[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 7246-7250]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE MIDDLE EAST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. McNerney). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. GILCHREST. I thank the Speaker for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, tonight I would like to talk to you and the American 
people about the troubled Middle East.
  American troops are serving in Iraq and Afghan as we speak. They are 
stunningly competent and, to some extent, they are implementing a 
policy that is flawed.
  America is behind the troops. Members of Congress are behind the 
troops. We want to bring independence, a sense of freedom and justice, 
certainly democracy to this troubled area of the world. But I think in 
order for us, the policymakers, to develop a policy that is as 
competent as those troops are competent that carry out the policy, then 
there is some knowledge that we need to acquire. So, what I would like 
to do tonight is talk a little bit about the present crisis in Iraq and 
the way forward.
  In order to understand the present crisis in Iraq, and the way 
forward, which, yes, we can say, can lead to stability, can lead to 
peace, respect for the rule of law, human dignity, justice and 
democracy, we need to acquire information to have a better 
understanding of that region and the present crisis.
  So what I would like to do is give a brief history of the Cold War 
and the United States' involvement in that, during the Cold War what 
was going on in the Middle East, touch on the present crisis that we 
are now seeing since 2003, and then, how do we solve this particular 
situation?
  Before I get into that information, I would like to share with you, 
Mr. Speaker, and Americans where in part some of this information I 
will give to you tonight has come from. And so I would like the 
listeners, Mr. Speaker, and I will say this twice during my address 
this evening. I would like them to get a piece of paper and a pencil, 
because I want them to write down the name of some of these books. 
There are not a lot of books. I am not talking about 100 books or 50 
books or 20 books, although there are many out there. I am just talking 
about 10 books that can be easily read in a relatively short period of 
time.
  And what I would ask the readers to do, or in this case if they read 
the books, the listeners, out across the landscape: You support the 
troops. You may have a son, a daughter, a father, a brother, a cousin, 
some relative, a friend in Iraq or Afghanistan, and you want America to 
rise up and support the troops. You want America to rise up and have a 
shared sacrifice in this huge endeavor that we are now involved with.

                              {time}  2145

  But you are not quite sure how to do that. We are not collecting tin 
cans for the troops. We are not storing or sending cans of food. We are 
not using less gasoline, although we should, to support the troops. 
What specifically are

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we doing as individual Americans to support the troops and understand 
the policy in which those troops are implemented?
  I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the listeners starting tonight 
turn the television off every night for as long as it takes to really 
understand, deeply understand the policy in Iraq. Understand the 
history, the intrigue, the violence, the complexity of the troubled 
area, the Middle East. So I would ask the listeners, you might have 
some interesting shows you like to watch occasionally, but I would ask 
the listeners to put on your calendars two hours every night you are 
not going to watch television. What are you going to do for those two 
hours, you are going to support the troops. How are you going to 
support the troops? You are going to become knowledgeable in the issues 
in which the troops are involved. You are going to become knowledgeable 
in the issues that Members of Congress should know and debate and come 
to some resolution on.
  Here are the books. Number one, ``A Letter to America,'' very easily 
read. It is a message of hope through difficult times by a former 
Senator from Oklahoma, David Boren. ``A Letter to America.'' Pick it 
up. You can read it in a day, but it will take a few nights. Take a 
look at it. You will have some understanding where this Nation is right 
now in the 21st century.
  The next volume is a paperback by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, 
you've heard of it, Iraq Study Group. ``The Iraq Study Group Report'' 
gives a clear vision on the way forward in Iraq. Take a look at it. It 
is not very long either.
  The next one is a little heavy reading by Thomas Ricks. It is called 
``Fiasco.'' It gets deep into the complexities of why there are still 
continuing difficulties in the war in Iraq especially.
  Just a thought about that. A few years ago we saw ``Mission 
Accomplished'' on a huge aircraft carrier out in the Pacific Ocean. I 
am not going to make a comment about whether ``Mission Accomplished'' 
was appropriate or not appropriate, but there was a remark by a defense 
intelligence analyst right at that moment who said Israel won the war 
with the Arabs in 1967 in 6 days. They won that war in 6 days in 1967. 
