The Moral Compass of the United State in its Quest for Victory

Floor Speech

THE MORAL COMPASS OF THE UNITED STATES IN ITS QUEST FOR VICTORY

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the greatest deliberative body the world has ever known--the United States House of Representatives.

I am pleased to be a part of this institution that has elections every 2 years, which requires us to put our fingers on the pulse of the American people. Even though most of us don't like the idea of a 24-24-7 campaign, that being 24 months, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you set up a perpetual motion machine, and you make sure that the people on your staff and those who are working with you are out there constantly with their fingers on the pulse, listening, talking.

Part of my job is to listen, and part of my job is to project the things that I learn and the things that I know. We have people in this Congress who decide, well, their job is simply to vote the majority opinion of their districts. They don't necessarily consider whether the district is right or wrong as far as the majority is concerned. They just try to put their fingers on the pulse and decide, well, let's see. If 51 percent of the people think this way and if 49 percent of them disagree and think the other way, then if I come down on the side of the 51, then I'll be able to keep coming back here to Congress and sort out the opinions and be, let me say, the barometer of the people in their districts.

Mr. Speaker, I think that's wrong; I think that's narrow, and I think that's shortsighted, but I do believe we have a responsibility to listen to our constituents. We have a responsibility to listen to the people in our States whether they're in our districts or not. We have a responsibility to listen to the American people across the board.

In the end, each one of us--each of us 435 Members of the House of Representatives and every one of the 100 Senators on the other side of the rotunda--has a responsibility. We owe Americans and especially our constituents our best judgment. That means we listen to the people in the district and across the country. It also means that here we are where we are, in a way, the epicenter of information for the world, where information comes pouring in here, and if I need to find an answer to a question, I ask somebody and the answer comes, and it comes almost always in a form that I can use it and incorporate it into the argument that I'm making and further enlighten.

So we have access to more information here than most people have, at least across the country, and they're out there doing a good job. They're on the Internet, and they're reading, and they're watching the news, and they're thinking and having these conversations across the country. Their conversations help shape the middle of America. If some people weigh in on the right and some people weigh in on the left, it kind of comes out to a balance. It's going to balance. It's a moving fulcrum in the middle.

What we need to do is to take this access to information that we have--and we owe the people in this country our best judgment--and we need to weigh the information. We need to apply our best judgment to the real data that we have, and if we disagree with the majority of our constituents, that doesn't mean that we go vote the way they think we should. We may do so, but we have an obligation to let them know, perhaps, both sides of the argument and to step in and to make the case. Sometimes we're called upon to go back and to inform the people in our districts of the things that we know even though we know very well that they may disagree with our positions.

The first thing we have to do is to do what is right for our country. The second thing we have to do is to do what's right for our States. The third thing we need to do is to do what's right for our constituents. I have said a number of times that, if it's good for America and not good for Mom, I'm sorry, Mom; we're going to find another way to take care of you. My first obligation is not with individuals but with the broader, overall good for the destiny of this country. Often those things come together, and almost always they do.

I actually can't think of a time when I've had to put up a vote that was contrary to the wishes of my district or was contrary to the best interests of my district, but that's where I draw the line--an obligation. I owe the people in this country my best judgment because that's essentially what they have endorsed in the election, and I owe them my best effort.

When you put those two things together and if we all did that, if we all stood on principle and offered our best judgments and our best efforts, if every motive in this place, Mr. Speaker, were an altruistic motive, this country would be a lot better off than it is today.

I lay that backdrop, Mr. Speaker, because I'm watching what has unfolded as we near the Presidential election in November of this year. We've all seen on the news the massive media coverage of the trip that was made over to the Middle East and to other parts of the world by the presumptive nominee for President for the Democrat Party.

I am troubled by what I read in the New York Times on January 14, in an article written by Senator Obama, where he laid out his plan and his strategy for Iraq. He was going to Iraq. He is there today on a factfinding mission. Today is the 21st or 22nd of July, but his article was posted on the 14th of July. It told everybody in America what he was going to find when he arrived over there on his factfinding mission, and it had been almost 900 days since he had been there. He had been there one time, Mr. Speaker, one time, and he drew conclusions. I don't actually know what he saw then, but he drew conclusions, and he had conclusions before he went. He didn't change his conclusions when he came back.

So, this time, he posted an op-ed in the New York Times that said, in part: On my first day as President, I will order a troop withdrawal from Iraq. That's what he said a week before he arrived in Iraq on a factfinding mission.

So, Mr. Speaker, I pose this question: I think he got it exactly backwards. I think, when you go on a factfinding mission, you can lay out what you think before you go. That's perfectly appropriate. To lay out the decision you're going to make after you're there and you gather the facts and you announce that before you go gets that exactly backwards. A factfinding mission needs to be just that. If you go into an area, you can say, ``Here is what I know. Here are my fundamental beliefs, but I'm going to talk to the people on the ground.''

He met with General Petraeus. I would go and do that again myself. I've done it a number of times. I would meet with Ambassador Crocker. I would meet with General Odierno. I would meet with troops from my home State. I don't know if he did that.

