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The Drum Beats of War are Growing Louder
House of Representatives - April 18, 2007

Mr. Speaker, the drum beats of war are growing louder. There is a growing fear here and around the world that the President, either alone or by proxy, will order a military strike against Iran.

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The President has escalated the military presence in Iraq at the same time he has escalated the military rhetoric concerning Iran. The President's accusations against Iran are being planted like seeds in fertile ground. Is this how the President cultivates diplomacy, or is he sowing the seeds for another war?

The House must pass legislation that would require a debate and a vote before the President orders U.S. Forces to launch a military strike against Iran. This is the people's House, and the American people have spoken. They don't trust the President, and they are worried about his saber rattling toward Iran.

I think of it this way: If Iraq is a quagmire, and it is, then Iran will be quicksand, with America sinking deeper and deeper into a disastrous foreign policy grounded in brute force and producing brutal consequences: thousands of American soldiers dead, tens of thousands of American soldiers gravely wounded, billions of dollars borrowed and wasted, over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed and injured, a raging civil war.

And after all that, the President and the Vice President say a military option is on the table for Iran. To prove it, U.S. warships were ordered into the Gulf 2 weeks ago. It was a show of military might around the date that the Russian military intelligence sources have widely forecast that the U.S. would strike Iran in stories posted online and in newspapers.

The current political regime in Iran is a government I do not endorse or support, but the record must show that the President's policies in Iraq created the problem the President now warns he will fix by military action, if necessary.

After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the President installed Paul Bremer as America's de facto premier of Iraq. Mr. Bremer answered only to the White House and not to the Iraqi people. Bremer dictated a series of policies that dismantled Iraq from the inside out. With the White House calling his every move, Bremer first dismantled the Iraqi civil society, plunging an entire nation into chaos.

The Iraqi civilians who ran everything from sewage treatment plants to traffic control to keeping the lights on were summarily fired. The country's infrastructure remains crippled by Bremer's order 4 years later. Bremer also dismissed Iraq's military, and in so doing, he put tens of thousands of demoralized Iraqis on the streets with a gun and a grudge. The vast majority of these people were in the military for the pay and the job, not because they supported Saddam.

With Iraqi civil and military sectors wiped out over 4 years ago, there were no Iraqis left to guard the borders between Iraq and Syria and Iraq and Iran. The borders have been wide open ever since because the appointed proxy government didn't bother to understand the history of the region or a basic national security need to protect a nation's borders.

We know weapons and insurgents have been walking across Iraq's open borders. Almost a year ago, leaders told me in Amman, and these are Iraqi leaders, that the most constructive thing the U.S. could do would be to withdraw from the cities and redeploy to the borders and establish border guards.

Instead of doing something constructive, the President ordered a military escalation in Iraq that is destructive. The Iraqi people want us out of Iraq. The American people want us out of Iraq. But the President drives us deeper and deeper into Iraq and then threatens military action against Iran.

As a lame duck President and as slave to his own failed foreign policy, Congress must ensure that the President cannot unilaterally strike Iran in the remaining months of his failed presidency. Congress must pass legislation that preserves the checks and balances to guarantee that the President must listen to someone other than the Vice President.

America cannot afford to remain on a hair trigger until a new President takes the oath of office in January 2009, but that is exactly what will happen unless Congress steps up to ensure that the President stands down on a military strike against Iran. We must take away his blank check.