[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 850-851]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      THREAT OF ISLAMIC RADICALISM

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I come to the Chamber to speak on the 
preeminent issue facing our country today, and that is the threat of 
Islamic radicalism, and specifically to respond to the comments of some 
of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle regarding the 
President's speech and the plans he has announced for our fighting 
forces in Iraq last night.
  As I have tried to sift through the differences of opinion--and here 
again, among people of good will who love their country and who are 
true patriots--I am forced to conclude that the division or faultline 
falls between those who have simply given up and do not believe the 
situation in Iraq is salvageable and those who believe the President's 
plan offers the last best hope for success in Iraq.
  I agree with those who say you cannot look at Iraq as if through a 
soda straw, as if that is the only challenge facing the United States 
and the Middle East, because, indeed, failure in Iraq, descension into 
a civil war, creation of a failed state will undoubtedly create a 
regional-wide conflict that will necessitate the United States and its 
allies reentering the conflict at some later date were Iraq unable to 
sustain and defend and govern itself, as the Iraq Study Group said it 
must.
  Indeed, I believe it is incumbent upon those who say the only 
solution is to draw down our troops in a gradual redeployment to 
explain what they intend to do when Iraq descends into a failed state, 
creating another platform, as Afghanistan did once the Soviet Union 
left that country, which gave rise then to the Taliban and al-Qaida. 
What is their plan to deal with that consequence if, in fact, that is 
what occurs, if the United States leaves Iraq before it is able to 
sustain itself, to govern itself, and defend itself?
  I congratulate the members of the new majority, but I must say, with 
the new majority comes not only the privilege of setting the Nation's 
agenda in the Congress but also the duty of governing. It is not 
acceptable to merely criticize, particularly if you are in the 
majority. We need to know what their alternative plan is for this 
unacceptable possibility of failure in Iraq if, in fact, we are to cut 
the legs out from under the Maliki government and simply withdraw 
before the Iraqis are able to sustain themselves.
  Mr. President, I am one of those who have not given up on Iraq and 
who believe that our fighting forces in Iraq are doing a lot of good. 
It is true, as the President said, that mistakes have been made, but it 
is important to recognize that the initial threat in Iraq

[[Page 851]]

was of a Saddam Hussein delivering weapons of mass destruction and 
technology about biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons to 
terrorists to use against us, as the terrorists did on 9/11. Even a 
remote possibility that might happen was unacceptable. We voted with a 
vote of 77 Senators--on a bipartisan basis--to authorize the President 
to use military force to take out Saddam Hussein.
  I don't need to recount the failures of our intelligence community 
that led us to erroneously believe he actually at that time did have 
weapons of mass destruction. But there is no question at all that 
Saddam Hussein sought weapons of mass destruction, much as his neighbor 
now to the east, Iran, seeks nuclear weapons itself. It is simply 
unacceptable, in a world where there are those driven by a radical 
ideology that celebrates the murder of innocent civilians, as al-Qaida 
and other Islamic radicals do, to allow them to get weapons of mass 
destruction and then to use them on innocent civilian populations, 
whether it is in the United States or abroad.
  It is true that the President has said that this is a test for the 
Maliki government. We are putting a lot of reliance, yet pressure, on 
the Maliki government to perform. When Prime Minister Maliki said he 
will stand up to the death squads and Shiite militias, like that of al-
Sadr, we will hold him to his word.
  It is absolutely critical to the success of reconstruction in Iraq, 
to a peaceful self-determination through a democratic form of 
government, that the security situation in Iraq be stabilized. The only 
way that is going to happen is if a lawful government of Iraq obtains a 
monopoly on the legal use of force in that country. Right now, the 
people of Iraq don't trust their own Government to provide that sort of 
security, so they have broken down along sectarian lines and relied 
upon Shiite militias and other extralegal groups to try to provide that 
security. But what happened is that we have seen retribution killings 
between different ethnic groups. But the threat is that sort of 
sectarian violence is not going to be contained just to Iraq but will 
spill over into the region. Iran will use the opportunity of Shiite 
violence to exact ethnic cleansing on Sunni populations in Iraq. Iran 
will use its ability to expand its influence into Iraq, perhaps to 
expand its own borders.
  That will not go without some response by the Sunni majority nations 
in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, for example, has already expressed 
grave concern that if the Shiite militias and others continue to exact 
violence upon the Sunni population, they may very well find a necessity 
to become involved and, indeed, we know that what some people view as 
if through a soda straw, violence in Iraq will become a regional 
conflict.
  Is there any doubt that if, in fact, we fail in Iraq because we have 
given up, because we don't believe Iraq and the Middle East is worth 
this last best chance for success, is there any doubt that the oil and 
gas reserves in that region of the world will be used as an economic 
weapon against the United States? So not only will we have a security 
vulnerability using that platform of a failed state as a launching pad 
for future terrorist attacks, much as al-Qaida did in Afghanistan 
following the fall of the Soviet Union in that country, but is there 
any doubt that in addition to additional terrorist attacks in the 
United States and among our allies and around the world, that the oil 
and gas reserves in that region will be used as an economic weapon to 
wreak a body blow against the rest of the world?
  So with winning the election on November 7 and gaining the majority 
and the mandate of the American people comes responsibility. The 
responsibility of our Democratic colleagues is to point out what their 
plans are when Iraq fails if we do not even try, as the President has 
proposed last night, to salvage the situation there by a change of 
course, by working with our Iraqi allies, backing them up, stiffening 
their backbone, to restore the security environment there so that 
reconstruction and democracy and self-government can flourish. I don't 
know whether it will work. I don't know whether anyone can ever 
guarantee in a time of war that one side or the other will be 
successful. But the consequences of giving up and of failure are simply 
too horrendous to contemplate, present too great a risk to the American 
people and civilized people around the world, for us not to try.
  That, to me, is the choice we have been given--between trying, using 
the last best effort we can come up with through this change of course 
in Iraq, or simply giving up. I would like to hear from our colleagues 
what their plan is if Iraq does descend into that failed state, if a 
regional conflict occurs and it then becomes necessary at a future date 
not to send an additional 20,000 American troops but far more to 
protect America's national security interests.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senator from Maryland is recognized for 10 minutes.

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