I have many times walked into a mess hall over in Iraq and also in Afghanistan and have just hollered out ``Anybody here from Iowa?'' Then they'll come around and gather around the table. That has actually been successful all but one time. There was once when I went into the mess hall when there wasn't anybody from Iowa, but that's how I find out what's going on over there. I know, when I sit down at the table with soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines from my home State, they will look me in the eye and will tell me the truth as straight as they know it. Sometimes they'll ask me to come off to the side, and they'll tell it to me real straight. They do that, and I can believe them because we're from the same State. We always know somebody whom we both know or somebody we're both related to or somebody whom they're related to or they're from a town where I'm from. As to this level of credibility that comes from people from the same locale, they're going to tell the truth because they know that those conversations go back and forth through the neighborhood. Plus, they're honest people and they're solid people, and they're honorable soldiers and Marines who are over there with their lives on the line for us.

I wonder what those soldiers from Illinois might have told the junior Senator from Illinois. I wonder if he gave them a chance to do that. I wonder how he interpreted it. I wonder what kind of message it would have been to a fellow who had served 147 days only in the United States Senate who had then decided that he had had enough experience to be President of the United States.

I wonder if they told him what they tell me.

I can tell you what they tell me, Mr. Speaker, and it is consistent, and it is without dissent from the people I talked to, and I'm open to all of them who come to me. They say, ``Let us finish our mission. You can't pull us out now. We are all volunteers. We're volunteers for this branch of the service. We knew there was a high likelihood that we would be ordered to deploy to this part of the world. We re-upped knowing that. Everybody in here signed up knowing this was a mission that they were most likely to be ordered on. We want to stay here and take on this fight and finish this fight to take the battle away from our children and grandchildren.'' That's the direct message that I've received over and over and over again in those parts of the world where we have troops deployed. I have an obligation to go over there and to visit with them and to pick that up from our line troops, from those people who are out there on patrols on a daily basis, from those people who are out there working in 125-degree heat with bulletproof vests on.

I notice that the junior Senator from Illinois arrived and got off the plane in Baghdad and had some pretty good photo ops while in shirt sleeves. I listened to the former admiral from Pennsylvania who spoke in the media here in the last couple of days. He would be Joe Sestak, Congressman Sestak, who made comments on, I believe it was, Good Morning America and also on Hannity and Colmes that there were at least three points on which the President and John McCain had come to Obama's position. I listened to that and thought: How could that be?

Well, he alleged that the President is adopting Obama's position on pulling out of Iraq and in setting a timeline. He also spoke about a couple of other issues there that he argued were Obama's positions--set a timeline, pull out of Iraq, et cetera.

I'll submit this, Mr. Speaker: The junior Senator from Illinois could not have stepped off of the airplane in Iraq in shirt sleeves or in a bulletproof vest and wearing a helmet, which most had to do when they went over there during the height of this conflict. He could not have done that today or yesterday if it hadn't been for the surge, if it hadn't been for President Bush in ordering the surge and if it hadn't been for General Petraeus in designing the surge and if it hadn't been for John McCain in supporting the surge and if it hadn't been for people like me who also supported the surge.

I introduced a resolution in this Chamber in February of 2007 that endorsed and supported the surge. I'm on record, Mr. Speaker, and I'm on record tonight in saying Barack Obama could not have set foot in the places that he did in Iraq if it hadn't been for President Bush's being bold enough to issue the order to follow through on Petraeus' idea and if it hadn't been for the support of Members of this Congress and of the Senate and of the support of people like John McCain who said this is a good alternative. It's a far better alternative than pulling out of Iraq and turning it over to al Qaeda.

In fact, if we had followed the leadership of the junior Senator from Illinois, we would have pulled out of there in 2005, and we would have turned Iraq over to al Qaeda. Instead of saying, ``well, Prime Minister Maliki, I think you ought to adopt my timeline on 16 months to pull troops out,'' he wouldn't be over there. The prime minister wouldn't be Prime Minister Maliki if we'd followed the leadership of the junior Senator from Illinois. It would likely be Prime Minister Zarqawi who would be there. Al Qaeda would be in control, and the Iranians would have flowed over across the Strait of Hormuz, and their influence within the Shiia regions in the south would be controlling much of the oil in the southern part of Iraq.

We have to think about what the consequences would have been had we pulled out when this supposedly visionary Presidential candidate, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania said, argued that the vision, the insight, of the junior Senator from Illinois is outstanding and impressive.

I say, no, it's utter failure. It's failure to understand that Iraq is a strategic part in the world, and the consequences of failing there cannot be measured against the advantage of having a couple of extra brigades that can be deployed into Afghanistan. When America accepts defeat, other Americans die. Later generations of Americans die. Other people, free people in the world, lose their freedom, and many of them die.

I have a constituent who is a refugee from Cambodia. She came here when she was 9 years old, and she lost a number of her relations in the killing fields in Cambodia, and she didn't see her father for years. She was kept away from her mother because she was put into a labor camp, a re-indoctrination camp, because the leadership in Cambodia concluded that the parents were a bad influence on the children. They wanted to change the culture of a generation, so they killed many. This is a result of our lack of will.

We didn't lose the war militarily in Vietnam. That didn't happen. We won every battle. We won every engagement. We tactically checked the North Vietnamese. We lost the battle in Vietnam right here on floor of the United States House of Representatives when they passed appropriations legislation that prohibited any dollars appropriated and any dollars heretofore appropriated, that means money that's already been sent that way and any new money, none of it could be spent on the ground or in the air over Vietnam, North or South Vietnam or Laos or Cambodia or offshore in the South China Sea.

