[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10571-10577]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       LESSONS LEARNED SINCE 9/11

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hensarling). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Rohrabacher) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, tonight, I thought that I would discuss 
some of the lessons learned since 9/11 and discuss some of the current 
events that we are seeing happen on a daily basis and put them into 
some historical perspective.
  First of all, 9/11. Let us note that 9/11 was not an unavoidable 
natural occurrence. 9/11, an attack upon the United States by an 
organized group of terrorists, happened because past American policies 
toward Afghanistan were wrong and because during the Clinton 
administration our general policy of weakness led our enemies to the 
conclusion that they could attack the United States of America and 
murder our people by the thousands and that there would not be the type 
of repercussions that they have had to endure since they did attack our 
country on 9/11.
  I have spoken extensively about the past policies about Afghanistan 
which led to the establishment of a Taliban, an extremist Islamic state 
in Afghanistan, which then was used as a base of operations for a 
terrorist organization that was committed to attacking the United 
States of America and killing as many of us as possible.
  I have also spoken in the past about 9/11 representing not only a 
mistake in policies but also a major, major screw-up on the part of 
America's intelligence organizations. 9/11, while the policies that we 
had as a country helped lead us to that situation, we should have at 
least been protected by our CIA, the FBI, and the National Security 
Administration. But what happened?
  We were blind-sided. We were blind-sided not just in an attack that 
cost the lives of thousands of Americans, but we were attacked by an 
organization, the al Qaeda, which had already been declared the number 
one enemy of the United States and the number one target of our 
intelligence community. The number one target of America's intelligence 
community, a community

[[Page 10572]]

