[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 4527-4534]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          IRAQ WAR RESOLUTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this profound honor to 
have the opportunity to address you here on

[[Page 4528]]

the floor of the United States House of Representatives, the People's 
House.
  I would reflect that all week long, starting really on Tuesday 
morning, we have had a series of marathon debates taking place here, 
Mr. Speaker, marathon debates that ranged in the area of 12 hours a 
day, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday until after 1 a.m. this morning, 
taking up again this morning shortly after 8 o'clock, and then moving 
on until mid-afternoon, when we finally had a vote on the resolution, 
the resolution that was offered by the majority, the resolution that in 
one voice said, we honor the troops, and the other voice said, but we 
are opposed to the reinforcements and opposed to the surge that the 
President had ordered, the surge that is already in motion, the troops, 
many of them have already been deployed, and it is not possible to back 
out of this.
  So the voice that came, Mr. Speaker, to the people across this world 
was answered and was heard in a lot of different ways.
  On one side of it, the antiwar movement within the United States, the 
activists, liberal left, the protesters that are, at least if not the 
people that were in the streets during Vietnam, were descendants of the 
people that were in the streets during Vietnam, philosophically, if not 
literally, and in many cases it was both. They heard a message, which 
is, at every cost, the Speaker's leadership is going to drag our 
military and pull our Commander in Chief back of their commitment to 
the Iraqi people in the Middle East.
  And the other voice, a voice was heard by a number of American 
people, stalwart patriots, people who believe in the destiny of America 
and understand that there is a price to be paid by each succeeding 
generation because of the decisions that are made by the preceding 
generations. We are the recipients of the sacrifice of our Founders and 
of every generation's sacrifice, starting with the shaping of the 
Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, those veterans of the 
Revolutionary War, those who supported the effort in the Revolutionary 
War, those who shaped the Constitution, Mr. Speaker, those that built 
the economy, those that built the churches, those that built the 
schools, those that built the communities that link together, which is 
this greater American civilization, we are the beneficiaries.
  The decisions that they made July 4, 1776, to pick a point we all 
understand, we benefitted from that decision. And it was a hard 
decision. And it wasn't a decision that was made without great concern 
or without great debate. There was. And there was dissension on both 
sides.
  Some of the people that were opposed to freedom, a free nation, were 
identified as the Tories, the people that aligned with the British. 
They didn't think it was worth the price. They didn't want to risk the 
blood. They didn't want to risk the treasure. They thought that they 
could suffer the indignities and the injustices that were being poured 
upon them from the crown, and that was more tolerable than the price 
that would have to be paid for freedom.
  But freedom won out. Freedom was established. And they pledged their 
lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, and they did so knowing 
that they might very well lose their lives and their fortunes, but they 
would never lose their sacred honor. That was the creed that came from 
the Founding Fathers, and that was just the Revolutionary War. Of 
course, it was the biggest and most significant.
  But, shortly after that, we had another conflict, and one of those 
conflicts, Mr. Speaker, was one that started out over in the 
Mediterranean. The hostilities between the United States and the 
British concluded in 1783. That was when the military victory was won 
by George Washington, and that was when, also, the protection of the 
Union Jack that flew over the seas and the oceans was removed from the 
protection of our Merchant Marine.
  So 1783, our Merchant Marine, our ship sailing on the high seas, lost 
the Union Jack protection, the intimidation of the British Royal Navy, 
1783. 1784, American ships were attacked and boarded and pirated, and 
our sailors were forced into slavery, and the cargos were sold, and the 
ships were put back into the fleets of the Barbary pirates, the Barbary 
pirates being the predecessors of the enemy that we have today.
  And it is an interesting study in history, Mr. Speaker, to see what 
unfolded here in the history of the United States when we sent our best 
diplomats over to the Mediterranean to negotiate with the Barbary 
pirates. Those were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
  Now, I have here a copy, Mr. Speaker, this is of the papers of Thomas 
Jefferson, right here, volume nine. This is dated 1785, November 1, 
1785 to 1786. This is the report that Thomas Jefferson returned upon 
his conclusion of his diplomat mission to the Tripoli pirates.
  In a paragraph that he has written to the American commissioners and 
John Jay he says, soon after the arrival of Mr. Jay in London, we had a 
conference with the ambassador of Tripoli at his house. This ambassador 
of Tripoli was a representative of the Islamic Caliphate. And he says, 
he writes, ``We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the 
grounds of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them 
no injury,'' meaning the United States of America, ``and observed that 
we consider all mankind as our friends, who had done us no wrong, nor 
had given us any provocation.''
  In other words, the statement that came from Thomas Jefferson and 
John Adams was, to the ambassador from Tripoli, we consider you 
friends. We have had no hostilities toward you. We have not provoked 
you in any way. We are simply sailing our ships on the high seas and 
providing open commerce and trade like any country would do. Why do you 
attack us? Why do you kill us? Why do you press our sailors into 
slavery?
  Jefferson answered, The ambassador from Tripoli answered us that it 
was founded on the laws of their prophet, that it was written in their 
Koran that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority 
were sinners, the authority of the Koran. I continue quoting, that it 
was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be 
found and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners and that 
every Muslim who should be slain in battle was sure to go to paradise.
  That is from the negotiations that took place in 1786, and that is 
from Jefferson's report to John Jay.
  Now, here we are, 2006. We are going through this debate, Mr. 
Speaker, and I am hearing over and over again there is a reason why 
they hate us. We should understand why they hate us. If we could figure 
that out, maybe we could change our ways and we could find a way to 
accommodate our disagreements, because surely there are two sides to 
every argument.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, I am here to submit that Thomas Jefferson 
understood this thing clearly. He understood a principle that I laid 
out this afternoon in debate called nosce hostem, which is a Latin 
term. It comes from the Roman legions, and that is Latin for ``know 
thine enemy''.
  The Romans understood, and they were the most successful long-term 
military legions in history all the time up to that point and maybe in 
all of history. They had to know their enemy, and they had to 
persevere, and that is where that term came, nosce hostem, know thine 
enemy.
  Thomas Jefferson understood the same thing.