We could not support the South Vietnamese. We trained them up, we gave them munitions, and we made them available, and they were ready so they could defend themselves. This Congress shut off the money. They shut off the ammunition to the M-16s that were in the hands of South Vietnamese soldiers. They shut off the heavy weapons like tanks and artillery, and they shut off the air cover that we had guaranteed. We guaranteed them we will provide you with the equipment that you need, the munitions that you need, and the air cover so that you can defend yourselves.

And we went through Vietnamization, and we trained the South Vietnamese military, and this Congress pulled the plug on them and broke that faith with the South Vietnamese people, and we wonder why they ran in front of the invasion when the North Vietnamese stormed down into South Vietnam? And the answer is, they didn't have a lot to shoot back with, Mr. Speaker. They didn't have anybody to support them, Mr. Speaker.

And 10s of thousands of them died. Many of them got into boats and tried to get out of the country. Many of them were sunk in ships going off of South Vietnam. A lot of them, though, got here to the United States where they started new lives, and this calamity flowed over into Cambodia.

All together, people in this Congress that were here then, a few, those that put up that vote, those that advocated for pulling the plug on our commitment to support South Vietnam seem to think that they saved American lives, and in reality, they probably temporarily saved American lives but 2 to 3 million of God's children died in the aftermath because we didn't keep faith with our word and we didn't keep faith with the South Vietnamese.

And so I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, that in General Giap's book, the North Vietnamese general who is credited with being the mastermind to what they celebrate as a victory over the United States, wrote in his book on page 8: ``We got the first inspiration that we could defeat the United States because the United States didn't press for a complete victory in Korea.'' In Korea, Mr. Speaker.

The Vietnamese understood that because we didn't press for a complete victory there, we settled for a negotiated settlement, and we set up a DMZ on, I think, it's the 38th parallel. When we did that, they saw that we did not have the resolve to finish the fight.

And so they began a tactic of undermining American public opinion, and the people in this country that marched in the streets and those who would undermine our troops just assuredly empowered the enemy.

And so this Congress put up the vote that shut off the support for the South Vietnamese, pulled all of our troops out of there, and in the collapse that happened, we saw the shame of lifting people off of the U.S. embassy in Saigon.

The people in Iraq remember this. Our enemies across the world remember what happened in Vietnam. Al Qaeda and Pakistan, and to the extent that they're in Afghanistan, and the very few remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq, they all understand. They've been marketed to by their leaders. They know what happened. They believe the United States lacked resolve in Vietnam.

They saw when the terrorists bombed the Marine barracks in Lebanon that we pulled out of there. They saw that even though there were all of 500 that were killed in the other side in the battle at Mogadishu, we lost 18 soldiers there, they saw us pull out of there. They saw us blink in the face of a conflict and not have the stomach for it. That's how they saw it.

I saw brave Americans step up every time they were given the order to do so. I never saw an American back up. I saw American politicians back up. I didn't see our soldiers, airmen or marines or sailors back up.

But when the politicians backed up, that put a marker down that inspired our enemies, and it may have, in Vietnam, saved some American lives, but in the long run, it put American lives at risk because our enemies were empowered throughout the generations.

I know this to be fact. Osama bin Laden has said so. Some of his other leadership has said so, and on June 11 of 2004, I was in Kuwait waiting to go into Iraq the next morning. I had a television station on, Al Jazeera TV, and there was an English closed-caption going on while the language was in Arabic. Moqtada al-Sadr, the infamous leader of the Mahdi Militia who now seems to have taken a far lower profile, Moqtada al-Sadr came on television and he said on Al Jazeera TV, If we keep attacking Americans, they will leave Iraq the same way they left Vietnam, the same way that they left Lebanon, the same way that they left Mogadishu. That's the message that he was pounding through Al Jazeera TV. Everybody in the Middle East could hear that message.

Now think for a moment, Mr. Speaker, what kind of a message does that send out to all of the rest of the sympathizers of our enemies, the radical Islamists, the jihadists, the people that are inclined to be supportive--and by the way, I asked the question of Benazir Bhutto while she was in Iowa giving a speech after September 11, I said: What percentage of Muslims are inclined to be supportive of al Qaeda? What percentage of Muslims are inclined to be supportive of al Qaeda? A straight, objective question that some will say, well, there's a bias built into the question. I don't think so.

I asked her that directly, and her answer was not very many, perhaps 10 percent. And the way it came off of her tongue said to me she had been asked the question before, she had answered the question before. Daniel Pipes puts that percentage at 10 to 15 percent, Mr. Speaker.

And so when you do the math, if it's 10 percent of 1.3 billion people, that's 130 million. That's a lot of people that are inclined to be supportive of al Qaeda. They are scattered across the world. And as we know, look in this country, the radicals in America show up, they come from really every State and many of the walks of life, and they're a small percentage, probably not 10 percent, but when they come to the streets of America, you get an entirely different message. And they recruit to each other, and they use the Internet to do that, and they come out on the streets and protest.

And so think of it in those terms. If you're a radical and you are marketing, trying to recruit other radicals, you aren't going to get 90 percent of the society. You're only going to be able to market to 10 percent, maybe 15 percent, those that are inclined to be supportive, but from that 10 to 15 percent, you can recruit a lot of fighters.

