Mister/Madam Speaker,
He was conscientious, committed to peace, and momentarily praised. His laurels burned in the bombings his valorous and vain efforts had but hastened upon his people.
Yet, in eulogizing this “English Worthy,” Sir Winston Churchill – an ardent opponent of the deceased’s policy of appeasement – unexpectedly struck a conciliatory chord toward the late Neville Chamberlain:
“It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events. In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have been wrong. Then again, a few years later, when the perspective of time has lengthened, all stands in a different setting. There is a new proportion. There is another scale of values. History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.”
Mister/Madam Speaker, while not serving in this chamber during the debates on the resolution authorizing the President of the United States to use martial force to remove Iraq’s Baathist regime for numerous just causes, including its refusal to honor its Gulf War cease fire and United Nations’ resolutions, during my time as a temporary custodian of my constituents’ office, I have striven to ensure our nation’s victory in the battles for Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the over-arching War on Terror. In doing so, for three years I have four times traveled to Iraq and once to Afghanistan to meet with our troops; visited wounded citizen-soldiers; eulogized our fallen and consoled their grieving families. As a witness to their courage, sacrifice and suffering, I have been morally compelled to support every appropriation for our military and civilian personnel in harm’s way; oppose every policy injurious to our country’s common cause of victory; advance my own ideas on how to secure our victory, including the introduction of bi-partisan, though ultimately unaccepted, legislation to establish concerted Congressional oversight over the course of this conflict; and refused to condone a resolution by my Republican peers which failed to meet its duty and, immediately afterwards, introduced a resolution of my own, in order to fulfill my duty to our soldiers, my constituents, and our country.
As a staunch supporter of our nation’s mission in Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout the world, I did so in the belief it is morally imperative for every sovereign American and their Congressional servants to do ensure our valiant troops victoriously come home to their loved ones’ arms. Were I to do otherwise and lapse in my moral duty, I would not only be violating our troops and my constituents’ trust, I would be violating the dictates of my conscience.
It is equally true, of course, how within this House other members’ dictates of conscience have led them to a decidedly different, though equally constant, course of action. To these members and their fellow citizens who have so done to date, I share the sentiments Sir Winston held for Neville Chamberlain: You are “An American Worthy,” who, “however the fates may play,” will “march always in the ranks of honor.”
Yet, because the resolution thrust before us is a craven exposition of political expediency in a time of national crisis, today many may stray from the ranks of honor.
This resolution is “non-binding,” which means the resolution has no force of law to compel future legislative acts in compliance with its dictates. In sum, then, this resolution legally changes nothing. Americans’ money will still unabatedly facilitate our troops continued deployment into harm’s way, despite the United States Congress collectively condemning the President’s announced troop reinforcement plan. This impotent resolution is injurious in the eyes of its opponents, because it will undermine the morale of our troops, their families, and our fellow citizens even as it heartens and emboldens our enemies; and this impotent resolution is injurious because it will not stop what many of its supporters purport will be a loss of life in a lost cause. By neither stopping the war nor speeding our victory and by calculatedly doing nothing in this time of national crisis, this resolution is immoral.
This immorality is manifest in how the resolution guilefully attempts to insinuate the United States Congress can simultaneously support our troops and oppose their mission. During a time of war, if an act is not in our national interest, such as the President’s plan is deemed to be in this resolution, the act is injurious to the national interest. At best, the act will expend resources or, most tragically, claim lives without furthering the cause of victory. Better than anyone, our troops understand this. Therefore, this Congress does not support our troops, when it proclaims they are risking their lives in a doomed mission injurious to America.
Yet, if Congress persists in this insanity, the members must meet their responsibility to enumerate the reasons they disapprove of the President’s plan and, in point of fact, the mission upon which our troops have already embarked. But this resolution does not provide any rationale for its conclusion. Thus, rather than deserving our collective concurrence, this resolution deserves our universal condemnation.
To this, some supporters will object and allege two defenses for this resolution’s fatal omission. Do not these supporters’ floor remarks provide the rationales sufficient to sustain this resolution? No. If floor remarks, alone, are sufficient to sustain the resolution’s conclusion, then floor remarks, alone, would be sufficient to derogate the President’s plan and, ergo, vitiate any necessity for a written resolution; conversely, if it is imperative for the plan’s detractors to express their opposition in a written resolution, it is also imperative to express their reasons in writing. Alas, such logic pales before some members’ impulsive muse of the moment.
