SPEECH OF
HON. PETER A. DeFAZIO
OF OREGON
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9, 2007
- Mr. DeFAZIO: Madam
Speaker, tomorrow the President will announce he has yet another new strategy
for victory in Iraq. This strategy will come just over a year after he released
his last strategy for victory in Iraq, which was completed in November 2005.
- According to the
Brookings Institution's Iraq Index, since the President released his last plan,
more than 900 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, more than 2,200 Iraqi police
and military forces have also been killed. The number of Iraqi civilians killed
has risen from 1,778 in January 2006 to nearly 3,300 in December 2006. The
number of multiple fatality bombings has increased from 41 in November 2005 to
69 in December 2006.
- In other words, by
virtually every measure, the violence in Iraq is worse this year than last year,
the political situation is more volatile and deteriorating by the day and the
civil war is expanding.
- After nearly four
years, after more than 3,000 U.S troops have been killed, after more than 22,500
U.S. troops have been injured--nearly half of whom have been injured severely
enough that they cannot return to duty--and after more than $300 billion of U.S.
taxpayers' money has been spent with no benefit to U.S. national security and
with little progress toward stabilizing Iraq, what is the President's response?
All indications are that he will propose to compound the failure by escalating
the war, putting tens of thousands of more American lives at risk, and borrowing
tens or hundreds of billions of dollars more in order to prosecute a war that
cannot be won militarily.
- It is past time to
end the open-ended commitment the President has made in Iraq. Reportedly the
President will propose benchmarks the Iraqi government must achieve, but since
there will be no consequences if the Iraqis fail, these benchmarks are
meaningless. The Iraqi government has failed to follow through on previous
commitments, yet the President's response has only been to express continuing
support for the Iraqi Prime Minister. His proposal this week will likely be more
of the same.
- As long as the U.S.
military remains stuck with the President's pledge of unlimited support, Iraqi
politicians and security forces will use the U.S. presence as a crutch and will
fail to take the necessary steps to solve their differences, establish an
effective and inclusive government, end sectarian violence, and create a secure
and prosperous society.
- Democracy and
stability cannot be imposed on unwilling parties. As New York Times columnist
Thomas Friedman said recently on Meet the Press, a stable, pluralistic democracy
in Iraq is everyone's second choice except ours. The Shias want power for
themselves. The Sunnis want power. And the Kurds want power and independence.
What they don't want to do is share that power, and we can't make
them.
- Being confronted
with the reality of a U.S. withdrawal should force the Iraqi factions to reach
the political compromises necessary to move their country forward. If not, there
is no reason to prolong the U.S. involvement in Iraq if we want a stable country
more than the Iraqi people and their elected leaders do.
- The U.S. cannot
impose freedom, security, and unity in Iraq by force. Those worthy goals can
only be achieved by the Iraqi people themselves, which will only happen when the
Iraqi people and their leaders decide to put aside their sectarian differences.
The U.S. cannot force Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds to make peace or to act for the
common good. They have been in conflict for l,400 years. Nor should the U.S.
military be forced to remain in Iraq essentially as an army for one side of a
civil war. The U.S. military cannot solve the sectarian violence and the lack of
political reconciliation in Iraq. Only the Iraqis can.
- In a minute, I will
address where I believe we need to go from here. But, before that, I want to
briefly review how we got into Iraq and how the Bush administration's many
mistakes have brought us to the disaster we face today.
- The list of the Bush
administration's failures with respect to Iraq is long and well-known. But it
bears repeating, particularly since the administration may be making similar
ones with respect to Iran.
- The administration
manipulated, misrepresented and in some cases outright lied about the
intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and non-existent
ties to al-Qaeda in order to build support in Congress and among the public for
the war.
- The administration
went in with too few troops to successfully carry out the mission.
- The administration
went in with few real allies.
- The administration
went in with no exit strategy.
- The administration
failed to stop the rampant looting in the wake of Saddam Hussein's ousting,
which set back recovery and reconstruction.
- The administration
failed to understand the ethnic tensions that were unleashed in Iraq.
- The administration
failed to understand the ethnic power bases in Iraq.
- The administration
relied on Iraqi exiles with no support among the Iraqi people.
- The administration
did not turn over authority to Iraqis early on. Instead, they stood up the
Coalition Provision Authority to run Iraq, which cemented in the minds of the
Iraqis that U.S. forces were an occupying power.
- The administration
largely used inexperienced political hacks to run the CPA rather than
experienced foreign service-types or individuals with subject matter expertise.
