Supplemental Appropriations
Floor Speech
SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS -- (Senate - May 21, 2008)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I rise today with the hope that this Chamber will soon find consensus in our efforts to find a new course and a new direction in Iraq.
I am more convinced than ever that we must change our mission in Iraq from one of combat to one of support. We must place the responsibility for Iraq's future and for the security of its citizens in the hands of the Government of the Iraqi people. Until we change our mission and we take our military out of their streets, Iraqi politicians will not take the necessary, courageous, and final steps toward a political reconciliation that can achieve a lasting peace for Iraq and for the region.
Our military is performing admirably in difficult circumstances. They have been tasked with calming streets that are wrought with sectarian conflict, with unraveling thousand-year-old webs of Sunni, Kurd, and Shia rivalries, with understanding the mixture of motives behind car bombings, suicide bombings, roadside bombings, and mass executions. They have been told that if they do this and slow the downward spiral of civil war, the Shiite-dominated Government will press for national reconciliation and a more stable, secure future for Iraq.
Our troops have done their job. The Iraqi Government has not done its part. The Maliki government in Iraq has failed to capitalize on the opportunities for success our soldiers have provided, and the administration has failed to implement a political or a diplomatic strategy that is worthy of their sacrifice on the battlefield.
``There is no military solution ..... to the insurgency [in] Iraq.'' That is a quote from General Petraeus. It is a quote General Petraeus made to the world and to Members of this body many months ago. He was right then, and he is right today.
I believe the overwhelming majority of Senators have the same goals with respect to our future policy in Iraq. In my view, we share four key principles and ambitions.
First and foremost, every Senator in this Chamber wants a stable Iraq that can protect its citizens without dependence on American combat troops. Regardless of one's position on the merits or demerits of the invasion, we must now help Iraq stand as a sovereign nation. We must root out the terror cells that have set up shop since the invasion. And we must guard against a failed state. We must also find a way to help the 2 million Iraqis who fled across the border to Jordan, to Syria, and to Iran, as well as the nearly 2 million internally displaced persons who have fled the violence of their neighborhoods. It is the largest refugee crisis in the world today.
Second, we generally agree that our military mission in Iraq must transition at some point from one of combat to one of support. We must have the ultimate goal of bringing our troops home. We may disagree about the number or the timing of troop drawdowns, but we all know we cannot sustain 15 to 20 brigade combat teams in Iraq indefinitely. It will take courage and conviction to shift our mission and to bring our troops home, but if Iraq is truly to stand on its own, we must take the decisive action so we can begin that transition.
The third point on which I believe we can, by and large, agree is that this war has been poorly managed. The administration made a series of disastrous mistakes and gross miscalculations after the invasion. Failing to plan for a postwar Iraq, disbanding the Iraqi Army, purging Baathist technocrats from the Government, staffing the Coalition Provisional Authority with neophytes, sending our troops into harm's way without body armor or armored vehicles--these blunders have cost America dearly. They have eroded this administration's credibility, and they have cost us in lives and treasure.
Fourth, I believe there is a widely shared view in this Chamber that the United States should focus its military and diplomatic efforts on the most pressing threats to national security. Senators on both sides of the aisle agree that our top national security priorities should be to capture the men who were behind the attacks of September 11, to break up the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, and to confront the nuclear threats that we see, especially from Iran.
Sustaining 140,000 troops in Iraq limits our ability to prosecute the war on terror where terrorist training camps are actually located. Our top intelligence analysts have concluded that al-Qaida has regrouped--has regrouped stronger than ever--on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. While it is true that al-Qaida in Iraq is a franchise, al-Qaida's main headquarters are elsewhere and not in Iraq.
Furthermore, prolonged commitments in Iraq limit our strategic flexibility should we need to respond to threats elsewhere around the world. We must evaluate whether putting all of our eggs in one basket in Iraq is the best strategy to protect America against threats and future attacks.
On these four points, I believe we should be able to find consensus in this Chamber. Our goal of stability in Iraq, our desire to start bringing our troops home, our shared frustration with the management of this war, and our concern that escalation in Iraq is weakening our defenses against terrorist threats and nuclear proliferation--these four points of agreement lead to the conclusion that we must find a new way forward in Iraq.
