Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan Security and Reconstruction Act, 2004

EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS FOR IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN SECURITY AND RECONSTRUCTION ACT, 2004

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, we have begun a debate that may ultimately be more consequential than the war debate we had in this Chamber last October, which culminated in the votes of 77 Senators authorizing the President of the United States to go to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. A negative Senate vote last fall, before our country was committed to liberating and reconstructing Iraq, would have weakened the President's leadership and made America less secure. But a vote against reconstructing Iraq now, with 130,000 American forces on the ground, American credibility before our friends and enemies at stake, and the enormous responsibility of helping the Iraqi people rebuild their country now on our shoulders, would doom Iraq's transformation to failure, with grave consequences for the entire Middle East, and devastate American leadership in a dangerous world.

An extraordinary allied military campaign in Iraq overthrew, in 3 weeks, a Baathist regime that had ruled for three decades. Americans were rightly proud not only of our military's exemplary performance, but of the cause for which they fought: ending the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime and liberating the Iraqi people from his tyrannical rule. With their liberation came an obligation: to help them restore their devastated and demoralized country until it is stable, and secure, and free, and therefore, no longer poses a threat to its people or its neighbors. That job is not close to being done. We have not yet won the peace. And we do not have time to spare.

If we do not meaningfully improve services and security in Iraq over the next few months, it may be too late. The danger is that our failure to improve daily life, security, and Iraqis' participation in their own governance will erode their patience and fuel a minority's appeal for insurrection. We will risk an irreversible loss of Iraqi confidence and reinforce the efforts of extremists who seek our defeat and threaten Iraq's democratic future. That is why we have to pass this supplemental spending bill, urgently.

There are two fundamental errors we could make in postwar Iraq. We could stay too long, denying Iraqi sovereignty to a proud and talented people who have the human and material resources to build a progressive and modern Arab state. We cannot repeat in Iraq the example of the Balkans, where Bosnia and Kosovo remain U.N. protectorates years after our just military intervention. Few things would inflame Iraqi and Arab opinion more than a long-term United States occupation of Iraq. But America is not an imperial nation. We will leave Iraq when our job is done, and we will leave behind an Iraq that is whole, free, and at peace.

The other danger, and the greater risk, is that we leave too soon—before basic Iraqi services are up and running, before law and order are restored, and before there is a competent, representative Iraqi government in place to answer to the Iraqi people. They key to a timely United States withdrawal from Iraq, and for the quickest restoration of Iraqi sovereignty, is to maximize our commitment now to providing the security and services that will allow the fragile institutions of democracy to take root. A serious United States investment in Iraq's future is the only way we can leave the Iraqi people and their leaders with a functioning, progressive state that will be an example for the region and a future partner and ally of the United States.

Some of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle accept that Iraq requires substantial and immediate reconstruction funding, but would provide that funding in the form of loans to be repaid to the United States or international financial institutions when the Iraqi economy is up and running again. This would gravely damage America's reputation and our support within Iraq. Asseting our claim to Iraq's oil revenues over the next 10 or 20 years would confirm the propaganda of our enemies and the suspicions of skeptics across the Arab world and closer to home: that this was a war for oil. It would also make it impossible for us to encourage countries like Russia, France, and Germany, which hold enormous levels of Iraqi debt from Saddam Hussein's era, to write off some of that debt in order to life its burden from the Iraqi people.

Seeking control, whether directly or indirectly, over Iraq's future oil revenues would condemn Iraq to be another ward of the international community by denying the Iraqi people the key to their future prosperity. By making a claim that would prevent future oil revenues from being spent by a representative Iraqi government to meet the needs of the Iraqi people, we would impede the economic development that will be key to a moderate, progressive Iraqi politics. We would make our immediate task of reconstructing and securing Iraq much more difficult, because collateralizing Iraqi oil revenues would encourage more Iraqis to believe the message of the Baathists and terrorists who oppose us: that we are in Iraq not to help the Iraqi people build a better future but to serve our own narrow ends, at their expense. Ironically, we would also make it more difficult for American forces to leave Iraq by handicapping Iraqis' ability to reconstruct their country and govern themselves. Providing reconstruction monies in the form of a loan would seriously undermine American national interests in the Middle East.