Forty-one years later the struggle continues. Read ``Fiasco.'' It gives 
you some sense of the problems and difficulties and mistakes that the 
policymakers made in Iraq that the troops, stunningly competent, are 
trying to implement.
  The next is by a retired marine general, Tony Zinni, ``The Battle for 
Peace.'' The struggle for peace in the Middle East will take everything 
we have: a strong military, a strong and vibrant intelligence 
apparatus. But the thing that is vital in this particular conflict is 
dialogue, consensus, talking to your friends and foes.
  Number five is ``Violent Politics'' by William Polk. He worked for 
President Kennedy and President Johnson. ``Violent Politics.'' It is 
not what we see here arguing. ``Violent Politics'' is about wars of 
insurgency when there is no dialogue and diplomacy has failed and small 
groups of people supported by the population in the region continue to 
fight. It will give you an understanding what we are going through 
right now in Afghanistan and Iraq.
  Number six is by Trita Parsi, ``Treacherous Alliance.'' It is a 
fascinating book because it shows for 30 years the Israelis and the 
Iranians, the Iranians who are Persian, not Arab, speak Farsi, not 
Arabic, the Iranians had a quiet alliance where they traded oil for 
technology with Israel. Israel was allied with Iran mainly because they 
had similar enemies. Israel was an enemy of the Soviet Union; so was 
Iran. Israel was an enemy of many Arab countries; so was Iran.
  Book number seven, ``All the Shah's Men'' by Stephen Kinzer. It is 
about Iran and its relationship with Britain and the United States in 
the 20th century, mainly the first half of the 20th century, where 
Britain and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which is now British 
Petroleum, extracted huge amounts of natural resources, mostly oil and 
natural gas from Iran without the Iranians knowing or being able to 
know how much was leaving and how much they were being paid. It is a 
fascinating book about how the United States made a mistake during the 
Cold War in its relationship with Iran which festered until 1979.
  Number eight is ``The Silence of the Rational Center'' by Halper and 
Clarke. Scholars and diplomats from great institutions in the United 
States, universities, including retired diplomats, speak out about what 
America needs to do in the 21st century, and ``The Silence of the 
Rational Center'' are those people who have great information, have 
years and decades of experience in different areas of the world, 
especially the Middle East, have been silent about a better way, more 
and better sophisticated policy. It is not just enough to know 
something, you have to act on that knowledge.
  Number nine is a fascinating book by a man called Archimedes Patti 
who was in the OSS. That is the Office of Strategic Services, the 
forerunner of the CIA, who met Ho Chi Minh in 1945 because Ho Chi Minh 
and the Viet Minh were helping the United States track Japanese troop 
movements in Southeast Asia because the French were not willing to do 
that for the United States. And Ho Chi Minh talked and discussed 
issues, including the wording of the soon-to-be-independent Vietnam 
about their declaration of independence which Ho Chi Minh, talking with 
Archimedes Patti, wanted it to be very similar to our Declaration of 
Independence, much of the words written by Thomas Jefferson. The name 
of the book is ``Why Vietnam?'' It gives you an understanding of the 
intrigue, the complexity, the foreign policy issues, the conflict 
issues, the economic issues, the criminal issues, the deception that 
was perpetrated in that region of the world back in 1945. The book goes 
from 1940 to 1954, ``Why Vietnam?'' Archimedes Patti. It will give you 
a fascinating understanding, along with these other books, about the 
intrigue, the complexity, the violence and sometimes the tragedy of how 
these very complex issues are handled.
  The last book, Mr. Speaker, is called ``Human Options'' by Norman 
Cousins. That is a book about choices and how we make them, how we make 
decisions.
  I use that as the last book because I want to start our discussion 
tonight with two quotes from Norman Cousins' book ``Human Options.'' 
The first quote is: ``Knowledge is the solvent for danger.'' Knowledge 
is the solvent for danger. The more you know when you are going into 
any situation, you are going to benefit from that knowledge. 
Preparation, understanding, to develop a policy, is so critical.
