Rep. John Duncan, R-Tenn., is calling for withdrawl from Iraq
in this speech he made earlier this week. he has made similar statements over the last few weeks, but this speech is especially worth reading.
http://www.house.gov/duncan/2005/fs061405.htmWe went into Iraq, and I can tell Members this: In 1998, I voted to give the Iraqi opposition $100 million to start the movement to take out Saddam Hussein. I was convinced that we should have let them fight their own war instead of sending our kids over there to fight and die. I think what we should do now, we should start, and I wish the President would announce a phased and orderly withdrawal. I think he could do this in a very positive way. He could say we have done far more for Iraq than any other nation has done for another in the history of the world. He could point to the $300 billion we have spent there, and he also could refer to the polls showing almost all Iraqis view us as occupiers rather than liberators. Last year in the last poll that the government took, it was 92 percent, and 78 percent in a poll taken by CNN, that the Iraqis view us as occupiers rather than liberators. They do not really appreciate what we have done. They do want our money. This is a country that Newsweek said had a gross domestic product of $65 billion before the war, and we have spent $300 billion in just a couple of years' time.
As I said earlier, some may say this is isolationist, but the truth is the war in Iraq has isolated us from almost everyone except a few foreign policy elitists around the world. When they use thoughtless cliches like we cannot cut and run, or we must stay the course, we should ask, why? Is what we are accomplishing or not accomplishing in Iraq worth one more young American being killed? Would it be worth the life of your son and daughter, I would say to anyone who happens to be listening to this?
Last June about this time I read in the Chicago Tribune a story about a young soldier who had just been killed in Iraq. Just a few days earlier he had called his mother and told her, this is not our war. We should not be here. I can tell Members this: We changed the name of the War Department many years ago to the Department of Defense. We should make it truly a Defense Department once again and bring our troops home.
I can tell Members very few people in this Congress, I do not think anybody in the Congress, really respects and admires the military more than I do, but I believe in national defense. I do not believe in international defense, and if we take on the defense obligations of the entire world, and that is another thing, conservatives have never believed in world government. This is not a conservative war. We should begin a phased, orderly withdrawal and stop the killing over there. It is such a sad thing, and it is just not worth what we are going through.
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