America Needs A Foreign Policy That Does Not Put The Interests Of Oil And Oil Dictatorships Above The Value Of Human Life

AMERICA NEEDS A FOREIGN POLICY THAT DOES NOT PUT THE INTERESTS OF OIL AND OIL DICTATORSHIPS ABOVE THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE -- (House of Representatives - January 11, 2007)

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, America needs a foreign policy that does not put the interests of oil and oil dictatorships above the interests of human life. It is not surprising that I don't support the escalation of U.S. troop levels in Iraq as asked for by our President last night.

President Bush cannot lead America to military victory in Iraq, absent a viable, political solution that puts Iraq's internal affairs back together and redeploys our soldiers out of the role of being an occupying force. His statement is 3 years too late and hundreds of thousands of soldiers short.

The President refuses to see that his strategy to combat terrorism is transforming Iraq into an Islamic Shi'a state with the relegation of the Sunni and the escape of Christians. Is this lop-sided result really in the interests of regional peace long term? Why should our U.S. forces, the President says he wants to deploy to Baghdad and Anbar Province, be used to do the cleanup work for the new Shi'a-led government. The growing insurgency inside Iraq, and any American sentiment both inside and outside of Iraq, will not be quelled by sending more U.S. troops. It will ripen it.

There is now only one choice: Iraq must take responsibility for its own security as part of a broader political solution that works. But how can that political solution work when minorities in Iraq feel so underrepresented? That is why the international community and Iraq's neighbors must, no matter how difficult, become engaged in diplomatic efforts.

Throughout the Muslim and Persian worlds, the President's policies have emboldened anti-American leaders in Lebanon, in Iran, in Syria, in Bahrain, in the Palestinian Authority, in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt, in Pakistan, even the Horn of Africa now. The Bush doctrine of preemptive war, test marketed in Iraq, succeeded in deposing Saddam Hussein and determining whether or not he possessed weapons of mass destruction.

It is time, therefore, for the President and us to declare victory and transform the operation. As decorated CIA intelligence officer Robert Baer has written: ``We are at war in America and throughout the Western world, at war with an enemy with no infrastructure to attack, with no planes to shoot out of the sky, with no boats to sink to the bottom of the seas, and precious few tanks to blow up for the amusement of viewers of CNN.'

Baer contends the only way to defeat such a faceless enemy is by substantial increases in human intelligence, and I agree. But that intelligence has been lacking. Even in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, almost no one speaks Arabic. Dr. Edward Luttwak, a strategic affairs expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, observed that the U.S. general who led the operation to apprehend Osama bin Laden neither spoke Arabic nor showed any interest in learning it and depended upon translations of intercepts to detect him.

Importantly, we can ask ourselves, after 5 years, why hasn't the administration filled that human intelligence gap so fundamental to success. Maybe they really don't want to know. So now with the President's proposal to accelerate more forces, those units are going to deploy with too few personnel or with significant numbers of new personnel.

This decreases unit cohesiveness and individual proficiency. Many units are facing three or more deployments, far beyond what was originally anticipated. We know that previous escalation of troops in Iraq have yielded no more success. Without a political solution the President cannot hold the ground by dispatching more U.S. groups or by continuing his escalation of the employment of greater and greater numbers of unaccountable, contracted forces and mercenaries to compensate for the lack of security and rising anti-Americanism.

Our military's time-honored values of duty, honor, and country are being eviscerated by an operation that is depending more and more on hired guns to police the streets, on bounty-seeking contractors to guard important sites such as the oil wells, and foreign nationals to carry out internal security operations in Iraq. I don't call that the freedom the President talked about last night.

Iraqis have proposed dividing Baghdad into nine sectors and policing them with Iraqi troops as American soldiers are redeployed as backups. That might work. But the U.S. most of all needs a broad political strategy that addresses the rising levels of global terrorism the Bush policy is yielding and the growing anti-American sentiment that is brewing in Iraq and the Muslim world beyond.

That strategy demands significant new human intelligence networks, not standing armies. Moreover, we need international diplomacy to engage all nations that border Iraq to seek a resolution to the strife.

Mr. Speaker, America needs a foreign policy that does not put the interests of oil and oil dictatorships above the value of human life. Just as the Bush administration took office, this country is importing an additional 1 billion more barrels of oil per year. Tell me there is no connection between our utter dependence on imported petroleum and the deployment of our precious troops to the Middle East and Central Asia.

http://thomas.loc.gov/