made up of organizations: the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, DIA and many 
others. These people receive tens of billions of dollars a year in 
order to protect us; yet the number one target of American intelligence 
carried off an extremely complicated plot against the United States 
that spent tens of millions of dollars putting a minimum of 100, if not 
hundreds, of people in the field who must have known about this; yet 
they were able to carry it off and to bring down the Trade Towers in 
New York and killing 3,000 of our fellow Americans. Let me add, had 
this happened a half an hour later or an hour later, it would have been 
tens of thousands of Americans and not 3,000 Americans.
  Let me just note that we have learned a lesson from 9/11. The CIA 
since 9/11, I am happy to report, has gone to great lengths to make up 
for their shortcomings prior to 9/11. The same with the FBI. The same 
with NSA. Apparently they learned the lesson.
  I remember when I worked in the Reagan administration back in the 
1980s; and in 1983, almost just about 20 years, a little more than 20 
years ago, right as we speak, Ronald Reagan put America's military 
forces on alert and sent them to the island country of Grenada in the 
Caribbean, which was going through turmoil when a radical group of 
Communists took over that country. I remember that inside, that was a 
victory supposedly for the Cold War, and we did return democracy to 
Grenada; but the liberation of Grenada itself was a catastrophe.
  All of our military forces found that they could not communicate with 
one another. Most of the casualties we suffered, and we suffered almost 
as many casualties in Grenada as we suffered in taking on Iraq and 
Afghanistan and Grenada was just a tiny little country, but most of the 
casualties in the liberation of Grenada were friendly fire casualties. 
Most of those who died in our military, it was because our own military 
people were not cooperating. They learned that lesson, I might add.
  The leaders of our military took it to heart what they had seen and 
how embarrassed they were that they were not being serious about their 
job, and they reconfigured our national military; and today we have 
such a superb military, headed by, I might add, a man of vision and a 
decisive leader, Mr. Rumsfeld; and Secretary Rumsfeld and the 
leadership of our military have just given us one of the most profound 
military victories, one of the most astounding military victories in 
the history not only of the United States but of the world.
  We took on, with very few casualties on our part, fewer than 200 
casualties, we liberated Afghanistan, and we liberated the people of 
Iraq and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan were, of course, thousands 
of warriors against us and a terrorist army of thousands. Then in Iraq, 
we had one of the 10 biggest armies in the world, one of the biggest 
armies in that region who were certainly a major force; yet we took 
them on in just a matter of weeks. That is because we did what was 
necessary to reform our system back in the 1980s and to equip our 
people with the technology they needed.
  The CIA, the FBI, the NSA are now going through that same kind of 
reform and soul-searching that took place in the 80s after Grenada. 
Already there have been some major successes. Many of them have not 
been announced to the public, but our CIA, for example, I know thwarted 
an assassination attempt on King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan, and there 
were no praises sung for this; but yet people in the know realized that 
since 9/11 and over these last few months and last years we have seen a 
new attitude emerge.
  Perhaps it is due to the leadership our President, President Bush, is 
giving; and I would certainly say that our President has risen to the 
occasion and since 9/11 has shown himself to be a world-class leader 
and historic leader of our country.
  This President has learned we should, when possible, have our local 
allies do the fighting for us. Let them fight for their freedom, and 
let us be there to help them. This is what President Bush, the strategy 
he laid forward in Afghanistan; and it is very similar to the strategy 
that Ronald Reagan laid down and was called the Reagan doctrine and how 
he ended the Cold War. Reagan's doctrine was let us not just do it just 
with the American military might, but let us depend on helping local 
people win their own freedom; and that is what we did in Afghanistan, 
and President Bush also made sure that the people of Iraq knew that our 
purpose was there to help them liberate themselves, not to occupy their 
country.
  Of course, we learned, and it was confirmed, that America's 
investment in weapons technology was well worth it, and we did go 
through a time in the 1990s in our predecessor's administration when 
there were dramatic decreases in the defense budget; and yes, certain 
decreases in the defense budget were warranted after the Cold War, but 
we managed to keep those technology weapons alive; and those 
developments of the laser systems that are offshoots of missile defense 
and other types of programs, we managed to keep them in the budget and 
not just the defense budget being used as a social welfare distributing 
system for different systems for different groups that were preferred 
that our people wanted to make political fronts with. Instead, we kept 
it a fighting unit; and that was one of the accomplishments of this 
Congress, as well as working with the Clinton administration.
  What did that lead us to? It led us to fewer than 200 American deaths 
in liberating Afghanistan and Iraq. What an enormous achievement that 
was.
  Let us now make sure that we pay attention to what was learned; also 
what have we learned from what we have gone through, what we should 
have learned, that we should not pay attention to the liberal whiners 
who always have seemed to be around.
  There is a myth that during the Reagan years the Cold War was ended 
because of some kind of bipartisan cooperation. I will tell my 
colleagues from the inside of the White House, we did not see much 
bipartisan cooperation. Yes, there were about one-fourth of the 
Democrats who were willing to stand by the administration when the 
fighting was hardest with the Communists; but by and large, every time 
Ronald Reagan tried to make a stand against the Communists during his 8 
years as President, there was an active group of people on the other 
side of the aisle who were doing their best to fight those who were 
fighting Communism. They were anti-, anti-Communists; and it is a 
miracle that the President was able to succeed in the way he did with 
the type of people who were undermining his efforts.
  The Communists invested in a whole bunch of intermediate range 
missiles they put into Europe and immediately said let us have a freeze 
and left them in a position of superiority, and then we have the 
nuclear freeze movement which was supported by, unfortunately, many 
people on the other side of the aisle; and Ronald Reagan stepped 
forward and said, no way, we are not going to freeze them into a 
superior position, and then offered, as Ronald Reagan always does and 
always did, a positive alternative, let us bring the number of missiles 
down to zero, let us agree to eliminate the class of intermediate range 
of missiles in Europe which, by the way, he was called names. He was 
made fun of. They called him an amiable dunce. They were suggesting he 
does not know what he is talking about, the Russians will never agree 
to that; and of course, within 5 years there was an agreement signed 
with the Russians to do precisely that.
  These whiners have been with us every time America takes a stand, and 
it is not just against Communism. We are talking about, these are 
people predicting doom whenever we try to act. It seems there are 
people that are part of our political system, part of our political 
spectrum here that have a compulsive lack of faith in America itself, 
and they were suggesting all kinds of horrible scenarios of what was 
going to happen if we took a stand and acted against Saddam Hussein; 
and they were the ones claiming within a very short period of time 
after Afghanistan started, oh, are we bogging down in Afghanistan.

[[Page 10573]]

  After 1 week of fighting, well, remember, let us not forget these 
predictions and let us learn from them. It was predicted that there 
would be a major tank battle, Saddam's Republican Guard was going to 
engage us in a major tank battle outside of Baghdad. Whatever happened 
to that? I will tell my colleagues what happened to it. We had the 
technology to destroy most of those tanks before they started moving up 
to any position where they could threaten our troops. What tank battles 
there were were limited. Our people were very brave; but by and large, 
that major tank battle, historic tank battle that would be on the scale 
of El Alamein and all the rest never happened.

