Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
May 20, 2004 -- Page: S5895

MRS. HUTCHISON. Madam President, we just heard a wonderful talk by the President of the United States. He talked about our commitment and reminded us once again that our commitment to winning in Iraq is everything. There is no alternative. The President talked about the commitment of winning the war on terrorism.

That means we must stabilize Iraq. We must begin to show the people in the Middle East what freedom, free enterprise, economy and jobs can do, and an educational system that includes boys and girls, giving them hope for the future.

He reminded us of the commitment we must make to see the war on terrorism through. This is not going to be a war that goes exactly the way it was planned. Name for me a war that did. Name for me a war that we said, Here is what is going to happen, and it happens just that way. This is war. We have been attacked. Thousands of Americans have been killed by fanatics. Nick Berg was assassinated on videotape in a brutal manner by terrorism. This will continue to happen if we lose our resolve. There is only one way that we can lose; that is, for America not to see this through.

It means winning the immediate war. It means stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan. It means sowing the seeds of freedom and representative government in those countries to show how it can be done where people have not lived in freedom for years. We must see it through. But it means more than just the next year in which we have the big important war on terrorism that we see evolve before our eyes.

It means we are going to have to stick with it for 25 or 30 years because it is going to take that long to show education can give children hope for the future, so you will not be able to brainwash a child to think life is not worth living, that the best thing one could do with their life is to give it up by killing other people in a suicide bomb.

The only way to warp children to believe a suicide bomb is their best hope in life is by failing to give them an education. An education gives them hope for a future, for a job, for a family, for a quality of life that is worth living.

The President of the United States is laser-beam focused. He is focused on winning the war on terrorism for the security of the American people and for the ability for freedom to live throughout the world. If America does not carry the beacon and the flag for freedom in the world, who will? Who has the capacity and the will to do it? If freedom dies in America, it will not flourish for very long anywhere else on Earth. That is why the President is so focused on the security of our country by finding and winning the war on terrorism.

We see people wringing their hands, asking, What can we do. We see the assassination of Nick Berg on videotape and we ask, What can we do to get out of this. We can make sure the violent death of Nicholas Berg is not in vain, that the hundreds of Americans who have died in this cause do not die in vain, that they are dealing with an America that has the leadership to stand up for our country and our security and our freedom and see it through. That is what the President of the United States is doing for our country today. We must not lose focus.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article by David Brooks from the New York Times.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

[From the New York Times, May 18, 2004.]

There's something about our venture into Iraq that is inspiringly, painfully, embarrassingly and quintessentially American.

No other nation would have been hopeful enough to try to evangelize for democracy across the Middle East. No other nation would have been naive enough to do it this badly. No other nation would be adaptable enough to recover from its own innocence and muddle its way to success, as I suspect we are about to do.

American history sometimes seems to be the same story repeated over and over again. Some group of big-dreaming but foolhardy adventurers head out to eradicate some evil and to realize some golden future. They get halfway along their journey and find they are unprepared for the harsh reality they suddenly face. It's too late to turn back, so they reinvent their mission. They toss out illusions and adopt an almost desperate pragmatism. They never do realize the utopia they initially dreamed about, but they do build something better than what came before.

This basic pattern has marked our national style from the moment British colonists landed on North American shores. Overly optimistic about the conditions they would find, the colonists were woefully undercapitalized, underequipped and underskilled. At Jamestown, there were three gentlemen and gentlemen's servants for every skilled laborer. They didn't bother to plant enough grain to see them through the winter.

But they learned and adapted. Settlement companies were compelled to send more workers, along with axes, chisels, scythes, millstones and seeds. Eventually the colonies thrived.

Centuries later, it was much the same. The guides who aided and fleeced the pioneers who moved West were struck by how clueless many of them were about the wilderness they were entering. Their diaries show that many thought they could establish genteel New England-style villages in short order. They leapt before they looked, faced the shock of reality, adapted and cobbled together something unexpected.

And it is that way today. We are tricked by hope into starting companies, beginning books, immigrating to this country and investing in telecom networks. The challenges turn out to be tougher than we imagined. Our excessive optimism is exposed. New skills are demanded. But nothing important was ever begun in a prudential frame of mind.

Hope begets disappointment, and we are now in a moment of disappointment when it comes to Iraq. During these shakeout moments, the nay-sayers get to gloat while the rest of us despair, lacerate ourselves, second-guess those in charge and look at things anew. But this very process of self-criticism is the precondition for the second wind, the grubbier, less illusioned effort that often enough leads to some acceptable outcome.

Today in Iraq local commanders seem to be allowed to try anything. We are allowing former Baathists to man a Falluja Brigade to police their own city. We are pounding Moktada al-Sadr while negotiating with him. There is talk of moving up elections so when an Iraqi official is assassinated, he is not seen as a person working with the U.S., but as a duly elected representative of the Iraqi people.

Some of these policies seem incoherent, but they may work. And back home a new mood has taken over part of the political class. The emerging responsible faction has no time now for the witless applause lines the jeering jackdaws on left and right repeat to themselves to their own perpetual self-admiration and delight. Even in a political year, most politicians do not want this country to fail.

There are, for example, members of Congress from both parties who feel estranged from this administration. They feel it does not listen to their ideas. But in this troubled hour, they are desperate to help. If but a call were made, they would burst forth with intelligent suggestions: about Iraq, about political tactics, about getting additional appropriations.

Remember, the most untrue truism in human history is that there are no second acts in American life. In reality, there is nothing but second acts. There are shakeout moments and redundantly, new beginnings. The weeks until June 30 are bound to be awful, but we may be at the start of a new beginning now.