                              {time}  1730

  And, in fact, his curiosity and his compulsion to understand and know 
the enemy caused him to go out and buy a Koran, and that Koran was part 
of his opposition research, if you will. And Jefferson's being one of 
the most curious individuals as a figure in our history and maybe the 
most learned man of his time, he studied Greek so that he could read 
the Greek Bible and do the translation himself. He wasn't quite 
satisfied with just King James. He wanted to do that comparison because 
he was that much of an intellectual and he had that level of curiosity. 
He had the same level of intellectual

[[Page 4529]]

curiosity in understanding our enemy the Barbary pirates; so his study 
of the Koran, I am confident, concurred with his report back to John 
Jay that was handed over to Congress, that report that says they 
believe their path to salvation is in killing us.
  So Jefferson persevered in his endeavor to understand our enemy. He 
studied Koran, understood our enemy, put the report in place, and in 
that one simple paragraph is an explanation of our enemy today. And 
there is quote after quote after quote that have been brought forward 
here by my colleagues on this side of the aisle in the last several 
days that support that statement. Statements made by Osama bin Laden, 
statements made by Zawahiri, statements made by other leaders of al 
Qaeda where they say their religious duty, their responsibility, is to 
keep attacking infidels; infidels, being defined as unbelievers in 
their Koran; unbelievers, being those who have not sworn allegiance to 
Islam.
  And you saw that in that quote where he said that they continued to 
attack us wherever we might be found until we either converted to Islam 
or pay homage or are beheaded. And historically looking back, most of 
us recognize when we say ``leathernecks,'' that means the Marine Corps 
today. That nickname came from the Barbary pirate wars when they went 
to the shores of Tripoli, and our Marine Corps wore heavy thick leather 
collars, Mr. Speaker. Those collars were worn to reduce the number of 
marines that would be beheaded by the swinging swords of the Barbary 
pirates.
  The beheadings of today are not anything new. These are beheadings 
that go back throughout time, throughout the Crusades, clear back to a 
thousand years ago, Mr. Speaker. And our enemy believes they are 
fighting that same war. They carry that same grudge. But furthermore, 
it is a religious conviction on their part. It is not something that 
can be negotiated away. And to believe that we could resolve this 
conflict by negotiations is a myopic and naive position. We cannot. If 
that were the case, I am going to trust Jefferson would have found a 
way, Adams would have found a way, all of our negotiators in the past 
would have found a way. Some of them would have found a way at least.
  But we fought the Barbary pirates, and it was a herky-jerky, hit-and-
miss, not always successful effort. But we did occupy some land there, 
and we did force them into submission, and we did get a kind of an 
agreement to resolve the disputes. But the battles between Western 
civilization and the Barbary pirates and the radical world of Islam of 
that era really didn't end until 1830, and I am going to go on record 
here in the Congressional Record, Mr. Speaker, when the French 
culminated a military operation and occupied Algiers. When they did 
that in 1830, that was essentially, at least for modern times, the end 
of the violence. Scattered incidents to be sure, but for the majority 
the end of the violence between the radical Islamists who were the 
Barbary pirates of that era up until 1830 and then move us forward to 
about 1979 when these hostilities started again. They lay dormant. They 
were essentially in submission. They didn't have many tools to work 
with. Some of them had been colonized. And during that period of time, 
they didn't get ahold of governments. They didn't have a place to 
start. They didn't have an ability transportation-wise to come out here 
and attack the rest of the world.
  But things happened and we moved into the modern world. And when the 
Cold War was over and there was no longer this titanic struggle between 
the world's two Superpowers and that power vacuum, in came al Qaeda. In 
came the Taliban. In came the radicals to fill that void. And the 
philosophical support became there. The funding was there from oil. The 
real oil wealth began to pour into those Islamic states in the 1970s. 
And if you remember the oil cartels of that era, the gas lines here, 
Jimmy Carter's legacy, the 444 days of 52 American hostages paraded in 
front of the television, and the only way they were going to be 
released was to elect a President that they were afraid of. So that is 
why you saw the split screen of Ronald Reagan taking the oath of office 
and those 52 hostages being released at the same time. But that became 
the beginning of this constant battle that we have now with the 
jihadists of today. And they have been empowered by oil wealth, 
families that are wealthy, by the religious network of radical Islam.
  Now, to help explain this a little bit, Mr. Speaker, I use an analogy 
here that is something that I have not heard from anywhere else. I look 
around and I think how do I compare what is going on? How am I to stand 
up and say I am opposed to the radical Islam, these jihadists, without 
directly attacking Islam itself? Many times the President has made the 
statement that Islam is a ``religion of peace.'' I am looking for more 
evidence of that before I am going to step up and resoundingly endorse 
that statement, but I am not willing to indict them at this point, Mr. 
Speaker. I would rather compare it this way: I am going to say the 
radical Islam, the jihadists, are a parasite that lives on and within 
the host called Islam.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, when you think about what that means, a parasite 
living on and within a host, a parasite will ride on a host, feed off a 
host, reproduce off a host, drop off and attack other species, but also 
attack the host species. This goes on over and over again. And I could 
take you down through some different species of parasites to make my 
case, but it remains a biological fact that that is what a parasite 
does.
  A parasite doesn't respect its host to the point where it will 
refrain from killing the host. Sometimes the parasite will kill the 
host. Think in terms of a tapeworm that will draw all of the nutrients 
out of the host until the host becomes so scrawny and so disheveled and 
so weak that the host actually expires. That will happen. There are 
other parasites that will do the same thing, but there are many 
parasites that will attack more than one species.
  This parasite called radical Islam, these jihadists, attack many 
species. They attack every species of Homo sapien, for that matter. 
They attack Jews as their preferred target. They attack Christians as a 
preferred target. They attack capitalists as a preferred target. And 
when they can do a two-fer, a Jewish capitalist, a Christian 
capitalist, a Western civilization representative, secular capitalist, 
they are all for doing that because they know that that destabilizes 
the civilization that they abhor.
  This parasite called jihadists also attacks Islam itself. Moderate 
Muslims are killed in greater numbers than anybody else historically 
over the last 30 or so years because the destabilization that takes 
place is where they thrive. This parasite called jihad, the jihadist, 
lives and it grows and it thrives in an anarchy.
  So they are seeking to create anarchy. They are attacking the host 
called Islam, but a host will always provide that food. It will provide 
the transportation. It provides a home for the parasite. The parasite 
jihadist, radical Islam, lives within Islam. And so radical Islam goes 
to the mosques where they preach their hatred and they help sort out 
those that are truly convicted on the jihad side. The most radical of 
those are identified by their response, their reaction, and they are 
connected to and recruited out of the mosques. Many people who go to 
the mosques are peaceful people. They all aren't. And that is a center 
where the communication comes through.
  The language itself is another tool that helps this parasite called 
jihadists communicate. So the Arabic language itself is a conduit, Mr. 
Speaker; a common conduit through the language, a common conduit 
through the mosque system, a common conduit because of common 
nationalities and identification with each other. You tie that all 
together and then you pick the radicals out, and that is how you sort 
out the species of the parasite jihadists.
  But the host hasn't done much to eradicate the parasite from its 
midst. I haven't seen Islam step up and decide that they are going to 
eradicate radical Islam from their midst. No. For a number of reasons. 
One, they are afraid to

