[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 14731-14736]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   WAR IS UGLY BUT TYRANNY IS UGLIER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. WAMP. I thank the speaker.
  Mr. Speaker, tonight I come to the floor with several of my 
colleagues over the next hour to recognize that while even tonight 
we've heard these divisions on the floor from both parties and Members 
in each party that have differences of opinion about Iraq and the war, 
we come tonight to talk about the threats around the world that 
continue to emerge, that are real.
  But before we get to the discussion about those threats and global 
security and the need for our country to be the leader of all of 
civilization, civilized countries versus, frankly, uncivilized, 
organizations, factions, even countries around the world who actually 
believe that blowing themselves up somehow is right or just. This is 
the struggle, and I do not think we can afford to deny the threats. I 
want to start first, though, by honoring the people who are 
volunteering to this very day to put themselves between the threat in 
our civilian population and serve in the uniform of our Armed Forces, 
first and foremost, the ones that have actually given their life for 
us.
  Last week, over the Memorial Day district work period, I joined the 
families of two heroic East Tennesseans, one here in Washington at 
Arlington National Cemetery as I left. Sergeant First Class James David 
Tiger Connell, Jr., of Lake City, Tennessee, was laid to rest here in 
Arlington a week ago Friday for answering the Scriptural call that ``no 
greater love hath any man than to lay down his life for a friend.'' And 
then on Memorial Day, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I joined the family of 
Private First Class Travis Haslip from Ooltewah, Tennessee, to lay his 
body to rest. Two great American heroes who joined six other heroes 
from my district who have given their life for us. And contrary to what 
some people say, they not only did not die in vain, they joined the 
ranks of the greatest Americans ever who were willing to give their 
life for the cause of freedom.

                              {time}  1915

  They were willing to lay it all on the line for the principles that 
this country holds so dear, knowing that every generation sooner or 
later has to face threats like this and somebody has to go and answer 
the call.
  If you believe they died in vain, then many, many, many others 
through other wars throughout the history of our country also did, and 
I don't believe it for a second, because I know that it is those 
patriotic Americans that have paid the price.
  I want to honor tonight Sergeant Paul Thompson III of Jefferson City, 
Tennessee; Sergeant First Class Stephen Curtis Kennedy of Oak Ridge, 
Tennessee; Sergeant David Thomas Weir of Cleveland, Tennessee, and I 
want to talk about his mom in a minute; Staff Sergeant Daniel M. Morris 
of Clinton, Tennessee; Sergeant John Michael Sullivan of Hixon, 
Tennessee; and Sergeant Terrance W. Prater of Speedwell, Tennessee.
  I want to say that Jackie Weir, Sergeant David Weir's mom, wrote me a 
letter which I received over the Memorial Day weekend. This incredible 
mom has on the bottom of her letterhead a quote from General George S. 
Patton. It says, ``It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. 
Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.'' This is on her 
letterhead. She gave her son for our country and its future.
  This coming Monday, I will be privileged to join my nephew with the 
181st

[[Page 14732]]