  The troops in Iraq are stunningly competent because they are 
prepared. They are trained. They learn things. They know things. The 
integration of integrity with their fellow soldiers, and now their 
fellow Iraqi soldiers, and the Iraqi citizens. The integration of 
integrity happens because they are prepared.
  How prepared are the policymakers in their knowledge, in their 
information, in their ability to integrate their integrity with their 
fellow members in the international community? You as American citizens 
can be knowledgeable and help resolve this conflict.
  The next quote by Norman Cousins in his book ``Human Options'' is: 
``History is a vast early warning system.'' I have heard for a long 
time about many conflicts we have experienced. Even in Iraq, I hear 
many of the people in the administration who are retired or have left 
the administration say, ``If we only knew this in 2003.'' ``Well, if we 
knew that, we would have done things differently.'' I have heard that 
about the Vietnam war for decades.
  ``Well, if we knew back then what we know now, things would be 
different.'' That is a bad excuse. That is a bad excuse because if you 
are knowledgeable, if you are prepared, if you want to know things, if 
you had a broad enough mind to view the majesty of this complex world 
in all of its dimensions, you would understand that hindsight is 
nothing more than understanding history to make better decisions.
  Rudyard Kipling, a British writer whose son was killed tragically in 
World War II in northern France resolved his sadness by saying this: 
``Why did young men die because old men lied?''

[[Page 7248]]

  We can take Robert Kipling's phrase to try to heal his soul because 
of the loss of his son, we can paraphrase it today and say: Old men 
should talk before they send young men to die. And that is what we 
should do.
  And it is not just talking to Maliki or our friends in Iraq, it is 
talking to all of the different factions in Iraq, whether they be Sunni 
or Shia or Kurds or any of the other factions that are there. And we 
should also be talking through dialogue with the Iranians and the 
Syrians. We should be talking to the full length and breadth of people 
in the Middle East because if we just focus on a few over-simplified 
issues in Iraq, the resolution will be long in coming.
  The Israelis won the 1967 war in 6 days; 41 years later that conflict 
is still a tragedy.
  Let's take a look at the Cold War and some of the incidents that 
occurred after World War II. We finally resolved the Korean War, at 
least to continue in a dialogue for decades, but only after 54,000 
Americans were killed. And many, many more wounded.
  In the 1950s, Khrushchev said on a number of occasions, the leader of 
the Soviet Union, pointing his finger at Americans in the U.N., in 
speeches around the Soviet Union and speeches around Eastern Europe he 
said we will bury the United States. Well, what was President 
Eisenhower's response to Khrushchev's volatile rhetoric? President 
Eisenhower invited Khrushchev to the United States to have a dialogue. 
They visited cities and the suburbs. They visited factories and farms. 
They went throughout the United States, and what was the sense of 
Americans when Eisenhower invited Khrushchev to the United States, our 
number one enemy with nuclear weapons pointing at America, what was 
America's response to Eisenhower inviting the enemy of this country 
here? America welcomed Premier Khrushchev. America was relieved because 
now we can have a dialogue and learn about each other. America 
responded in a positive fashion because they were sick of war, World 
War II and Korea on its heels.
  When Kennedy found out that there were deployable nuclear weapons in 
Cuba pointing at the United States, 90 miles from our shore, those 
nuclear missiles were minutes from the United States. What was 
Kennedy's response? Let's quickly talk to the Soviets and see if we can 
resolve this issue without war and conflict, without bloodletting. 
Let's resolve the issue, and the issue was resolved and the missiles 
were removed.
  Communist China Mao Zedong said many times it would be worth for half 
the population of China to die in a war with the United States as long 
as we could get rid of the United States. This was an enemy of the 
United States.
  What was America's reaction when Nixon went to China? They were 
relieved. They were glad. The bloodshed, the violence, the sadness, the 
tragedy is avoided through a dialogue, through a conversation by 
learning how to see the world through the Chinese eyes, by learning how 
to see the world through Khrushchev's eyes, by learning how to see the 
world in all of its complexities and difficulties.

                              {time}  2200

  The other conflict that I have to mention here, Mr. Speaker, is the 
Vietnam war. 58,000 Americans dead, well over 100,000 wounded. A 
million Vietnamese dead.