                              {time}  2200

  What about the gas attacks and the nuclear attacks that were going to 
vaporize our soldiers, this fear which immobilized so many people. We 
have to stop our President from putting our troops in or they were 
going to be gassed and vaporized by nuclear weapons. That, of course, 
never happened.
  Some ask what happened to the weapons of mass destruction the 
President was talking about? Let me just note I have been a strong 
supporter of the President from the very beginning. I have called for 
eliminating Saddam Hussein for many years. When I was first elected is 
when we went to the war in the Gulf and I told Dick Cheney and Colin 
Powell then not to start this fight unless we are going to finish it. 
And yes, I have been critical of President Clinton, and now let us be 
critical of President Bush's father. He did not finish the job. He left 
us vulnerable, and left a homicidal maniac in charge of the country of 
Iraq. Well, that was not the responsible course of action, just like 
many things that Clinton did were not responsible, but we had to make 
up for it.
  I have never suggested that Saddam Hussein had to have weapons of 
mass destruction for us to justify joining with the people of Iraq or 
helping liberate the people of Iraq from this dictator or monster 
because he had a blood grudge against us. It was prudent for us to 
eliminate that dictator before he was able to amass these mountains of 
money that were predicted because of the oil revenues that Iraq could 
expect in the future years, these tens of billions of dollars. He would 
have bought himself a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon. He would 
not have to build it; he would have bought chemical and biological 
weapons. He would have overthrown the Saudis with the tens of billions 
of dollars of oil money that he was about to reap. No, it made no sense 
to leave that man there.
  We can be proud our President made the stand, even while everyone was 
throwing up their hands and nitpicking and naysaying and predicting 
horrible things. How many times did we hear: Why did we rush to this? 
The President took month after month after month trying to work it out 
peacefully, and then he was castigated as if he was rushing into war.
  We should remember that because those who were predicting weeks of 
house-to-house combat, building by building would have to be taken, and 
urban fighting. That never materialized. It never materialized. We kept 
saying the people of Iraq do not want to live in a dictatorship. And 
yes, President Saddam Hussein did have his gang of thugs that were 
somewhat of a threat, but the people of Iraq have by and large been on 
our side.
  What about the massive demonstrations that were going to be 
precipitated by America's adventurism overseas? And of course as the 
war ran its course, opposition actually declined. The number of people 
going into these demonstrations and saying and having all of these very 
negative thoughts about our country and troop deployment, they 
decreased over the days of this military operation. And of course now 
that it has ended in a very successful way, no one is out 
demonstrating.
  Remember if we did this, there were predictions that there would be 
chaos and destabilization throughout the Arab world and the region and 
there in the Persian Gulf. Oh, the instability this would create. There 
would be wars springing up everywhere and regimes falling and it would 
create a much less safe world. That did not happen, did it?
  But we heard all of these predictions. Let us not forget them. Let us 
not forget who was making those predictions and the speeches we heard 
right here on this floor by people making these very same predictions 
and doing their best to make sure that the American people had no 
confidence in their President's leadership during this vital moment in 
our history.
  So what about the chaos and destabilization? It did not happen. What 
about the urban fighting that was supposed to go on for weeks? It did 
not happen. What about the vaporization of our troops with gas and 
nuclear weapons? That did not happen.
  What about the Shiites rising up? There have been a few Shiite 
demonstrations, and most have been religious marches because under 
Saddam Hussein they were restricted from demonstrating their faith for 
20 years. Finally, there are hundreds of thousands of them marching for 
their religious faith; but the left wing of this country, the news 
media, ends up characterizing that as being anti-American. No, the 
power play by some Shiites who are politically motivated in that 
direction numbered a couple thousand people, and we have made it clear 
to the people of Iraq that they are going to elect their own leaders 
and we are going to set up a system, we are going to work with them for 
a couple of years, and set up the institutions necessary for them to 
elect their own leaders.
  Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt some Shiites are going to be elected, 
but they are not going to be elected in the name of establishing a 
theocracy like Iran. They just got rid of their dictatorship. Clearly 
the people of Iraq would like to live in freedom; and yes, there are 
some powermongers there, but we are not going to let them get away with 
it, and the people of Iraq are not going to let them pressure their way 
into power.
  Remember the predictions about the Turks. They were going to invade 
the Kurdish areas in the northern part of Iraq. These Turks were going 
to come in and grab the oil and there would be bloodshed and chaos. 
Funny thing, that prediction did not come true either. Just remember 
who made these predictions.
  All I am suggesting is let us learn, America, from what we have just 
gone through so when people get up in the future and undercut a 
President who is trying to make a tough stand to secure the blessings 
of peace and liberty for future Americans we will be able to stick 
behind him and we will know that the naysayers will always be with us, 
and the naysayers will always try to undercut a President that is 
acting on the behalf of the United States of America perhaps because 
psychologically they just down deep have such little faith in our own 
system because they only see the flaws in America.
  I see the flaws. There is no doubt that America has a multitude of 
flaws. Look, we had slavery in this country. We had slavery long after 
Great Britain eliminated slavery. We have had racism in this country 
over the years. Let me point out that race relations to almost all of 
the other countries in the world in those days, they were just as bad 
as we were; but that does not excuse us, a country that Thomas 
Jefferson wrote down such wonderful founding principles as ``Rights are 
given by God to every person.'' These are children of God, and we have 
not done right by many people here.
  American Indians were not treated well, we know that. We know over 
the years we have had our share of corruption, but we know we, as 
Americans, have other things that we can be so proud of, that the 
average person has had so much more freedom here than in other 
countries. Even though there has been racial discrimination, we are 
going to try to work to end that. We have made a lot of progress in 
this.
  Our Army during the Gulf War, if we look at who made up that Army, it 
was a little bit of America. Every American was there and represented, 
the leadership of the Army and the leadership of