Field Artillery Brigade as they deploy for Iraq from Chattanooga. 
Jeffrey Watts is my nephew, so a member of our family is going as well. 
May God be with all of them, protect them and strengthen them.
  Because, as John Stuart Mill once said, ``War is an ugly thing, but 
it is not the ugliest of things.'' He said, ``The decayed and degraded 
state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth 
war is much worse.'' He said, ``A person who has nothing for which they 
are willing to fight, nothing they care more about than their own 
personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of ever 
being free unless those very freedoms are made and kept by better 
persons than himself.''
  That is etched in my memory, because I don't believe everything John 
Stewart Miller ever wrote, but I agree with that, that the alternative 
to war sometimes is complete loss of freedom, and it is tyranny, and it 
is terror all the time, and it is oppression. Without the courage to 
fight and stand up, that is where we may end up.
  It is easy to forget the timeline. I want to go through it. Then I 
want to recognize the gentleman from Michigan. The timeline though goes 
back a long time.
  Twenty-five years ago, April, 1983: A suicide car bombing against the 
U.S. Embassy in Beirut killed 63, 17 Americans.
  October, 1983: A suicide car bomb attack against the U.S. Marine 
barracks in Beirut kills 241 servicemen. A simultaneous attack on a 
French base kills paratroopers.
  November, 1984: A bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, 
Colombia, kills a passerby. The attack was preceded by death threats 
against U.S. official by drug traffickers.
  April, 1985: A bomb explodes in a restaurant near a U.S. air base in 
Madrid killing 18, wounding 82, including 15 Americans.
  June, 1985: San Salvador, El Salvador, 13 people are killed in a 
machine gun attack in an outdoor cafe. Four U.S. Marines and two 
American businessmen.
  June, 1985: A TWA airliner is hijacked over the Mediterranean, the 
start of a 2-week hostage ordeal. The last 39 passengers are eventually 
released in Damascus after being held in various locations in Beirut.
  August, 1985: A car bomb at a U.S. military base in Frankfurt, 
Germany, kills two and injures 20. A U.S. soldier murdered for identity 
papers is found the day after the explosion.
  October, 1985: Palestinian terrorists hijacked a cruise liner, the 
Achille Lauro, in response to the Israeli attack on PLO headquarters in 
Tunisia. Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly, wheelchair-bound American is 
killed and thrown overboard.
  November, 1985: Hijackers aboard an Egypt Air flight killed one 
American. Egyptian commandoes later stormed the aircraft on the island. 
Sixty people are killed.
  December, 1985: Simultaneous suicide attacks are carried out against 
U.S. and Israeli check-in desks at Rome and Vienna international 
airports. Twenty people are killed in the two attacks, including four 
terrorists.
  I am going on and on. There are 44 incidents in 25 years by the 
Islamic radicals. You can deny it if you want to. You can say this is 
all about Iraq if you want to. But I continue.
  April, 1986: A bomb destroys a West Berlin disco frequented by U.S. 
servicemen, killing one American and one German woman and wounding 150, 
including 44 Americans.
  An explosion in April, 1986, damages a TWA flight as it prepares to 
land in Athens, Greece. Four people are killed when they are sucked out 
of the aircraft.
  December 21, 1988: A bomb destroys Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, 
Scotland. All 259 people aboard the Boeing 747 are killed, including 
189 Americans, as are 11 people on the ground.
  February, 1993: A bomb in a van explodes in an underground parking 
garage in New York's World Trade Center killing six people and wounding 
over 1,000, 1993.
  April, 19, 1995: A car bomb destroyed the Murrah Federal building in 
Oklahoma City. This was not al Qaeda. We know what that was.
  November 13, 1995: A car bomb in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killed seven 
people, five of them American military and civilian advisers for the 
National Guard training center.
  June 25, 1996: A bomb aboard a fuel truck explodes outside a U.S. Air 
Force installation in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Nineteen U.S. military 
personnel are killed.
  July 27, 1996: A pipe bomb explodes during the Olympic games in 
Atlanta. That was also not them.
  June, 1998: Rocket propelled grenades explode near the U.S. Embassy 
in Beirut.
  August, 1998: Terrorist bombs destroyed the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, 
Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
  October 12, 2000: A terrorist bomb damages the destroyer USS Cole in 
the Port of Yemen, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39.
  September 11, 2001: It is all I need to say.
  April 11, 2002: Explosions at ancient synagogue in Tunisia leaves 17 
dead.
  May of 2002: Car explodes outside hotel in Pakistan, killing 14.
  June of 2002: Bomb explodes outside American consulate in Pakistan, 
killing 12.
  October of 2002: Nightclubs bombed in Bali, Indonesia, killing 202, 
mostly Australians.
  October suicide attack on a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, killed 16.
  May 4, 2003: Suicide bombers kill 34, including eight Americans, in 
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
  May of 2003: Four bombs kill 33 people, targeting Jewish, Spanish and 
Belgian sites in Casablanca.
  August, 2003: Suicide car bomb kills 12, injures 150 at Marriott 
Hotel in Jakarta.
  November, 2003: Explosions rock Riyadh Saudi Arabia, killing 17.
  November, 2003: Suicide car bombers simultaneously attack two 
synagogues in Istanbul, Turkey, killing 25 and injuring hundreds.
  March, 2004: Ten terrorist bombs explode almost simultaneously during 
the morning rush hour in Madrid, Spain, killing 202 and injuring more 
than 1,400.
  May 29 through 31, 2004: Terrorists attacked the offices of a Saudi 
oil company in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, taking foreign oil workers hostage 
in nearby residential compound. Twenty-two people dead.
  June, 2004: Terrorists kidnap and execute Paul Johnson, Jr., an 
American in Riyadh. Nearly a week after his capture, photos of his body 
are posted on an Islamic website.
  December, 2004: Militants believed to be linked to al Qaeda drive up 
to U.S. Embassy consulate in Saudi Arabia, storm the gates and kill 
five.
  July, 2005: Bombs explode on three trains in London, England, killing 
52.
  October, 2005: Twenty-two killed by three suicide bombers in Bali.
  November, 2005: Fifty-seven killed at three American hotels in 
Jordan.
  March, 2006: Two residents arrested in this country, one a Georgia 
Tech student.
  June, 2006: Canadian plot to behead the Prime Minister and bomb the 
Canadian Parliament. Seventeen arrested.
  June, 2006: Florida-based plot to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago, 
seven arrested.
  December, 2006: Chicago area Muslim convert arrested for plotting to 
attack a local mall and government buildings using grenades.
  May, 2007: New Jersey-based plot to attack soldiers in Fort Dix, New 
Jersey.
  Last week, another huge plot exposed to cause unbelievable damage at 
JFK Airport on an energy system that runs between New Jersey and New 
York.
  We sure better not ignore these threats. We better stand in the gap 
for the next generation and quit denying that these threats are 
mounting against us. I don't want our country to be the last country in 
the world willing to face this reality.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan, the Chairman of 
the Policy Committee here among Republican Members of the House, 
Thaddeus McCotter, an expert on these issues.