  Ho Chi Minh, a small, frail, sickly old Vietnamese man, who wanted 
sovereignty from the French; he wanted his independence. He was tired 
of French colonial rule. He was tired of Japanese oppression. He didn't 
want the British to come in and colonize another section of Southeast 
Asia. He wanted his freedom.
  Because of that misunderstanding, because we didn't go to Hanoi and 
talk to Ho Chi Minh; some Americans did but it never worked its way up 
to the White House, we had a conflict, we had tragedy, we had war. We 
had a problem.
  The present crisis in Iraq, how do we see it?
  Well, in the Middle East, three great religions, for centuries, these 
religions have lived together. They've shared joy and they've shared 
sorrow. For centuries there was laughter or there was blood letting. 
There was community or there was death. It's a complicated place.
  Faith, to each of these three world religions, Judaism, Christianity 
and Islam, is an important part of everyday life throughout the Middle 
East. They all come together in Jerusalem. They all have an important 
part of that city that emanates throughout the Middle East.
  In the Middle East, oil exports are the economy. Economic viability 
depends upon oil exports. Because of the war in Iraq, because of the 
crash of the Soviet Union, because of the war in Afghanistan, because 
of other problems, the geopolitical balance of power is fractured right 
now.
  Who will be more influential in the Middle East? It's not going to be 
Europe. They pretty much left there after World War II. Most of the 
countries do not want Russia. They feel that Russia, an atheistic 
country, has not found its soul yet. The Middle Eastern countries don't 
want China to have that much influence, because China, they know, is 
after the resources.
  The geopolitical balance of power is fractured. Who still do the 
countries of the Middle East look to for resolving this and creating a 
better climate for a balance of power for the economy, for an 
integrated security alliance similar to what we have in NATO or SEATO 
or the Organization of American States or the European Union or other 
places? They still look to the United States.
  And the world is still waiting for the United States, since the focus 
of the Middle East came after 9/11. They're still waiting to see how we 
can not only resolve the issues between the Shiia, the Sunnis and the 
Kurds in Iraq, but how do we bring all of the Middle East together.
  How do we separate to the American mind the difference between the 
Shiia, the Kurds, the Sunnis, al Qaeda, and the Taliban and Wahhabiism? 
They're all very different forms of Islam.
  The Iranians, for example, are bitter enemies of al Qaeda and the 
Taliban. The Wahhabis, mostly in Saudi Arabia, are not bitter enemies 
of al Qaeda or the Taliban. The government of Saudi Arabia may keep 
them at arm's length, but many of the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia, have a 
relationship with the Taliban and al Qaeda. Virtually nobody in Iran 
has a relationship with al Qaeda and the Taliban. A pretty complex 
place, the Middle East. The more we know about it the better able we 
are to deal with it.
  The war in Iraq, it's a war. There's a war in Iraq. But ask this 
question. Where are the munitions factories that we can bomb like we 
did in Germany and Japan and Italy? Where are the large troop 
concentrations that can be decimated? Where are the supply lines that 
we can cut off?
  It's not that kind of war it's a war of insurgency. It's a war of a 
few radical people who are supported by the vast population, by their 
tribes, by their relatives, by people across the vast reaches of the 
Middle East. Political violence is an insurgency, but it's a different 
kind of war.
  The present crisis in Iraq has taken 34,000 American casualties. What 
does that mean? That means over 4,000 Americans are dead. Over 30,000 
Americans are wounded and have lost limbs, have lost good brain 
function, cannot walk, have Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome.
  And what's post-traumatic stress? It's when you see pretty violent 
acts. Someone is blown up, someone is shot and killed. You pull the 
trigger of your rifle and someone dies. That's a pretty traumatic act. 
Do you forget that? Not for the rest of your life. You come home and 
that image comes in the forefront of your thoughts because of a smell, 
a sound, something you see, something you feel that will be with you 
for the rest of your life.
  Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome is virtually 100 percent of anybody in 
combat. Now, most are able to digest that and deal with it and go about 
their daily lives and compartmentalize those horrific incidents, but 
many are not.