The wise heads of the Iraq Study Group laid the groundwork many months ago for a comprehensive strategy on how we would move forward in Iraq. We commissioned out of this Congress our finest and most experienced foreign policy experts, led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, to provide us an objective and bipartisan set of recommendations on how we should proceed forward in this intractable war. I have reviewed this report multiple times, the report of the Iraq Study Group. That report was released at the end of 2006. It is a small book, but it contains great wisdom of our top diplomats, military commanders, and statesmen from around our country and, indeed, around the world.
The report of the Iraq Study Group laid out a political, diplomatic, and military strategy for how we create the conditions to end this war.
Its core military recommendation is simple: It is time to transition our troops from a mission of combat to a mission of training, equipping, advising, and support of the Iraq military. Iraq must take responsibility for its own security, and it must be forced to take the political steps necessary toward that reconciliation.
Unlike the President's policy, the Iraq Study Group's prescriptions couple a military strategy with a robust and effective diplomatic and political strategy. The group recommended making our economic and military support contingent upon the Iraq Government devising and achieving specific benchmarks. While the Iraqis have made some progress in achieving these benchmarks, much remains to be done, and most of these benchmarks have not been met.
Finally, the report makes it very clear we need a diplomatic offensive to help change the equation in the Middle East. Under this diplomatic push, we would reach out to potential partners in the region, engaging those partners in the region as we strive to have a stake in creating long-lasting peace and stability in Iraq.
I wish to spend a few minutes now speaking about the Iraq war provisions in the supplemental which is later on in the day formally before the Senate. The bill before us contains many of the propositions that would change our Iraq policy in ways that are consistent with the Iraq Study Group's core recommendations. First and foremost, the bill expresses the sense of the Senate that our troops' mission should change from combat operations to counter terrorism, training and supporting Iraqi forces, and force protection. It would set a reasonable goal--not a deadline, a reasonable goal--of June 2009 to complete this transition. This goal is some 15 months past the date of March of 2008, which the Iraq Study Group originally proposed as its target date for the completion of this transition.
This bill would require the Iraq Government to stand up to its own responsibilities in important ways. It would be required to match any funds we spend for training of Iraqi security forces or for reconstruction. This legislation would ensure that the U.S. military pays the same price at the pump as Iraqi civilians are paying today, by requiring the Iraq Government to provide the same kind of support for the fuel costs we are using to protect Iraq today. We are spending $12 billion of America's taxpayer dollars each month in Iraq. We are spending $12 billion of American taxpayer dollars each month in Iraq. After more than 5 years of this war, in my view, it is time for the Iraq Government to share this financial burden.
We also need to recognize that this administration's policies have stretched our military to the breaking point. Our troops are away from their families too long, they do not get enough time to train, and readiness is suffering. Under this legislation, the President would have to certify that troops are fully trained and equipped before they are deployed to Iraq. It would place a time limit on combat deployments and ensure that our troops have sufficient dwell time between tours.
Finally, the bill would ban permanent U.S. bases on Iraqi soil and require that any mutual defense agreements with Iraq must be approved by this Congress and by this Senate.
It is not enough to simply endorse a set of military tactics and hope for the best, which is what the President of the United States has done. The solution in Iraq, our military commanders tell us, is one which is not a military solution but one which combines all those elements that were set forth in the Iraq Study Group.
Henry Kissinger once said America needs to rid itself of ``the illusion that there are military answers to our security, and that policy ends where strategy begins.''
We would be wise to heed Kissinger's advice in this age of turmoil. There are no easy answers in Iraq, no easy exits, no certainty of success. To stay on the President's path of more of the same is simply to embrace a policy that is not working--the same dogmatic leadership that led us into war, the same dogmatic leadership that failed to make a postinvasion plan, the same dogmatic leadership that chases the hope of a mission accomplished without regard to learning the lessons of the failures of the past.
To charge a new path--to build a political, diplomatic, and military strategy in Iraq--is to embrace the role of a statesman. For it is a statesman, Kissinger used to say, who takes responsibility for all the favorable results if everything goes as planned but also for all the undesirable results if they do not.
To serve as statesmen is our role. This is our role as Senators. It is up to the wise heads of this body to take the long view in Iraq, to be realistic about our options, and to consider all our national security interests--from terrorism to nuclear threats--when pursuing our goals of stability and peace in the Middle East.
Thank you. I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
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