Let us, then, move to the some of the resolution’s supporters’ second, far more distressing defense: "A vote of disapproval [on the President’s plan] will set the stage for additional Iraq legislation, which will be coming to the House floor." As no one who participated in the crafting of this covert legislative agenda has deigned to inform the American people as to its aims, one wonders if it will cut off funding for our troops in harm’s way or cut off critical reconstruction funding in the supplemental appropriations bill (thus toppling an unheralded but essential pillar of the President’s new victory strategy and “proving” the perspicacity of the present resolution). While we wonder and worry, according to newspaper reports there is a strategy to make this rumored legislative plan palatable to the public. This strategy’s tactics, which its instigators are more than happy to relate to the media, are reputed to include a coordinated, multi-million TV ad campaign by leftist special-interest pressure groups. No doubt, somewhere beyond this ephemeral stream of time, there lurks a jealous Clement Vallandigham.
But, in fairness, let us disdain a-priori speculation; and, instead, examine a previous resolution to glean the potentialities of the present resolution’s supporters’ secret legislative plan. The following passages are excerpted from a previous resolution which, albeit more forthrightly, also opposes the Commander-in-Chief’s decisions:
"Resolved, That this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure...by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretense of a military necessity of war-power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities…to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored...”
This previous resolution, too, expresses its support for our troops in harm’s way:
"Resolved, That the sympathy of the Democratic Party is heartily and earnestly extended to the soldiery of our army and sailors of our navy, who are and have been in the field and on the sea under the flag of our country, and in the events of its attaining power, they will receive all the care, protection, and regard that brave soldiers and sailors of the republic have so nobly earned."
This previous resolution is the Democratic Party platform of 1864.
If the past is prologue, let us be firm in a fair request: if the resolution’s supporters possess a victory strategy – or otherwise – for Iraq, these public servants must immediately reveal it to the sovereign citizens of the United States. If these stealth strategists refuse, they will incur the American people’s inference this legislative plan assumes and will hasten our nation’s defeat in Iraq. How else could one explain these individuals’ already having a legislative plan and an accompanying media campaign premised upon our troop reinforcement’s failure – and doing so regardless of potential American victories on the ground or the advice of our military commanders? Perhaps, while they demure from revealing it, these anonymous commander-in-chiefs will dubiously coin their legislative plan an “exit strategy.” It is an irrelevant distinction. Right now, the enemy is actively seeking to murder more American and Iraqi soldiers and civilians. So, right now and for the immediate future, an exit from Iraq is a defeat in Iraq. Whatever one pretends to the contrary, one will never convince our enemies otherwise.
Yes, it is all too human to wish the world were different; all too human to rationalize away one’s misguided actions. Being composed of frail, fallible human beings, even great assemblies such as this have succumbed to the temptation. We must not.
Writing well before Churchill’s magnanimous eulogy of Chamberlain and, to the contrary, warning the British people’s representatives how history was pitiless, George Dangerfield coldly assessed his national leaders’ mismanagement of state affairs during the pre-great war years of 1910-1914:
“Along that row of distinguished and original faces there would pass from time to time, as lightly as a shadow upon the waters, an alarming, an alien, spirit…a spirit dangerous and indefinite…the Spirit of Whimsy…In the hush of crisis, in the tumult of abuse, or when the stuffy air of the Commons seemed almost to glitter with the shining, salt ripples of sarcasm – there it played, airy, remote and irresponsible.”
Is an inchoate angst over history’s final verdict the reason some supporters of this resolution have taken to this floor – though not in this resolution – and verbally professed three key defenses of their decision?
One defense is they were misled into supporting an Iraqi regime change because of the false claim it did or might possess weapons of mass destruction. Mercifully, let us stipulate these elected officials performed their due diligence on the matter and – especially for our Democratic colleagues so situated – they did not overly trust the man many had earlier accused of stealing a Presidential election. Again, there were numerous justifiable reasons for authorizing the President of the United States to militarily execute a regime change in Iraq. As those reasons are written in that resolution, I will not dwell upon them, for they do not constitute the crux of the matter, which is this: The war aim of regime change was a success; it is the post-war failure of Iraqi reconstruction breeding our present perils. Thus, even if a member of Congress can be excused for authorizing force on the basis of being “misled,” the member of Congress cannot be excused for failing to demand adequate post-war reconstruction planning, nor for a three year failure to demand constructive changes to an inadequate post-war reconstruction plan.