[[Page 14733]]


  Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Tennessee.
  Mr. Speaker, amidst these tumultuous times, it is often difficult to 
make sense of the stakes and the situations which confront us. But let 
us be clear: America in Iraq faces the prospect of a defeat, with 
consequences not only for this present generation of Americans but for 
future generations of Americans as well. Unlike Vietnam, the enemy will 
follow us home; and this is an enemy that is bent upon our destruction 
and the death not only of ourselves but of everything we hold dear.
  In similar times, as my colleague Phil English, the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania, earlier read, it was the moral clarity of individuals 
like President Roosevelt, who helped guide the greatest generation to 
their triumph over abject evil.
  This generation of Americans must retain their moral clarity to 
understand what needs to be done in the perilous present to get us to a 
better tomorrow. First, we need to step back and assess the situation 
in Iraq. The reality in Iraq is that we have one thing left to do as a 
Nation, and that job has been entrusted to our troops, who have done 
everything and more that has been asked of them.
  To date, Iraq is free, Iraq is sovereign, Iraq has a democratically 
elected government. The people of Iraq within the government are 
fighting side by side with United States forces to kill and capture al 
Qaeda and other terrorists and insurgents.
  And today we find ourselves struggling to attain the last goal before 
our troops accomplish the mission, and that is to give the new 
democracy a chance to survive in our absence. I say a chance to survive 
in our absence, because no free people, including ourselves, can ever 
be guaranteed that their liberty will last in perpetuity.
  Did not Benjamin Franklin tell us this when he said to his fellow 
patriots at the founding of our Nation, we will give you a republic, if 
you can keep it.
  The price of keeping that republic, or of any free nation, is eternal 
vigilance, to make sure that your rights are not eroded and you are not 
enslaved.
  At another time in our Nation's history, when we were sorely tried 
through the conflagration of war, it was President Lincoln who 
understood that a war for secession had become a war for the 
emancipation of an entire race so that our Nation could have a new 
birth of freedom.
  What we find in the Middle East today as we struggle to accomplish 
the last task in this mission is that our war for terror has been 
transformed into the war for the emancipation of millions of Muslims, 
so that the Middle East and our world can have a new birth of freedom.
  If we, as a nation conceived in liberty, who have seen the sorrowful 
sacrifice of so many of our sons and daughters throughout our history 
to retain that liberty, determine to turn our backs upon people we have 
given a cruel sip of freedom to before we abandon them, we must ask 
ourselves two questions: What do we as a nation believe anymore about 
ourselves and the inalienable truths upon which we were founded; and 
what manner of dedication can we portray to the world and to ourselves 
as to its preservation?

