Nomination of Condoleeza Rice to be Secretary of State - Continued
Floor Speech
NOMINATION OF CONDOLEEZZA RICE TO BE SECRETARY OF STATE--CONTINUED -- (Senate - January 25, 2005)
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Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I rise in support of the nomination of Dr. Condoleezza Rice to be America's next Secretary of State. President Bush has made an excellent choice for this preeminent position in his Cabinet. Her experience as National Security Adviser will make her even more effective than one normally might be. When foreign leaders talk with Dr. Rice, they will know she is speaking with the President's voice.
I had the privilege of attending much of the 9-plus hours of hearings. Dr. Rice got about every kind of question. She handled the questions, I thought, with dignity, with intelligence, with grace. It was an excellent performance. It augurs well for her time as a U.S. Secretary of State. I am proud to support her.
The major issue confronting Dr. Rice and our Nation today is the war in Iraq. At the hearings to which I just referred, some of my colleagues talked about needing an exit strategy. I disagree. I don't believe we need an exit strategy in Iraq. We need a success strategy. But such a strategy may mean taking a little more realistic view of what we mean by success. It is one thing to help people win their freedom, as we did in Iraq. It is another to help a country become a stable, pluralistic democracy, a flourishing society. We need to ask ourselves how many American lives are we willing to sacrifice to do this? How long are we willing for it to take? And what is our standard for success?
We should be thinking well beyond Iraq. The next time the opportunity occurs for the United States to undertake what we now call regime change, or nation building, what lessons have we learned in Iraq? During his campaign for the Presidency in 2000, President Bush was critical of nation building. That was before September 11, 2001. Today the situation has obviously changed.
Our initial war in Iraq was a stunning success. What came afterwards has been a series of
miscalculations. But the United States has engaged in nation building more than a dozen times since World War II and, based on those experiences, should we not have anticipated that nation building in Iraq would have required more troops, more money, and taken longer than we expected? And what do those lessons say about our future policy toward nation building?
I asked Dr. Rice about this when she appeared before the Foreign Relations Committee. One lesson she said we learned was that we need to train our own diplomatic personnel with the skills of nation building. She said we need to learn how to help a country set up a new, independent judiciary, how to establish a currency, how to train up police forces, among other things. I am sure other lessons will be learned as we move forward, and we should be humble enough to learn them.
I would hope that our experience in Iraq has reminded us of what a major commitment regime change and nation building require. I hope the next time someone suggests to this President, or to any future President, that he pursue regime change, that one of his advisers, perhaps Dr. Rice, will say: Mr. President, based on the history of postwar reconstruction and what we have learned in Iraq, any regime change is likely to take us several years, is likely to cost us hundreds of billions of dollars, and require the sacrifice of thousands of lives. If it is in our national interest to go ahead, then the President may decide that, but he needs to have that advice. And we need to discuss that as we did in the hearing the other day.
American history is the story of setting noble goals and struggling to reach them and often falling short. We sincerely say, in our country, that anything is possible, that all men are created equal, that no child will be left behind--even though we know down deep we will fall short and we know we will then have to pick ourselves up and keep trying again to reach those noble goals.
We also said we want to make the world safe for democracy, and we remember an inaugural speech 44 years ago in which a new President named John F. Kennedy said we would ``pay any price, bear any burden'' to defend freedom. And we heard last Thursday President Bush echo those sentiments when he said to the people of the world: When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.
Yet there is obviously a limit to what we can do and to what we are willing to do and to the number of lives we will sacrifice to secure the blessings of freedom and democracy for others. So, now that we have a new Secretary of State--almost have one--new Iraqi elections within the next few days, and we are about to spend another $80 billion in Iraq, now is a good time to be clearer about what our success strategy would be in Iraq. When I asked Dr. Rice about this in her hearing, she acknowledged we need a success strategy but didn't want to commit to a timetable.