If you're al Qaeda and you are marketing to that 130 million people or maybe as many as 200 million people, if you take Daniel Pipes' number of going as far as 15 percent--let's just say 200 million people--on the

planet that are inclined to be supportive of al Qaeda, as high as 15 percent of the Muslim religion that are those inclined to be radical, and now what happens when you have Moqtada al-Sadr say, If we keep attacking Americans, they will leave Iraq the same way they left Vietnam, Lebanon and Mogadishu, some of those out there hear that message and some of them migrate towards the center, the center to where they can be recruited to fight for al Qaeda and attack and kill Americans.

That's gone on. That's gone on in Iraq since the beginning of the operations in March of 2003. It goes on in a far weaker effort today, but think of this. Think what happens if we pulled out of Iraq. If we have a Commander in Chief who has said we can't win, it's a loss, we're already defeated, the surge is a failure--oh, yes, the junior Senator from Illinois said repeatedly the surge is a failure, it can't work. Now, today, he can't say that out loud, but he said that in the past. He tore the things down off of his Web site that declared the surge to be a failure. And now the posture is, well, some things have happened there that have provided better security, but we need to pull our troops out and we need to pull them out on a timetable.

Well, here's something that you need to know. When there is a war, there is a winner and a loser. Both sides will seek to declare victory if there's any way that they can do that, but a declaration of victory does not constitute a victory. What constitutes a victory is achieving your objectives. Our objectives in Iraq were to provide freedom for the Iraqi people, leave them in control of their country, promote a moderate Islamic State that actually will have people going to the polls to elect their own leaders and direct their own destiny. And we hope against hope that they will be a strong ally to the United States.

And Mr. Speaker, in the times that I've made the trip over there, I surely have concluded that the Iraqis do intend to remain a strong ally to the United States. When I talk with their leaders, when the Mayor of Ramadi comes in and begins to talk about needing sewer and needing more electricity, needing more power, needing some roads, that sounds to me like maybe the Mayor of Des Moines, as opposed to the Mayor of Ramadi.

They do appreciate the sacrifice of the American people, and 4 years ago, the situation was this. Yes, all the Iraqis wanted the Americans to leave, just not anytime soon. They wanted to have control of their country. They wanted to be able to provide the security so that they didn't have violence going on constantly, and now that they're close enough, they are starting to feel like they can control their own country and provide security in their own country.

So that's the political push that Maliki is playing to as he gets ready for the elections that come up there later on this year and which will be perhaps as late as December or January of next year. There's politics going on, and if Prime Minister Maliki needs to tell the Iraqi people that he would like to see a timeline by which the United States would pull troops out of Iraq, yes, I wish I had that timeline, too. I understand why he has to say that politically, but truly, it would be foolhardy to set a timeline and declare our troops are going to be out of Iraq and not prepare for the enemy.

The enemy has a play in this, too. General Petraeus said the other day, The enemy has a vote, and not only does the enemy have a vote, but they are an independent variable. A very diplomatic way of saying you can't just declare that we are going to be in a position where we can draw our troops down to significant levels. It does look likely, and that's been the plan all along.

And you can go back through the announcements that were made by the Secretary of Defense, and let's just go through Secretary Gates back to Secretary Rumsfeld, we can go back through the commanders on the ground in Iraq, General Odierno, General Petraeus, and General Casey and General Sanchez, all the way on back to the commanders on the ground, the core commanders there on the ground, and what you will find is that each of them have had a plan that draws troops down when violence is reduced to certain levels. That is nothing new.

I mean, that's a plan, a strategy for all wars. You don't have to be a rocket surgeon to come up with the idea--and I said that on purpose, rocket surgeon--to come up with the idea that when you win the war, the troops come home. The idea was to win the war and bring the troops home, and bring them home while leaving enough of a force there to maintain security.

The surge was about taking over control and security within Iraq and then setting up the Iraqi military which has been growing and being trained all along. I saw the first Iraqi troops being trained in Mosul in October of 2003, and guess who was training those troops, General David Petraeus. Now, that was October. They went in and liberated Mosul in March of 2003.

Things not known by the American public, Mr. Speaker, General Petraeus set up elections in Mosul and two of the adjoining states, did so in May of 2003. They elected a governor, a vice governor and several other officers to be the civilian authority there in the country.

And so, as this has unfolded and developed in Iraq, the situation has gotten worse because over through the mid-years of 2005, 2006 and parts of 2007, that happened I think because we left too much of it in the control of the Iraqis, and we didn't grab a hold of the bull by the horns and reset the destiny.

That happened when General Petraeus came back from writing his book on counter-insurgency and when he took charge and we gave him the resources he needed to put the surge in play. It happened when President Bush ordered it.

And if it hadn't been for the surge, Obama wouldn't be able to set foot in many of those places that he's visiting today, pontificating on how right he was. He was utterly wrong. It was wrong to pull the troops out in 2004, 2005, 2006 or 2007. It's wrong to immediately order them out today. But we are bringing troops out of Iraq on a timely basis. And it's going to likely be right to bring more troops out in 2009.