  Over $600 billion so far in the war in Iraq. How engaged are the 
Americans

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in the war in Iraq? How often do they discuss the issue at the mall, at 
the movies, at the grocery store, at parties? How often is this issue 
discussed?
  There's a sense of apprehension about the war in Iraq. Americans are 
disturbed. They want it to end. But how engaged are we in the war in 
Iraq?
  There's global dissent. We look around the globe, we look at many of 
our allies, many of them said we should not have gone in to Iraq. One 
of our strongest allies in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, says that the 
U.S. war in Iraq is illegal. That's really interesting.
  But we should understand, do we ever question them about that? Do we 
have a dialogue with the Saudis about that?
  The present crisis is still very difficult. Now, should we leave Iraq 
right now? Should we send all the U.S. troops down into Basra, bring 
Navy ships up there, load them on the ships and bring them home? Should 
we do that right away?
  Well, look what happened in Mogadishu some years ago when the 
Americans left. It was chaos. There was rape, murder and mayhem. The 
criminals took over. We don't want another Mogadishu in Iraq. So we 
shouldn't leave right away. We need to be responsible about how we deal 
with it. But as we gradually pull out, how many American troops do we 
leave?
  And unless some of the politics are resolved, both in Iraq and the 
Middle East, we may have another French Dien Bien Phu, 1954 Vietnam, 
when the French pulled most of their troops out of Vietnam and the last 
remaining troops were surrounded by the Vietnamese, and many Frenchmen 
lost their lives.
  General Petraeus says there's no military solution in Iraq. Is there 
a political solution under the present circumstances?
  If we just look at Iraq, like many of us do, just Iraq, there is no 
political solution and there is no military solution. If we just look 
at Iraq in isolation, that's simply not going to happen.
  What we need to do is look at Iraq in the broader context of the 
Middle East. American troops right now, it's understood, are the 
skeletal structure upon which the entire Iraqi society depends, so you 
can't pull them out. But how long do they stay?
  And if there's no military solution, how do you deal with this 
politically?
  Well, the first step is to understand the Middle East and what drives 
radicals to run to al Qaeda or the Taliban. What drives Arab and 
Islamic fundamentalists to hate the United States?
  The Palestinian Israeli question has been going on since 1948. 
Palestine was created, Israel was created out of the region, the former 
British protectorate, Palestine, after the war, after the Holocaust, 
when the world felt that they needed to do something for the Jews who 
lost six million of their fellow citizens during World War II in Nazi 
concentration camps.
  Since 1948, the Arabs and the Palestinians, the Palestinians and the 
Israelis have been fighting, since 1948. So the United States needs to 
engage, as we've started, but more fully engage as an objective 
arbitrator of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. 
And the Arabs need to see that. We need to do that because it's the 
right thing to do. It's the ethical thing to do because both the 
Israelis and the Palestinians need and justly deserve peace, the rule 
of law and to raise their children out of harm's way. But the Arab 
world needs to see the United States working on this issue in a very 
objective fashion.
  And we need to engage the Saudis, because the Saudis are Sunnis, and 
there are Sunnis in Iraq, but there are Shiias in Iraq. And the Saudis 
have some fear that Iraq, if left unattended, can become an Iranian 
satellite. And the Iranians are Shiias. This sounds all pretty 
confusing, but it shouldn't be confusing at this point. It's year 2008. 
The war started in 2002. And so Americans need to be more engaged in 
some of these issues.
  The Saudis need to know that Iraq is not going to become an Iranian 
satellite. And we need to assure them that that's the case so they can 
work constructively with the Sunnis in Iraq.
  The Iraqis need to know that the Americans aren't going to abandon 
them. But they also need to know we're not going to stay there for 100 
years, certainly. They also need to know that militarily, this conflict 
which is an insurgency, is not going to be won unless there's a 
political solution.
  And the Iranians, who we should talk to, need to know that the United 
States, eventually, will become one of their allies, and the United 
States will help the Iranians find a way to stabilize the mess in Iraq.