[[Page 4530]]

confront them. They don't know what the price will be. Another one is 
they are not quite sure they really want to side with the people that 
are on our side of this argument. Some of them are also dancing in the 
streets with their radical jihadists when something goes bad for the 
people on our side, this Western civilization, which I think 
encompasses the world that the jihadists are opposed to. Western 
civilization including Christians, Jews, the Judeo Christian ethic, the 
free market ethic, the liberal democracies that we have that provide 
freedom for people and give us this flexibility to define our own 
future. They hate freedom, as the President has said many times, and 
they attack freedom.
  So, Mr. Speaker, this is a difficult nut to crack. And I would like 
to charge Islam with eradicating that parasite in their midst. I do 
think it is part their responsibility, but I am not hearing them step 
up to this task. So I am looking forward to the day that that happens, 
Mr. Speaker, but until it does, we have a war to fight.
  We have a task ahead of us, and this task that is ahead of us is a 
great big, difficult task. And it is far more difficult today, Mr. 
Speaker, than it was a week ago because of the message that came out of 
this Chamber all week long, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and this 
morning up until mid-afternoon, and especially because of the vote; the 
vote that passed a resolution that said we support our troops and 
oppose their mission. I mean a third grader can figure out that that 
logic doesn't fit. You have got to do one or the other, and they are 
tied together. You don't send your military off and ask them to put 
their lives on the line for a mission that you don't believe in. And to 
say to them, ``I am all for you, buddy, but if you get shot over there, 
if you give your life over there, I can't say that you did it for a 
good cause because it is a bad cause.'' That is what got said over 
here.
  This is a good cause. This is a just cause, Mr. Speaker. And our 
troops have been undermined today and yesterday and the day before and 
the day before that. And now they have got to carry out a mission, and 
it is a lot harder than it has ever been over there.
  And our enemy has been encouraged, Mr. Speaker. They have got the 
words that have been said over here, these quotes put up. They have got 
to be all over al-Jazeera, over the Islamic blogosphere. There have got 
to be people dancing in the streets all over the land where they 
recruit our enemies because they know what this means. They know what 
it means because they study history.
  And, Mr. Speaker, I have studied history as well. And part of that 
history is, first of all, the United States of America is a Nation 
that, up until the conclusion of the Korean War, had never lost a war. 
We had been successful in every conflict that we had engaged in. And I 
grew up under that. I grew up with a military father and military 
uncles on both sides of the family. They sat around a lot and talked. 
The United States of America, of all the Nations in the world, has 
never lost a war. And the reason we haven't lost a war is because we 
believe in freedom.
  And you are a lucky young man, Steve King, for being born in the 
United States of America. You could have been born anywhere else, but 
you were born here. You are a recipient of that freedom that they 
fought for and each preceding generation had fought for. And I was 
extraordinarily blessed. I am, Mr. Speaker, but I was raised with a 
reverence for that freedom and the understanding of the price that was 
paid for it. And up until that time we had been successful in every 
conflict. They didn't quite define the Korean War except to say, well, 
we won that, but nobody talked about that very much.
  I bring this up, Mr. Speaker, because I picked up a book a little 
while back. I had to do a little searching to find it. And the title of 
the book is How We Won the War. By General Vo Nguyen Giap. He was a 
Vietnamese general who commanded their troops throughout the entire 
period of time that they were in conflict with the United States of 
America in Vietnam. And his comment in there that caught my eye first 
was ``It all began when the United States failed to win a clear victory 
in Korea,'' Mr. Speaker.
  If you remember, Korea was resolved in the early 1950s, I think 1952, 
but when it was resolved, it ended up being on the 38th parallel. We 
had pushed the Chinese back north of the 38th parallel. We had gone 
north to the 38th parallel with U.N. troops as well, and pushed back to 
the 38th. The resolution came, and we shut down the fight on that 38th 
parallel line, which is pretty much back to the same line before the 
invasion came from the North Koreans.