[[Page 10574]]

our country with Colin Powell and Don Rumsfeld standing side by side 
along with our President, George Bush.
  We have throughout the administration and in Congress seen these 
great examples of progress, and throughout the countryside and cities 
throughout our country, there is not the racial hatred and animosity 
that there was. I personally sense since 9/11 a wonderful rebirth, if 
not a rebirth, maybe it is a birth for the first time, of a feeling of 
goodwill among all Americans. We have gone through these times before, 
but I think 9/11 has unified us as never before, and we are building 
upon that. This President is building upon that goodwill to try to help 
us improve this country.
  One day in the Los Angeles Times, when we talk about what the 
President has put up with and the pessimism, and this is the day before 
yesterday, they had a front-page story talking about the quagmire that 
we are in in Iraq. Talk about naysayers. But what happened just today, 
look at the Los Angeles Times. The very next day they have a story 
detailing the emergence of new leadership in Iraq.
  Something is wrong here. We cannot have a story one day where we are 
in the middle of a quagmire and the next day have a new democratic 
leadership emerging in a country that has been under a dictatorship for 
so long. The problem is we had critics and naysayers who have been 
speaking out in loud voices and repeatedly they have been wrong, they 
have been wrong, and they have been wrong.
  What we need to do tonight and what we must do in the weeks and 
months and years ahead is not forget what they have been saying and how 
wrong they have been so we will not listen to them and take their 
advice and base it on pessimism, on just undue pessimism in the future.
  America in the future, as we have had now, and thank God we have had 
a President that is not afraid to act, we cannot be afraid to act if we 
are to be a prosperous people and if we are to live at peace and if our 
freedom is to be protected. We should have no apologies about acting in 
our own country's interest.
  Let me repeat that because many of the people who are attacking our 
President are doing it based on some global strategy or some notion of 
what is going to happen in the world. We should have no compulsion 
about holding back when it is our country's interest, and I mean long-
term interest. In the long-term interest of our country supporting the 
cause of freedom, supporting the cause of peace and freedom in this 
world, of liberty and justice for all as we say, this is in America's 
interest.
  Ronald Reagan demonstrated that acting on the behalf of freedom, 
acting on behalf of liberty and justice, helping to support the various 
people struggling against the Soviet Union and supporting those people 
that believed in democracy, that helped end the Cold War; and now 
President Bush has clearly demonstrated that America's most powerful 
and successful strategy is not based on coalition building and some 
international acceptance or global strategy. Instead, our most powerful 
and successful strategy is one that is based on promoting human 
freedom.
  Look at what happened in the last few months. Our foreign policy 
establishment seems obsessed with pleasing the international foreign 
policy establishment. Our own State Department, these are the people 
who are supposed to be doing our bidding, their liberal allies in the 
press and the leadership of the Democratic Party, had George W. Bush 
jumping through hoops. And as President of the United States, they had 
him going from here to there groveling before the United Nations and 
begging our NATO allies to join with us or to at least give us your 
approval.
  Why should we need the approval of the United Nations or of our NATO 
allies to go forward and to do what is in our national security 
interest as long as that is consistent with promoting the cause of 
human freedom? By the way, again, if we are not furthering the cause of 
freedom and democracy, we probably should have second thoughts about 
what we are doing. But our enemies are the enemies of freedom. The 
Taliban in Afghanistan, al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in 
Iraq, these people are enemies of the United States because we 
represent what is best in Western civilization.