  Eisenhower said that there were three things the United States needed 
to do in order to remain strong. Three. We needed a strong military, we 
needed the best intelligence of the world we could gather in the world, 
and the third leg of that stool was consensus and dialogue.
  We have the strongest military in the world. We should not be afraid 
to talk to anybody. We have the best intelligence in the world, 
especially if it is objectively analyzed. But we need to engage our 
enemies, as well as our friends, in a conversation, in a dialogue.
  When President Kennedy invited Kruschev to the United States to talk 
about issues, this was not Chamberlain telling Hitler he could have a 
piece of Czechoslovakia. This was not a compromise that started World 
War II. When Kennedy brought Kruschev to the United States it was from 
a position of strength, and it was a dialogue and we avoided tragedy 
and death and suffering. Eisenhower and Kennedy, Richard Nixon did the 
same thing.
  We should talk to the Iranians without any preconditions. This is not 
giving in to the Iranians. This is showing the rest of the world who 
the Iranians are and what the Iranians are really like. The United 
States is bargaining from a position of power.
  Consensus and dialogue are the third leg of that three-legged stool. 
Knowledge is the solvent for danger. Knowledge. The more information we 
have, the better off we're going to be.
  History is a vast early warning system. We know the things that have 
worked in the past. Kennedy and Kruschev, it worked. It avoided war. 
The collapse eventually of the Soviet Union.
  We did not have a dialogue with Ho Chi Minh. And if we did we could 
have avoided the tragedy of the war in Vietnam.
  And what is our policy in Iraq now based on? What do you, the 
American people, understand our policy to be?
  Let's take a look at Sam Rayburn, former Speaker of the House. Sam 
said, ``Any mule can kick a barn door down, but it takes a carpenter to 
build one.''
  We need carpenters to build the dialog, the integration of integrity 
with all the world's peoples.
  What did Rudyard Kipling say so many years ago when his son 
tragically died in Northern France? ``Why did young men die? Because 
old men lied?''
  And why did old men lie? Maybe they just didn't know enough.
  To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling today, old people should talk. Old 
people should be carpenters, not mules, carpenters, before they send 
young men, young women, young people to die.

                              {time}  2215

  The landscape of human history is tragically filled with conflicts. 
What is the main reason for these conflicts? Ignorance, arrogance, and 
dogma. What does that combination lead to? I'm right and you are wrong. 
Monstrous certainty. Can you shoot your way through that? How do you 
get through that, that maze of complexity, of arrogance, ignorance, and 
dogma?
  You replace ignorance with knowledge, and you do that with knowledge 
and you do a consensus and you do it with dialogue. Arrogance is 
replaced with humility. And generally, the more someone knows, the more 
humble they are. And you get rid of dogma with tolerance.
  We need a diplomatic surge in the Middle East. That diplomatic surge 
means that we have the best and the brightest diplomats in the world 
right

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here and now employed in the State Department, employed in the Defense 
Department, retired diplomats, retired generals. And they can integrate 
themselves throughout the Middle East. They can talk about an economic 
alliance, a security alliance. They can talk about exchanging all kinds 
of medical and scientific and economic information.
  We need to continue and let the world know the drawdown in a 
responsible, strategic fashion of our military presence in the Middle 
East. Work for reconciliation among the different factions in the 
Middle East by integrating those factions with a broader Middle East.
  Let's look at some examples of the past.
  1941. United States, Britain, and a number of other countries right 
at the very early stages of World War II signed something called the 
Atlantic Alliance. And what was the Atlantic Alliance? It was a 
commitment, an agreement among many countries around the world that 
people would live in freedom, they would work for economic prosperity 
in all the world, they would make sure people would live free of fear 
and want, and the list goes on.
  The Atlantic Charter. What did the Atlantic Charter lead to? It led 
to the union of the many regions of the world, led to the North 
Atlantic Treaty Organization. It led to the Southeast Asian Treaty 
Organization. It led to the Organization of American States in Latin 
America. It was a commitment of nations that they would work together 
to have dialogue and rule out the use of force.