In a Washington Post op-ed this morning, two of Dr. Rice's predecessors, Secretaries Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, agreed we should not set a specific timetable for pulling out our troops. But they also go further than Dr. Rice did in the hearing in outlining the framework for what a success strategy in Iraq might look like.
Dr. Kissinger and Dr. Shultz wrote this:
A successful strategy needs to answer these questions: Are we waging ``one war'' in which military and political efforts are mutually reinforcing? Are the institutions guiding and monitoring these tasks sufficiently coordinated? Is our strategic goal to achieve complete security in at least some key towns and major communication routes (defined as reducing violence to historical criminal levels)? This would be in accordance with the maxim that complete security in 70 percent of the country is better than 70 percent security in 100 percent of the country--because fully secure areas can be models and magnets for those who are suffering in insecure places. Do we have a policy for eliminating the sanctuaries in Syria and Iran from which the enemy can be instructed, supplied, and given refuge and time to regroup? Are we designing a policy that can produce results for the people and prevent civil strife for control of the State and its oil revenue? Are we maintaining American public support so that staged surges of extreme violence do not break domestic public confidence at a time when the enemy may, in fact, be on the verge of failure? And are we gaining international understanding and willingness to play a constructive role in what is a global threat to peace and security?
An exit strategy based on performance, not artificial time limits, will judge progress by the ability to produce positive answers to these questions.
That is what Secretaries Kissinger and Shultz wrote this morning. I ask unanimous consent the article be printed in the RECORD at the conclusion of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. ALEXANDER. When Dr. Rice comes back to the committee as Secretary Rice--and she will be there often--I hope she will address these questions and say more about what our objectives are. When she does, I also wouldn't mind if she acknowledges when things aren't going well, or when we need to change our strategy or tactics because our earlier approach is not working. I think such acknowledgments only strengthen the administration's credibility and reassure us that needed adjustments are being made.
At President Reagan's funeral last June, former Senator Jack Danforth said the text for his homily was ``the obvious,'' Matthew 5:14-16.
You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a bushel basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works, and give glory to your father in heaven.
From our beginning, that vision of the city on a hill has helped to define what it means to be an American and provided America with a moral mission. It helps explain why we invaded Iraq, why we fought wars ``to make the world safe for democracy,'' and why President Bush said last Thursday:
All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors.
It is why we are forever involving ourselves in other nations' business. It is why when I was in Mozambique last summer I found 800 Americans, 400 of them missionaries and most of the rest diplomats or aid workers.
But is it possible that too much nation building runs the risk of extending too far the vision of the city on the hill?
Letting a light shine so others may see our good works does not necessarily mean we must invade a country and change its regime and reshape it until it begins to look like us. It may mean instead that we strive harder to understand and celebrate our own values of democracy, of equal opportunity, of individualism, of tolerance, the rule of law and other principles that unite us and that we hope will be exported to other parts of the world. How we ourselves live would then become our most persuasive claim to real leadership in a world filled with people hungry to know how to live their lives.
For example, in my own experience--and Dr. Rice said at the hearings in her experience--we have found that sometimes the most effective way to export our values is to train foreign students at our American universities who then return home to become leaders in their own countries.
Of course, we Americans will never say that only some men are created equal, that only some children will not be left behind, or that we will pay only some price to defend freedom. But perhaps we should be thinking more about strategies for extending freedom and democracy in the world other than nation building and determine what those strategies are and when they most appropriately might be used.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Exhibit 1
[From the Washington Post, Jan. 25, 2005]
Results, Not Timetables, Matter in Iraq
(By Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Shultz)
The debate on Iraq is taking a new turn. The Iraqi elections scheduled for Jan. 30, only recently viewed as a culmination, are described as inaugurating a civil war. The timing and the voting arrangements have become controversial. All this is a way of foreshadowing a demand for an exit strategy, by which many critics mean some sort of explicit time limit on the U.S. effort.
