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Senator John Kerry Floor Statement Transcript
Washington D.C - Yesterday, Senator John Kerry spoke from the Senate floor on his plan for Iraq. Below is a transcript of his statement, as delivered:
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, last November, the American people sent an unmistakable and incredibly important message to their elected leaders. They didn't ask for it, they demanded a change of course in Iraq. The American people understand that the current strategy is not working. They have demanded that we honor the extraordinary effort of our troops by providing a strategy for Iraq that is actually worthy of their sacrifice. They don't consider more of the same--additional troops essentially doing what they have been doing before--they don't consider that anything other than an escalation of our military involvement, linked to the same mistakes and same illusions of the past. They don't consider that an acceptable strategy.
This new Congress comes here with a mandate, as well as a moral obligation, to find not just a new way forward in Iraq but the right way forward. That is what we owe the families; that is what we owe those fighting forces.
It is clear the administration's litany of mistakes has made an incredibly difficult task that much harder and has reduced what we can reasonably expect to accomplish. As the saying goes around here, we are where we are. The mistakes of the past do not change the fact that Congress bears some responsibility for getting us into this war and, therefore, must take responsibility for getting us out.
That responsibility starts by having a real bipartisan dialog on where we go from here. I believe we are finally at the point where that can happen. We all agree about the nobility of the service of our troops. We all agree about the incredible bravery of the men and women of our Armed Forces who put their lives on the line every single day in Iraq. We all want to see a stable Iraq. We all know Iraqis want to see it, too. We all agree on the need to preserve our vital national security interests in the region, and we all agree on the importance of preventing the violence in Iraq from spreading into a broader regional conflict. We all understand the need to prevent Iraq from becoming a safe haven for al-Qaida and like-minded terrorists. We all understand the potential of regional chaos and of failed states spreading one to the other.
In order to understand, however, where we go from here, we have to remind ourselves of the real nature of this conflict. It is not enough to sort of find some safe haven in rhetoric that points out all of the downsides but continues to pursue a policy that, in fact, increases those downsides, invites those downsides, actually makes matters worse.
The civil war we are in the middle of now didn't begin when we went there. It had been tamped down, quashed by a dictatorship and by history. Before I went back to visit the Middle East, I had the chance to read a book by Vali Nasr, called ``The Shia Revival,'' in which he traces the history of Shiaism and what is happening in the Middle East today. What we learned from that is instructive and critical to determining whether troops will make a difference on how we resolve what is happening in Iraq today.
When the Prophet Mohammed died, Ali, who was his cousin and stepson and virtual son, was passed over at that time to be the caliph. In fact, three people were chosen in between him. Ultimately, he did become the caliph, but that was the beginning of the difference of the separation, if you will, within Islam. That became far more pronounced about 1,300 years ago, around 680, when the grandson of Ali was slaughtered in the desert along with 72 of his followers--72, a number that comes back to haunt us today, because that was indeed an event in Karballah in 682 that defined martyrdom, which we see played to by the extreme religious efforts that are taking place today in the Middle East.
Why do I mention this today? Because that is where the great Shia-Sunni divide began. Ali and his followers were beheaded in the desert, their bodies left to rot in the sun. Their heads were posted, first in Najaf, and later in Damascus. That began to instill a depth of both anger and suppression that has gone on all of these centuries.
The fact is that we, through our invasion and our election, have given the Shia at the ballot box what they never could achieve all of those years, and the Sunni, who have continually been the dominant, more secular faction that managed the affairs of state, are suddenly finding themselves in the minority; many believe they were born to the right to rule and are determined to restore it. This is the civil conflict we have put ourselves in the middle of, with American troops who don't speak the language going door to door and house to house, attempting to somehow make sense of an alien environment they have been plunged into--from California, Kansas, Missouri, Massachusetts, and all of our States. We are doing precisely what Secretary Rumsfeld said we would not do--putting our troops in the middle of a civil war.
On my recent trip to the Middle East, I heard grave concerns expressed by Sunni leaders, Mubarak and others, about the Shia resurgence and Iran's growing influence in the region. Indeed, Iran's influence has grown, and we are partly responsible, if not significantly responsible, for that growth. We need to stand up for our allies in the region, our Sunni friends, yes. But we can and must do it in a way that doesn't exacerbate the Sunni-Shia rift in the region. That is why we have to ask more of our Sunni allies when it comes to pressuring the Sunnis in Iraq to accept that, with this turn of events called an election, they will no longer--absent a revolution, which some are planning on--be running the country, and that they must lay down their arms and join the political process.