                              {time}  1930

  And then we must ask ourselves a very cruel question: What other 
nascent democracies under terrorist attack will the United States 
abandon? Because that is the question that the enemy wants us to 
confront in what they are doing in Iraq.
  If the United States is defeated in Iraq, and make no mistake, with 
the euphemisms that are bandied about, if we leave we lose, and the 
terrorists will remind us of this. The gutter snipe, Osama bin Laden, 
will be more than happy to proclaim it through every Internet site and 
every broadcast media available to him and his ilk for domestic 
American consumption.
  If we leave and are defeated in Iraq, everything that the enemy has 
done in Iraq will be transferred to Afghanistan. Already, as we found 
out earlier today, we have seen the hand of the Iranians in putting 
exploding devices and other material to support the Taliban insurgents 
against the NATO forces and our own U.S. troops who are part of that 
coalition.
  Let us not forget that it was in Afghanistan that al Qaeda, and 
especially bin Laden and others, learned to kill as they chased the 
Soviets out through measures that they are now applying in Iraq and 
Afghanistan. And let us not forget that an emboldened enemy will then, 
on much more familiar ground where the al Qaeda was housed before the 
attacks of September 11, it will prove a much more fertile ground for 
their incipient brand of insurgency, which we will have already been 
unable to quell in Iraq, which will now devolve into chaos and prove a 
safe haven for those who wish to kill us.
  But let us not forget, we have one thing left to do in Iraq. That is 
why it is so bloody, that is why it is so bitter, and that is why it is 
so frustrating to the vast majority of Americans. But if we maintain 
our prudence and perseverance and clarity, we can see this through 
until the mission is accomplished. We can see that the United States, 
which is a revolutionary experiment in human freedom, can remember the 
lesson that Lincoln taught us: When we extend liberty to the enslaved, 
we ensure liberty for ourselves. President Lincoln understood that 
liberty is not static. It does not remain in a perpetual stasis where 
we can enjoy our liberty while others have it denied unto them.
  If freedom is advancing or eroding in the course of human events, let 
us rededicate ourselves not only to accomplishing the mission in Iraq 
and Afghanistan so that our world can experience a new birth of 
freedom, let us rededicate ourselves to the proposition that we who are 
born into freedom also bear the responsibility where we can to extend 
liberty to those who also yearn to breathe free, as do all of God's 
creatures.
  Mr. WAMP. I thank the gentleman.
  We all desire a better course in Iraq. We all desire changes, not 
just General Petraeus' leadership and the increase in security forces 
from our country necessary to prevail in Iraq, but even more regional 
cooperation, and some of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group so 
that people in this country will truly recognize, especially in the 
Congress, that this is not our President's war. This is our country's 
war. This is our country's fight.
  Now a very prominent person from my State wrote a book called ``The 
Inconvenient Truth.'' He wrote it about the environment, but I have to 
say tonight on the floor of the House that a bigger inconvenient truth 
than the one he wrote about is the inconvenient truth that is lost 
around here a lot, that over half of the Democratic Members of the 
United States Senate and almost half of the United States House of 
Representatives voted to remove Saddam Hussein by force. Now, many 
people are running from that commitment and decision, but it is an 
inconvenient truth that they said it needed to be done and they 
committed us to doing it. And we went as a nation and there was not 
that much criticism as there is now, but it is convenient to blame or 
cast aspersions or to say that intelligence went wrong instead of 
accepting the responsibility that we removed a genocidal mass murderer 
from the world stage in an important time in the history of the Middle 
East and an important time in the history of the world.
  I have two pages, and I am not going to go through these quotes like 
I did the time line, but two pages of quotes from the most prominent 
leaders in the Democratic Party in this country saying why Saddam 
Hussein had to be removed by force.
  The quotes I will go through tonight, though, are from the terrorists 
themselves because I think they must be quoted so we understand what 
they are doing.
  Zawahiri, al Qaeda's top leader in the region now, we don't know 
where Osama bin Laden is, but Zawahiri said, ``The jihad movement is 
growing and rising. It reached its peak with the two blessed raids on 
New York and Washington. And now it is waging a great heroic battle in 
Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and even the crusaders' own homes.''

