[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 9]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 12831]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          THE WAR ON TERRORISM

                                 ______
                                 

                     HON. HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 27, 2006

  Mr. McKEON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of a just cause that 
is facing a critical turning point. The outcome hangs in the balance, 
and Mr. Speaker, we should not kid ourselves into believing that 
victory is foreordained.
  Churchill once said that there would not be war if both sides did not 
believe that they could win it. The enemy we face in Iraq, and in the 
broader war against the radical Islamists, is driven by an apocalyptic 
vision of God. And because such apocalyptic visions are rooted in faith 
and not facts, they are very hard to dispel. We, therefore, face an 
opponent who is neither open to reason or compromise. Nor will he 
necessarily be defeated by calculations of military strategy and 
prudence.
  We face the paradox of a perilous time. At the opening of the 21st 
century we are opposed by an adversary who preaches the savagery and 
barbarism of the 12th century. We face in Iraq an enemy that will show 
us absolutely no quarter. And Mr. Speaker, I am bound to say that I 
think we in this Chamber, and indeed even in the country at large, have 
been slow to grasp that fact.
  However, the difficulty of the fight should not dissuade us from 
waging it if the cause is just--and the cause IS just. Mr. Speaker, I 
have had the sad duty to attend the funerals of several of the 
servicemen killed in Iraq who came from my district. There are those 
who say that we should not withdraw from Iraq because to do so would 
mean that they died in vain.
  This is not correct. Nothing that we have done or will do, will ever 
subtract one ounce from the valor and nobility of those who have died 
in the service of their country. As Lincoln said in the Gettysburg 
Address, ``We can not dedicate--we can not consecrate--we can not 
hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled 
here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or 
detract.''
  However, we should pause to note that our servicemen and women are 
fighting--and sometimes dying--because they know the terrible price 
that will be paid if our adversaries prevail. They have seen, as I have 
seen when I traveled to Iraq, what a world our enemies would have us 
live in.
  It is a world filled by a grotesque and distorted vision of God. It 
is a world of slavery and submission where the Almighty is not a 
benevolent and loving Creator of His Children. But rather is a pagan 
idol that demands blood sacrifice and glories in the murder of the 
innocent.
  You need look no farther than the carnage in Baghdad, or Kabul, or 
Mogadishu or, let us never forget, the Twin Towers, to see the truth in 
that axiom. That is what our enemy, for all his talk of God, seeks to 
do. He seeks to kill God by destroying God's children and God's 
creation. And we are all that stands between our adversary and the 
realization of his nihilistic vision.
  Mr. Speaker, there are those in this House who are far better versed 
than I in the strategic and military calculations that are the essence 
of this conflict. There are those who say that we mistakenly entered 
the war in Iraq on the basis of flawed intelligence. This, I think, 
underestimates the nature of our adversary. Given the expansiveness of 
our enemy's nightmare vision, I think it is safe to say that there 
would have been war in Iraq no matter what we did.
  That, of course, will be for the historians to decide.
  But this much I do know, Mr. Speaker. We stand for hope. We fight for 
peace and a world that is free. We sacrifice now so that the little 
children that I met when I was in Iraq might live in a better world 
tomorrow. And because they will have a better world, we Americans will 
live in a safer one. To quote DeGualle, ``Behind the terrible cloud of 
our blood and tears here is the sun of our grandeur shining out once 
again.''
  Mr. Speaker, I do have one concern. I think that we in this Congress 
have allowed too wide a gap to develop between the society we help to 
govern and the war we have been compelled to wage. We have to correct 
this, because we will not win this war--in Iraq or beyond--unless we as 
a Nation come to grips with what we face and begin to act accordingly.
  We must never forget that, to quote Lincoln again, ``Public sentiment 
is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it 
nothing can succeed.'' Right now I look around me and I see a Congress 
and a country distracted, and nothing could be deadlier to our security 
and our hopes for a better future.
  To some extent this is understandable. America is, and has every 
right to be, tired of conflict. In 1917, for the first time, we went 
``over there'' to make the world safe for democracy. In 1941, in 
Churchill's evocative phrase, the new world stepped forth, yet again, 
to the rescue and liberation of the old. Then after 1945 we stayed on 
to wage the long twilight struggle that came to be called the cold war.
  Then, in 1989, a miracle. We stopped holding our breaths. The Berlin 
Wall came down and the Soviet Union disappeared. The hair trigger 
nightmare of the nuclear armed world seemed to recede. We came off of 
the figurative tip-toes on which we had been standing for nearly 50 
years. We had grown so accustomed to it that when the Cold War ended, 
we scarcely realized just how nerve wracking, and what a strain, it had 
all been.
  Now here we are again. More war, more sacrifice, more death. It is 
not a pleasant picture--but it offers this. It offers hope. It offers 
an alternative to yet another in a long line of obscene and perverted 
visions that seem to be forever conjured in the minds of men.
  Mr. Speaker, I have dared to say today something that very few of us 
seem willing to say. We could lose this war. There is nothing in the 
stars that says we must prevail. In history, freedom is the exception, 
not the rule. So I say to my colleagues, we must press on in Iraq. We 
must fight wisely, but we must not falter.
  Most of all we must stand together. That way, when our children and 
grandchildren look back at this moment in history, they will say that 
at the threatened nightfall the blood of their fathers ran strong.

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