Find Ways to Come Together on Iraq
Floor Speech
FIND WAYS TO COME TOGETHER ON IRAQ -- (House of Representatives - June 06, 2007)
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Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
And I also want to thank all of you for coming down here this evening for a thoughtful dialogue on the issues of war and peace that confront this country and literally the rest of the world.
I would just like to speak to the issue of Iraq in the context of where we are in the world today. This is not our grandfathers' world. This is not our parents' world. This is a new configuration that can't be compared to World War II or even the Cold War. This is a world that is now filled with tiny splintering, struggling countries and cultures. The Soviet Union is gone. Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, we see a great deal of struggling third world countries, cultures, people trying to find their place, their niche.
One of the countries, the United States, has a golden opportunity to integrate ourselves with the rest of the world to encourage peace and security. And if we notice around the world, the world is integrated right now. The world is integrated globally. It is integrated economically with trade. It is integrated politically. It is integrated when there are disasters. We saw what happened with the tsunami to countries like Sri Lanka and Thailand and India and Indonesia when the world responded. The integrity of the world's compassion for these people was extraordinary.
The world is also integrated with disease. Whether it is Ebola, malaria, bird flu, TB, you name it, the world is integrated.
And one of the ways I think to solve the problem, besides solving the problem of Iraq on the House floor the way we are doing it tonight with a discussion, is to integrate our integrity with the great land mass that is around this great globe. The integration of integrity.
I want to make a quick quote by a former artist, media person, diplomat named Norman Cousins, who wrote a fabulous book called ``Human Options.'' In the book is one extraordinary quote, ``History is the vast early warning system.'' And if we look at how we dealt with the Soviet Union over decades of time, it was step by step by step with dialogue. What did we do with China over decades, even after China said that they would like to destroy the United States, even if it wiped off half the population of China? It was step by step by step of dialogue. What did we do with the Cuban Missile Crisis? It was dialogue. Unfortunately, we never had a dialogue with Ho Chi Minh. We lost probably a million people on both sides of that conflict.
What is the issue here with Iraq? It's a dialogue with the Iraqis, it's a dialogue with the Sunnis, the Shi'as, the Kurds. It's a dialogue with the Syrians, the Iranians. It's a dialogue with the Middle East. It's a dialogue with the international community to integrate ourselves to make a commitment to the politics, to the economics, to the security of all the peoples of the world.
So, there is hope. There is movement. And the way to solve one conflict is to understand the nature of the culture. Talk first, for as long as is necessary. And that dialogue got us out of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Nixon went to China. Kennedy did not bomb Castro in Cuba. That can work today.
I will close with this comment from a book I recently read by Anthony Zinni called ``The Battle For Peace.'' And Anthony Zinni described the Cold War
where one man is in a room with a cobra alone for decades, and the man wakes up one morning and the cobra is gone, but the room then is filled with bees; a whole different set of circumstances. And you don't deal with the bees the way you dealt with the cobra.
I thank all you gentlemen for coming here tonight for this integrated dialogue so our integrity can mesh a little bit better and we will find a solution.
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Mr. GILCHREST. I think when you generate ideas like we're having tonight with this decision, people are free to have an enthusiastic conversation where we can see each other's individual ingenuity. And then it is that collective ingenuity, that individual collective ingenuity that spawns these kinds of ideas that solve problems.
I couldn't agree more that the Iraq Study Group reassemble to evaluate where they were just 6 months ago in their recommendations to where we might want to be in September or sometime this fall is an excellent idea. And I am pretty sure that those men and women would come together to do this second reevaluation.
The other thing is, I think we, as members of our group here, Members of Congress, we need to do some preparation ourselves prior to whatever that announcement, whatever that assessment is going to be in September, we have to have some preparation for what we think the status of the conflict in Iraq needs to be.
And the third thing, while we are preparing for this report by General Petraeus, while we are encouraging the Iraq Study Group to reevaluate the status, as General Petraeus will, I really think it's important for us to continue to pursue a dialogue with all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria.
Now, we all know that the Ahmadinejad administration, if I can say that, has said some pretty pointed, scary, threatened things. But it is my understanding that the Iranian people do not see the world, do not see the United States through Ahmadinejad's eyes. The Syrian people, the parents, the fathers, the people who want good lives for their children, the Chamber of Commerce in Damascus wants to have a relationship with the United States. There are many, many business people, many, many people in Iran that want a relationship with the United States.
So as we are preparing for this discussion in September, where we are with the surge and where we are with the conflict, let's get the Iraq Study Group together. Let's prepare for that statement so we understand where we think we should be. And then let's continue to pursue, however difficult it is, this dialogue.
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Mr. GILCHREST. I thank the gentleman.
Just very quickly on the comment from the gentleman from New York, Syria is basically a secular country. It is not an Islamic state. It is secular. They feared al Qaeda and the Taliban, and they don't want al Qaeda in Iraq creating chaos. Al Qaeda was basically the enemy of the Iranians. It was the enemy of Iraq. It was a disruptive factor in the Middle East.
So careful analysis of each country, using the best diplomats in the world that the United States has, has the potential for unraveling this very difficult, chaotic situation. We know we need a military presence in the Middle East, we know we need a political presence in the Middle East, and we know we need an economic presence in the Middle East. With the emphasis on the politics and the economics with the Middle Eastern countries, I think we can back our way out of this chaos.
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