Friday, February 16, 2007
SPEECH ON THE WAR IN IRAQ
BY HON. GEORGE MILLER OF CALIFORNIA ON THE HOUSE FLOOR
I rise in strong support of this resolution to say to the President, no more. I rise in strong support of this resolution to say to the President, your policy is wrong.
Yes, you have tried the surge before, and the surge is not -- has not brought peace to Iraq, Has not brought an end to the insurgency, it has not brought an end to the sectarian war that is going on in that country every day.
Yes, this is the fourth time the President has tried this policy and it has not worked many of those times. When we passed this bipartisan resolution, the president should pause because at that moment the president will not have the support of the United States House of Representatives and at that moment the president will also not have the support of the people of the United States.
The president better think long and hard about if he really believes that he should commit these troops, continue to commit these troops without the authority of the people, without the authority of this congress.
Mr. Speaker, members of the house, American men and women have been fighting in Iraq, they will soon begin their fifth year. For five years they have done all that we have asked them. What we have asked them to do cannot be accomplished by the military.
We have known for some time that Iraq now requires a political solution and it requires the Iraqi government, the Iraqi people, the Iraqi society, and the communities to take hold of their country and to decide whether they want a future of continued sectarian violence or whether they want an orderly society. They must make that decision.
The President has had it wrong for many, many months, for many years. He has continued to say that as the Iraqis stand up we will stand down.
Mr. President, you have it wrong. As we begin to stand down, they will begin to stand up. The fact that our military troops are on the streets of Baghdad and Anbar province and elsewhere enables people to continue a level of violence that randomly and wantonly takes the lives of men, women, and children, innocent bystanders for almost no good reason at all. No good reason at all. It allows that to continue because each side knows if it gets out of control the American troops will ride to the rescue, the helicopters will come, and the missiles will fly.
We are the enablers of the continuation of this violence. Once they have to take responsibility for their actions, once we leave, this is no longer an insurgency; this is crime on crime, Iraqi against Iraqi.
Somebody's got to take the responsibility for that, and that will not be us. We will not be able to bring it to an end. The Iraqi government will be. The time has come for our troops to leave. The time has come for us to understand that we cannot cure what is wrong in Iraq.
For these troops that are there and for the troops that are being sent in spite of the will of the American people and the will of the Congress, we ought to understand that they ought to be fully equipped. We should not repeat the history of this Administration and this deployment where young men and women were sent into this theater without proper body equipment, without proper armor, without a proper understanding and without a proper training.
Members have come to this floor now for many hours and said, what is the message you are sending to your troops?
What is the message Congress is sending?
What was the message this Congress sent to the troops when allowed this President to go to war without enough troops to secure the peace?
What was the message of this Congress when it allowed them to go to combat without proper vehicle armor?
What was the message of the Congress that allowed them to go into combat without proper protective armor?
What was the message when it allowed the President to continue his failed course with no adjustment over the last four years?
And what was the message we sent to the troops when it allowed the President to effectively draft American volunteers by continuing their tours, shortening their time at home, shortening their time with their families and sending them back without proper training, shortened training, and proper equipment.
We cannot do that to the troops. And the message of this resolution is we are not going to do that. We are not going to do that.
We are going to make a pledge to you that we will not let you fight and die forever, with no plan to get you out, with no exit plan for you, with no change in the policy that has led so tragically to so many deaths and so many wounded. That’s what this resolution is about. That's the message we must send to the troops, and that's the message we must send to the Iraqi people. That they must take responsibility.
This surge is not an Election Day surge. This isn't a constitutional day surge. This is a surge for the purpose; this is an escalation for the purposes of door-to-door combat. Street by street, block by block, house by house.
Yet today we see General Shoemaker saying, these people will not have -- will not have enough interpreters, they will not have civil affairs soldiers, they will not have enough translators. Now we are putting them again where they are in the greatest danger.
The Speaker Pro tempore: The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Miller: This Congress is agreeing to go forward and repeat history and put them at risk when it's not necessary.