[[Page 14734]]

  Al Manar said, ``Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility to the 
Great Satan, America, is absolute. Regardless of how the world has 
changed after September 11, death to America will remain our 
reverberating and powerful slogan: Death to America.''
  Zarqawi said, ``They are aware that if this Islamic giant wakes up, 
it will not be satisfied with less than the gates of Rome, Washington, 
Paris, and London.''
  Bin Laden's top lieutenant said, ``The fire has not and will not be 
put out, and our swords, which have been colored with your blood, are 
thirsty for more of your rotting heads.''
  The leader of Hezbollah said, ``We have discovered how to hit the 
Jews where they are most vulnerable. The Jews love life; so that is 
what we shall take from them. We are going to win because they love 
life and we love death.''
  Zawahiri said, ``Knights under the prophet's banner, al Qaeda's most 
important short-term strategic goal is to seize control of the state, 
or part of a state, somewhere in the Muslim world.'' He wrote, 
``Confronting the enemies of Islam and launching jihad against them 
require a Muslim authority established on Muslim land. Without 
achieving this, our actions will mean nothing.''
  Osama bin Laden said, ``The whole world is watching this war and the 
two adversaries. It is either victory and glory or misery and 
humiliation.''
  Osama bin Laden has said, ``The most important and serious issue 
today for the world is this Third World War.'' That's what he said. 
``It is raging in the land of the two rivers, Iraq. The world's 
millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate.''
  These are the words of jihad.
  Before yielding to the gentlewoman from North Carolina, I would like 
to encourage people to open a book called ``America Alone'' by Mark 
Steyn. The gentlewoman has just finished the book. It is on our reading 
list as we are trying to educate Members of the House on the threats. 
We all know you can't believe everything you read. But if you do your 
homework and you follow people who do their research, reading is the 
best way to understand this threat.
  Let me say first, I am for pluralism. Every religious view is 
welcomed in this country, period. We are tolerant. It is a tenet of our 
foundation, religious pluralism is the American way. We do not believe 
in theocracy. It doesn't come with freedom, not our way. But let me say 
tonight, and this may not be popular in some quarters, that is not the 
Muslim way today. It is not.
  The Islamists, the radicals, are insulated within Islam and they are 
not being challenged by the rest of Islam. And they call for a global 
sharia. That is Islamic rule. There were challenges all around the 
world right now about whether Islamic law, their law, a theocratic 
system, trumps the laws of any country, including this country. And if 
you don't think this is infiltrating most of the countries around the 
world, you are not paying any attention. This threat is growing and 
rising.
  All you have to do is study the demographics that are articulated in 
this book and you realize that countries like our and Japan and Russia, 
they are actually declining in population. Our country is barely 
growing. The most rapid growth in the world is among the Muslim 
countries. Sheer demographics overtake us if the radicals continue to 
be insulated within Islam and not challenged because the numbers are 
exponential in terms of how many people are now willing to kill 
themselves for a cause. I could spend the rest of the night going 
through the latest statistics which ought to shock every American, that 
26 or 30 percent, depending on two different questions, of Muslims in 
this country, many of whom are citizens, believe it is acceptable, this 
is scientific polling 2 weeks ago, it is acceptable to blow yourself up 
for a cause. That's a problem. I have to tell you, that is not 
acceptable in this country.
  It is not acceptable that jihadism is fashionable or a way of life. 
How many people in the Muslim world now think that 9/11 was justified. 
I have to tell you, America is not perfect, we have made mistakes; but 
anybody in the world who apologizes for our country is wrong.
  And these apologists who somehow blame us for what happened are 
wrong. Many others are here to speak. I yield to the gentlewoman from 
North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Congressman Wamp for 
organizing this hour tonight and bringing together a group of folks who 
have similar feelings to his. I see several of my colleagues have 
joined us and so I won't take a lot of time. It is always hard to 
follow such eloquent speakers as Congressman McCotter and Congressman 
Wamp. They are both eloquent people, and I am pleased to be with them 
to add my few comments.
  As Congressman Wamp has said, I have been reading ``America Alone.'' 
I want to recommend it. It is written by Mark Steyn, S-T-E-Y-N. It is 
an excellent book. It is very, very readable, and it is very, very 
frightening.
  As Congressman Wamp said, if you don't do anything but pay attention 
to the demographics, you will have your attention gotten by this book. 
As he indicated, the United States of America is the only western 
country that is replacing itself in terms of population. It takes a 
birth rate of 2.1 to replace the population. What is happening in 
Canada, which I wasn't aware of, Canada has a birth rate of about 1.3 
right now, 1.4. All of the European countries have birth rates of 1.3, 
1.4, 1.2. Their populations are going to be cut in half within 35 
years. That is something that has never happened in the history of 
humanity. Their populations are going to be cut in half; and yet the 
Muslim populations are growing anywhere from 4.7 percent to over 7 
percent which means their populations are going to double in a very 
short period of time. And fairly soon, all of Europe is going to be 
predominantly Muslim.
  The title of the book, ``America Alone,'' we are going to be the only 
country in the free world that is increasing our population of people 
with western ideals, western religions and western thought. That is 
something we really have to be thinking about.
  I have been troubled, and I have spoken about this before, about 
statements that have been made by Democrats in this body when we talk 
about the war that we are in. They talk about failure. They talk about 
it being an impossible situation. Well, I want to try to tie this in to 
what Congressman McCotter was saying.
  When I meet with people and they ask me about the, quote, ``war in 
Iraq,'' I quickly say to them as kindly and as nicely as I can, we are 
not in a war in Iraq, we are in a war for the freedom of this country 
and the freedom of the world. If we lose this war, we are losing to 
radical jihadists who see that we have only two choices. We either 
convert to becoming Muslims or we should be killed.
  Now as Congressman Wamp says, we believe in pluralism in this 
country. We believe in inviting people to come to this country, worship 
as they please, but not to come here and try to impose their idea, 
their radical idea of the world on us. So I think it is very important 
that we all do that. We understand this is a war for freedom.