                              {time}  2215

  We do not and should not need the approval of the United Nations to 
defend ourselves and to support other people who are struggling for 
freedom and democracy in far-off lands. Unfortunately, this has almost 
become a cliche about the United Nations. People think of the United 
Nations as our best hope. The United Nations is not our best hope. The 
United Nations is our worst nightmare. I hope the American people after 
looking at what has happened these last few months will understand that 
too is a lesson that we need to have learned. The United Nations is 
still with countries that are vicious, ugly dictatorships at the same 
level of Saddam Hussein. The world's worst human rights abuser, 
Communist China, has a veto power over anything the United Nations will 
do. We see the United Nations putting countries up that are 
dictatorships and human rights abusers. Fidel Castro ends up on the 
Human Rights Commission; and we end up being removed. Syria, you name 
it, these countries that do not have democratic governments, do not 
permit political opposition, end up in pivotal, decision-making 
positions.
  Let us note that if we depend on the United Nations, we are going to 
pay a price anytime we have to do anything; and in this case it took so 
long, it almost undermined our entire effort in Iraq because it was 
just taking so much time, it would have put us in the middle of the 
summer and it would have compromised the entire military operation. But 
our President, trying to prove that he is going to do everything he can 
to bend over backwards in order to convince our allies and convince the 
United Nations that we respected their institutional prerogatives.
  But what does it mean when you get the U.N. behind what you are 
doing? What it means is you have had to buy off the Communist Chinese. 
I do not know if we made any agreement, if our government ended up 
making an agreement with Communist China. I do not know. But I will 
tell you in the future, look very closely when people have a United 
Nations-based strategy. Perhaps in order for us to do something in our 
national security, they may demand that we never mention Tibet again. 
So we just write off the people of Tibet. Or how about other religious 
believers in China? Is that worth the price of getting their little 
approval in a vote in the United Nations? I say that is baloney. I say 
that is not worth it at all. There is no trade-off there. To get them 
to vote in the United Nations, that is worthy of us giving up millions 
of people in China who believe in God and so we will never mention it 
because we do not want to break our word to them that we are going to 
let them run their internal affairs now?
  And then there are people in our State Department and throughout 
academe and the press who are trying to build this global strategy for 
America, yes, based on the United Nations which, as I say, very 
precarious, but then they want to, of course, set up an economic 
organization, the world trading organization, that will control trade 
and economic decisions so that we will have economic harmony, another 
great dream just like the United Nations. But if you look real close, 
it is a disaster. It is a disaster waiting to happen. We will have 
panels set up that will be making decisions for what? It will be making 
decisions on whether or not our economic policies are consistent with 
the international agreements. Who will be on the policy boards and the 
commissions? And who will be running these structures and making these 
determinations? People from third-world countries, like Burma. How 
about Nigeria? How about Bolivia or Colombia? Do we really want 
countries like this to be making determinations if we are in compliance 
with international economic regulations and agreements? The people who 
will be serving on these boards from those countries will be bought off 
in a heartbeat by the Communist Chinese. We

[[Page 10575]]

will not buy them off because we are moral. We want to go by the 
system. But they will not think twice; our enemies and the thugs of the 
world will not think twice about this.
  You do not want to go through the U.N., and you do not want to set up 
a world organization run by countries that are not democratic in order 
to depend on a prosperity and a peace for the people of the United 
States of America. We also do not want to rely on NATO and our NATO 
allies anymore. NATO served its purpose, and its purpose was to deter 
the Soviets from invading western Europe and that is done. That is 
totally done. The Soviet Union is gone. Now we have a democratic 
Russia, a Russia who is struggling to be democratic. We do not need 
NATO to protect the peace. NATO is a bureaucracy, and now we find that 
our NATO allies whom we believe that we can depend upon are not 
dependable allies. We find out that NATO is worthless, that France, 
Germany and Belgium and even our neighbor Canada are fair-weather 
friends, fair-weather friends who we cannot depend upon to help us when 
our liberty is being threatened and when we feel compelled to act.
  We have just spent in the last decade billions of dollars to help 
these NATO allies out in the Balkans, which is part of Europe, part of 
their responsibility. Yet we spent billions of dollars, put our 
military people at risk, and they in return gave us the back of their 
hand. By the way, we still have thousands of troops in Kosovo, 
thousands of troops in Kosovo. Yet our German, our French, our Belgian 
and other allies cannot get themselves to help us at a time like this. 
We did have, and I will say something inspiring, a new concept. As the 
President moved forward, he said we will have an alliance of the 
willing. That was extraordinarily inspiring. Great Britain, of course, 
stood with us. Yes, I think Tony Blair should be given an honorary 
citizenship in the United States of America. He and the rest of the 
British people are our great friends. But the people of Spain stood 
with us. Poland. We found our friends in Bulgaria and the Czech 
Republic and, yes, we found that our Aussie friends, the Australians, 