                              {time}  1745

  So it was fought essentially to a draw, and the line was the same 
line that the war began on. My father and their generation didn't 
acknowledge that we failed to win that war. They neither acknowledged 
or said or even implied that we lost it. I think we fought it to a 
draw.
  But when General Giap took over in Vietnam, Dien Bien Phu came along 
in the mid-fifties and the French had lost, and President Kennedy 
ordered our troops into Vietnam in 1963, by my recollection, and the 
Vietnamese had to look at what was coming at them. This big industrial 
Nation, this sleeping giant, formerly sleeping giant, there was only 
about not even two decades after World War II, a huge, powerful 
industrial, military and economic force in the world, was coming into 
South Vietnam to help support the freedom fighting people in South 
Vietnam. He had to come to a conclusion on how they were going to fight 
so great a nation.
  He had seen the French lose their resolve at Dien Bien Phu. They lost 
their resolve along the way. And he knew something Clausewitz had 
written about in his book on war years before, when Clausewitz said the 
object of war is to destroy the enemy's will and ability to conduct 
war. Will and ability, two factors that are the targets of war.
  Now, you can destroy the enemy's ability to conduct war. You can wipe 
out all their tanks and take all their guns. You can take their swords, 
knives and hatchets. They can be totally devoid of arms. But if they 
still have the will to fight, they are going to come at with you with 
sticks and clubs and fists and boots, if they still have the will. That 
is what Clausewitz understood. It is a two-section effort when you go 
to fight a war. You are going after the ability to conduct war, the 
enemy's ability to conduct war, and you are trying to destroy their 
will to conduct war.
  So as Giap analyzed that, he realized he could never destroy our 
ability to conduct war. We could always pour more and more munitions 
into the fight. We could send our ships and planes over and we could 
always pour more bombs in there and always could bring more soldiers 
in.
  So the strategy was how do you then attack, damage, weaken and 
destroy the United States' will to conduct war? And the North 
Vietnamese, General Giap in particular, recognized that their best ally 
in that war wasn't an AK-47 or a ChiCom grenade. What it was was the 
anti-war movement in the United States.
  So they encouraged that movement, and nurtured it and negotiated with 
it. And they brought Jane Fonda over there and put her in a gun 
emplacement in Hanoi, and that encouraged the anti-war movement here in 
the United States. They sent the photo-op back. There were a number of 
photo-ops like that.
  You heard from the great Sam Johnson at this very microphone earlier 
this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, when he talked about how the voices of the 
anti-war leaders in America were transmitted across loud speakers in 
the Hanoi Hilton where Sam spent far too many days, 2,500 days in 
captivity, and how those voices demoralized our POWs in Vietnam.
  But General Giap understood, we are destroying the United States' 
will to conduct war. The frontal assault on the will of the American 
people was going on relentlessly and persistently, and it says in his 
book, their best ally was the anti-war movement here in the United 
States.

[[Page 4531]]