                              {time}  1945

  This country is the beacon of freedom in the world, and failure is 
simply not possible.
  I am very troubled again by the talk by Senators in the Democratic 
party who say the war is lost. It cannot be lost again. If it is, then 
we will go out of existence as a society and as a culture. We can't do 
that.
  We know that we're fighting against extremists. There's Sunnis, 
there's Shias and there's al Qaeda and their intent to fortify their 
influence in the Middle East and expand beyond it.
  The Democrats have claimed that a recently declassified National 
Intelligence Estimate concluded that the war in Iraq has made the war 
on terror more difficult to win, even though the terrorists see the war 
in Iraq and the war against terrorists as one and the same. They see it 
that way. We do not.
  But the NIE actually concluded that, should Jihadists be perceived to 
have

[[Page 14735]]

failed in their efforts to undermine democracy in Iraq, ``fewer 
fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.''
  So we have to defeat the terrorists. We have to defeat them not only 
in Iraq but in Afghanistan, in New York City, in New Jersey, anywhere 
that we find them. Because that is our mission, and that is what we're 
here for. If we don't want to see freedom and our way of life 
destroyed, then it's our responsibility to do that.
  And I will tell you that I am not going to allow the brave men and 
women who are fighting to maintain our freedom to think that all 
Members of Congress have no backbone and are weak-kneed and look only 
to political advantage. I want them to know that there's some Members 
of Congress who appreciate what they're doing, who understand the 
sacrifice that they're making and understand the consequences of our 
winning or losing.
  Mr. WAMP. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman.
  One of the most articulate and knowledgeable Members of the U.S. 
House of Representatives on radical Islam is Representative Trent 
Franks from Arizona, and I yield to him.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. As usual, 
he's always more kind than he should be.
  Mr. Speaker, today, as we embrace the grave responsibility of 
discussing an issue that will have a profound impact on future American 
generations, it seems very appropriate to remind ourselves of the ideal 
that gave birth to the United States in the very first place. We hold 
these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and 
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among 
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
  It puts us all on even ground, Mr. Speaker, but, whether we realize 
it or not, most of the important discussions in this Chamber, including 
the one in this moment, center around whether we still believe those 
words.
  In these hours, America finds herself at war with an inexpressibly 
dangerous ideology that is the antithesis of those words and everything 
that is the American ideal. What concerns me most, Mr. Speaker, is that 
this is a war between an ideology that is committed to the death and 
destruction of freedom and the subjugation of the entire world and is 
one waged against the world's free people who still remain primarily 
asleep.
  Mr. Speaker, this ideological war did not begin on 9/11. It began 
many years ago when certain Muslim extremists embraced a divergent 
Islamist dogma that dictates that all infidels must die. It was called 
then, as it should be now, Jihad.
  This is the same Jihadist ideology that murdered Israeli athletes in 
1972; that took American hostages in Iran; that murdered Marines in 
their barracks in 1983; that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, 
Riyadh in 1995, the Khobar towers in 1996, the embassy in 1998, the 
U.S.S. Cole in 2000; and that brutally murdered scores of little 
children on their opening day of school in Beslan, Russia. And then, 
Mr. Speaker, this same dark ideology massacred nearly 3,000 Americans 
on September 11.
  The ideology of Islamist Jihad leads to the practice of decapitating 
humanitarians with hacksaws on television while the victims scream for 
mercy. Just last month, one of those most recent videos on the Internet 
showed a member of the Taliban beheading a man accused of spying. That 
member of the Taliban was 12 years old.
  Mr. Speaker, that is a wake-up call to this planet if we will only 
listen. This same hatred causes Islamic Jihadists to cowardly hide 
