Iraq
IRAQ
Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, this morning's Washington Post has an especially long editorial. Indeed, it takes up the entire length of the editorial page. It is entitled "Drumbeat on Iraq, a Response to Readers."
I have a dear friend in Utah who wrote me. She was distraughtis distraught, I am sureabout the prospect of going to war and expressed a great many concerns. I have been in the process of constructing what I hope is a responsible and thoughtful response to her concerns. As I read the editorial in this morning's Washington Post, I found that it does a better job than I could do of summarizing many, if not most, of the issues about which she is concerned. I want to read from sections of the editorial and then ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the RECORD at the end of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. BENNETT. In the editorial they say:
The right question, though, is not, "Is war risky?" but "Is inaction less so?" No one can provide more than a judgment in reply. But the world is already a dangerous place. Anthrax has been wielded in Florida, New York and Washington. Terrorists have struck repeatedly and with increased strength over the past decade. Are the United States and its allies ultimately safer if they back down again and leave Saddam Hussein secure? Or does safety lie in making clear that his kind of outlaw behavior will not be tolerated and in helping Iraq become a peaceable nation that offers no haven to terrorists? We would say the latter. . . .
As I say, I could not have put it better, which is why I have quoted it. I have raised the question on the floor before: What are the consequences if we do not follow through in Iraq? Some have said let's just leave the troops in place. And that means Iraq remains contained.
Leaving the troops in place is not an option. We must understand that the troops are where they are, poised to move into Iraq, because of the agreement of the governments in Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, among others. Those governments will not allow our troops to remain on their soil indefinitely. They will not allow those troops to remain there while we contain Saddam Hussein for 6 months or 12 months or 12 years, which has been the period of "containment" that we have seen up until now. We must either withdraw those troops and say we are not going to move ahead militarily or, if Saddam Hussein does not disarm in accordance with the U.N. resolutions, those troops will move forward into his territory. We have no other choice: Move forward or withdraw.
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For those who say the inspectors should be allowed to do their job, we must understand that the only reason the inspectors are there is because the troops are there. So we are coming down to the decision point, that is very clear.
Again, back to the editorial:
Some argue now that, because Saddam Hussein has not in the intervening half decade used his arsenal, Mr. Clinton was wrong. . . .
I should say that the editorial quotes President Clinton as outlining the case against Saddam Hussein in 1998.
Some would argue now that, because Saddam Hussein has not in the intervening half decade used his arsenal, Mr. Clinton was wrong and the world can rest assured that Iraq is adequately "contained." Given what we know about how containment erodes over time; about Saddam Hussein's single-mindedness compared with the inattention and divisions of other nations; and about the ease with which deadly weapons can move across borders, we do not trust such an assurance. Mr. Clinton understood, as Mr. Bush understands, that no president can bet his nation's safety on the hope that Iraq is "contained." We respect our readers who believe that war is the worst option. But we believe that, in this case, long-term peace will be better served by strength than by concessions.
There is one other issue that was raised by my friend in Utah to which the editorial does not speak. This is the issue of first strike. My friend says we cannot cross the line of having the United States be involved in a first strike against a nation that has not attacked us.
One of the arguments I have heard on this score is that if we do it, we will set a precedent that will allow other nations to do it. Other nations that we do not want to do it will say we can do it because the United States did.
If I may, without being disrespectful to that argument, I would point out that Adolph Hitler did not need a precedent from the United States to attack Poland. He made up his own excuse. He pretended that Poland had attacked him. He dressed prisoners in Polish military uniforms, murdered them, and then had them found by German soldiers on German soil who said they were shot as they tried to invade Germany.
The setting of a precedent by the United States or the not setting of a precedent by the United States will have absolutely no effect on the actions of a brutal dictator who decides to attack his neighbors in a first strike fashion. Saddam Hussein didn't quote precedent when he attacked Kuwait in the early 1990s. He went ahead and did it, and would have done it again whether he had precedent or not.
Having said that, however, I want to review a little bit of American history. It may not be history of which we are proud, for those who say we have never committed a first strike, but it is history nonetheless of which we must be aware. I have not taken the time to research all examples of this because my memory provides me with enough to make the point.
I remember when Lyndon Johnson sent the Marines into the Dominican Republic, for what purpose I cannot recall. But this was not a country that had attacked us and we sent military forces in there on the grounds that there was some American interest that had to be protected.
Ronald Reagan sent the Marines into Grenada. His reason was that the legitimate Government of Grenada requested it.
In his book, "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire," Brian Crozier referred to the American military action in Grenada as one of the key turning points in the cold war. He said if the United States had not moved into Grenada and removed the Communist government there, the cold war would have lasted considerably longer and been more devastating.
