War on Terror

WAR ON TERROR -- (Senate - September 26, 2006)

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak for a few minutes in morning business.

In August, I received a letter from a constituent, Mr. John Dodgen, of Humboldt, IA. Along with the letter, Mr. Dodgen enclosed a copy of an opinion piece he authored regarding the war on terror that was published in the local newspaper.

In his opinion piece, Mr. Dodgen rightly asserts that the United States is engaged in a global war on terror with an enemy whose goal is the elimination of the United States. I also strongly agree with his premise that we must take the fight to the terrorists where they operate or we will be forced to confront them on our soil. This is a war that we must win, and we must remain on the offense until the war is won.

Mr. Dodgen raises some compelling thoughts in his opinion piece. Rather than try to summarize all of Mr. Dodgen's points and recommendations, I would like to submit for the RECORD his thoughts on controlling terrorism.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of Mr. Dodgen's opinion piece be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

Controlling Terrorism

Our world is made-up of two dramatically opposed factions. Those who enjoy freedom versus those who would enslave the world. This is not a debatable subject--it's an all out world war of ideologies.

As a nation of freedom, we are engaged in a conflict that must be won or our world culture will be reduced to the dark ages. We are engaged in a conflict for survival.

The nations of Iran, Syria, North Korea, and the terrorists of Hezbollah all seek one objective--the destruction of Israel and the United States. They are like ``mad dogs''. There is no way to reason with them to a peace loving state. The only solution with a rabies infected dog is to destroy it. This same strategy does not apply to all Muslims, only those lunatic, malicious, hateful, and destruction-minded fanatics who declared war on ``infidels'' several years ago. In World War II the allies stopped Hitler, Mussolini and Japan from destroying half the world. Ninety percent of my Navy amphibious group were killed or wounded invading the Philippines and millions of others were killed in tragic World War II.

While we still have a chance to stamp out the hate and suicidal destructive force in our world, the U.S. and our allies should confront Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Hezbollah with an ultimatum to destroy their rockets and nuclear warhead pursuits or we will have no alternative but to destroy them ourselves with or without the United Nations blessing. It's totally unrealistic to think that negotiations with these evil nations will solve or alleviate the threat, so we should bring this to a head before they attack any other nations and unleash their evil hatred and destruction on innocent, peace-loving people. We should use every means within our power to reduce their threat to insignificance. There is no other course; we should act now while our declared and profound enemies are vulnerable to our containment. If we wait and try to solve our world's conflict with diplomacy and negotiation, we are fooling ourselves and eventually our nation and our love for freedom and peaceful existence on Earth will be destroyed.

In past history, two postures for our nation--The Monroe Doctrine and Teddy Roosevelt's ``Walk Softly And Carry A Big Stick Policy--along with President Kennedy's demand that Russia withdraw rockets with nuclear warheads from Cuba, kept us from wars to maintain our freedom. Now we need to declare and carry out the United States world position that we will not tolerate ``evil and war mongering'' nations, and unless they cease and desist of such a threat they will have the United States and its overwhelming power to force them to do so. We were able to convince Libya to stop its terrorism with a well placed bomb; we can do the same with the other terrorist nations listed.

America needs to withdraw from the United Nations as they have utterly failed from their beginning existence to keep the peace or more than temporarily stop aggression and human suffering. What the world needs is for the United States to establish a ``World Peace Council'' made up of: The President of the United States; The Prime Minister of England; Queen Elizabeth and/or Australia's Governor General; The President and/or The Prime Minister of Russia; The President of China; The Emperor and/or Prime Minister of Japan; The President of India.

These nations could meet for three days every month to determine the issues requiring their attention, determine the appropriate action, and then enforce their decision based on the majority vote of the council. A veto would be prohibited. Funding would be on an assessed basis from the seven nations plus other voluntary freedom loving nations and a chosen General whose International Police Force would be enlisted on a country by country basis to carry out the seven nations' solution.

If any of the nations selected to form the World Peace Council chooses not to serve or withdraws, then the remaining members would select a nation for their replacement. In the case of a tie vote, another candidate would be chosen until a majority vote determined the successor.

As a Christian, it is utterly deplorable for me to come to the above conclusion. However; as a practical human being and a concerned U.S. Citizen, I acknowledge that terrorism is a fact that must be recognized and dealt with. I therefore urge our Congress and President to declare an ultimatum on the nations of terrorists and restrain them while we still have the power and resolve to do so. We cannot wait until we have another Pearl Harbor, Cuban Missile Crisis, or 9/11 before we stop this aggression.

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