And those levels that we can bring down, the concern we need to have is, what's the casualty rate there, and what does it take to sustain a level of stability? That's the questions that need to be answered, Mr. Speaker. And the very idea that because one junior Senator from Illinois has said that he disagreed with the war and that he disagreed with our troops there throughout the full duration, that we should pull the troops out immediately and that we should deploy some troops to Afghanistan, that he was right all along doesn't hold up, Mr. Speaker, because he's been wrong all along.

He would have turned Iraq over to al Qaeda. Al Qaeda would own a big chunk of that country today if we had listened to the junior Senator from Illinois, and Ahmadinejad would own the rest. Except for the Kurds; they would have declared independence and been immediately in a two-front work, with the Iranians on one side, the Turks on the other side. All of that would have been wrong. It would have been a tactical blunder. And all of that to, what, free up a couple of brigades to go to Afghanistan and talk about the broader picture for the world?

I think the American people have a better feel for the broader picture of the world than that. I think they understand this: If Vietnam, Lebanon and Mogadishu are enough to inspire Muqtada al-Sadr to mount a Mahdi militia and fight the way they did and die the way they did, and enough to inspire al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and Zarqawi, if those three countries of the United States demonstrating lack of resolve were enough to inspire al Qaeda to attack the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania--which was either destined likely for the Capitol here where we stand or the White House--if our lack of resolve in Vietnam, Lebanon and Mogadishu was enough to inspire all of that, think, Mr. Speaker, what kind of inspiration it would be to al Qaeda, to the Taliban, to all of our enemies if we lack the resolve to finish this war in Iraq that is so nearly finished.

If we handed it back over to the enemy, if we let it collapse around the Iraqi people, and if millions of them died as millions in Cambodia died because we lacked resolve there, Iraq would be declared a victory for al Qaeda, it would be declared a victory for our enemies because, here's the fundamental truth: It's like a street fight. When there's a street fight, usually the one who loses is the one who runs away, maybe cursing and shouting or is carried away by his buddies. The one who wins is still standing on the corner. That's who wins a street fight, that's who wins a war. You've got to own the ground, Mr. Speaker, and you've got to destroy the will of the enemy to commit war.

We've nearly destroyed the will of al Qaeda in Iraq. And I have set foot and walked around in most of the regions in Iraq, but particularly al Anbar Province, a place that I could not go a year and a half ago, I went there less than a year ago. I couldn't go there a year and a half ago because al Qaeda owned too much of al Anbar Province. That's a third of the real estate in Iraq. And the mosques were preaching then an anti-coalition, anti-American message. Today, there aren't any Mosques in al Anbar Province that are preaching an anti-American, anti-coalition message. The last numbers I saw were 40 percent were preaching pro-coalition, 60 percent were preaching a neutral message.

And the example of al Anbar Province, the very intensive Sunni Province, where the Sunnis joined up with us and provided intelligence and the Sunnis rose up and drove a lot of al Qaeda out and took them out, there was no place for al Qaeda to hide in al Anbar Province as long as the Sunnis were willing to team up with coalition American troops. And they did so. They did so because they believe that we're going to stick it out and we're going to be with them. They also believe that the future for Iraq is far better when the Iraqi people are determining their destiny rather than al Qaeda. They did so because of some of the very brutal tactics against civilians that were committed by al Qaeda. They did so for a lot of reasons. But in the end, people want their freedom. They want to be able to control their own destiny. They don't want to be ruled by a tyrant, and they don't want blood-thirsty al Qaeda in their regions.

So the good work that got done in Iraq could be thrown away with the stroke of a pen of a potential future Commander in Chief who said, before he went on his fact-finding mission, ``On my first day in office I will order a troop withdrawal from Iraq.'' That says to me, regardless of the conditions on the ground, regardless of the input that comes from the commanders on the ground, regardless of the facts, regardless of the intelligence, regardless of whether he hears this message that I have described, that pulling out of there creates a vacuum that hands over some of the control on the Iraq side of the Straits of Hormuz to Ahmadinejad, and pulling out of there will open things up for al Qaeda to reestablish a base camp there, and pulling out of there sets up the temptation for the Kurds to declare independence and end up with a two-front war and pits the Iraqis against the Iraqis. And without anyone to keep order, that is a very, very big gamble. And the most disagreeable consequence, Mr. Speaker, is that it would add Iraq to Muqtada al Sadr's list and make him right.

Then, Osama bin Laden would say, we have won in Iraq. And if we keep attacking Americans, they will leave. They will leave Afghanistan the same way that they left Vietnam, the same way they left Lebanon, the same way they left Mogadishu. And if Obama is elected President, they will say, and also the same way they left Iraq.

Al Qaeda will declare victory and they will be right because we will not be standing on the ground. We will not be standing on the street corner. That's the measure of victory: If you're there, they can't declare victory, they have to come back and take it from you. It puts me in mind of a famous flag that I saw, it was an early flag during the Texas independence fight. The flag is a white battle flag, and it has on it the black silhouette of a canon, and it says, ``Come and Take It.'' It's an inspiring message that comes from Texas. And that's what they need to do if they're going to declare victory, they have to come and take it. But they have taken defeat in Iraq. We need to solidify our victory. We can't have a victory if we pull out, if we cut and run, if we order troops out of there regardless of the situation on the ground. It takes time to nurture this.

