[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 4398]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, last week there was a quote attributed 
to John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for President, who said ``I've 
met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but, boy, 
they look at you and say, `You got to win this; you got to beat this 
guy; we need a new policy,' things like that.'' He has not denied the 
statement.
  Quite frankly, whether the statement is accurate or not, and I do not 
believe it to be accurate, America's foreign policy decisions are not 
designed to win popularity contests. They are designed to protect and 
defend America, her citizens, and her allies.
  In the days since September 11, there have been those who actually 
seem to believe that if we had been more understanding of extremist 
regimes and terrorists that perhaps they would have left us alone. 
There is a troubling trend in this campaign season. It has become 
almost formulaic, and we are hearing it from everybody, from the 
Democratic Presidential candidates on down. Criticize the President, 
criticize our foreign policy, criticize our country, criticize what we 
offer, and do it as loudly and as often as they can.
  The alternative to President Bush's bold, tough foreign policy that 
puts terrorists and rogue regimes on the run is one that relies on the 
international community to take collective action. We have been there. 
We spent 12 years letting the U.N. throw paper at Saddam Hussein while 
Saddam's military launched missiles at our pilots, at American pilots 
enforcing the U.N. no-fly zones over Iraq. For 12 years the U.N. turned 
a blind eye while such as France allowed its citizens to profit from 
the Iraq Oil for Food or, as some call it, the Oil for Palaces Program.
  International consensus, multilateralism? These are terms the policy 
wonks and the intellectual elites love to use. They are terms that 
sound great on paper, but an unyielding dedication to them has proven 
disastrous in the real world. Multilateralism and collective action are 
terms that we in the real world know to mean that America should stop 
leading and let the status quo remain. Those who profited from a status 
quo that allowed Saddam to remain in power, that allowed terrorists to 
grow and flourish in Afghanistan do not want us to act.

                              {time}  1945

  Nations that have neither the will nor the military capability to 
take on terrorism on a truly global scale should not criticize those 
that do.
  It was 3,000 Americans, our buildings, our Pentagon that were 
targeted on September 11, and those responsible needed to know that we 
were going to do more than lob a few missiles. We have taken steps to 
reshape the world for the better, and whether this pleases the French 
is irrelevant. We alone have the capability and the responsibility to 
stamp out terrorism, and it is to President Bush's credit that he was 
not deterred by apologists for terrorists and Saddam.
  Should America make a turn backward, back to the days when multi-
lateralism and collective action were more important than promoting 
freedom and targeting terrorism, when we relied on the U.N. to slap 
dictators on the wrist and sit idly by as Afghanistan became a giant 
terrorist training camp? If we take that step back, then we are 
signifying our weakness.
  The debate is very clear: Do you prefer that we act preemptively to 
prevent another September 11? Do you believe swift, decisive action in 
lands breeding terrorism is preferable to emergency response on the 
streets of our cities in the aftermath of an attack? Do you want 
American foreign policy dictated by your elected leaders or those in 
Europe?
  I think the answer to this is clear. We all know the answer to this 
and, certainly, when we read polls like this one from the Iraqi people 
who say their life is better today than it was a year ago, we know the 
answer to that question.

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