We must make clear that countries such as Saudi Arabia can and must do more to crack down on support for those Sunni insurgents coming into Iraq from their country. We dare not forget that it is the Sunni insurgents who are killing many of our troops. Most of those troops have died in Anbar Province. We have a right to demand more from the Sunni neighbors to quell that insurgency. We must encourage those Sunni neighbors to step up in terms of providing debt relief and reconstruction assistance, and we must make clear that threatening to intervene in Iraq in a way that is perceived as being on behalf of the Sunni minority only serves to exacerbate the Sunni-Shia complexity, the tension that is causing so much of the violence today.
Now here in Washington, a combination of events on the ground and the November election results are beginning to produce a bipartisan resolve to genuinely change course. Many on both sides of the aisle now agree that the administration's plan to escalate the war in Iraq by sending in some 21,500 additional troops would represent a tragic mistake. It won't end the violence; it won't provide security; it won't turn back the clock and avoid the civil war that is in fact already underway; it won't deter terrorists who have a completely different agenda; it won't rein in the militias who are viewed as the protectors of the general population. It will simply postpone the political solution that is the only solution in Iraq, while further damaging our prestige and credibility in the region. Unfortunately, it will also expose our troops to unnecessary death and injury.
Our generals understand this. General Abizaid said clearly in his testimony before the Armed Services Committee that more U.S. troops will not solve the security problem. In fact, he said they would only slow the process of getting Iraqi security forces to take more responsibility. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously oppose this escalation. In fact, according to recent news reports, the Pentagon warned that any short-term mission may only set up the United States for bigger problems when it ends.
A short-term mission could give an enormous edge to virtually all the armed factions in Iraq, including al-Qaida's foreign fighters, Sunni insurgents and Sunni and Shiite militias, without giving an enduring boost to the U.S. military mission or the Iraqi Army. And it is not just the advice of his military commanders in Iraq the President is ignoring, it is the bipartisan counsel of the Iraq Study Group appointed for the very purpose of defining a new course.
Mr. President, what kind of arrogance so willfully kicks to the curb the work product of two former Secretaries of State, Republicans, a former Attorney General and Chief of Staff, Republican, a former Senator and member of the leadership, Republican, and a group of moderates, a former Secretary of Defense, and others respected for the moderation of their views on foreign policy and security issues? What kind of arrogance avoids almost all of those recommendations and moves in a different direction?
Rather than change course, this administration chose to ignore the generals. In fact, it chose to change the generals. The folly of this escalation is so clear that we have a bipartisan responsibility to do everything in our power to say no.
I ask my colleagues: Is there one colleague here who believes that 21,500 troops is going to pacify Iraq? Is there a colleague here who believes that 100,000 troops will pacify Iraq? It is not enough for Congress simply to go on record opposing the President's reckless plan. That is why I support the resolution submitted by my colleague, Senator Kennedy, that requires a new congressional authorization, which is appropriate because the prior authorization only applies to the weapons of mass destruction and to the threat that Iraq poses to us based on the presence of Saddam Hussein. This is a new Iraq, and it is an Iraq with a civil war, and the Congress of the United States has a responsibility and a moral obligation to make certain that if our troops from each of our States are going to fight and die, we stand up and be counted as to what the force structure is to be, as to what their mission should be because this administration has proven unwilling to get it right.
Stopping this escalation, however, is not enough. I believe Congress has to provide a responsible exit strategy that preserves our interests in the region, preserves our ability to continue to protect the security of the United States, and honors the sacrifice our troops have made. I believe those are tests we need to pass.
Six months ago in the Senate, we stood against appeals to politics and pride and demanded a date to bring our troops home, to make Iraqis stand up for Iraq and fight a more effective war on terror. But while we lost that rollcall, I still believe it was the right policy to put in place, to demand benchmarks, to demand accountability, and to leverage action.
That is why I will again introduce legislation, slightly different this time, in order to try to offer a comprehensive strategy for achieving a political solution. I believe the strategy I will set forth is the best way forward for America and for Iraq. We have to find a way to end this misguided war and bring our troops home, and the legislation, while protecting all the interests I described, I believe can do that.