It was interesting to compare the history of the insurgency in the Philippines with the battle that we have going on against al Qaeda globally today. A lot of

the same kind of enemies, by the way, with some of the same kind of ideology. I will say, perhaps, the spiritual descendants, al Qaeda is likely the spiritual descendants of the enemies that we fought in the Philippines. That was from 1898-1902.

We sent the Marines there and we sent the Army there. General ``Black Jack'' Pershing was there. We took on those insurgents and we fought them for 4 years, and we lost over 4,000 Americans during that period of time. And during that period of time we also sent, by the numbers presented to me by the President of the Philippines, 10,000 teachers there. We sent priests there, we sent pastors there. We sent our culture over to the Philippines to lift them up and help them out.

It took a long time to put that insurgency down. And the violence went on several years after we were finished with our main part of the conflict going on in the Philippines. But a few years ago, President Arroyo of the Philippines came here to Washington, DC. She gave a speech in a downtown hotel, not to Members of Congress particularly, but to whoever happened to be in the crowd and attended that dinner. And she said, and I'll never forget it, ``Thank you, America. Thank you for sending the Marine Corps to our islands in 1898''--she forgot to say the Army. ``Thank you for sending the Marine Corps to our islands in 1898. Thank you for liberating us. Thank you for freeing us. Thank you for sending 10,000 teachers. Thank you for sending your priests and pastors. Thank you for teaching us your way of life, including our economy and our culture,'' because she said today--and language, ``thank you for teaching us your language'' because today, 1.6 million Filipinos go anywhere they want to go in the world to get a job, and they send the money back to the Philippines. And it's a significant percentage of their gross domestic product. She said the percentage, I've forgotten it, but I remember the theme and the rest of the things that she said. It was a clear thank you that came in more than a century later to thank America because we were there to give them their opportunity for freedom. And they hung onto that freedom and in fact fought with us through the Second World War and fought bravely and valiantly. And today, they're set up as a free and democratic country.

That's the result of a battle against an insurgency when we had confidence in ourselves, when we weren't undermining our military with defeatist comments. And by the way, I happened to notice this in the USA Today newspaper today, the Presidential election that went on during that period of time was about whether we would stick it out or whether we would pull out. And the Presidential candidate that advocated for pulling out was William Jennings Brian, a young charismatic Presidential candidate who was essentially a populist who said, ``let's get out of there, it's wrong to be there.''

I'll make this point, Mr. Speaker: Americans voted for McKinley in that election, and they did so because he was a tough, crusty fighter that was going to stand up for the values of the United States. He wasn't going to back off. Once we engaged in a conflict, he intended to win. We did win. The Philippines are free today, they're free today because of it. We could have handed it back over, we did not.

The American people sided for freedom. And where American soldiers have gone, they've taken freedom with them. And by the way, wherever the English language has gone around this planet it has taken freedom with it as well, whether it was carried by the Brits, the Aussies, the Americans, the Canadians. I can't find an English-speaking country that is not a free country today. The English language is the best carrier of freedom that there is. And that doesn't mean if people speak English, they're free, but the culture of freedom goes with the language called English. That's the historical fact.

Today, the Philippines are free. And we won the insurgency there and there are lessons to be learned. General Petraeus references the Philippine insurrection in his book on counter-insurgency. It's an instructive lesson, it's a lesson of resolve. But additionally, if you look through the conflicts and the history of America, while we had elections during those conflicts--and the most instructive is the election in 1864 during the height of the Civil War and the carnage that took place there. We lost over 600,000 Americans--that would be total from each side--during that conflict of the Civil War; bloody and brutal with thousands of casualties, actually thousands killed in a number of different battles.

And the will of the American people was tested on the north side of the Mason-Dixon Line and on the south side of the Mason-Dixon Line. And when the election came up in 1864, America was tired of war. They didn't know whether they could win or not--and I'll talk about the North didn't know if they could overcome the South. But the candidate that ran against Abraham Lincoln was General George McClellan. And General George McClellan was not an aggressive commander. He commanded the Army of the Potomac. And the Army of the Potomac was a large and massive army that had a chance at victory south of here and didn't press the enemy or he might have been able to close on Richmond and end the war within the first year. He didn't do that.

And so he went back and dug in and fortified Washington, DC to protect this city, and drilled and trained and fortified and drilled and trained and fortified until Abraham Lincoln sent him a letter that said, ``Well, if you're not going to use this Army, can I borrow it?'' That was the general that ran against Abraham Lincoln in 1864. And General McClellan's agenda was, ``we will sue for peace. We will negotiate a settlement so that this horrible war is over.'' And you know, if McClellan would have been elected, we wouldn't be one country today. The Mason-Dixon Line would have been the boundary between the United States of the North and the Confederate States of the South.

If that had been the case, if the American people had chosen to side with the candidate who wanted to accept less than victory, the United States would not be the United States. We wouldn't be the great Nation we are today. We wouldn't have been able to engage in some of these large conflicts that have turned the destiny of the world. We wouldn't have been, perhaps--I'll say almost certainly we would not have gone into the Philippines. We would have fought a defensive war in the Spanish-American War. Who knows who would have prevailed in that. They might have pitted the South against the North; clearly, that's what happens. There would have been residual animosity left over from the Civil War. We don't know the results of the Spanish-American War if we hadn't had a successful resolution to the Revolutionary War that tied this country back together.

