[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5138]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    TIME WILL PROVE WAR TO BE RIGHT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, it is still an honor to stand in 
this body and speak to those Members of the House who are assembled.
  Historians and politicians, political scientists, play parlor games, 
one of which is to rank the Presidents from best to worst. In that 
group almost always Washington, Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln are put 
as the top three; usually Lincoln is listed as number one. They are 
able to do that because of the 20/20 hindsight of history, because of 
the dogged tenacity which prohibited him from taking a shattered 
country that was mired in what some people have called the ``19th 
century Vietnam'' and extracting themselves from the war even though he 
would have received critical acclaim from liberals at that time.
  That same tenacity that we respect today was the element of criticism 
that was intense and unfair to him while he lived. The New York riot 
that took place in 1863, lasting 4 days, killing 105 people, when even 
the New York Times put three Gatling guns on the roof and in their 
windows to protect them, was blamed on him.
  Horace Greeley in 1864 of Lincoln wrote, ``Our bleeding, bankrupt and 
almost dying country longs for peace.'' The Democratic platform that 
same year said that after ``four years of failure to restore the Union 
by the experiment of war, we demand immediate efforts for cessation of 
hostilities.''
  A leading newspaper wrote that there is a ``cowardly imbecile at the 
head of the government.'' And a Congressman said, ``I am heartsick at 
the mismanagement of the Army and disgust with our government is 
universal, probably even amongst some of our European friends.''
  Sound familiar? I am sure, because those same feeble criticisms have 
been thrown at the U.S. policy in Iraq. Lincoln was great, just no one 
told his critics that he was. But that same mold of critics tells us 
the Iraqi policy has failed. Unfortunately, no one has told the Iraqis 
of that fate.
  They still recognize that they have more power generated now than 
they ever had in their country. Two-thirds of all the water projects 
have been restored. There is a 6,000 percent increase in health funding 
in the country. All the hospitals, all the colleges, all the technical 
schools are now open again. Five-and-a-half million students go to 
school every day without having to say, ``Long live Saddam Hussein'' 
every morning. Seventy percent of the Iraqis see their future as better 
and brighter with a spirit, a new form of government and new policemen 
and soldiers who are enlisting every day. The impact has been 
significant in that particular area.
  This is an area of the world where some people, of which the Baathist 
Party in Iraq is an example, have viewed the Byzantine Empire as the 
time when everything was right and the Mideast was the center of the 
world; and that, today, is an aberration. And many of those people have 
tried to find in the history of the 20th century quick-fix solutions to 
change that and rewrite the world as they see it.
  Before World War II, and the Baathist Party is an example of this, 
they attempted Fascism while they supported the Axis powers until they 
realized that was not the access that they needed. They flirted briefly 
with Communism in the 1950s before they found that was not an access 
that was needed. They tried the Pan-Arabism of Nasser in the 1950s and 
1960s and they found that was not the access. And, today, many of these 
elements have used terror as, hopefully, the access to right the world.
  If this country is ever going to have a future, it must ensure that 
terrorism is never viewed as a successful policy by any state or any 
subgroup of a state to try and change the world.
  Historians have praised Lincoln for the same qualities that his 
contemporary critics blamed him for. Historians, I am convinced, will 
pass praise on America's policies in Iraq which have ended a 
dictatorship of 30 years, mired in blood and horror and terror that 
destabilized his region with the ultimate goal of destabilizing the 
entire world.
  It is right what we have done to try to restore the balance in the 
world.

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