I believe the Iraq Study Group's recommendations can form the basis for finding a bipartisan way forward. Many of those proposals, which are consistent with proposals that some in the Senate have long advocated, are incorporated in the legislation I will offer, including launching a major diplomatic initiative, enforcing a series of benchmarks for meeting key political objectives, shifting the military mission to training Iraqi security forces and conducting targeted coun ter ter ror ism operations, maintaining an over-the-horizon presence to protect our interests supported by a concerted effort to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate the militias which must be undertaken by Iraqis.
This legislation includes an additional provision that is a critical component of the strategy. I know a lot of colleagues were nervous about setting a date. Fewer are as nervous today. But I believe there is a way to require the President to set that date, negotiate that exit, a way to do it constitutionally and also within the context of the reauthorization.
I think that is not an arbitrary deadline. In fact, the Iraq Study Group report effectively sets a goal of withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq by the first quarter of 2008, or within approximately 1 year. This date was based on the timeframe for transferring responsibility to Iraqi security forces set forth by General Casey and on the schedule agreed upon with the Iraqi Government itself for achieving key political security objectives.
The President even said that under that new strategy, responsibility for security would be transferred to Iraqis before the end of this year. That is how unarbitrary it is. The President has said it, our generals have said it, the Iraq Study Group has said it.
I wish to repeat this because it is important because it is continually distorted. We all want success, but we have to examine the realities of the road to success. An effort that combines diplomacy with smart deployment of our troops is the only road to success.
I ask my colleagues: Where is the diplomacy? Many of us can remember, under a Republican President, Henry Kissinger shuttling back and forth day and night working to bring an end to the Vietnam war. Many of us can remember Jim Baker, at the beginning of the decade in the nineties, when he took 15 trips to Syria alone, and on the final trip got President Asad to actually agree to support what we were doing. That is diplomacy.
We don't have that kind of diplomacy. We lack even a special envoy there day to day, hour to hour, leveraging the Arab League, leveraging the United Nations, working with the U.N. Perm Five, working with the neighboring countries, doing the kinds of significant, heavy diplomatic lifting our sons and daughters who are dying deserve.
As our combat troop levels wind down, we can have sufficient forces to confront the Sunni insurgency. We can still continue to prosecute al-Qaida, but our core security interests--the security interests of preventing another terrorist attack on our country--those interests lie where our troops can still play a positive role in confronting Sunni insurgents and their al-Qaida allies. That will happen when we focus on Al Anbar Province, not Baghdad.
It is time for Iraqis to assume responsibility for their country, and that is not just a statement. It has been 4 years, 300,000 troops are trained. When I talk with the
military people, they don't tell me training is the problem. They tell me motivation is the problem. Those 300,000 troops are not prepared to die for an Iraq yet, and they are mostly local militia and/or local tribe affiliated, which is their true allegiance at this point in time.
We need a timetable which forces Iraqi politicians to confront this reality. Americans should not be dying because Iraqi politicians refuse to compromise and come together. If they are not willing to do it today with thousands of people dying around them, with this kind of sectarian violence, what will make them more willing to do that in a year? They are using the security blanket of American presence in order to avoid making those compromises, and we need to understand that and get about the business of leveraging the compromise that is the only solution to what is happening in Iraq.
I believe a deadline will actually help provide the Iraqis with the motivation and the pressure to step up and take control. General Abizaid made it clear that is essential to our strategy. The key to providing the motivation is making sure they, in fact, begin to take control and begin to define their own future.
As we give the Iraqis more control over their own destiny, we also have to hold them accountable for the fundamentals of leading their country on the construction, as well as the basic resolution, the political differences within the oil revenues, the federalism issue, which are the two great stumbling blocks fundamental to a resolution.
Why the President didn't make the condition of providing additional security and putting additional Americans online, why he didn't make their resolution of those issues a precondition is beyond me. But American forces are now going to be put at greater risk, more kids at harm, without the fundamentals that are essential and that are completely out of the power of any squad or company or battalion to be able to resolve.
When Prime Minister Maliki took power in May, General Casey and Ambassador Khalilzad said the new Government had 6 months to make the political compromises necessary to win public confidence and unify the country--6 months last May. They were right. And yet with no real deadline to force the Government's hand, that period passed without any meaningful action, and we are now seeing the disastrous results.
To ensure history does not repeat itself, we need to put those benchmarks in place, and we need to have those benchmarks agreed upon. That is the least, again, we can ask on behalf of our troops.
I, also, believe a deadline is essential to getting Iraq's neighbors to face up to the realities of the security needs of the region. If we are going to be concerned about Iran, it should not be surreptitiously based on them using us. It should be all of us together defining a new security arrangement for the region. General Zinni has talked about that many times. He is one of the most respected hands in that region.