stood by us and proved themselves to be there when it counted.
  Let me note, when the Australians come to us, I may be a bit 
suspicious about the World Trade Organization and setting up a grand 
alliance with everybody in the world, democratic or not, and having 
those rules apply and be applied by an international organization 
controlled by all these countries. I have no problem with the free 
trade agreement with Australia. They have proven themselves to be our 
friends and they are democratic.
  What about one other country that I have not mentioned here a bit, a 
lesson that we may have learned in these last few months? What about 
Russia? They were not with us, were they? I have paid close attention 
to Russia; and I have separated it out from the rest in terms of an 
analysis of their potential and how we should relate to them. The 
Russians, I believe, first and foremost wanted to be on our side in the 
crisis from which we have just emerged. They requested, however, that 
if they would be on our side in any attack on Iraq, that the $8 billion 
that Iraq owes to Russia should not be canceled. They have a very weak 
economy right now. They are struggling in Russia. It was a very 
reasonable request for them to make, that if they were going to stand 
side by side with us, that we not let their economy take the $8 billion 
hit of a cancellation of the debt the Iraqis owed the Russians. They 
also said, let us be part of rebuilding Iraq. Those were two reasonable 
requests. We did not follow through.
  We could have had Russia and the United States standing together. It 
would have been an awesome picture to the world. It would have 
presented a picture of strength that would have been very difficult for 
anyone ever to ignore. It would have shown a new alliance for democracy 
in the world. It was just a very sad thing; and I believe that if the 
administration has made mistakes, and all of us do, it was a mistake in 
passing up this opportunity and not following through on it and putting 
the energy into making it work with Russia as we could have. Just as I 
say, the vision of Russia and the United States standing there would 
have so overshadowed the French and the Germans and the other whiners 
in Belgium and elsewhere, that everyone would have known it is a 
totally new world. But with Russia, sort of playing games with them and 
being sort of part of their team, it did give a greater image of 
strength to those opposing us than need be.
  Let me just note this. That does not mean we had to just go along. We 
could be creative. We could just go along and say, The Iraqis can't 
cancel their debt to Russia. I understand some of our diplomats were 
saying that, saying if they end up having to pay the debt to Russia, 
that is, if they end up paying the debt, it will be a burden around the 
new democratic Iraqi government's neck. We cannot burden the Iraqi 
people with having to pay back Russia so that is why we did not take 
them up on that offer. That is what I have heard. That is just a one-
dimensional look at this issue. If we honestly felt that we wanted to 
have a democratic Iraq that was capable of acting without having to 
have that type of burden around their neck, we should have then told 
Russia, we will support your cancellation of Soviet-era debts to the 
German and French banks. That has been a burden around their neck all 
this time. We could have fulfilled their desire in a different way 
using a creative approach by letting the Russians cancel the debt to 
the German and French banks. That would have sent a very good message 
and at the same time protected the new democratic government in Iraq 
from having too much debt and a millstone around its neck. But we did 
not do it. As I say, it is something that is past now; but we are going 
to have to work to make up for that what, I believe, is a mistake.
  There are ways that we can work with Russia. We need to help the 
reformers in Russia. I know that just a couple of weeks ago there was a 
liberal reformer who was assassinated in Russia, showing us that we 
have got to stand by the good people in Russia who are struggling and 
even putting their lives at risk to try to build a more democratic and 
more decent place in what was the Soviet Union. So let us give the 
Russians a way to work in partnership with us and not to be considered 
an outsider. We did not do that during this Gulf War, this Gulf War II; 
we did not go out of our way to do that as we should have. The Columbia 
shuttle disaster, however, let me note, I am not only on the Committee 
on International Relations but I am also the chairman of the Space and 
Aeronautics Subcommittee of Science, so I oversee NASA.
  Let me say, the Columbia shuttle disaster, yes, it was a horrible 
thing and sometimes, as the Chinese say, opportunity and challenges are 
part of the same word. We have great opportunities in how we are going 
to deal with the shuttle disaster Columbia. It permits us a chance to 
work even closer with Russia in the satellite area and in the area of 
the international Space Station and space transportation. They have 
rocket engines in Russia that are superior to the rocket engines of the 
United States. We need not spend money to develop rocket engines in the 
United States when we can buy that type of capability from the Russians 
themselves. Let us let them get into the game of selling their services 
to the world; and when they do have something to sell, let us not cut 
them out by protecting our own industries. Our industries have to 
compete with them. Instead of spending money replicating what the 
Russians can do, let us spend our research dollars developing newer 
technologies and leapfrog technologies that will put us ahead of the 
game.
  I know that there are some restrictions on Russia, especially in 
cooperating with Russia in this arena, in the space arena, because 
Russia is building a nuclear power plant for the Iranians. I agree, 
they should not be doing that. The Iranians have oil and natural gas. 
They do not need a nuclear power plant. There is only one reason that 
they would want that and that would