- The administration
disbanded the Iraqi army, which added to the security problems by creating a
large pool of unemployed, armed, and alienated Iraqis.
- The administration
purged the Iraqi government of all Baath party members, even low-level
Baathists, which continues to hamper the delivery of even basic government
services to Iraqis since the bureaucracy has basically been created from
scratch.
- The administration
failed to conduct proper oversight of reconstruction resulting in waste, fraud,
and abuse, poor contractor performance and Iraqi expectations for progress not
being met.
- This is not an
exhaustive list, but it highlights some major failures that have contributed to
the chaos in Iraq.
- The administration
claims that what has happened in Iraq was unforeseeable. In reality, many
critics predicted the problems in Iraq. The administration just chose to ignore
those who raised concerns. The problems in Iraq are actually worse than
predicted because of the administration's blunders.
- The administration
ignored the doctrine created by its own Secretary of State Colin Powell when he
was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The ``Powell doctrine'' says that the
U.S. should go to war only as a last resort and then only with overwhelming
force. In his article ``U.S. Forces: Challenges Ahead'' in Foreign Affairs in
1992-93 Powell posed a number of questions to be asked by U.S. policymakers
before launching a war. Is a vital national security interest threatened? Do we
have a clear, attainable objective? Have the risks and costs been fully and
frankly analyzed? Have all other non-violent policy means been exhausted? Is
there a plausible exit strategy? Have the consequences been fully considered? Is
the action supported by the American people? Does the U.S. have broad
international support?
- The answer to these
questions in the case of the Iraq war is no. But the administration went ahead
anyway and Powell put aside any misgivings he may have had and publicly
supported it.
- The administration
ignored General Eric Shinseki, then the head of the Army, who testified before
the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 25, 2003, that the
administration's plans failed to include an adequate number of troops. He said,
``I would say that what's been mobilized to this point--something on the order
of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would
be required. We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of
geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that
could lead to other problems.''
- Secretary Rumsfeld
and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, called Shinseki's estimate "far off the mark"
and "wildly off the mark." Wolfowitz said it would be "hard to believe" more
troops would be required for post-war Iraq than to remove Saddam Hussein from
power.
- It may have been
hard for an ideologue like Mr. Wolfowitz to believe, but it wasn't hard for a
military professional like General Shinseki to envision.
- Many Members of
Congress also raised concerns. I personally wrote to the President on September
5, 2002. I challenged the supposed threat posed by Iraq's assumed WMD programs.
I raised questions about more pressing national security challenges like North
Korea and Iran. I raised questions about the impact the war would have on U.S.
relations with allies and our reputation in the world. I posed questions about
what the impact of a long-term occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces. I asked about
the impact of diverting military and intelligence resources to Iraq from the
battle against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. And I raised concerns about the economic
impact and the impact on U.S. taxpayers from the war.
- The administration
dismissed the concerns and warnings of critics like me and launched this
ill-advised war. I voted against it. We're forty-six months into the war, where
do we go from here?
- The President
apparently believes that the U.S. needs to escalate the conflict in Iraq by
sending 30,000 or more additional troops to Iraq. I think that is a mistake. It
will not bring stability to Iraq, and I oppose it and will vote against it if
given the opportunity.
- Just as importantly,
the President's chief military advisors oppose it. As General John Abizaid, then
the head of all U.S. forces in the Middle East, testified before the Senate
Armed Services Committee hearing on November 15, 2006, ``I met with every
divisional commander, General Casey, the core commander, General Dempsey, we all
talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring
in more American Troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve
success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is because we want the
Iraqis to do more. It is easy for the Iraqis to rely upon to us do this work. I
believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from
taking more responsibility for their own future.''
- The President didn't
like what he heard, which may be why General Abizaid is expected to retire this
March. As a Lebanese-American who is fluent in Arabic, his understanding of the
region will be greatly missed. General Casey has also been removed as commander
of U.S. forces in Iraq.
- Shinseki, Abizaid,
Casey. There is a pattern here of the Bush administration ignoring the advice of
military leaders and firing them when they don't tell the President what he
wants to hear.
- Let me be clear, I
do not believe there is any level of U.S. troops that could stabilize Iraq at
this point.
- But, I think it is
particularly offensive that the President is reportedly planning to put 30,000
additional U.S. lives at risk when that escalation is virtually certain to have
little or no impact on the violence in Iraq. There might be a small, temporary
reduction in the chaos in Iraq, but the escalation will not solve the deep and
underlying political conflicts that are preventing a long-term resolution to the
violence in Iraq.
