Flipflops on Iraq and Al Quaeda

FLIPFLOPS ON IRAQ AND AL QAEDA -- (House of Representatives - July 15, 2004)

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Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, the timing was impeccable tonight, to have heard the previous speaker from Ohio talking about the 30-something Democratic Caucus.

[Time: 23:40]

As a 38-year-old Republican, I am disappointed his bipartisan effort has not reached this far across the aisle to include some of the rest of us. Especially people my age, we are not baby boomers. We are Generation X. We grew up through the malaise of the Carter years. We grew up watching America internationally impotent in the world. We watched friends, neighbors, family lose their jobs under stagflation.

And then we watched Ronald Reagan's administration come in. We watched America be truly respected throughout the world. We watched free market economies grow and expand to provide opportunities for us as we left our college years, and we were blessed enough to see the fall of Godless communism throughout Eastern Europe.

But then we are also very practical opinion people for another reason, because shortly after that, we got to see our generation quoting Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on the streets of Tiananmen Square being gunned down by yet another totalitarian government, and we realized early on in life that life is a struggle between good and evil and in many ways it is a perpetual one.

My generation also had some difficult lessons to learn too. We were the first ones to realize that a sexual infection which was once curable could be superseded by sexual infections that could kill people; that we would have to continue to work our lives longer and longer with even the remote chance that we would have Social Security because we were the first generation smaller than the one that went in front of us, which was never part of the plan. We have to watch our parents, who are living longer, come to us for help as we try to watch the soaring cost of tuition for our own children behind us.

And perhaps because of the realistic, practical nature of my generation and perhaps something we have gotten from our grandparents, the Greatest Generation, that I think it is time on Iraq to ask some fundamental questions, and I think they are exceedingly fair questions to ask because no one has answered them and no one has bothered to posit any answers to them.

I want to know what the plan is from the minority party. The multilateral mantra has been disproved by the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food scandal, their inability to stop genocide in the Sudan or in Rwanda prior to that, and their abject anti-Americanism in so many of their member states.

Would we like to see multilateralism work and the reconstruction of Iraq? Absolutely. But I do not think we the American taxpayers should hold our breath until the governmental entity where we pay 22 percent of their core funding decides that they do not dislike us as much as they do.

So multilateralism is also not going to work because the Democratic approach to that has been quite simple. The Democratic Presidential nominee has derided and criticized our allies whose soldiers are fighting and dying next to us in the fields of Iraq as the coalition of the bribed and the coerced, the bought, and the extorted. How do they build an international coalition attacking their allies? Whom are they trying to add? One cannot attack their allies and add their adversaries and call that a true coalition, especially if one is trying to be the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces.

So then we have to ask, what is the plan? We have not heard a plan. We have to ask, on the question of weapons of mass destruction, what constitutes a significant tie with al Qaeda? If one does not believe there were significant enough ties, there were contacts, although the same intelligence which is being derided is also being used to disprove that they were collaborative, which is quite an interesting feat rhetorically. I want to know under what circumstances, what was the threshold the minority party would hold Saddam Hussein to before they would engage in defending the United States of America without a veto from the U.N. When could we unilaterally protect ourselves if necessary?

Ten tons of yellow cake from Niger, which the French Government, the Italian Government, and the British Government still stand by exclusive of the bogus material, the one bogus document. What is the threshold? What is a collaborative link? What is their standard for defending the United States against an external threat from a terrorist-sponsoring state and a terrorist-sheltering state? If they did not like President Bush's, if they do not believe he had enough, then I ask them to tell us what their standard is so as we head into this election we can have a debate on issues, not individuals, because the American people deserve to know what they are going to do to defend this country if they hold public office today and tomorrow and probably for our lifetime in this war on terror. I think those are fair questions to ask.

I think we should also ask the question about the moral equivalency that we used to see between the Soviet Union and the United States and the left in this country, I want to ask the question where did the moral equivalency go? There is more outrage over

Abu Ghraib prison than there is the treatment of American soldiers that are shot and killed by the insurgents and terrorists in Iraq. The actions at Abu Ghraib were horrible, but the purpose behind them was to gather information from people who were shooting at and trying to kill our troops to protect our troops and protect the United States citizens, just as it was at Guantanamo Bay. The goal of the terrorists that are violating every civilized notion of captivity, their goal is to foist terrorism back upon Iraq and back upon the rest of the world.

It is so sad, I would not even settle for moral equivalency from the left these days that would wax nostalgic for it.

Finally, I just find it very difficult to see this debate continue and not to see a plan. I reiterate that. We are sentient human beings. We have the gift of reason if we so choose to use it. And as we head into this troubled time for our country, deeper and deeper we go, the longer and longer it takes us to come to each other with ideas to debate and discuss for the common good that can be objectively analyzed and assessed by the electorate and by each other, the worse off we are going to be.

So in the future I would just ask a simple question of anyone who has any opinion on this, on Iraqi reconstruction, on weapons of mass destruction, on the role of the United Nations in this world. It is nice to have their protestation and opinion, but show me their plan and perhaps we can proceed together.

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Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, I am most impressed by the gentleman from Utah's understanding of the Spanish-American War. In fact, I would only add that there were also front page stories about American troops and captured insurgents in that war as well.
The gentleman brings up a very good point that I would welcome the opportunity to address, as my district has many constituents who are Iraqi and Arab American and, more importantly, many of my friends are.

One of the things we have heard repeatedly throughout this debate is the Iraqi people will not take to democracy, that they have suffered too long under a totalitarian yoke.

Well, what country could you not say that about in this world? Half have suffered under totalitarianism with no history of democracy, including up until the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian people themselves? How many Eastern European countries never knew full freedom, only knew serfdom and feudalism?

So I would like to add to my list of requests for plans one final one: Those people who believe that there are some human beings that cannot take to democracy, I would like your test and your complete list of those who you deem unfit for freedom.

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