[[Page 10576]]

be to build a nuclear weapon and we will not permit that to happen. But 
we cannot just lay it on Russia, It is in our interest not to have the 
nuclear power plant built, and walk away, just like we were saying to 
them, you are going to have to join us and have the risk of losing that 
$8 billion in Iraq, you are going to have to absorb the cost.
  This is a country that is just struggling to have a decent economy to 
help their people raise their standard of living which has been going 
down for years. Now they have a chance to raise it. We should not be 
trying to undercut them, but let us use some creativity here. If they 
cannot build a nuclear power plant for Iran because Iran is controlled 
by hostile powers, let us help the Russians build a nuclear power plant 
for Turkey. Or how about Australia? Or how about the Philippines?

                              {time}  2230

  These are countries that need electricity. We could probably arrange 
and guarantee a loan from the World Bank, and it would not even cost us 
any money. We would just have to help guarantee it and arrange the 
business deal, and then the Russians could build that; and they would 
be building something that would not be a threat to us like it is in 
Iran, and then we could move forward with a number of space-related 
projects in which both countries would benefit. But it takes creativity 
and a commitment to freedom in American foreign policy. And the 
struggle for freedom, the direction of Russia, is one of the pivotal 
fights in our time. If Russia goes in the way of democracy in the West 
and builds up these economic relations with the people in the Western 
democracies, especially in the United States, our world will prosper 
and will live in peace. If it goes the opposite direction, if it begins 
to more align itself with China, which has an anti-view of Western 
Civilization and is a belligerent country to democracy or if it starts 
to align itself with the thugs of the world, then there will be a lot 
of trouble in the world ahead and the Russian people and the American 
people will suffer because of it. So let us have a freedom-based policy 
and work with those people in Russia and elsewhere looking to promote a 
freer society.
  Unfortunately, that is not the basis of what our State Department 
uses to decide upon American foreign policy. After looking at the 
American State Department up close now for about 15 years, actually 
probably more like 20 years now because it has been 7 years in the 
Reagan White House, I would say that if there is one word that is the 
goal of the State Department, it is not globalism, it is stability. 
They believe in a foreign policy which they call a pragmatic foreign 
policy, which is based on a formula for stability.
  Ironically, and this is what is so ironic, pragmatism as a strategy 
does not work. It is idealism and the ideals of freedom and democracy 
that work, that help to build a more stable world. We receive stability 
when we put freedom and liberty and justice into the equation while we 
are trying to figure out what we should be doing in various parts of 
the world; and it is only when we have liberty and justice as part of 
that decision-making concept that we will find that peace is possible.
  For example, in Kosovo here we are still. Years and years and years 
we have been in Kosovo. I remember when I was down on the floor 
predicting that it was going to be a decade before we got out of 
Kosovo, and we were assured by all those people who voted for this at 
President Clinton's request, it will be 1 year, a 1-year deployment. 
Sure. We should not forget that either. We should remember all the 
lessons we have learned over these last few years. We are still in 
Kosovo, and do the Members know why we are in Kosovo? We have got 
thousands of troops in Kosovo because our State Department has 
basically convinced themselves that we cannot recognize Kosovo's right 
to have their own country. In Kosovo 90 percent of them are Muslims; 
they are Albanian extraction. They want to have their own country just 
like the Croatians want their own country, just like the Slovenians 
want their own country, and they have got their own little country; and 
there is no reason why they cannot, except that would make the Serbs 
really mad. So in order for the Serbs not to get angry, to make sure 
that there is not a crisis, to ensure stability of the moment, we have 
kept our forces in Kosovo all of this time.
  We should have worked a long time ago in order to build a consensus 
and reach compromises within the Kosovo society for there to be free 
elections and there to be a referendum; and the people of Kosovo should 
decide with a vote, with their own vote, whether or not Kosovo should 
be independent. I have no doubt that they would vote for their 
independence, and then we should support them in building their own 
defense forces to protect their borders and just let the Serbs know 
that, I am sorry, they cannot attack the Kosovars. They cannot attack 
the Macedonians; and whatever they declare their national sovereignty, 
they cannot attack the Slovenians, the Bosnians. I am sorry, but Serbia 
has got to be enough for them. By the way, each one of those countries 
has a map of a greater Serbia or a greater Albania or a greater 
Croatia, claiming that their borders used to be way down here and thus 
they should control it even though the vast majority of the people in 
those areas are no longer Croatian or Serbian or whatever, no. Where 
the majority of people want to be part of a government, we let them 
vote on it; and if they want their independence, they have a right to 
declare their independence. God gave them the right to control their 
own destiny through the ballot box.
  That is what the United States of America is supposed to be all 
about. We developed a system which works. It is practical, but the 
basis of the system is an understanding that people have a right to 
control their own destiny through the ballot box, and they have a right 
to live in peace and freedom and dignity.
  In Afghanistan we are making the same kind of mistake as we are 
making in Kosovo. And our State Department has again proven itself 
totally incapable of appreciating America's experience and America's 
ideals of how we solve things. In Kosovo they will not let these people 
have their own country even though the vast majority of them want their 
own country because it might make the Serbs mad. In Afghanistan there 
are many, many different ethnic groups. And in Afghanistan the major 
ethnic groups, they call them the Northern Alliance right after we were 
attacked, and this Northern Alliance is an alliance of ethnic groups, 
which compose about 50 percent of the population; they were the ones 
who fought the Taliban, those people, and they have militias. And their 
militias and their generals, which they call them warlords, which is 
very pejorative, they fought the Taliban and kicked the Taliban out 
while a huge chunk of the population of Afghanistan did not fight the 
Taliban. They sort of sat it out. They are called Pashtans, and the 
Pashtans of course share Pakistan and Afghanistan. And guess what? Now 
our State Department, so we do not make the Pakistanis mad, we have to 
have the Pashtans in power in Afghanistan.
  That is not what this is all about. We believe in democracy. We 
believe in people controlling their own destiny through the ballot box. 
Our State Department is pushing the French model in Afghanistan. The 
French model is when there is a strong central government and it 
appoints the police chiefs, the head of the local schools, the people 
who provide local services; and they do not have local government 
really. They have a strong central government. What do the Members 
think about these five ethnic groups that fought alongside the United 
States against the Taliban and we are telling them they have to disarm 
and basically let the strong central government, which is now dominated 
by another ethnic group who did not fight the Taliban, control them?
  I recently went to Afghanistan and helped work out a compromise, and 
the compromise is very easy. The warlords supposedly, their ethnic 
groups or their militias, will disband their armies.