- The President
desperately wants to look like he's trying something new in Iraq in response to
the concerns of the American people, but really he's just repeating the same
mistakes and compounding previous failures. The administration is trying to
prolong the U.S. involvement in Iraq in order to perpetuate the fallacy that the
President's original vision for a democratic, pro-U.S., capitalistic,
pluralistic Iraq is still achievable. It is not. The American
Enterprise Institute
military escalation plan for Iraq, which is the basis for the President's
proposals, has a timeline of 18-24 months, conveniently enough leaving the mess
in Iraq for the next President, meaning President Bush would never have to admit
his policies in Iraq have been a failure but at a very steep cost to our troops
taxpayers.
- The administration
already increased the number of U.S. troops in Baghdad this summer and has
occasionally increased the number of troops throughout Iraq, yet the violence
against our troops and Iraqi security forces and civilians continues to
increase. Following the influx of troops this summer in Operation Forward
Together, the violence in Iraq actually increased. Weekly attacks increased by
15 percent while the number of Iraqi civilian casualties increased by 51
percent.
- Based on historical
analysis, counterinsurgency experts estimate it takes around 20 U.S. troops per
1,000 inhabitants to successfully fight a counterinsurgency. To achieve that
ratio in Baghdad alone would require 120,000 troops. Even with the escalation
proposed by the President, we'd only have around 40,000 troops in Baghdad. For
all of Iraq, it would require 500,000 troops. We only have around 140,000 there
today.
- General Shinseki and
others based their original recommendation for several hundred thousand troops
on this historical analysis. But, the time in which a large number of forces
could stabilize Iraq has long since passed.
- The bottom line is
that a proposal to increase U.S. troop levels in Baghdad or Iraq more generally
by 30,000 troops in not a serious effort to restore stability to Iraq.
Essentially, the President is proposing to put more lives at risk with little or
no chance of success.
- The President and
his allies justify the continuing U.S. presence in Iraq by claiming that if we
don't fight there, we'll have to fight here at home. However, the Iraqi Sunni
rejectionists, Saddamists, and nationalist Shias, who combined make up the vast
bulk of the insurgents and militias committing violence in Iraq, have no
interest in attacking the U.S. homeland. They just want U.S. military forces out
of their own country. They have no designs on our country. So it is misleading,
at best, to argue that if we don't fight there, we will fight them in the
streets of the United States.
- It is also
misleading to pretend that if the U.S. leaves that somehow Osama bin Laden will
take control of Iraq. There is no chance that the Shias and Kurds, who represent
around 80 percent of the population in Iraq, will allow foreign terrorist
elements to take over the country. Even the majority of the Sunnis have grown
tired of foreign terrorists operating in Iraq.
- A better strategy is
to announce a timeline for bringing our troops home over the next 6 months to a
year. The administration has always set timelines for political developments in
Iraq--for elections, for the drafting of the constitution etc. The
administration argued such timelines were necessary to focus the energy of
Iraq's leaders and to force compromises. We need to do the same on the military
side.
- In the interim, I
have also proposed that U.S. troops be removed from front line combat positions
in Iraqi cities and towns, turning over daily security patrols, interactions
with citizens, and any offensive security actions to the Iraqis themselves.
- The training and
equipping of Iraqi security forces should be accelerated and the sectarian
balance must be improved.
- The U.S. must
renounce any U.S. interest in constructing permanent U.S. military bases in
Iraq.
- It is also important
to accelerate reconstruction spending and grant the bulk of reconstruction
contracts to local companies employing Iraqis rather than multinational
corporations, whom have proven inefficient, inflexible, sometimes fraudulent and
have even imported workers rather than employing Iraqis.
- The U.S. embassy in
Baghdad should also be reduced to normal size and authority rather than
establishing one of the largest embassies in the world.
- And, the U.S. must
engage in robust diplomacy with all factions in Iraq, except the foreign
terrorists and domestic al-Qaeda elements, and work with Iraq's neighbors in an
effort to bring about political reconciliation among Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds.
- Our troops have done
all that has been asked of them in Iraq. Saddam Hussein is dead. His allies are
on the run or in prison. The threat from WMDs in Iraq is nonexistent. Arguably,
the war that Congress authorized has been won. Our troops should come home.
Congress did not authorize U.S. troops to referee a civil war in
Iraq.
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