  So here we are today, Mr. Speaker, and the enemy has been encouraged. 
There is nothing that came out of that side of the aisle that 
discouraged the enemy. I can't think of a single word, maybe one 
speaker, and that would have been a little bit qualified, that would 
have discouraged the enemy. Over on this side, just hearing Sam 
Johnson, if I were the enemy, my feet would tremble in my sandals.
  We have to understand that there are two parts to this war, the 
ability to conduct war and the will to do so. And we don't conduct wars 
here in the United States any longer looking at that as two different 
things we need to assault. We are trying to fight a nicy-nice war with 
limited targets and rules of engagement that keep our military from 
doing the job that they could do.
  There isn't a strategy to destroy the enemy's will to conduct war. It 
is just a strategy to destroy the enemy's ability, I should say limit 
their ability, try to shrink down the arms and funding they have coming 
in, and try to limit the transportation routes of the insurgents as 
they infiltrate into Iraq.
  That is not enough, Mr. Speaker, but at least we are in a position 
where we can go forward and win this war if the will of the President 
and the will of our military can overcome the encouraged and supported 
will of our enemy, which has been encouraged and supported by many, 
many voices here on the floor of this Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, I point out also the legacy of Korea and Vietnam. That 
legacy has already been reflected by one of the leaders of our enemy 
within Iraq, and this is Muqtada al-Sadr. He is the leader of the Madi 
militia, and he has been a thorn in the side of the United States for a 
long time. I identified him as somebody that had to go a long time ago, 
at least as far back as early 2004.
  I have to say in memory of Charlie Norwood, this man needs a dentist, 
and wherever he is going to go, Charlie is going to have no chance at 
him.
  But this individual, Muqtada al-Sadr, said over Al-Jazeera TV on the 
evening of June 11, 2004--I was in Kuwait City waiting to go into Iraq 
the next day--Sadr came on Al-Jazeera TV and said in Arabic, with the 
English crawler underneath, he said, ``If we keep attacking Americans, 
they will leave Iraq the same way they left Vietnam, the same way they 
left Lebanon, the same way they left Mogadishu.'' Muqtada al-Sadr, June 
11, 2004, and that was Al-Jazeera TV.
  That voice out of that man. And when I heard that, I concluded, he 
has read General Giap's book. He understands maybe not what happened in 
Korea, but he understands what happened in Vietnam. He understands that 
he has got to continue to fight, to break the will of the American 
people here, here in the United States of America, Mr. Speaker, because 
the last battle in this war, if the United States doesn't ultimately 
prevail, will be fought right on this blue carpet, right in this place 
right here. It won't be fought over there in Iraq, it won't be fought 
in the Middle East anywhere. It is here.
  Here is where our vulnerability is, Mr. Speaker. Here is where the 
battle needs to be fought, and here is where the battle needs to be 
won, for our posterity and for the liberty and freedom we have been 
passed from our Founding Fathers. Sadr knows it.
  I will submit this, Mr. Speaker: If we don't prevail in Iraq, and I 
believe that tactically we have every opportunity to do that, if we 
don't prevail in Iraq and Jack Murtha gets his way and troops come out 
of Iraq before there is a clear victory, then this man comes back into 
power. He is probably done talking about how to get Americans to leave 
Iraq.
  But I can tell you Osama bin Laden will surface, or Zawahri will 
surface, and I will bring their picture down here to the floor, Mr. 
Speaker, and I will make a statement then. But I make the prediction 
now, you will see a picture of either Osama bin Laden or Zawahri or 
whoever the leader of al Qaeda is, and underneath it I will put the 
quote from them which will go something like this: If we keep attacking 
Americans, they will leave Afghanistan the same way they left Vietnam, 
the same way they left Lebanon, the same way they left Mogadishu, the 
same way they left Iraq.
  And every time we lose our resolve and the legacy becomes the legacy 
that has been stipulated to us by Muqtada al-Sadr, it gets harder and 
harder to win the next war, harder and harder to have the will to 
conduct war, harder and harder to destroy their will, when they know 
that there is a legacy of us losing our will, us losing our nerve, a 
legacy of Members of Congress demonstrating a lack of spine, a lack of 
understanding of history, a lack of commitment to the legacy that has 
been handed to them and handed to all of us by our founders, Mr. 
Speaker.
  So, I would reiterate, nosce hostem, know thy enemy. War, according 
Clausewitz, the object of war is to destroy the enemy's will and 
ability to conduct war. No one can destroy our ability, but we don't 
have the will to match our ability. And that was proven here today, Mr. 
Speaker.
  And one of the members of the Democrat party said, and I applaud him 
for saying so, it does our military no good for the people on our side 
to sit in the corner and boo when they have been ordered into battle. 
We need to be on their side.
  Who would go into the bleachers and boo their home team and think 
somehow the home team was going to perform better? Who would believe, 
when you hear the voices that came out of here for the last 4 days, Mr. 
Speaker, or I go back to the presidential campaign as it went through 
for 2004, where we heard continually ``wrong war, wrong place, wrong 
time.'' All we heard from another Senator in Massachusetts, it was all 
a war cooked up by oil people in Texas.
  Voice after voice after voice of quasi-leaders of the United States 
have spoken, and it has undermined our troops and it has weakened their 
resolve, and it has empowered and emboldened our enemies. And when they 
are sitting in a hovel in Iraq making an IED and watching their Al-
Jazeera TV, Mr. Speaker, and they hear the voices that came out from C-
SPAN from the floor of this Congress, do you think that they make more 
bombs or less? Do you think they have more or less courage to plant 
them, more or less courage to attack Americans, more or less resolve to 
continue the fight, more or less perseverance because of the voices 
that came collectively from this side of the aisle and this Congress, 
Mr. Speaker?
  We all know the answer to that. The answer is they have more resolve, 
more persistence; they will make more bombs, they will attack more 
Americans, and more Americans will die because the booing from this 
section has encouraged our enemy, and I got to bury some of those 
soldiers in my district, as do most of us. And that breaks my heart, 
because I understand it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be, Mr. 
Speaker. It didn't have to be and it doesn't have to be. And others 
will say, but it is. It is the price of a democratic system and a 
democratic process. And they say it is patriotic to speak about our 
disagreements.
  So, if one yells fire in a crowded theater and 50 people are trampled 
to death on the way out and there was no fire, did they abuse their 
freedom of speech? And don't we know that there is a Supreme Court 
decision that says your freedom of speech doesn't extend to the right 
to yell fire in a crowded theater? Verbatim and specifically the answer 
to that, Mr. Speaker, is yes.
  So how can we give a pass to people whose words cost more lives? And 
beyond the lives, people's whose words alter our national destiny and 
make us poorer for it and diminish our potential and affect our future 
and burden our children and put them at risk, Mr. Speaker? I can't 
tolerate that.
  As I travel over to the Middle East and settle in and talk to the 
soldiers there on the ground, and I like to do that more than anything 
else over there, Mr. Speaker. I will walk into a room, maybe a mess 
hall, climb aboard a C-130. I will say, anybody over here from Iowa? 
There have been a couple of times there hasn't been. Most of the time 
there is somebody there from Iowa.
  I will sit down, and it is our immediate bond, and I will ask them 
what is

[[Page 4532]]

going on here on the ground? What do I need to know? What do you want 
me to know? And please rest assured I will not identify you or take 
that information to your officers. This is something for me, because it 
is my duty to do this kind of oversight.
  And I hear continually, I am proud to fight for freedom, I am proud 
to serve my country, Congressman, but why do we have to fight the 
United States news media too? Why is there a conflicting message coming 
out of Congress? Why do we have to take on that part of this battle? We 
are fighting the enemy over here. We need to know that Congress is 
behind us.