We will also debate the question of whether to divide this spending bill into military and reconstruction components.
Proponents of this approach would substantially trim or vote down reconstruction funding, as if we should pay only for our troop presence in Iraq but spend little to nothing on what our troops are actually there to do: create basic security and enable restoration of services so the Iraqis can govern themselves. The reconstruction and military components of this spending request are inextricably linked. Part of the answer to the security challenges we face in Iraq is restoring basic services and empowering Iraqis to play a greater role in their own security. Voting against reconstruction funds will seriously degrade the security environment as greater numbers of frustrated Iraqis fall prey to the extremists' appeals to oppose our presence, putting our troops in greater danger and imperiling their core mission of stabilizing Iraq.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, I asked Ambassador Paul Bremer what would happen if Congress did not pass the reconstruction portion of the President's supplemental spending request. Here is his response: "Well, it would be directly contrary to American's interest—obviously, it would be contrary to the Iraqi people's interest, but it would be contrary to our interest, because it would create a situation of much greater insecurity. I think we would find more of the population turning against us. I think we would find more attacks on coalition forces. Eventually, Iraq would .    .    . recede into a situation of chaos, not dissimilar from what was experienced in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, and we would find another breeding ground for terrorists. So I think it's a rather grim outlook."

I would encourage my colleagues who may be considering efforts to split this bill into military and reconstruction components in order to decrease or vote down reconstruction funding to contemplate the prospect of the kind of state collapse and civil war that destroyed Lebanon happening in Iraq as a result of our own shortsightedness.

The Senate will also consider proposals to reduce tax cuts for the wealthy in order to pay for Iraqi reconstruction. I voted against the President's tax cut package in 2003, in part because the costs of this war and its aftermath were unknown at the time. But given what is at stake for the Iraqi people and for America's national interest, I cannot support proposals to raise taxes to fund our mission in Iraq. Such proposals, if not linked to the Iraq supplemental, would have merit, but were they to pass as part of this package they would endanger its passage, transforming a domestic political dispute into what would quickly become a foreign policy defeat. Our success in Iraq is too important to take that chance.

This bill is not perfect. I intend to offer an amendment to provide for regular auditing of the Coalition Provisional authority's budget, and I suspect the Senate will add additional reporting requirements to better inform us about how reconstruction money is being spent. But given the urgency of our mission in Iraq, I intend to strongly support the President's budget request, oppose all amendments that could endanger its passage, and do everything I can to see that the United States honors the commitment we have entered into to help the Iraqi people stand up a legitimate, representative government that does not threaten them or their neighbors, and that is a force for good in a dangerous region.

Every so often in this Chamber, we deal with an issue of such gravity that it transcends partisan divisions. Providing for Iraq's democratic future should be such an issue. I encourage my colleagues to gauge carefully the broader national interest, as we conduct what I hope is a civilized and high-minded debate. To a large extent, or choices will determine the success or failure of what I believe to be the most important foreign policy challenge in a generation.

Failure to make the necessary political and financial commitment to build the new Iraq could endanger American leadership in the world, empower our enemies, and condemn Iraqis to renewed tyranny. We must act urgently to transform our military success into political victory. Passage of these supplemental funds will move us meaningfully towards that goal.
Stripping reconstruction aid or providing it in the form of a loan that will incite Iraqi and Arab hostility against us will only make the job of our service men and women in Iraq harder and could doom them to failure. After all their sacrifice, and in light of the potential a free and stable Iraq holds for the future of the Middle east and America's position in the world, it would be disgraceful to turn our backs now.

Iraq's transformation into a progressive Arab state could set the region that produced Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, and al-
Qaida on a new course in which democratic expression and economic prosperity, rather than a radicalizing mix of humiliation, poverty, and repression, define a new modernity in the Muslim world that does not express itself in ways that threaten its people or other nations. Conversely, a forced United States retreat from Iraq would be the most serious American defeat on the global stage since Vietnam. I don't make that statement lightly. I repeat: A forced United States retreat from Iraq would be the most serious American defeat on the global stage since Vietnam.

Our mission in Iraq is too important to fail. But it is winnable, because an Iraqi majority shares our vision of a free and progressive Iraq. Our national interest demands that we help them realize this goal.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.