There was no international clamor against President Reagan when he did this. He believed it was in America's best interests, and at least one historian has said it was not only in America's best interests, it was in the world's best interests for Ronald Reagan to have done what he did in Grenada.
In the waning days of his Presidency, the first President Bush sent American troops into Somalia. Somalia had not attacked us and did not represent any threat. The troops were there presumably on a humanitarian mission, but they were sent in to deal with a military situation in that country that President Bush thought had to be dealt with. Those troops were withdrawn by the Clinton administration. But, once again, this was not a circumstance where America had been attacked but one where an American President sent American troops and there was no international outcry, no international complaint.
Shortly after I came to the Senate, President Clinton invaded Haiti. Our former colleague, Sam Nunn, was in Haiti just prior to the time when the American military entered that country, and he debriefed a number of us after he came back. He pointed out that the only reason there was not bloodshed when the American troops entered Haiti was because the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, went with Senator Nunn and former President Jimmy Carter to Haiti and General Powell was able to convince the Haitian general in charge of their military that it was not dishonorable for the Haitian general to save the lives of his troops and allow the Americans to come in without military opposition.
As I recall it from Senator Nunn, the Haitian general was determined that it was his duty as a military man to resist any invasion of his country, no matter how hopeless that resistance might be. And he gathered his family around him, his wife and his children, hugged them together and said: This is our last night on Earth because tomorrow the Americans are invading and I will be killed.
As I say, General Powell sat down with the Haitian general, convinced him that his first duty as a military officer was to protect the lives of his troops, and that he was not doing a dishonorable thing if he did not mount a hopeless resistance against the Americans.
Once again, there was no international outcry against the American decision to send troops into Haiti. Looking back on it, it was not necessarily a wise thing to have done. We replaced a brutal dictator much beloved by American conservatives with a brutal dictator much beloved by American liberals. But the average Haitian has not seen any improvement in his or her lifestyle. Indeed, those who have been to Haiti recently tell me things are worse now than they were before the Americans invaded.
Then we have the former Yugoslavia, a country that represented no threat to the United States and had not attacked the United States, but the United States led a national coalition in war upon that nation.
Why did we do it? We did it because, under Milosevic, that nation had produced enough casualties within its borders to begin to approach 20 percent of the size of the Holocaust. They killed that many of their own people, and the Americans felt that was a serious enough challenge to require us to go ahead.
Now we have just heard a speech by the Senator from Michigan with respect to North Korea. We are being asked, Why are we not doing more with respect to North Korea? I will not respond to the Senator from Michigan or the Democratic leader in that vein. But I will point out that the attitude around the world and, indeed, here in the Senate is why the United States isn't taking care of this. If I might add one word to that question, Why isn't the United States taking care of this unilaterally? In other words, the United States should handle this all by themselves, according to speeches that are made here and in the world community.
I run through this history simply to make this point: It is not accurate to say the proposed action in Iraq is either unprecedented in American history or illegal under American or international law. The action that is proposed with respect to Iraq is in the tradition of these humanitarian missions that I have described.
Some of them have gone wrong. Some of them have turned out not to produce a humanitarian result. But in every case there was no prior complaint raised against the proposal that we do this on the ground that this was an unacceptable first strike against a defenseless neighbor. In every circumstance, it went forward with full approval. I voted against the move into Haiti. But the President appropriately came to the Congress and got approval before he did it.
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President Bush has come to the Congress, and by a 77-23 vote in this body and an equally lopsided vote in the other body, has approval before he goes into Iraq. This is not a stealth attack like Pearl Harbor under the cover of night. This is something that has been debated and laid before the United Nations. The United Nations, by a 15-0 vote in the Security Council, announced to Iraq if she did not disarm, she would face serious consequences, and serious consequences in United Nations speak means war. This is not something that is done hidden or in a corner or in the dark.
So we come back now to the fundamental question: Is it safer to go ahead with an operation in Iraq than it is to pull down the American troops and bring them home? I agree with the editorial writers of the Washington Post. This is an agonizing decision. This is not one to be made lightly, and I am sure from conversations with him that the President is not going to make it lightly. He is going to weigh all of the consequences. But I believe in the end he will come to the same conclusion that the Washington Post editorial writers have come to and that I have come to. Whatever the unknowns on either side, the present evidence suggests that the most dangerous thing we could do with respect to the situation in Iraq is to back down if Iraq does not comply with the United Nations resolution. To pull our troops out of Iraq does not comply with the demands that the world has made upon it. The safest thing to do if Iraq does not comply is to carry through with the resolution that was adopted on this floor by an overwhelming margin, adopted in the Security Council of the United Nations unanimously, and not hold back.
I yield the floor.