                              {time}  1800

  One of the lieutenant colonels that I travelled over there with made 
a statement to me in one of those late evenings as we were talking this 
over deeply and profoundly. I will not use his name either because I 
have not asked him that I could do so, but I will use the quote.
  And he said, Do not save me, pacifists; do not save me. I volunteered 
for this. I want to be over here fighting for freedom and liberty 
because I know the world will be a safer place. I want to take this 
battle on for my children so they do not have to live in fear and they 
do not have to carry on this fight.
  They are all volunteers, and they say do not save me. I will take my 
chances. I volunteered for this war. I want to save my children from 
this burden.
  Who are we? Who are we to micromanage a war and try to pull our 
troops out after all that blood and treasure has been invested in 
freeing Iraq and giving them an opportunity for freedom? Who are we?
  I had gold star parents, Mr. Speaker, come into my office a week 
before I last went to the Middle East. So this would have been the 
third week in November, and several families had lost a son or a 
daughter in combat over in Iraq or Afghanistan.
  We had a lot of profound discussions in there, and I listened to 
them. They had travelled over to Iraq themselves and taken on the risk 
to go there. They had met with Iraqis. They had been welcomed into the 
homes of the Iraqis, and the Iraqi people showered them with gratitude 
for the measure of freedom they have today, even with the insecurities 
that are part of that, the gratitude for the sacrifice that Americans 
have given, their lives for Iraqi freedom and American safety and world 
safety.
  And of all the things that were said, one that struck me the most, 
Mr. Speaker, was a father who had lost his son from California. His 
name is John. I have forgotten his last name, if I actually ever heard 
it, and he said, It is different now. You cannot pull out of Iraq. Our 
sons died there. They gave their lives for the freedom of the Iraqi 
people, and we are going to have more safety in America because of it? 
You cannot pull out of there. It is different. That soil is sanctified 
with the blood of our children.
  Mr. Speaker, I challenge anyone to look that man or a father in the 
eye and say I think I know better, I think we ought to concede, I think 
we ought to admit and pull out and declare defeat like somebody said 
this war cannot be won, cannot be won, cannot be won. If I put a word 
search on there, ``cannot be won'' over and over again, hundreds of 
times it got said here in the last 4 to 5 days.
  Mr. Speaker, I point out that Iraq, 80 percent of the violence is 
confined within 30 miles of Baghdad. You just look at the area that is 
there, Baghdad standing kind of alone in the middle. I checked this all 
out in the World Factbook just because that is where we go for 
information. Baghdad represents 1/2500th of the land area of Iraq, and 
we are saying we cannot prevail because 1/2500th of the land area has 
some people in there that are battling us? 1/2500th, one day of the 
life of Sam Johnson when he was in the Hanoi Hilton, one out of his 25 
days, 1/2500th of the land area of Iraq, and we want to say we do not 
have the will. Every ability in the world, but we want to say we do not 
have the will to persevere, even though that soil is sanctified with 
the blood of our sons and daughters.
  It will be a disgrace here on the floor of this Congress, Mr. 
Speaker, and I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. 
Sali) who I am sure came down here with his heart full and look forward 
to whatever he might have to say.
  Mr. SALI. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to tip my hat to 
the good gentleman for his efforts on the floor and for the compelling 
argument that he has made here.
  The idea that our young people, young men and women, have gone to 
Iraq, gone to Afghanistan, they have spilled their blood there for a 
purpose that would become meaningless if we withdraw without finishing 
the job over there, that is something that makes the discussion I think 
a little different.
  All of us are tired of the war. All of us are tired of the casualties 
that have been inflicted. What we have to do is keep our eye on the 
ultimate goal, what it is. Is it to quell a disturbance, a dispute that 
has arisen between different Islamic groups? No, it is not. It can 
never be.
  It has to be the security of the United States. For those folks who 
have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, for their lives to have meaning, we 
have to consider what that goal is.
  The national security of every person in this country, those 
interests have to be paramount to everything else that we consider. 
They have to be paramount to our distaste for the fighting that has 
gone on. They have to be paramount to every life that has been lost.
  Mr. Speaker, for those lives that have been lost to have meaning, it 
has to be that we will save more lives by their efforts that have been 
there than if we just pull up stakes and quit. If we do not get that 
job done, if those radical Islamists are allowed to declare a State, if 
they have a home, a base from which to operate, we will repeat the 
events that happened when the Taliban had a home base in Afghanistan.
  The recipe is before us. We have seen it before. We will have a 
repeat of something like 9/11.
  The only choice that we have as a Nation is to continue that job over 
there, to get it finished as best we can. Is there a perfect 
prescription for that? No, there is not. Is it going to be easy? No, it 
is not. Will we have more casualties? Unfortunately, we will, and yet 
we must continue this fight so we will not dishonor those who have paid 
the ultimate sacrifice to this point in the conflict.
  I thank the good gentleman.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Idaho, and I appreciate 
him coming down here and adding to this dialogue.
  I had a chance to collect my thoughts a little bit during that, too, 
and a number of points that I did not make here.
  First, I would like to say the argument is it is a civil war and we 
should not be involved in a civil war. We have been involved in a 
number of civil wars, and we will be involved in more civil wars. The 
same people who say we cannot be involved in a civil war say go into 
Darfur. Well, that is a civil war.
  The same people said we should have gone to Rwanda. I am one of them 
that thought we should have gone to Rwanda. It was horrible. We could 
have done something about it, but it was a civil war.
  And that list goes on and on, but let me define a civil war so it is 
a little more clear, Mr. Speaker, to the people that care, and that is, 
that you will be able to identify a civil war in Iraq when you see the 
Iraqi military and the Iraqi police force line up and choose up sides 
and decide they are going to start shooting at each other. They are not 
doing that. They are keeping order all that they can. They march 
forward in uniform. They stay together, and that is one thing that says 
it is not a civil war.
  Another one seems to me to be the most obvious and that has not been 
brought up here, and that is, I know of no entity of the five to eight 
competing factions within Baghdad that is trying to unseat the elected 
government of Iraq. It is accepted. The people went to the polls and 
voted in greater numbers percentage-wise than we do here in the United 
States, and they elected their

