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2007 Speeches
Floor Remarks on Israel and Iran
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA)
House of Representatives
June 20, 2008
Mr. Speaker—
It says something about tensions in the world today when the
first thing I want to enter into the Record is a reminder of my strong and long
standing commitment to the defense of Israel, the safety and security of the
Jewish people and the absolute right of Israel to exist.
I offer this preamble because I also want to say that I am
deeply troubled by news reports around the world today that Israel recently conducted a major military
exercise in what many military analysts see as training for a possible strike
against Iran. The United States
supplies Israel with
billions of dollars in military hardware, training and intelligence, and I
believe it is both appropriate and urgent for the US to raise questions about their
intentions and to aggressively pursue diplomacy in the region.
We have made such a mess of things in Iraq that it is
hard to believe that any nation thinks war in can achieve peace. News reports say
Israel conducted a massive military exercise in plain sight to send signals to the United States, Europe and Iran that Israel was prepared to launch a massive military strike against targets across Iran, if
diplomatic efforts to halt or delay its nuclear program failed.
Almost immediately, Iran retaliated in the press,
saying any attack against its proud nation with a strong military capability
would be met with an equally massive counter-offensive. And the media reminds us that Iran has just
taken delivery of accurate Russian-made surface to air missiles. We are edging perilously close to a hair trigger moment, when
someone, somewhere, will do something that turns saber rattling into a
provocative military confrontation and we will be at war again on a new
front. I’m deeply worried.
There are those who would have us believe that US military
superiority ultimately trumps any nation, any force. We are the most powerful military nation on earth, but with
power comes responsibility, accountability and leadership. For all the guns and bombs and missiles we have at our
disposal, history is replete with failed policies and missions and dubious
figureheads we have propped up against the will of the people and any rationale
approach to US foreign policy.
This includes the history of US secret involvement in Iran in the 1950s, when we and the British
worked to overthrow and replace Iran’s
elected leader, Mohammed Mossadegh, and install the Shah of Iran, who we kept
in office as our direct pipeline to Iran’s oil wealth. As the most powerful nation on earth, you would think that
we could do a lot more to prevent war than simply wring our hands while we read
the newspapers. And I think we can.
First, I think we have to abandon the notion that all US foreign
policy begins and ends behind the butt of a gun. Some will stand up and say, well, that’s just Jim McDermott, the doctor, who
believes that you don’t have to use guns to fight for peace.
Well, I have some company. I would like to enter into the Record a story carried
earlier this week in the Asia Times.
It reports on the first conference held by the Center for a
New American Security. Ambassador James
Dobbins, who was special envoy to Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo under President Clinton, and
Special Envoy to Afghanistan under the current President, George W. Bush, said this about US policy toward Iran.
Quote: "I reject
the theory that the implicit threat of force is a necessary prerequisite to
successful diplomacy."
Let me read from the news story. “Looking back on 40
years of US diplomacy,
Dobbins, now director of the Rand International Security and Defense Policy Center, concluded that
the conventional wisdom about the need to back up diplomacy with adversaries
with force is wrong.
"I can say that most of it was not conducted against a
background of threat of force," said Dobbins, and when the threat of force
was introduced, ‘diplomacy failed’. “In a line that got
applause from the more than 750 people attending the conference, Dobbins said
his solution was to ‘deal with Iran’.”
I urge everyone to read the entire story. And I urge the Administration and Congress to start asking
tough questions, and demanding straight answers, while there is still time.
Thank you.
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