In addition, our own intelligence agencies tell us that the war in Iraq is fanning the flames of jihad, and we have to stop serving as an al-Qaida recruitment tool. When are we going to take that seriously in the Senate? We spent a lot of time and energy to reorganize the intelligence community. We supposedly have the best intelligence now, and that intelligence in the conglomerate is telling us that this current policy is putting America at greater risk because we are creating more terrorists, fanning the flames of unrest in the region, and creating a recruitment tool for al-Qaida in that region.
We can see the results. Hamas is more powerful now. Hezbollah and Nasrallah are more powerful today. Iran is more powerful today. Syria is more than willing to play with Iran than care about what the concerns might be of the rest of the region.
We have gone backward because of this policy. How can this administration stand up and say to us that we have to fear the security interests of the future, when the security interests of the present are moving in the wrong direction?
Afghanistan, where the diversion of resources to Iraq has already allowed the Taliban to rise again, is increasing as a threat to those long-term security interests. Osama bin Laden roams free while a regenerated al-Qaida continues to plot attacks on American interests, and the flourishing opium trade has turned the country into a virtual narcostate, funding insurgents and warlords and threatening the viability of the Karzai Government.
Now our generals in Afghanistan are warning, in the darkest possible terms, that the Taliban is poised to launch a major new offensive in Afghanistan, and they have issued an urgent appeal for more U.S. troops to fight back. Instead of sending 20,000 troops over to Iraq, we ought to be listening to our military commanders and give them the few thousand more troops they desperately need to deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
On the broader regional front, we clearly need to come to grips with the need to engage Iran in a way that not only deters Iran from nuclear and other military adventurism, but does not create another disastrous war that is not in our national security interest. I want to take one moment before closing to speak to that point.
I am hardly the only one in the Senate who is concerned about a terrible byproduct of the administration's escalation plan for Iraq. That byproduct could be movement towards a calculated military conflict with Iran, which would further destabilize the Middle East, fan the flames of intra-Muslim and Muslim-Western violence. In fact, many Americans are increasingly concerned that the administration's rhetoric regarding Iran sounds eerily familiar.
Congress must make it absolutely certain that we do not make the same mistake we made in rushing to war with Iraq, starting by making it clear President Bush does not have the authority to engage Iran militarily, excepting, of course, an immediate attack on our troops or a definable and palpable emergency. He does not have the authority to engage them without express congressional authorization.
Looking at recent developments, it is not hard to see why people are concerned. In the President's speech introducing his new Iraq strategy, he issued a thinly veiled threat that sounded as though the administration was at least contemplating military operations on the Iranian side of the border. In the last few weeks we have arrested Iranian nationals in two separate incidents in Iraq. The initial operations against Shiite militias in Baghdad at a minimum are bound to exacerbate tensions with Iran even further, and we recently sent another aircraft carrier to the region, ratcheting up our aggressive posture.
Taken alone, individually, there is a certain logic to each of those actions. Taken on the whole, however, they have created an impression in the region, and as we all know impressions are what ultimately push leaders to make judgments about threat and to make determinations about their own actions. The impression in the region is that we have taken the side of the Sunnis in the conflict with Iraq. Whether that is true or not, we must never forget that in the Middle East especially, perception is reality. If we are seen to be favoring the Sunnis, we run the risk of alienating the Shiite majority that will ultimately be running Iraq--that is the reality--and inflaming extremism throughout the region. It is essential that we remain evenhanded in our own actions as well as our words in our efforts to bring stability to Iraq.
There is another reason, as the Iraqi Study Group suggested, we should engage Iran and Syria. Leadership means talking to countries who are not our friends. President Kennedy reminded us: Never fear to negotiate but never negotiate out of fear. We need to engage directly when our vital national security interests are at stake. We have done it all through our history. Richard Nixon sent Henry Kissinger to China. President Reagan went to meet with Miguel Gorbachev and came to an agreement on arms after defining the ``evil empire.'' The conversation that I had recently in the Middle East with Senator Dodd, when we traveled there together with President Asad of Syria, led us to believe that a dialog could, in fact, be constructed in working toward a goal that we share with Syria: creating a stable, secular, Arab Iraq. That is at least what President Asad said he would like. It seems to me, given the morass we are in, it is worth putting that to the test.
