appropriate one dime more than I have asked for, I 
will veto it.
  Again, in June, when Congress tried again to beef up our ability to 
protect communities and ports and other vulnerable areas from terrorist 
attack, the President vetoed more than a billion-and-a-half dollars in 
homeland security money that this House and the other body voted to 
provide by 90 percent margins of both political parties in both 
Chambers.
  Now, that action by the White House, in vetoing those funds, raised 
doubts in Congress. Were we really willing to do everything necessary 
to baton down the hatches at home, to guard against retaliatory action 
if we are going to take on Saddam? The answer from the White House, 
given by its action on the veto of home security funds, was only 
partly.
  Internationally, the signals were just as confusing. Now, I know the 
French do not need many excuses to go their own way in foreign affairs. 
They have demonstrated that from the time of Charles de Gaulle.
  But look at the administration's conduct the last 2 years on four 
fronts. First, in the past 2 years, the administration has unilaterally 
announced its intention to, or its desire to blow up three 
international treaties: the nuclear test ban treaty, the antiballistic 
missile treaty, and the global warming treaty. Then after those 
actions, the administration professes surprise when the French and the 
Germans feel free to engage in a little unilateralism of their own. By 
example, it seems to me that, by example, the administration made it 
easy for France and Germany and others to go their own way because that 
is what we announced our free right and intention to do on those other 
treaties.

                              {time}  1515

  Second, the administration added to the unraveling of NATO and the 
weakening of the Security Council resolve by announcing twin doctrines 
of American unilateralism and preemption. Now, obviously, the United 
States and any other sovereign nation has the right to undertake a 
unilateral or preemptive act to defend its own people. Obviously. But 
to announce it and to trumpet it to the world as a new intellectual 
doctrine scared the bejabbers out of many countries and gave other 
countries an excuse to do the same thing.
  Mr. Speaker, whatever happened to Teddy Roosevelt's advice, ``Speak 
softly and carry a big stick''? And it did not help that the 
administration's chest-beating on preemption came at the same time that 
our own officials were worried pea green about a preemptive military 
action that might be taken by either India or Pakistan during their 
escalated confrontation.
  Third. The administration even let it be known that nuclear weapons 
were a possibility in Iraq under certain circumstances. That also added 
to the world's jitters. The net result of the administration's 
overblown rhetoric resulted in pro-American responses in public opinion 
polls in Europe declining by almost 20 percent. And all of that made it 
easier for the French and the German governments to question the Bush 
administration and its policy on Iraq. I think it would have been much 
harder for them to do so if the administration had not spent the last 2 
years telling the rest of the world we were going to do everything our 
way or suffer the consequences.
  And even if we, in the end, obtain the acquiescence of countries like 
Germany and France to proceed on Iraq, our past rhetoric will make it 
more difficult for the U.S. to have their support in the years ahead 
when we will be neck deep in a post-war Iraqi-American regency of 
dubious wisdom. So, in my view, in short, the administration, by its 
rhetoric, has written a textbook on how not to rally support on a 
controversial question.
  Fourth. As a result of the unilateralist rhetoric, the administration 
has also raised the cost of this endeavor to U.S. taxpayers. President 
Bush's father was able to work the world by telephone, sort of in a 
dialing-for-dollars operation, in which he was able to convince other 
countries to pay their share for the cost of attacking Iraq in 1991. 
This President has brought a new wrinkle to diplomacy. He has offered 
to pay other countries for their share of the cost associated with this 
war. That really is an interesting wrinkle. Meanwhile, the 
administration has steadily hidden the potential range of costs and the 
duration of our occupation of Iraq from the American people.
  Now, I have no doubt that we are going to war; and when we do, I, 
like every other Member of this body, will rally around the troops in 
the field, because they are doing their duty under the Commander in 
Chief and we have no choice and no desire to do anything but to support 
them. I know my daughter-in-law's brother is one of those patchy 
helicopter pilots who will be stuck with heavy duty over there. But, 
please, Mr. Speaker, spare us the rhetoric about how this operation is 
going to transform Iraq into a beacon of democracy.
  Mr. Speaker, I have heard such overblown rhetoric about how this 
action will unleash the forces of sweetness and democracy in Iraq, but 
I fully expect that the next thing we are going to hear is that we 
ought to replace New Hampshire with Iraq on the Presidential primary 
cycle.
  Mr. Speaker, it is clear that the die is cast, and I am not going to 
continue to chew the same old argument. This House has already voted. 
But before this operation moves ahead, I want to express my dismay at 
the shortsighted and thoughtless manner in which the administration, 
through its careless and arrogant unilateralist rhetoric, has 
mishandled relations with the same NATO allies that we will need in the 
Security Council. And I would ask some of the same questions I asked on 
this floor before we went to war against Iraq in 1991. And I would say 
parenthetically that I was privileged to chair that debate for a 
considerable period of the time in which it occurred back then. But I 
want to ask some of the same questions I asked then.
  Now, the administration clearly expects this war to go swiftly, and 
they expect it to go well. And they are probably right. I think they 
are, and I hope that they are. But my concern is what about afterwards. 
Do we really believe that we will not create thousands of new recruits 
for al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in the Arab world? Do we 
really intend to continue the policy of benign neglect and drift that 
has characterized our policy toward the moribund peace process between 
the Israelis and the Palestinians? How long will U.S. military presence 
be in the Middle East after the war is over, and how do we intend to 
handle that presence that we do not become a hated occupying power in a 
radicalized region of the world?
  And I would ask this: While we are focusing on Iraq, is the 
administration, by default, going to acquiesce in North Korea's 
becoming a permanent member of the nuclear club? It appears from what 
we see in the papers that that is very likely on the part of the 
administration.
  And then I would ask, bringing the issue closer to home, what are we 
going to do to protect our own economy from the cost of both this war 
and its 10-year aftermath? So far the administration's answer is we are 
going to go to war and so we need to cut your taxes.