We reject this counsel. The implications of the term ``exit strategy'' must be clearly understood; there can be no fudging of consequences. The essential prerequisite for an acceptable exit strategy is a sustainable outcome, not an arbitrary time limit. For the outcome in Iraq will shape the next decade of American foreign policy. A debacle would usher in a series of convulsions in the region as radicals and fundamentalists moved for dominance, with the wind seemingly at their backs. Wherever there are significant Muslim populations, radical elements would be emboldened. As the rest of the world related to this reality, its sense of direction would be impaired by the demonstration of American confusion in Iraq. A precipitate American withdrawal would be almost certain to cause a civil war that would dwarf Yugoslavia's, and it would be compounded as neighbors escalated their current involvement into full-scale intervention.
We owe it to ourselves to become clear about what post-election outcome is compatible with our values and global security. And we owe it to the Iraqis to strive for an outcome that can further their capacity to shape their future.
The mechanical part of success is relatively easy to define: establishment of a government considered sufficiently legitimate by the Iraqi people to permit recruitment of an army able and willing to defend its institutions. That goal cannot be expedited by an arbitrary deadline that would be, above all, likely to confuse both ally and adversary. The political and military efforts cannot be separated. Training an army in a political vacuum has proved insufficient. If we cannot carry out both the political and military tasks, we will not be able to accomplish either.
But what is such a government? Optimists and idealists posit that a full panoply of Western democratic institutions can be created in a time frame the American political process will sustain. Reality is likely to disappoint these expectations. Iraq is a society riven by centuries of religious and ethnic conflicts; it has little or no experience with representative institutions. The challenge is to define political objectives that, even when falling short of the maximum goal, nevertheless represent significant progress and enlist support across the various ethnic groups. The elections of Jan. 30 should therefore be interpreted as the indispensable first phase of a political evolution from military occupation to political legitimacy.
Optimists also argue that, since the Shiites make up about 60 percent of the population and the Kurds 15 to 20 percent, and since neither wants Sunni domination, a democratic majority exists almost automatically. In that view, the Iraqi Shiite leaders have come to appreciate the benefits of democratization and the secular state by witnessing the consequences of their absence under the Shiite theocracy in neighboring Iran.
A pluralistic, Shiite-led society would indeed be a happy outcome. But we must take care not to base policy on the wish becoming father to the thought. If a democratic process is to unify Iraq peacefully, a great deal depends on how the Shiite majority defines majority rule.
So far the subtle Shiite leaders, hardened by having survived decades of Saddam Hussein's tyranny, have been ambiguous about their goals. They have insisted on early elections--indeed, the date of Jan. 30 was established on the basis of a near-ultimatum by the most eminent Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The Shiites have also urged voting procedures based on national candidate lists, which work against federal and regional political institutions. Recent Shiite pronouncements have affirmed the goal of a secular state but have left open the interpretation of majority rule. An absolutist application of majority rule would make it difficult to achieve political legitimacy. The Kurdish minority and the Sunni portion of the country would be in permanent opposition.
Western democracy developed in homogeneous societies; minorities found majority rule acceptable because they had a prospect of becoming majorities, and majorities were restrained in the exercise of their power by their temporary status and by judicially enforced minority guarantees. Such an equation does not operate where minority status is permanently established by religious affiliation and compounded by ethnic differences and decades of brutal dictatorship. Majority rule in such circumstances is perceived as an alternative version of the oppression of the weak by the powerful. In multiethnic societies, minority rights must be protected by structural and constitutional safeguards. Federalism mitigates the scope for potential arbitrariness of the numerical majority and defines autonomy on a specific range of issues.
The reaction to intransigent Sunni brutality and the relative Shiite quiet must not tempt us into identifying Iraqi legitimacy with unchecked Shiite rule. The American experience with Shiite theocracy in Iran since 1979 does not inspire confidence in our ability to forecast Shiite evolution or the prospects of a Shiite-dominated bloc extending to the Mediterranean. A thoughtful American policy will not mortgage itself to one side in a religious conflict fervently conducted for 1,000 years.