[[Page 4533]]

leaders. They ratified their Constitution. They elected their leaders, 
seated their prime minister.
  So Iraq is a country that is a sovereign country. No one is trying to 
unseat the government. It is not a civil war. Yes, there is sectarian 
strife, but it is not so much to do with religion as it is so much the 
power vacuum that is going on. It is not a civil war.
  We cannot constitutionally micromanage a war. The precedents for that 
are utterly weak throughout history, even though there was some 
struggle with that a number of times. But the precedent that remains 
was here in 1973, after Richard Nixon finished the Vietnamization 
process, moved our troops out of Vietnam, then a wounded President 
during the Watergate era was forced into a situation where this 
Congress shut off all funds from going to Vietnam, and that was on the 
land of Vietnam, in the skies over Vietnam and the seas offshore 
Vietnam.
  The bill, and I just looked at it again yesterday and I read it a 
number of times, the bill said none of these funds or any funds 
heretofore appropriated shall be used on Vietnam, over Vietnam or 
offshore in Vietnam, which kept all of our military from supporting the 
South Vietnamese Army which was defending itself after the Treaty of 
Paris and the resolution of that issue.
  Now the North Vietnamese broke the treaty. The South Vietnamese did 
not have support. They did not have munitions, which we promised them. 
They did not have air cover, which we promised them. We could not even 
do a naval bombardment to support them from the seas because this 
Congress jerked the rug out from underneath that. And the disgrace lies 
yet in our history books.
  Sam Johnson also went back to Saigon here just not too long ago, 
within the last number of weeks, and laid a wreath at the U.S. embassy 
where we lost 10 to 12 Marines as you saw them being air lifted off the 
top of the U.S. embassy. Ten to 12 marines does not sound like much. 
That was the cry and the agony of a Nation, but those 10 to 12 Marines, 
think in terms of the millions of skulls that are piled in southeast 
Asia that came in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the human tragedy.
  I would say, Mr. Speaker, that none of us could pick up one of those 
skulls in The Killing Fields, and say this was a Cambodian skull or a 
Vietnamese skull or an American skull. And I can tell you, God does not 
draw the distinction, but he understands what goes on in a conscience 
of humanity and the conscience of a Nation.
  One would think that this Congress, Mr. Speaker, would have learned 
from that colossal error and be able to stand and have enough resolve 
when we are in a situation where Baghdad is surrounded, and by the way, 
Baghdad is not a stronghold. I asked a commanding general at the time 
of our ground forces within Baghdad, and I said, What is this about a 
stronghold? Are there places you cannot go? He said we go everywhere we 
want to go. We go when we want to go there. Sometimes we do not want to 
squabble. Sometimes we go in there because we want to pick a fight, but 
there is no such thing as a stronghold. So that resolves that.
  I wrote an editorial a while back, Mr. Speaker, and released about 
December 20 because December 22 was the anniversary of General 
McAuliff's retort to the Nazis at the battle of Bastone. History will 
record, and you will remember, Mr. Speaker, the 101st Airborne in World 
War II was surrounded in Bastone. Bastone, a city that had seven 
highways coming to it, it was the confluence of the transportation and 
a critical area that had to be held and controlled for whichever side 
was going to be successful in the Battle of the Bulge.
  When the Nazis surrounded the 101st at Bastone and were mercilessly 
shelling them, they sent a message in that demanded our surrender. 
General McAuliff's response was, ``Nuts.'' Nuts, Mr. Speaker. Nuts, 
Nazis. They had to go all kinds of linguists and ask what does this 
mean? How do you translate this into German? It did not translate very 
well into German because that was the American spirit that echoed 
through that word, ``nuts.'' Nuts, we have got you right where we want 
you. We are going to stay and hold our ground.
  They did so, and to this day, the 101st will tell you, they did not 
really need Patton to relieve them, they would have won anyway. But 
Patton did come, history shows. They held their ground. Bastone was 
held. The Battle of the Bulge was turned back and the Nazi regime was 
destroyed forever because of American courage and American guts and an 
America that said ``nuts'' when they were surrounded in Bastone.
  Mr. Speaker, today, 2,499 parts of 2,500 parts of Iraq are 
essentially pacified, and are there under our control. Parts of Baghdad 
essentially are all that is left.

