STATEMENT OF REP. GARY L. ACKERMAN

“IS THERE A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS?”

(Washington, DC) - Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.  The 5 year anniversary of the September 11 attacks is an appropriate point for us to pause and take stock of the war against terrorism, but I find the subject of today’s hearing alarming.  I see two possibilities.  One, that 5 years into this conflict, we need to have a hearing to help define and describe our enemy because the Bush Administration has ignored one of the most basic and obvious dictums of strategy:  to know one’s enemy.  And that without accurately understanding who and what they’re fighting against, they can’t hope to fashion a successful response.  The second possibility is that this hearing is just another pre-election gambit to scare the public and bolster support for the war in Iraq by engaging in ominous historic make-believe and proposing some parallel to World War II.  Actually, there is also a third possibility, that both of these interpretations are correct.

     I agree that there is a great struggle occurring within Islam and that the outcome of that struggle will have a global impact on more than just Muslims.  But it is equally clear that non-Muslims can have only a marginal effect on how that struggle evolves.  We can and should extol the universal values of peace, freedom and tolerance for all peoples.  We can and should condemn acts of terrorism wherever and against whomever they occur.  We can and should exhort Muslims to publicly and definitively reject those within their societies who justify violence in the name of Islam. 

     But in the end, it is for the global Islamic community to make these determinations and reject the extremists who have hijacked their faith in the name of a mad quest to return to the 13th century.

     Unfortunately, at a point in history where the United States most needs the moral authority to influence this debate, this Administration has frittered it away.  President Bush has turned the near universal international support we had to invade Afghanistan in response to September 11, into near universal opposition to U.S. leadership in foreign affairs and reflexive deafness to our message.  Iraq is central to our fight against terrorism, but not for the reasons suggested by the President.  We didn’t invade Iraq as a response to September 11 and we didn’t invade Iraq to fight al Qaeda.  My sad conclusion is that the President pushed us to go to war in order to create a whipping boy, an example; to “shock and awe” them in order to show others what fate awaited them if they resisted our righteous demands.  Obviously not everything has gone according to plan since the President’s Mission Accomplished-moment aboard the Abraham Lincoln.

     And now we actually have to fight al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq because of the catastrophic incompetence that has characterized the President’s policy in Iraq; that allowed that nation to slide into civil war and created precisely the unstable and chaotic conditions in which terrorists thrive.  It is not the model of American power and dominance that the President and his advisers so thoughtlessly expected.  Far from it. 

     Instead, Iraq has become a quagmire hindering all other efforts to fight terrorism outside of Iraq.  The war in Iraq has diverted our attention.  It has drained resources from the war in Afghanistan and allowed the resurgence of the Taliban, the mid-wives to the September 11 attacks.  It has damaged our international alliances and obliterated our international image.  It has cost a fortune in borrowed money and has put tens of thousands of brave Americans into hospitals and rehabilitation facilities.  And it has sent 2,984 American service-members to their final rest.

     The war against terror—against the fanatical deviants who attacked us on September 11th -- will be a long one.  It should involve all the assets and capabilities that the United States can bring to it.  It will be fought militarily on a variety of battlefields, but it will not be won there because the war against terror is chiefly about ideas.    Democracy, freedom, tolerance, human rights, rule of law; we all know that’s what the United States stands for.  People around the world used to believe that.  But a policy that focuses solely on capturing and killing terrorists and their leaders while ignoring the battle of ideas will not defeat the enemy and in the end will not make us safer.  The Administration should be devoting its efforts and attention to understanding and undermining our true enemy.  To date the Administration has not done that.  This Congress should be compelling them to do so.  And to date, we have not done that.

     We can win this battle.  We must win this battle.  Our ideas are clearly superior to the murderous, oppressive Caliphate advocated by the enemy.  But we’re not winning the battle of ideas and we will not win if we don’t know how to speak to those who might be receptive, or worse, can’t even identify them.

      I hope today’s witnesses can enlighten the committee on both counts.

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