IRAQ WAR RESOLUTION
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Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself so much time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, we are engaged in a long war on radical Islam, a war the President has analogized to the Cold War. Two roads in that war lead to disaster. The first disastrous road would be to abandon the battle, appease, disarm, blame America, and speak to Syria and Iran about what concessions we are going to give them.
The second disastrous course is to stay the course in our utter fixation on Iraq as the only battlefield in the global war on radical Islam. Those who propose that we stay the course, an erroneous course, I might add, give four different reasons:
First, they say that if we do not stay in Iraq and prevail, then terrorists will have a place to gather and plot against us. Mr. Speaker, terrorists can plot against us in the deserts of Somalia. Terrorists are plotting against us in the mountains of North Waziristan, in the mountains of Pakistan. Mr. Speaker, terrorists can plot against us in an apartment building in Hamburg. Even if we prevail in Iraq, terrorists will always be able to find a conference room.
The second reason we are given is that if we do not prevail in Iraq, the terrorists there will follow us home. Well, keep in mind on 9/11, the vast majority of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, a country with an apparently stable and obstensibly friendly government. So even if Iraq were stable and friendly, individual Iraqi terrorists might well come to the United States and carry out actions against us. Third, we are told that we have an obligation to the Iraqi people to stay there, to stay the course. We have liberated the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, a man who killed millions in his war against Iran and against the Kurds. Now we have given the Iraqi people an opportunity to come together. We have bled sufficiently for Iraq.
Finally, we are told that we owe it to those Americans who died in battle to stay in Iraq until Iraq is a model democracy.
I would argue that instead we owe it to those who died to have an intelligent foreign policy that safeguards America. That starts with learning the lessons of the Cold War. Remember the 1960s and the 1970s, when we were told that if we didn't support every escalation in Vietnam, then the Communists would follow us home or, in the parlance of that day, there would be Communists on the beaches of southern California.
Well, we won the Cold War because we pulled out of Vietnam. The short-term outcome in Vietnam was not what we would have liked, but even if we had stayed in Vietnam another decade, it would have been no different. We won the global war on communism because we waged it globally, and we did not become fixated forever on Vietnam.
The time has arrived to pull back from daily battles on the streets of Baghdad. It is time for Iraq to no longer be viewed as the sole or exclusive battlefield in the war on terrorism. It is time instead for us to focus on the one part of the global war on terrorism that could lead to hundreds of thousands of American deaths, and that is Iran's nuclear program. We need to mobilize all of our diplomatic leverage to reshape our policies towards Russia, Europe and China, toward the single goal of putting together a coalition that will put the pressure on Iran necessary to force that country to abandon its nuclear program. We owe this to those who have died in Iraq, and we owe it to the American people.
Finally, we are told that this resolution is nonbinding, meaningless, that the President will ignore it, that the only way we have of affecting policy is to cut off funds, which is constitutionally problematic, since it involves tying in the hands of the Commander in Chief while we have troops in the field. But the very people who say this resolution is meaningless have it in their power to make it meaningful, have it in their power to avoid such constitutionally problematic approaches.
Because if the Republicans will vote for this resolution, they will make it meaningful, they will make it decisive, the President will not ignore it, we will jolt the President into abandoning his stay the course, escalate the course approach.
Those who vote against this resolution may keep it from being meaningful. But if even a third of the Republican caucus votes for this resolution, then the President will no longer stay the course, he will be jolted, he will work with Congress cooperatively towards a foreign policy that makes sense for our country.
I look forward to having enough votes for this resolution so that it is, indeed, meaningful.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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