If we were two countries instead of one, we wouldn't have engaged in World War I in the fashion that we did. An entirely different result might have happened. It might have been the Germans that won World War I instead of the Allied Forces. And when you get to World War II, the conflict that forced this country to mobilize, 16,000 men and women in an effort in uniform to win the global war, win the war in Europe and win the war in Asia, you put that all together, it would have been impossible to do so if there had been a United States of the North and the Confederate States of the South. We would not have been able to be one country. And when Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor, I'd question whether there would have been a Pearl Harbor for them to attack. And who knows what would have happened if they had landed on our west coast which States would have been North and which ones would have been South. And would we have carried that resentment on to the next century and said, ``I'm not going to defend the Confederate States of America. After all, we fought a war with them less than 100 years ago.'' Who knows? But we could not have pooled our resources if we were two separate countries.

Abraham Lincoln had the resolve. The greatness of the man was he saved the union. Yes, it was bloody and it was brutal and it cost a high price. But the millions of lives that have been saved because of that weigh in favor of Abraham Lincoln's resolve to save the union.

And so who would have saved the world from the tyranny of Nazism, of Stalinism, the tyranny of the Cold War that would have washed over us, who would have saved the world from all of that if the United States had been two nations instead of one? I suspect it would have been nobody, and perhaps the last flames of freedom would have been snuffed out by the totalitarian regimes that came from imperialistic Japan and Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. How would anybody on this planet have stood up against that if we weren't one Nation under God, 48 States pulling together with our vast resources and our strong spirit, the spirit of freedom, and the confidence of American destiny that we had then, that has since been besmirched by Vietnam, Lebanon, Mogadishu?

But not, Mr. Speaker, not Iraq, I pray. Not another huge inspiration for our enemies. Let's seal the deal there. Let's demonstrate our resolve there. Let's stand on the principles that took us there. And when this country goes to war, it's our country, right or wrong, it's our country. And we need to sing off the same page of the hymnal and get to this point where we have a victory that is legitimately declared, not a retreat that we're going to try to redefine as a victory. We stay. We stand together. We finish the fight there. And when we do so, the legacy that's left will be one to build on instead of one to run away from. And let me just say we can never, never let leaders in the world, tyrants in the world, say, ``If we keep attacking Americans they will leave''--name your country. Let's say Afghanistan--"the same way they left Lebanon, the same way they left Vietnam, the same way they left Mogadishu, the same way they left Iraq. Those ``the same way they left Iraq'' words can never be legitimately spoken. They must never be allowed to be legitimately spoken because if they are, more American lives will be lost, more of God's children across this planet will be lost, and the forces of evil and tyranny will be strengthened. Their resolve will be strengthened. Their recruitment will be strengthened. Ours will be diminished. And for the purposes of freeing up a couple of brigades to go to Afghanistan, it's not a bad idea to bolster some troops there, but NATO needs to send their people in there in big enough numbers and be willing to fight. The United States can't carry this alone.

What happened to the argument that we needed to have coalitions to fight these wars? We had 30-some nations on the ground fighting in Iraq. I stood in a place in Basra, where the British commanded, and at random counted officers there from eight different countries. In fact, I lined them up and took their pictures because I thought nobody's going to believe that we have this kind of a presence here in this country. We did. We had coalition troops in Iraq. We still have a good presence of coalition troops in Iraq. And for the junior Senator of Illinois to talk about pushing more troops over to Afghanistan, which I will support when they're freed up and I think we can produce enough troops to do so, but I would say back to him what about a coalition? Let's put some troops in there from the NATO countries in the world. Let's ask for a little more from them instead of America carrying this load all the way. Those things I think are components of this entire discussion.

So, Mr. Speaker, Americans wouldn't be walking around in the streets of Ramadi shopping, as I did, if it hadn't been for the surge and if it hadn't been for General Petraeus. Americans wouldn't be thinking of coming back home out of Iraq instead of being redeployed to Afghanistan if it weren't for the surge. Americans wouldn't be in a situation where we could say all of the indicators there define victory for us if it weren't for the surge.

I mean this Congress, and I thought imprudently, set up 18 different benchmarks for the Iraqis to meet. Of those 18 benchmarks, the Iraqis have met at least 15 of them and they are working on the other 3. They have accommodated this rather skittish Congress that we've had, and they have done that in the face of--since Nancy Pelosi took the gavel as Speaker in January of 2007, since that time to this floor there have been brought 40 resolutions, 40 resolutions that undermined our military, weakened our support for our military and our troops, and sought to unfund the troops, 40 resolutions sending the message Congress doesn't support our troops in the field. And I can say that, Mr. Speaker, because it doesn't work to say ``I support the troops but I oppose the mission.'' It doesn't work to say ``Put your life on the line for me and my freedom and my security, but I think it's the wrong mission.'' When you ask somebody to put their life on the line, you've got to believe in their mission, you've got to stand with it, and you've got to make sure they have all of the equipment, all the training, all the support that's possible that can be generated by the treasure of a country that owes so much to its military people.

This situation, the idea of declaring what he finds out and then going there to find it, that does not hold up in a logical society. And declaring his first order would be to order troops out of Iraq, regardless of the situation on the ground, and then still maintaining a standard that if things get bad, we'll go back in, if you don't have the will to stay there now when the war is essentially won, you won't have the will to go back in. The American people know that, Mr. Speaker.