  You know what Ho Chi Minh said about the Atlantic Charter in 1942 
when he heard about it? He said, I hope it applies to Asians, meaning 
Vietnamese, because they were still under the iron fist of the Japanese 
and the French. You know what Ho Chi Minh said in 1945? He said, I 
guess the Atlantic Charter doesn't apply to the Vietnamese people.
  To me, that's pretty sad.
  1975, we signed the Helsinki Accords. A number of countries around 
Europe, including the Soviet Union and most of Eastern European 
countries except Albania. Helsinki Accords said basically the same 
thing as the Atlantic Charter: We would respect the integrity of the 
territory of all of the states that signed this; it would be peaceful 
settlement of disputes and not armed interaction; we would not 
interfere in the internal affairs of other countries; there would be 
freedom of thought, conscious, and religion; there would be equal 
rights for people.
  The Helsinki Accords, 1975, what did that do to oppressed people in 
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union when they found out that the Soviet 
Union signed that? They gradually, the courageous ones, began to rise 
up, and eventually you saw the collapse of the Soviet Union. People in 
the Ukraine or Georgia or Poland or Czechoslovakia or the former 
Yugoslavia, they saw the Helsinki Accords, and they had a goal that 
they would reach out to. So the Helsinki Accords gradually integrated 
like-minded, peace-loving, freedom-loving people to begin exercising 
their God-given rights.
  1949, one last comment about the past. The Geneva Conventions. The 
international community came together and signed the Geneva Conventions 
about the treatment of people in conflicts. Not just uniformed 
soldiers. This international agreement applied to anybody that was 
captured on a battlefield and how that person was to be treated and how 
they were to be interrogated and how they were be imprisoned, and it 
was based on some pretty fundamental human rights. An international 
agreement.
  So people from around the world see these things. They understand 
that there is hope; the way forward is to have knowledge. It's to 
understand the complexity of this world and see it in all its vast, 
deep dimensions. Don't look at the world through a bent straw. That is 
the way too many of us see it. There's vast opportunities.
  I'm going to quote from a book that you don't have to read, it's 
called ``The Ascent of Man'' by Jacob Bronowski. It's actually a book 
about the evolution of science and civilizations going back to pre-
history. But there's a chapter in there about World War II. Many of 
Jacob Bronowski's relatives died in concentration camps in Auschwitz, 
and Bronowski has a paragraph: there are two parts to the human 
dilemma, one is the belief that the end justifies the means, that push-
button philosophy that delivered deafness to suffering that has become 
the monster in the war machine.
  When we go to the mall, do we think about the war in Iraq, or is it 
silent to us? Do we have conversations at the dinner table about the 
war in Iraq, or do we talk about other things? Do we ever talk about 
the war in Iraq, or do we have a sense of deliberate deafness to 
suffering? Do we think the war machine is going to take care of it?
  The other aspect of human dilemma is that too often, tragically, 
nations become a nation of ghosts, obedient ghosts or tortured ghosts. 
That means you're not a whole human being. You go through life almost 
imperceptible. What is your value? What is your contribution? How do 
you make that contribution?
  So those two dilemmas can be resolved by listening to the sound and 
the voices of tragedy and then becoming knowledgeable and begin 
learning that you, too, can do something.
  So over the next few months, turn the television off. You want to 
commit yourself to helping the soldiers in Iraq, the people of Iraq, 
the people in Afghanistan, the tragedy of human history that plagues us 
so often where there is ignorance, arrogance, and dogma. ``A Letter to 
America,'' David Boren. ``A Letter to America.'' ``The Iraq Study 
Group,'' James Baker, Lee Hamilton; ``Fiasco,'' Thomas Ricks; ``The 
Battle for Peace,'' Tony Zinni; ``Violent Politics,'' William Polk; 
``Treacherous Alliance,'' Trita Parsi; ``All the Shah's Men,'' Steve 
Kinzer; ``The Silence of the Rational Center,'' Halper and Clarke; 
``Why Vietnam?'' by Archimedes Patti; ``Human Options,'' Norman 
Cousins.
  I wish you well in your reading.
  Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Does the gentleman yield the balance of his 
time?
  Mr. GILCHREST. I yield the balance of my time.

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