The Constituent Assembly emerging from the elections will be sovereign to some extent. But the United States' continuing leverage should be focused on four key objectives: (1) to prevent any group from using the political process to establish the kind of dominance previously enjoyed by the Sunnis; (2) to prevent any areas from slipping into Taliban conditions as havens and recruitment centers for terrorists; (3) to keep Shiite government from turning into a theocracy, Iranian or indigenous; (4) to leave scope for regional autonomy within the Iraqi democratic process.
The United States has every interest in conducting a dialogue with all parties to encourage the emergence of a secular leadership of nationalists and regional representatives. The outcome of constitution-building should be a federation, with an emphasis on regional autonomy. Any group pushing its claims beyond these limits should be brought to understand the consequences of a breakup of the Iraqi state into its constituent elements, including an Iranian-dominated south, an Islamist-Hussein Sunni center and invasion of the Kurdish region by its neighbors.
A calibrated American policy would seek to split that part of the Sunni community eager to conduct a normal life from the part that is fighting to reestablish Sunni control. The United States needs to continue building an Iraqi army, which, under conditions of Sunni insurrection, will be increasingly composed of Shiite recruits--producing an unwinnable situation for the Sunni rejectionists. But it should not cross the line into replacing Sunni dictatorship with Shiite theocracy. It is a fine line, but the success of Iraq policy may depend on the ability to walk it.
The legitimacy of the political institutions emerging in Iraq depends significantly on international acceptance of the new government. An international contact group should be formed to advise on the political and economic reconstruction of Iraq. Such a step would be a gesture of confident leadership, especially as America's security and financial contributions will remain pivotal. Our European allies must not shame themselves and the traditional alliance by continuing to stand aloof from even a political process that, whatever their view of recent history, will affect their future even more than ours. Nor should we treat countries such as India and Russia, with their large Muslim populations, as spectators to outcomes on which their domestic stability may well depend.
Desirable political objectives will remain theoretical until adequate security is established in Iraq. In an atmosphere of political assassination, wholesale murder and brigandage, when the road from Baghdad to its international airport is the scene of daily terrorist or criminal incidents, no government will long be able to sustain public confidence. Training, equipping and motivating effective Iraqi armed forces is a precondition to all the other efforts. Yet no matter how well trained and equipped, that army will not fight except for a government in which it has confidence. This vicious circle needs to be broken.
It is axiomatic that guerrillas win if they do not lose. And in Iraq the guerrillas are not losing, at least not in the Sunni region, at least not visibly. A successful strategy needs to answer these questions: Are we waging ``one war'' in which military and political efforts are mutually reinforcing? Are the institutions guiding and monitoring these tasks sufficiently coordinated? Is our strategic goal to achieve complete security in at least some key towns and major communication routes (defined as reducing violence to historical criminal levels)? This would be in accordance with the maxim that complete security in 70 percent of the country is better than 70 percent security in 100 percent of the country--because fully secure areas can be models and magnets for those who are suffering in insecure places. Do we have a policy for eliminating the sanctuaries in Syria and Iran from which the enemy can be instructed, supplied, and given refuge and time to regroup? Are we designing a policy that can produce results for the people and prevent civil strife for control of the state and its oil revenue? Are we maintaining American public support so that staged surges of extreme violence do not break domestic public confidence at a time when the enemy may, in fact, be on the verge of failure? And are we gaining international understanding and willingness to play a constructive role in what is a global threat to peace and security?
An exit strategy based on performance, not artificial time limits, will judge progress by the ability to produce positive answers to these questions. In the immediate future, a significant portion of the anti-insurrection effort will have to be carried out by the United States. A premature shift from combat operations to training missions might create a gap that permits the insurrection to rally its potential. But as Iraqi forces increase in number and capability, and as the political construction proceeds after the election, a realistic exit strategy will emerge.
There is no magic formula for a quick, non-catastrophic exit. But there is an obligation to do our utmost to bring about an outcome that will mark a major step forward in the war against terrorism, in the transformation of the Middle East and toward a more peaceful and democratic world order.
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