So there's much at stake. We need a strong Commander in Chief. We need a tough, ornery patriot.

And, furthermore, to tie this all together, in the history of America in every election when we have had a conflict, when we have been at war, there has been a presidential candidate that was less aggressive, a presidential candidate that was more of a pacifist, and in all but one of the circumstances that I can think of, there has been an opponent that said end this war at any cost, shut down the violence, let's get out of there, let's bring our troops home. And in every single case that there's been a presidential election during a time of war, the Commander in Chief whom the American people had the most confidence in winning that war and boldly moving us to victory, that's the person who won the election. That's the person who was elected to be Commander in Chief or the person who was elected to another term like Abraham Lincoln. McClellan lost the election because the American people are winners. We are winners because we know that when you engage in a war, you must win. The consequences for that multiply across the ages.

I can remember growing up and asking my father, who served 2 1/2 years in the South Pacific, ``Have we ever lost a war?'' And his answer was, ``No, the United States of America has never lost a war, son, and I pray we never do.''

It's not that easy to say that today. I can make the argument. It wouldn't stick with a lot of people. But that's where we are. We must maintain the resolve. The American people will step up and they will elect a strong Commander in Chief who will see us through to the end in this war in Iraq. Someone who understands this global threat of al Qaeda, who understands that the infiltration that's coming in from Pakistan into Afghanistan is where the threat comes from; that the sanctuary that exists in Pakistan needs to be addressed;

someone who understands that in the history of the world, it's hard, difficult, and maybe not even possible to come up with an example of an insurgency that was defeated when it had a sanctuary in another sovereign country that it could be armed from and deployed from. I can't think of an example, and I can't get an answer from others when I ask that question. Perhaps there is one.

But as this lays out, the American people need to understand where we are in the continuum of history, and where we are is that we must be able to chalk Iraq up as a victory. It is in a critical strategic part in the world. Iran is developing nuclear weapons as fast as they can. And if we pull out our position to leverage Iran without warfare, it gets weaker and weaker, and it puts us strategically in a worse position to do something about it if we do pull out. Every indicator is negative if we pull out of there. If we stay and we finish this thing with honor and we can declare it a victory, a victory that historians will sustain as a victory, then under those circumstances we discourage our enemies. We shut off their recruitment.

They are, by the way, on the run now, and they have a place to hide, and we need to eliminate their places to hide, and I will agree with that. But I'm looking forward to the American peoples decision, their verdict in November.

And I just cap this off by shifting to an important piece, Mr. Speaker, and that is this circumstance right here, that is the number one issue on the minds of the American people. This, Mr. Speaker, is gas prices. And where we are today, and actually I haven't looked today, but I had them check the prices when we built this poster, $4.08 a gallon. I listened to the rhetoric through this Congress as we moved through the Bush administration when gas was $1.49 back here when President Bush took office January 20 of 2001. And then gas prices went up not a buck, they crept up to $2.33 over time. As we tried to open up more energy, as this Congress passed six to eight bills out of this House when we had a Republican majority, every one of them provided more energy, more access to refineries. They would have built refineries. It would have opened up natural gas drilling, Outer Continental Shelf, ANWR. We passed all of that off the floor of this House, Mr. Speaker, and sent it over to the Senate, where the minority over there, the people who are opposed to energy development, filibustered our energy bills.

If we would just simply apply all those energy bills, if they would have been applied at the time we passed them, this gas wouldn't be $4.08. It wouldn't even be $2.33. The Senate was blocking this legislation clear back here. This legislation in 2003, 2004, 2005, we passed smart energy legislation here, and I have given many speeches on the subject matter during that period of time and since. But what happened, Mr. Speaker, is they shut down the development of our energy.

If we're not going to develop new energy in the United States, then the supply is going to diminish. For example, if you drill a well down into the zone and you start that well producing, that well is going to peak out about right then. When it does so, then what will happen is it diminishes in its production. So when you make your discovery, that's the peak. If you stop discovering, if you stop exploring, if you stop drilling new wells, or if you slow it down, our overall energy production goes down too.

Well, gas was $2.33 when Nancy Pelosi took the gavel, and she said, We are going to get you cheap gas prices. I have no idea what the strategy was, any kind of a rational approach on that. So I'd leave that to them to answer that question.

But my strategy is more energy of all kinds. Let's take this gas price back to $2.33. It's $4.08 today. Let's drill ANWR. Let's drill the Outer Continental Shelf. Let's drill the nonnational park public lands. Let's drill the Bureau of Land Management locations. Let's open up the oil shale. Let's produce more ethanol, more biodiesel, more wind. If you add up all of those sources of energy, grow the size of the energy pie, produce more Btus--we are only producing 72 percent of our energy consumption. Let's produce 100 percent of the energy that we are consuming.

If we do that, these prices go down, and we get this gas price back to $2.33. And the people that are blocking energy production need to be held accountable by the American people. That is the bottom line.

Supply and demand sets the price. You cannot suspend the law of supply and demand any more than you can suspend the law of gravity. If we do that and shore up the dollar, Mr. Speaker, we will see gas at $2.33 again. I will continue to work on that. I will sign every discharge petition I can to get there. And I will ask my colleagues to do the same. And I will ask the American people to have a referendum on who is producing a policy that will generate more electricity for the American people.

It's my side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, not the other side of the aisle.

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