[[Page 10577]]

They will demobilize. They will disarm. But they have to be guaranteed 
the right to elect their own mayors and city councils, to elect their 
own provincial governors, just like here in the United States. Why is 
it the State Department cannot understand what made America successful? 
This is what made America successful. We do not centralize power in 
order to bring about a more peaceful society. We diffuse power and we 
let everybody share in it, and we have people electing the people who 
will most affect them.
  I will tell the Members I do not understand why the State Department 
does not understand, but they are pushing the wrong way in Afghanistan. 
It will not work there, and it is going to cause more trouble and it is 
not working. It is keeping us tied up in Kosovo. We need to make some 
decisions here, and we should not be leaving it up to the professionals 
of the State Department. The professionals at the State Department, 
when they are negotiating, they are not negotiating, as I have just 
pointed out, from the idea of what is best for America or even what is 
most consistent with the American way of government. Instead, they have 
an ideal of their own in mind. It is a worldwide pragmatic organized 
world based with United Nations, with the WTO, with all of these world 
health organizations, world trade organizations, and this is the dream 
of the people who are representing us. So when we go into negotiations 
and we try to have our government directed one way or the other, we end 
up not having America's interest and America's ideals in place. They 
are not part of the bargaining table. The people on the other side of 
the bargaining table, they know that they are bargaining for what is 
good for their country. Our people are bargaining for what is good for 
the world, what is good for the global vision of the world.
  A few years ago the Euro was in trouble. The Euro was in trouble. The 
dollar of the European Economic Alliance was in trouble. Why is it in 
our interest to help them build an economic coalition that is aimed at 
undercutting us? Why should we build our competitors up in Europe? Why 
should we help them build a currency that permits them to undercut the 
United States of America? Why did we do this? And this was about 4 
years ago, the Euro was collapsing, and we took money from our own 
account here in the United States that should be aimed at stabilizing 
the American dollar, and we took it over there and we stabilized the 
Euro. We should not want our competitors to do well. Our job is to 
watch out for the people of the United States of America. Instead of 
these large grandiose worldwide treaties based on economics, we should 
be going individually to countries like Australia, for example, and 
having agreements, Japan and elsewhere, having bilateral agreements 
that we will insist on being enforced with other democratic countries 
rather than putting ourselves at the mercy, at the mercy, of 
organizations that will be controlled by people from countries that do 
not share our ideals. Yet our own State Department has this type of 
world as their goal.
  Let me just note that during the time when our President was trying 
to do the bidding of the State Department and trying to jump through 
the hoops, trying to have a strategy based on what they wanted him to 
do, things seemed to bog down. It looked like we were weak and that our 
President lost his purpose and was not going to be following through. 
He kept saying that he was, but it became tiresome. It was frightening 
for a moment to think that he might back down. Instead, that all 
changed when the President gave a speech before the American Enterprise 
Institute, and that is when he outlined the moral basis, not just the 
pragmatic basis. They were going to have regime change. Remember? They 
were going to have regime change. That was their goal. When he spoke at 
the American Enterprise Institute, and I believe that was the end of 
February, he outlined for the people of the world and for the people of 
Iraq that our goal was freedom and justice for the people of Iraq and 
that we will only stay there long enough to help them build a 
democratic system.
  After that our effort was energized. After that there was no stopping 
the United States of America because we were the freedom fighters, and 
those who opposed Saddam Hussein and wanted democracy were our allies, 
and the President allied himself with those people all over the world 
who believed in freedom and justice and democracy, and most importantly 
he allied himself with the people in Iraq who believed in those things.
  Yes, it is when we stay true to our ideals, it is when we have a 
morally based, a freedom-based foreign policy that America becomes 
unstoppable because our goal is not to dominate the world but to 
create, yes, a better world that is based on freedom, not based on more 
bureaucratic organizations, but on freedom and on people treating each 
other decently, on liberty and justice for all, as we have said many 
times.

                              {time}  2245

  We would hope that as we face these challenges in the future, that 
the people of the United States remember what we just went through and 
learn the lessons. Our military learned the lessons of the seventies 
and eighties. Our CIA and our intelligence agencies have learned the 
lessons of 9/11. But the American people need to learn the lessons of 
what we have just been through.
  There will always be naysayers. There will be pessimists, people who 
do not believe in our system. There will be people who believe in a 
global approach, but not believe in America as a leader. But we must 
lead the way.
  The President of the United States is doing a terrific job for us, 
but we as the American people must stand behind any President that is 
willing to act in the cause of freedom. We must lead the world, 
because, if we do not, there will be no courage on the part of the 
people who believe in freedom and justice anywhere in the world, unless 
they know that the United States is with them, and we are with everyone 
throughout the world who would side with liberty and justice and 
against tyranny.

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