behind women and children while launching rockets deliberately 
targeting innocent civilians, and continually breaking treaties of 
peace, and forcing children to blow themselves to pieces to effect the 
murder of other innocents, and all this while their mothers scream for 
joy.
  As we anticipate future actions of the Jihadists, we should consider, 
as Mr. Wamp has so eloquently said earlier today, the words of the 
terrorists themselves. And at the risk of repeating some of the things 
that Congressman Wamp said, I believe that these kinds of words are so 
important for America and for the people in this body to hear.
  Al Qaeda's Al-Zawahiri said this. He said, ``The Jihad movement is 
growing and rising. It reached its peak with the two blessed raids on 
New York and Washington. And now it is waging a great heroic battle in 
Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and even within the Crusaders' own 
homes.''
  Al-Manar said on BBC, ``Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility 
to the Great Satan, America, is absolute. Regardless of how the world 
has changed after 11 September, Death to America will remain our 
reverberating and powerful slogan: Death to America.''
  Al-Zarqawi said this of America's leaders, ``They are aware that if 
the Islamic giant wakes up it will not be satisfied with less than the 
gates of Rome, Washington, Paris, and London.''
  Al-Muhajir, Osama bin Laden's latest lieutenant in Iraq, said this. 
He said, ``The fire has not and will not be put out and our swords, 
which have been colored with your blood, are thirsty for more of your 
rotting heads.''
  Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, said this, ``We have 
discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The 
Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are 
going to win because they love life and we love death.''
  Mr. Speaker, then we hear Democrats in this body say things like, 
``The savagery of the terrorists is not relevant,'' or even the most 
senior Democrat in this House is quoted as saying, ``I don't take sides 
for or against Hezbollah, or for or against Israel.'' The senior 
Democrat in the other body said, ``This war is lost.''
  Mr. Speaker, that kind of blind relativism that deliberately ignores 
all truth and equates merciless terrorism with free nations defending 
themselves and their innocent citizens is more dangerous to humanity 
than terrorism itself, and it is proof that liberals completely 
misunderstand the enemy that we face.
  Osama bin Laden's deputy, Al-Zawahiri, said this. He made it clear in 
his book, Knights Under the Prophet's Banner, al Qaeda's most important 
short-term strategic goal is to seize control of a state, or part of a 
state, somewhere in the Muslim world. He wrote, ``Confronting the 
enemies of Islam and launching Jihad against them require a Muslim 
authority, established on Muslim land. Without achieving this goal, our 
actions will mean nothing.''
  For God's sake, I hope we're listening to people like that. Mr. 
Speaker, such a Jihadist state would be the ideal launching pad for 
future attacks on the West.
  Bin Laden himself has stated, ``The whole world is watching this war 
and the two adversaries. It's either victory and glory, or misery and 
humiliation.''
  Mr. Speaker, the terrorists regard Iraq as their central front in 
their war against humanity; and if we're to understand our enemy and 
this war, we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war 
against Jihad. Our courageous and noble soldiers understand that, and 
our enemy certainly understands that.
  Osama bin Laden himself said, ``The most important and serious issue 
today for the whole world is this Third World War. It is raging in the 
land of the two rivers, Iraq. The world's millstone and pillar is in 
Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate.''
  Mr. Speaker, if Democrats are correct that this struggle in Iraq is 
not crucial to winning the war against Islamist Jihad, then for God's 
sake I wish they would explain that to the terrorists, because they 
don't understand it.
  Brink Lindsey put this all succinctly. He said, ``Here is the grim 
truth: We are only one act of madness away from a social cataclysm 
unlike anything our country has ever known. After a handful of such 
acts, who knows what kind of civilizational breakdown might be in 
store?''
  Mr. Speaker, we simply cannot deny that we are fighting a war against 
an insidiously dangerous and evil ideology that is bent on the 
destruction of the

