Majority Makers

Floor Speech

MAJORITY MAKERS -- (House of Representatives - September 19, 2007)

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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Thank you, Mr. Courtney.

Mr. Speaker, I don't think any of us want to be here talking about the war because it's a tragedy, and I believe the American people have come to that conclusion. Whether they supported going into the war or they opposed going into the war, they figured out that at this point our military men and women have done all they can do. They toppled Saddam. They reported back truthfully that there were no weapons of mass destruction, and they allowed stability in Iraq so that Iraq had three democratic elections. At a certain point, it is up to the Iraqis to step up and build their own institutions and their own democracy. We obviously can help and we have some responsibility. But the American people, those who supported the war, those who opposed going into the war initially, have come to a pretty commonsense conclusion: We have done our job, the military has performed ably, and it is time for the Iraqis to take our place.

The fundamental question that the President has put to this Congress and to the American people is this: Is it the proper role of the United States military to be refereeing a civil war? That's the question. Now, Republicans and Democrats in the past have been united that our military has a primary responsibility for defending us in fighting wars, not for refereeing civil wars.

A couple of things. One, there has never been an example in the history of the world where a third-party military has actually refereed a civil war to a peaceful political and economic conclusion. There are examples of third-party militaries, outside militaries, coming in on one side and, through force of arms, imposing an outcome. But that is not the policy even of the Bush administration.

Is this a civil war? Here's what is going on in Iraq right now: There are several different civil wars that are underway. In the south in the Basra region where our ally Great Britain has basically taken its 44,000 troops down to 5,000 troops and redeployed them to a base, there are three different Shia wars going on. They're not fighting about democracy. They're not fighting pro- or anti-Iran primarily. They're not fighting about the future of Iraq as a united country. They are fighting about oil. It is about who is going to be in control of that port and that refinery in Basra.

You then go to Kurdistan. Kurdistan has been, in effect, independent since 1991, Mr. Speaker, after the first Gulf War. And they have actually built an economy. They have outside investment coming in. They will not even allow the Iraqi flag to be flown in Kurdistan and are bent on achieving their own independence. But they want oil as well and are threatening, and they have an independent military, the Peshmurga, to take significant forceful action if they don't, from their perspective, get their share of oil in the Kirkuk region.

Then you have Baghdad. Baghdad has been the site of the most extreme ethnic cleansing. Before the fall o

Saddam, Baghdad had 65 percent population that was Sunni. That was the seat of Saddam's power. Now it is 75 percent Shia.

A neighborhood that I visited, Mr. Courtney, when I was with a delegation to Iraq, the Dora neighborhood, had previously been Sunni and was now Shia, and peace came about basically by displacing the people who used to be there and putting new people in.

And the overall dislocation in Iraq is astonishing, as you mentioned, my friend from New Hampshire: 2 million Iraqis displaced internally, 2 million exiled; 4 million people already, about 60,000 a month, are affected by this. And that is the equivalent in the United States, 20 percent of our population or about 50 million people. Think about it if 50 million people were displaced, either thrown out of the country or fleeing the country or had to move from Texas to Vermont or Vermont to New York because of force and fear.

Then you have the provinces around Baghdad. The Sunni Triangle, Anbar, Diyala, a couple of provinces where General Petraeus was arguing that there was, quote, ``progress.'' Well, again, no one is going to quibble about a military person's estimation of whether there is military progress, but what has happened there largely is that there has been dislocation. The Sunni tribal leaders have done what most analysts expected they would do: They would turn against al Qaeda because they are nationalists. They are much more concerned about Iraq than they are accommodating this radical ideology and they would, quote, ``work with the United States.''

But what's the price that we are paying? What is the tactical decision that was made? The decision was made to arm tribal chiefs. Now, that can work in the short run. It gives them arms to fight alongside American soldiers in some particular circumstances. But what is the overall policy of the Bush administration? It is a strong central Iraqi Government centered in Baghdad. So what you have now is a United States policy that arms factions in the provinces, which is a momentary truce of convenience, that has no loyalty to the central government in Baghdad. And down the road, as what happened in Afghanistan when the United States, to pursue its interest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, armed the Taliban, and that Taliban then became the monster that produced an Osama bin Laden. But we have our policy where we are literally doing two things against the middle: arming factions who are hostile to a central government even as we say our goal is to have a strong central government.

So none of us know what all the details are, but what you have is an incredibly internal complexity: a Shia south where there is Shia factional fighting, a Sunni Triangle where there is a temporary alliance of convenience, you have ethnic cleansing in Baghdad, and you have a Kurdistan that is insisting upon being independent.

Incidentally, on this question of being independent, even the President's friends who have business interests are getting it. You read the report last week about Hunt Oil. Hunt Oil is owned by Mr. Hunt, a very good friend of the President, a big contributor and a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee that the President pays deference to, listens to. Mr. Hunt bypassed the central government in Iraq and is entering into a direct oil agreement with Kurdistan. So he not only has made his bet that the President's policy is going to fail, he is making arrangements to profit by that failure.

So why is it that we are asking the American military, the American taxpayer to continue pursuing a dead-end policy? There is one reason that the President now offers to defend a policy that is bankrupt, that is a dead end, that has a history of failure. That argument that the administration is making is this: If we leave, there will be chaos.

Now, think about it. Those who oppose the war, those who voted against it argue that if we invaded Iraq, in all likelihood the outcome would be the quick toppling of Saddam and the long-term chaos and violence that would follow. The argument that the President rejected then he is embracing now.

All of us who oppose the war really do so with a heavy heart because we know that the choices that are available to this country and to the people of Iraq are very constrained and there is going to be untold suffering that lies ahead. We don't have good choices, but the question is what is the right choice that is going to mitigate the suffering? And that right choice has to be to redeploy our troops because the continued presence of the United States through the military emphasizes a military approach to a political problem. And that's why all of us are here doing everything we can to change our direction in Iraq.

And I thank you for my opportunity to participate with my wonderful colleagues.

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