[[Page 5375]]

  Can you imagine President Teddy Roosevelt or President Woodrow Wilson 
or FDR or Harry Truman saying we are going to go to war and your 
country needs you to accept a tax cut? Should we really be saying, we 
are going to go to war and so you should have a tax cut and your kids 
should pay the bill, not just for the war but for the 10 years 
afterwards? We are already being asked to borrow money to pay for this 
war, and the scuttlebutt is that the minute the war begins we are going 
to get a bill from the administration, a request for about $100 
billion. And Lord knows what it is going to cost in the next 10 years.
  And my simple and last question would be: Should we, at the same time 
that we are borrowing money to pay for this war, should we also be 
borrowing money to take millionaires off the tax role, as the White 
House tax and budget request in fact is asking us to do? I would hope 
that the political leadership of this country would be more mature than 
that and more fair than that. I cannot believe that we are going to put 
this war on the cuff; that we are then going to proceed with tax action 
that will take another more than $1 trillion out of the Federal 
Treasury in the next few years and then go to the American people with 
a straight face and say we have strengthened the economy for the long 
term.
  I think Americans expect to do their duty in a time of crisis, and I 
think Americans do not expect that while we are having several hundred 
thousand troops abroad prepare to make the ultimate sacrifice in 
defense of what the President has concluded is in our national 
interest, I do not believe that at a time when those soldiers are doing 
that, that the best we can do back home is to say to everyone on the 
home front, folks, you are going to have to sacrifice by taking a tax 
cut, even though it is going to load billions and billions of dollars 
of debt on future taxpayers, including the kids that we say this war is 
being fought to help protect.
  So, Mr. Speaker, this country is going to war. It is obvious. But I 
would hope that the next time that we do so we have not ahead of time, 
as the administration has done, that we have not ahead of time looked 
for ways to antagonize the very allies that we are going to need in 
this case, like we need support in the Security Council today if we are 
to have unity in the world when we take on Saddam. I hope we learn from 
this experience that if you intend to ask the support of the world in a 
military endeavor of this nature that you do not spend the first 2 
years saying, by the way, everything we are going to do in the world, 
we are going to do it our way or no way. I do not think that is an 
intelligent or a thoughtful way to run foreign policy. And I certainly 
do not think that adding over $1 trillion to our budget deficit and our 
national debt over the next few years is a way to run the economy at a 
time when we are contemplating going to war.

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