We cannot turn back the clock and reverse the decisions that brought us to this pass in Iraq and the Middle East. We cannot achieve the kind of clear and simple victory the administration promised the American people so often even as the conditions in Iraq grew worse and worse. But we can avoid an outright defeat. We can avoid creating the chaos we say we want to avoid. We can avoid a victory for our adversaries by identifying specifically what we can and cannot accomplish in Iraq.
With a new Congress comes a new responsibility: to get this policy right. That starts with preventing the President from going forward with this senseless escalation. And it has to end with finding an exit strategy that preserves our core interests in Iraq, in the region, and throughout the world.
I look forward to having a real debate. I hope we can find that way.
I might mention, when Senator Dodd and I were about to helicopter out of Baghdad, we were at Landing Zone Washington, which is right in the Green Zone. Many Senators are familiar with it. In the darkness of night, as we were leaving, a young man came up to us to talk to us and he identified himself as an officer in the Army. He was going home for leave and was hitching a ride on the helicopter to go home. He went home, visited his 14- month-old daughter and, I think, his 4-year-old son, if I am correct. His name was Brian Freeman and he was intelligent and thoughtful and bright and he talked about his future and talked with us animatedly about what was going on in Iraq and how he disagreed with what he was being asked to do and how others did. He went home, and we just learned that this Friday he was killed. So he went back. He did his duty as so many have.
I know when I returned from war, almost 40 years ago now, I stood up and spoke from my heart and my gut about what I thought was wrong. To this day that has been controversial in some quarters, but I am proud that I told the truth. And that truth has been documented again and again from Army training manuals to books that have been written to the statements of our own Secretary of Defense at that time, Robert McNamara. But, before I finish, I want to make it clear that that is my motivation in talking about this war now and this predicament that so many of these soldiers find themselves in.
I asked the question in 1971: How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? Although I knew going into public service I wanted to be in a place where I could have an impact should there be a choice of war in the future, but I never thought that I would be reliving the need to ask that question again.
We are there. Most of our colleagues understand this is a mistake. Most of our colleagues understand that 21,000 troops is not going to pacify Iraq. So all of us have a deep-rooted obligation, a deep moral obligation to ask ourselves what we can do to further the interests of our Nation and honor the sacrifices of those troops themselves. I think it is to get this policy right. I hope the President will truly listen to us in these next days because we want to work in good faith to do that.
Before I finish, I want to add a note, both personal and political. Two years ago I sought the Presidency to lead us on a different course. I am proud of the campaign we ran, proud of the fact that 3 years ago I said that Iraq was the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time; proud that we defined energy independence and made it, for the first time, part of the Presidential race; proud of a health care plan that we laid out that to this moment remains viable and waiting to be used in order to lower the health care costs for our fellow Americans.
We came close, certainly close enough, to be tempted to try again. There are powerful reasons to want to continue that fight now. But I have concluded this is not the time for me to mount a Presidential campaign. It is time to put my energy to work as part of the majority in the Senate to do all I can to end this war and strengthen our security and our ability to fight the real war on terror.
The people of Massachusetts have given me an incredible privilege to serve, and I intend to work here to change a policy in Iraq that threatens all that I have cared about and fought for since I came home from Vietnam.
The fact is, what happens here in the next 2 years may irrevocably shape or terribly distort the administration of whichever candidate is next elected President. Decisions are being taken and put into effect today and in the days to come that may leave to the next President a wider war, a war even more painful, more difficult, more prolonged than the war we already have.
Iraq, if we Senators force a change of course, may yet bring stability and an exit with American security intact or it may bring our efforts in the region to a failure that we will all recognize as a catastrophe.
I don't want the next President to find that he or she has inherited a nation still divided and a policy destined to end as Vietnam did, in a bitter or sad legacy. I intend to devote all my efforts and energies over the next 2 years, not to the race for the Presidency for myself but for doing whatever I can to ensure that the next President can take the oath with a reasonable prospect of success for him or her--for the United States. And I intend to speak the truth as I find it without regard for political correctness or partisan advantage, to advise my colleagues and my fellow citizens to the best of my ability and judgment, and to support every action the Senate may reasonably and constitutionally take to guide and direct the ship of state.
This mission, this responsibility, is something all of us must accept, and as someone who made the mistake of voting for the resolution that gave the President the authority to go to war, I feel the weight of a personal responsibility to act, to devote time and energy to the national dialog in an effort to limit this war and bring our participation to a conclusion.
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