Iraq and the Middle East

IRAQ AND THE MIDDLE EAST -- (House of Representatives - September 10, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCOTTER. I thank the gentleman from Iowa. I just want to touch on some points regarding strategic basis of the surge and some of the goals, some of what we've heard today. Your indulgence. Just touch upon some of the general themes that our Nation faces in the war for freedom.

Mistakes in the past in Iraq have been rectified under the Petraeus plan. As I have said and many here have said on our side of the aisle, in the early days of the problems of reconstruction, we believed that you could not impose democracy from above in a top-down approach, but you could unleash liberty so that it could rise up, much as the American Revolution did, to take its own shape as the Iraqi people were emancipated from the shackles of Saddam's oppression.

What General Petraeus is doing, in conjunction with Ambassador Crocker, is they are going into the towns, they're going into the tribes, they are going into the bedrock of the population of Iraq, and with the surge, providing the security to protect these individuals in these towns from the collective and systematic terror of the enemy, so that average Iraqis can make the local political shift to liberty and away from the insurgency. This is being done not simply through the utilization of military force. In fact, the success on the ground in the local levels and in the provinces and in our cooperation with the tribes is built upon and hastened by this political shift among the population.

In any counterinsurgency operation, the critical element is to separate the population from the insurgency. This can be reasoned, if we look back at some of the statements of the grand guerilla warrior, Chairman Mao. When asked about how his guerilla operations and insurgencies against the nationalist Chinese would work, he said, our people will be as the fishes amongst the water of the people. What you have to do is separate the fish from the water. This is why the critical testimony I believe we heard today was that every single Iraqi, everyone in Anbar Province and elsewhere where we are seeing progress is being given the ability to make the free, conscious decision to reach for their liberty. They are not being terrorized because of the valor of our troops and the plan and the reconstruction efforts that are flowing into these areas that show they have a transactional benefit in this transformational change. And this is hastening the local political shift which I believe undergirds our chances for victory in Iraq. This is also what undergirds the good news that we had today, at least the welcome news that, because of the local shift amongst the population and the improved security that is concomitant to it, General Petraeus has proposed a reduction of 4,000 troops by the end of the year and a reduction of 40,000 troops by July.

Even if our Nation is so divided that we cannot unite in the cause of victory in Iraq, at least let us unite with the welcome news that 4,000 now and 40,000 of our fellow Americans citizens are going to be returning from harm's way to their loved ones.

[Time: 21:00]

To have individuals derive this as a token gesture is to accuse General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker of what the accusers themselves are doing, which is to play politics with the lives of our troops. We have seen, despite all evidence, despite what the military's assessment has been, repeated calls for the immediate withdrawal of the United States forces from Iraq. This would be irresponsible not only to our troops in the field but to the people of the region, especially the Iraqis themselves, who would be slaughtered.

When one decides to engage in a strategic withdrawal in the face of enemy, military experts generally concur that this is one of the most dangerous maneuvers forces in the field can attempt because your numbers are getting smaller as the enemy is becoming emboldened and encroaching ever closer to you. The wholesale withdrawal on a date certain, which is an arbitrary dictate from politicians in Washington, for those who believe that this is a proper course of action, I ask them to check into how the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan went, and they might reach another decision.

Further, to call this a token gesture not only belittles the sacrifices that our troops have made to reduce the security problems in these areas and to help get this local political shift, it also diminishes and belittles in a callous way the true joy these troops' families are going to feel when their loved ones come back.

To me that is something that is not a token. That is something that relieves the painful anxiety of every waking minute these families spend wondering if their loved one will come home. I highly doubt that the military mothers in my district or throughout America are ever going to consider any troop coming home from accomplishing their mission as being a token gesture.

Be that as it may, it is also critical that we understand, in this period of time, that ours is the latest generation duty bound to defend freedom in its hour of maximum danger. Thus we must ever remember, through this crucible of liberty, our course is tough but our cause is just.

The enemy is the sire of tyranny; we are the children of liberty. By heinously invading our Nation on September 11, 2001, and killing 3,000 innocent American souls, the enemy announced we cannot co-exist. In consequence, it is clear a world condensed by an Internet cannot endure half slave and half free. Yes, many times in the life of our free Republic, we have been called upon to face danger and to defeat it, and we have always done this and secured it by advancing a simple elemental truth that has served us well: to ensure our own liberty, we must ensure liberty to the enslaved.

Thus in this trying time, it is imperative that we demonstrate that our devotion to liberty transcends their obsession with death. And united amongst ourselves and other free people, with prudence, we can, we must, and we will, for the sake of our children and the generations of Americans yet unnamed, we will win and we will walk our path, and we will widen the cause of human freedom.

I thank you for allowing me the chance to address you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCOTTER. Thank you. The gentleman from New Mexico, the good doctor from Texas and other speakers have touched upon a fundamental point. I wish to stress what General Petraeus said in terms of what an American victory would look like and then ask a question of those who would support an immediate withdrawal.

In his own letter to the troops, General Petraeus said that what we need is for the Iraqis to become solely responsible for their own security. That means a very small footprint, if at all, of the United States in Iraq militarily. Secondly, it will depend upon the local reconstruction, reconciliation, and security of the average Iraqi which will then drive the national reconciliation. Between those two pillars of local reconciliation and security will come a stable and free Iraq that no longer creates terrorists, but captures them instead.

But as we are the children of liberty, as we are a Nation that proudly proclaims it is conceived in liberty, that since every human being has an unalienable, God-given right to breathe free, to have the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness, I ask my fellow Americans who support the immediate withdrawal this: If we betray our fundamental commitment to liberty to the people of Iraq and watch them be slaughtered in the sands, what will we ever be able to offer them again to turn them from the enemy and towards us? If we betray our own profession of the desire to liberate them, to let them share in their God-given rights the same way we have, we will be ideologically disarmed in the war for freedom.

I assure you we will rue the day that we betrayed not only them but the inherited legacy that we have received from the greatest generations of Americans who preceded us and allowed us to live in the majestic America that we know today.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source