- House of Representatives
- October 20, 2003
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- The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the
House, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
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- Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, many Americans today may not
be familiar with Will Rogers. However, Will Rogers was at one time considered
by many to be the most popular man in America. He once said, ``America
has a great habit of always talking about protecting American interests
in some foreign country.'' Then he said, ``Protect them here at home. There
is more American interest right here than anywhere.''
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- The passage of an additional $87 billion for an operation
in Iraq seems to many to be anything but fiscally conservative. The request
includes, among many other things, $5.7 billion for a new electric power
system; $3.7 billion to improve drinking water; $856 million to upgrade
and repair three airports, rail lines, and phone service; $240,000 each
for 1,500 police trainers to train Iraqi police; $1.71 per gallon for gas
that they are then selling to Iraqi citizens for $4.15 per gallon, according
to The New York Times.
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- Earlier billions have been used to build or rebuild thousands
of Iraqi schools, give free health care to many Iraqi citizens, make backpayments
to the Iraqi military and Iraqi retirees, and even send 60,000 soccer balls
there. Our Founding Fathers could not have imagined all this in their wildest
dreams.
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- A distinguished Member of the other body, the gentleman
from Ohio, Mr. Voinovich, said, ``Look at the needs we have here at home,
with our roads, sewers, and water projects. It is hard to tell people there
isn't money for sewers and water and then send that kind of money to Iraq
.'' Another distinguished Member of the other body, Mr. Hagel, the gentleman
from Nebraska, said, ``There is a great unease about all this reflected
across this land. We are getting deeper and deeper into something we have
never been in before in this part of the world. This is complicated, dangerous
and uncertain.''
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- Conservatives, Mr. Speaker, have never believed in massive
foreign aid, yet our occupation of Iraq has become the largest foreign
aid program in the history of the world. Conservatives, Mr. Speaker, have
never believed in huge deficit spending, yet we are now told that our deficits
for just this year and next will reach close to an astounding $1 trillion.
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- Supporters of the war scoffed at the predictions that
we would spend between $200 billion to $300 billion in Iraq over the next
10 years. Now, by the most conservative efforts, not counting many things
that should be counted, the Iraqi operation will cost $167 billion in just
the first 2 years.
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- And because we are in such a deep fiscal hole already,
we will have to borrow all these billions we are spending there.
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- Conservatives have never believed in world government,
and have been strong critics of the U.N. Yet, some prominent war supporters,
while criticizing the U.N. in one breath, will say in the next we had to
go to war to enforce all the U.N. resolutions Saddam Hussein had violated.
Most conservatives surely do not believe it is fair to place almost the
entire burden of enforcing U.N. resolutions on American taxpayers and the
U.S. military. Most conservatives, while believing strongly in national
defense, have never believed the U.S. should be the policeman of the world.
Most conservatives believe we would not have nearly as many enemies around
the world if we followed a noninterventionist foreign policy and did not
get involved in so many religious, ethnic, and political disputes around
the world.
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- Now, we are following a so-called neoconservative foreign
policy that is anything but conservative. This interventionist policy is
breeding resentment, creating more enemies, and putting our children and
grandchildren into a financial black hole, and worst of all killing many
young American military.
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- Fortune magazine in its November 25 issue, long before
the war started, printed an article entitled, ``Iraq --We Win, What Then?''
The article said a ``military victory could turn into a strategic defeat,''
and an American occupation could turn U.S. troops into sitting ducks for
Islamic terrorists. These predictions have turned out to be deadly accurate.
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- The columnist Georgie Ann Geyer wrote, ``Critics of the
war against Iraq have said since the beginning of the conflict that Americans,
still strangely complacent about overseas wars being waged by a minority
in their name, will inevitably come to a point where they will see they
have to have a government that provides services at home or one that seeks
empire across the globe.''
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- Saddam Hussein was an evil man but he had a military
budget only about two-tenths of 1 percent of ours and was never any real
threat to us. Everyone knew we would win the war quickly and easily.
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- Winning the peace, everyone said, would be much more
difficult. Now, we are hearing noble-sounding cliches like ``we have to
get the job done'' and ``we must stay the course'' and ``the American people
must be willing to sacrifice.'' Well, we should all be asking why?
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- Mr. Speaker, it is clear that the Iraqi people do not
want us running their country, they only want our money. Any country would
want all these billions. Now war supporters seem to be criticizing the
media for reporting all the killing but failing to emphasize all the good
that is going on there. For all of the billions we are spending there,
I certainly hope some good things are going on, but these good things should
be paid for by the Iraqi citizens with their own oil wealth. Let us leave
Iraq to the Iraqis.
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- [Begin Insert]
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- A very small minority of very powerful Neo-Cons have
apparently dreamed of war with Iraq for many years. They got their wish.
But what they may have thought would be their crowning achievement may
instead lead to their downfall.
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- So many people in the United States and around the world
feel that they were misled about the need to go to war in Iraq that they
almost certainly will be much harder to convince the next time around.
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- No matter who is President, almost all the leaders of
the Defense Department, the State Department, the National Security Council,
and our intelligence agencies are going to advocate more and more involvement
in foreign affairs, even those which should be none of our business or
even when there is no threat to our vital interests.
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- This is because all their power and glory, and most importantly,
their funding are determined in large part by our involvement in the affairs
of other nations. These people are not seen as men and women of action
and world statesmen when they urge that we do more and more in other countries.
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- I wish more of our leaders would heed the advice of President
Kennedy who said in 1962: ``We must face that fact that the United states
is neither omnipotent nor omnisicient--that we are only six percent [now
four percent] of the world's population--that we cannot impose our will
upon the other 94 percent of mankind--that we cannot right every wrong
or reverse each adversity--and that therefore there cannot be an American
solution to every world problem.''
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- There is nothing conservative about the U.S. policy in
Iraq .
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- Congressman John J. Duncan represents the 2nd District
of Tennessee.
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- http://www.house.gov/duncan/2003/fs102003.htm
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