                              {time}  1815

  Baghdad surrounded, it is not a stronghold. And if we pull out of 
there, history will rule us as nuts. Nuts, a weak nation, a weak nation 
that didn't have the resolve, Mr. Speaker.
  I will put one more point in here, and hopefully I can get this done 
within the time that I have, and that is the straddle that is taking 
place with this resolution, Mr. Speaker. The straddle that gives the 
majority side of this thing an argument that they are right, no matter 
what the results are in Iraq. And that is, the way the resolution 
reads, they support the troops but oppose the mission.
  Then they go on and say, we are going to do a slow bleed. Jack Murtha 
says we are going to do a slow bleed and we are going to eliminate the 
President's ability to conduct these operations in Iraq.
  Well, all right. So if the President's plan succeeds and Baghdad is 
pacified and the government of Iraq grows stronger and more stable, you 
will hear from over this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, over and over 
again, ``See,'' they are going to say, ``we were right. It took us to 
encourage the Iraqi government and the Iraqi military to step up to the 
plate and do the job. If we hadn't done that, the Americans would have 
held their hand and been their training wheels forever. They never 
would have learned to defend their country.'' That will come out of 
that side if history makes it clear that we are successful in Iraq.
  And if we deploy out of there and Iraq turns into what I believe will 
be a disastrous chaos and cede the Shi'a region of the Iraq to the 
Iranians, who essentially have significant influence in there now, that 
would be 70 to 80 percent of Iraq's oil as well. It would give Iran 
control of the global export quantity of the oil. Iran would then have 
control of 42.6 percent of the oil that would go on the market, which 
is absolutely enough to control the market and enrich them 
fantastically and let them buy their nuclear capability and intimidate 
everyone in the Middle East and everyone in Europe and intimidate the 
United States as well. They would not be limited.
  That is what happens if we pull out and the catastrophe, not to 
mention the human catastrophe, not to mention all the skulls that will 
be stacked up in Iraq like they were stacked up in Southeast Asia to 
the numbers of 3 million. That is the catastrophe there, Mr. Speaker.
  But I am going to compare this. There was only one country that was 
guaranteed to be on the winning side in World War II, and that was 
France, because they were on both sides, Mr. Speaker. They were on both 
sides because you had Charles de Gaulle's freedom fighters, and they 
had gone into exile into Great Britain and continued their ``Free 
France'' battle going on. That was part of the effort, and we supported 
and helped them.
  But you also remember there was the Vichy French. The Vichy French 
jumped right into bed with the Nazis and they staked their claim there, 
and that was Marshall Petain. And the French, not much of their country 
was destroyed really in World War II. Paris certainly held together 
pretty good, and I am glad it did.
  But if the Nazis had won and prevailed, the Vichy French would have

[[Page 4534]]

emerged to the top. And then the French would have said, see, we got on 
the right side of this war, we avoided a lot of conflict, and Marshall 
Petain now is our president who is cutting a deal with Hitler. Or, as 
it turned out, it turned out to be Charles de Gaulle instead.
  Straddle the issue, go right down the middle, prepare yourself to be 
on the victorious or at least be right, no matter what the results.
  That is what this resolution does, Mr. Speaker. It allows the 
majority party and those that voted for this resolution to make the 
claim that they are right, no matter what happens. And they brought not 
one word of strategic plan to resolve this issue in Iraq. Not one. In 4 
days of debates, not a single plan came out of that side of the aisle, 
not one.
  None came out in the campaigns, either. They never stepped up and 
said, ``This is what I would do.'' Except some said, ``I would cut and 
run. I just wouldn't call it that.'' Some of that went on. But, beyond 
that, there was nothing, except they said we need a strategic plan, we 
need a better plan.
  And one of them came here to the floor and said, ``I used to command 
a carrier task force offshore of Afghanistan,'' which would be by my 
look of the map the Arabian Sea. And he says, ``My job now is to come 
here and plan a strategy to resolve the issue in Iraq.''
  And I reflected, Judge Louie Gohmert found himself wanting to 
legislate from the bench in Texas, so he ran for Congress because he 
knew constitutionally this was the place to legislate.
  But that Member, Mr. Speaker, if he wanted to micromanage a war, 
should have kept command of his task force and the Arabian Sea. This is 
no place, Mr. Speaker, to micromanage a war. Our job constitutionally 
is to fund it, and the Commander in Chief's job is to run it, and we 
have endorsed his authority to do that.
  As these amendments come and these appropriations bills come, one 
after another in this slow bleed that has been promised, we will know 
that the constitutional authority doesn't exist to do that. The 
President has the authority to take the money that has been 
appropriated and to do intradepartmental transfers and I will say 
interdepartmental transfers as well to fund the military however he 
sees fit to protect this Nation.
  And if this party sees fit to starve our military and put them at 
risk, then woe are we. But they have also taken responsibility for the 
results of this war by this.
  So I will say, Mr. Speaker, this resolution that passed here on the 
floor today, it assists our enemy. It assists our enemy. It assuages 
our enemy. It encourages our adversaries. It provides benefit for our 
enemies. It encourages the bad guys. It provides comfort and charity to 
the criminals. It encourages and exhilarates our enemy. It provides 
favor and gifts to the enemy, our foe. It is a handout. It is help to 
the insurgents. It is relief and reward for the opposition. It is 
salvation and succor for terrorists. It emboldens and encourages.
  This day on this floor of the United States Congress will live in 
infamy, and I pray it may not be a precedent for the future of America 
and for our national destiny.
  Mr. Speaker, I would make another point, and that is I have decided I 
will follow General Petraeus, and you have decided you will follow 
General Pelosi.

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