9/11 Commission Report

9/11 COMMISSION REPORT -- (House of Representatives - July 22, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) may continue not beyond midnight.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to touch upon a couple of points that the gentleman from New Mexico brought up. One of them I think that is fascinating is the fixation in this country to try to split hairs between what is a collaborative tie between Iraq and al Qaeda or what is, I suppose, called a casual tie between Iraq and al Qaeda. Or whether or not because al Qaeda may or may not have been involved in Iraq to a great extent but other terrorists were, it still was unjustified.

It seems to me, and I can only speak for myself on this, if a terrorist kills me, it is not really going to matter to me whether he was al Qaeda or whether he was some other group that was housed in Iraq or anything else. It is going to seem to me that, assuming I am looking down as opposed to looking up, I would ask the question why nothing was done. Have we become that legalistic in this country, that formalistic, that blind to the reality around us that we do not understand that if a dictator hates you and a terrorist hates you and they have ties, it does not bode well for you?

I think that is just something that has grated on me for quite some time, how we tend to intellectualize things without seeing the reality, behind the sophistry of the arguments. It is much like the approach that many wish to take towards terrorism. Many in this country believe that you can cleanse the criminal by deeming it political. A murder is a murder. Kidnapping is kidnapping. Extortion is extortion. It is an inherently, intrinsically evil act. The goal for which one engages in the intrinsically evil act does not change its nature, does not justify it.

So when we hear many in the international community trying to justify the actions of the terrorists based upon years of colonial occupation by European powers, I reiterate European powers, or we hear that there are underlying root causes, many of which are valid root causes but no justification for the act of terrorism, we have to be clear in our minds, because as I said before, every single American today is under attack from the terrorists. The act of killing our fellow citizens or kidnapping and killing our fellow citizens or kidnapping and killing other citizens of this world is designed to prey upon our minds, so that we believe that we cannot prevail, that we tend to doubt that people wish to breathe free, that they wish to love their children, that they wish to grow old, that they wish to savor the gift of life from our Creator.

Some would have you believe that there are people in this world that are unfit for democracy, that they would say they can never take to this forum, that it cannot be imposed from above. I believe that the thirst for democracy, the thirst for freedom, comes from within, and that what we as a Nation have done is created the conditions in which their own yearnings can be expressed and their own futures be determined, and then can they live in freedom. I think that if you come from that perspective, it is easy. It is difficult to miss the reality in Iraq which proves my point about the terrorists trying to prey upon your mind. There are 25 million people in Iraq.

The reason the terrorists are engaging in individual suicide bombings, in individual kidnappings, is because you do not have millions of Iraqis fighting with their new government to return to the days of Saddam Hussein.

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We do not see organized armies of Iraqis out in the field en masse trying to overthrow the transitional government and replace it with a terrorist regime. What we see every day in Iraq is what we try to do here: Iraqi citizens trying very desperately to live normal, happy lives. They want to take their children to school.

Let me just stress this. In this country when people take their child to school, they generally feel safe that their child will be in a stable environment, will be educated, will return to their loving arms. Put oneself in a position of an Iraqi parent today, and the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) and I were there at the time of the so-called days of national resistance when the first place they put the fliers threatening to kill people were around the schools so the parents would not take their children to school. We see an Iraqi parent, they have to take their child to school with the threat of terrorism around them every day in a magnitude we have yet to experience. We see them dropping them at the schools, under threat of death for doing so, and then praying that their child comes home to them.

And yet many in this world will say that these are people unfit for freedom. They are no different than we are. I think it was President Kennedy that put it best: We all inhabit this small planet. We all breath the same air. We all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal.

To our fellow human beings in Iraq, we cannot offer condescension. We cannot offer derision. We must continue to offer assistance so that they can breath free, so that their internal thirst can commence upon a quest for freedom in their lifetimes.

And probably one of the things I will always remember from Iraq, as we were leaving, we were getting on the Black Hawk helicopters to leave the Green Zone for the final time. It was Halloween, and there was an American soldier with a small Iraqi child, maybe 8 or 10, and he had little Dracula fangs he was playing with and smiling at the American soldier. That to me expressed the hope for Iraq, that that child who has been inoculated, who has been given an opportunity to go to school, whose parents have a chance to seize his freedom, that child is the future of Iraq, and we cannot turn our back on that child.

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Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Mexico for yielding.

I would just like to conclude with an observation and a question. When we last participated in special orders, I asked the question about where is the opposition's plan for dealing with terrorism? Where is their plan for reconstructing Iraq? Where is their plan essentially to protect the national security of the United States, whether they would delegate it to the United Nations or keep it where it remains, here in the bosom of the sovereign people?

Well, I got kind of an answer, and I guess maybe this is what passes for planning these days, it seems to me more a statement of the obvious, that part of the opposition's plan was that they would, with sufficient evidence, preemptively take out terrorists.

Well, I am glad that they concur with part of the President's plan. But that is not necessarily the in-depth approach that we need at the present time. Maybe the forthcoming week will show us more.

My observation along those lines is perhaps more of a frustration, that many people today are saying that America needs international support if we are to stand with the Iraqi people. We all know we would enjoy international support. But what I find galling is they will then turn around and say they are most capable of building the international support for the coalition to help reshape Iraq and help defend the United States. But, in the process of doing that, they have done something very interesting, is that they have denigrated as coerced, as distorted, as bribed, quote-unquote, the allies we have abroad as part of our coalition whose children, whose young men and women, are fighting beside our soldiers in Iraq and who are dying.

Now, I am a liberal arts guy, I was not a math guy, but it seems to me that if you attack and denigrate your own allies, it is very difficult through subtraction to build a larger coalition, especially when one is going to rely on people who have adversarially tried to undermine the United States' effort and our coalition partners' efforts in Iraq. I am thinking of many people in the United Nations who during the Oil For Food scandal were not necessarily in the best position to tell Saddam Hussein, who they were in league with and making money off of, to try to follow the resolutions they passed regarding weapons of mass destruction.

So I would just ask people to consider whether someone may or may not hypothetically be fit to be the Commander-in-Chief of the United States who, during a time of war, denigrates our allies and courts our adversaries. There is no simpler way to put that, because that is absolutely true. Ask yourself that question.

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