[[Page 14736]]

Western World, and they would like nothing better than to decapitate 
this country by detonating a nuclear blast 100 yards from here. To 
allow Jihadists to declare victory in Iraq will serve only to hasten 
such a day.
  The free nations of the world once had opportunity to address the 
insidious rise of the Nazi ideology in its formative years when it 
could have been dispatched without great cost. But they delayed, and 
the result was atomic bombs falling on cities in the world, 50 million 
people dead worldwide, and the swastika's shadow nearly plunging the 
planet into Cimmerian night.
  Mr. Speaker, Jihadists believe they have a critical advantage over 
the free world. They believe their will is stronger than ours and that 
they need only to persevere; and, Mr. Speaker, the words of neutrality 
and retreat have only encouraged them in that belief.
  We must realize that this is a war that is fundamentally a battle 
between good and evil, between light and darkness, between individual 
freedom and totalitarian repression; and we must realize that our enemy 
is absolutely blinded with an absolute hate for all the Western World.
  They also recognize that America is the flagship of human freedom, 
and if America allows terrorists to conquer us both on the battlefield 
and in our will to fight the result will be that humanity will be left 
to face a future that is dark beyond expression.
  Mr. Speaker, I think that probably Ronald Reagan could close this in 
the best way. He said to our soldiers who nobly fought in Vietnam, 
``Let us tell those who fought in that war that we will never again ask 
young men to fight and possibly die in a war our government is afraid 
to win.''
  And I'm afraid sometimes that we forget the heroism of the past. So 
let me just close with a prayer that one of our great Presidents, 
Franklin Roosevelt, said many years ago, as today we mark the 63rd 
anniversary of the D-Day invasion to liberate Europe from Hitler's 
fascism. U.S. forces alone sustained over 6,500 casualties in that 1 
day, twice what we've endured in 5 years in Iraq. Knowing the gravity 
of the operation, Franklin Roosevelt, one of the Nation's most liberal 
Presidents, said and allow me to close in those words:
  ``Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon 
a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, 
and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. They fight 
not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to 
liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill 
among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their 
return to the haven of home. Some will never return. Embrace these, 
Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom. And 
for us at home, fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and 
brothers of brave men overseas, help us, Almighty God, to rededicate 
ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice. 
And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; 
faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Thy will be done, 
Almighty God. Amen.''
  Mr. WAMP. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  Every Member of this body has an obligation to do their best to share 
their beliefs in what they think we face with the American people and 
their constituents. I believe that this problem in Iraq that we've got 
to do better with is not the end of this at all.
  For some reason, God spared us again with the JFK plot and allowed us 
to actually interdict that before another September 11 or even worse 
happened. For some reason, He granted us grace, but it is a matter of 
time, given the conflicts that we face.
  To the people, this Iraq conflict is a chapter in the war that is 
mounted against us, and it's not the end, anymore than the first 
bombing in 1993 of the World Trade Center was the end. We denied that 
it happened, but we weren't willing to address it, and September 11 
happened. But Iraq is no different in the long-term conflict which is a 
generational struggle with radical Islam.

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