Dovetailing with this defense, some of the resolution’s supporters now claim their initial ardor for the regime change was a “mistake,” because this administration has botched Iraqi reconstruction beyond salvaging, and the fledgling democracy is now in a state of civil war. This argument has the merit of being partially correct, for, despite the hard-learned lessons of our nation’s former successes in doing so, this administration utterly failed to comprehend and implement the fundamental principles of reconstructing a defeated belligerent nation. Importantly, this does not preclude reconstructing Iraq now.
While rife with sectarian violence – much of it instigated and perpetuated from external elements – Iraq is not in a civil war. Relative calm exists in most of the beleaguered nation’s provinces and, if one dares to look, there are the agonizingly slow but significant signs of incremental progress in the establishment of order. This progression will be expedited by the administration’s new plan, which finally incorporates the two fundamental principles of Iraqi or any reconstruction plan. One: a liberal-democratic society evolves upward from its traditional roots of order, not from a centralized bureaucratic government downward; and, Two: a nation’s transformational evolution into a liberal-democracy must contemporaneously provide transactional benefits to its citizens. These fundamental principles will be implemented through critical initiatives, such as provincial reconstruction teams, an accord on oil revenue allocations, and a national reconciliation process, amongst others. But to earn the support of terrorized Iraqis, security must first be established so they may commence securing the blessings of liberty. This is why the troop reinforcement is required; and why the twin pillars of troop reinforcement and grass roots reconstruction can achieve a joint American and Iraqi victory over the enemies of liberty.
The ineluctable fact our victory must be won with the Iraqis, is disconcerting to many of this resolution’s supporters, who believe the Iraqis are unwilling to fight for their freedom and are incapable of perpetuating once it is secured. This argument often intersects with the charge our mission in Iraq has been untenably shifted from effectuating a regime change to erecting a model democracy; and, for the above reasons, they think this is impossible. This deplorable argument is antithetical to the self-evident truths written into our own Declaration of Independence, though sadly it is not without precedent. Once more, let us reference another resolution, this one opposing a military mission creeping toward a decidedly different goal:
“Resolved: That the emancipation proclamation of the President of the United States is as unwarranted in military as in civil law; a gigantic usurpation, at once converting the war, professedly commenced by the administration for the vindication of the authority of the constitution, into the crusade for the sudden, unconditional, and violent liberation of 3,000,000 negro slaves; a result which would not only be a total subversion of the Federal Union, but a revolution in the social organization of the Southern States, the immediate and remote, the present and far-reaching consequences of which to both races cannot be contemplated without the most dismal foreboding of horror and dismay. The proclamation invites servile insurrection as an element in this emancipation crusade - a means of warfare, the inhumanity and diabolism of which are without example in civilized warfare, and which we denounce, and which the civilized world will denounce, as an uneffaceable disgrace to the American people."
So much for the prognostications of the “Peace Democrat” controlled Illinois Legislature’s 1863 resolution. Thankfully, by the Grace of God and the sanguine sacrifice of the American people, it was this Illinois legislature – not our African-American American brothers and sisters and our nation’s Great Emancipator – who are to be denounced by the civilized world for all eternity.
What of our legislative body? Now resurrects the specter of our own judgment, which hovers above and shadows us as we seek to ensure we are not forever weighed in the balance and found wonting. It is as it should be, as it must be, for – notwithstanding its non-binding nature – even after this resolution’s disposition our duty demands we make moral decisions affecting our nation’s victory or defeat, and our fellow citizens’ lives or deaths. Is this not why, even while bearing malice toward none of them, in defending his own war plan, our own maligned President warned his opponents history is a harsh mistress:
“Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if adopted, would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure of money and of blood? Is it doubted that it would restore the national authority and national prosperity, and perpetuate both indefinitely? Is it doubted that we here – Congress and Executive – can secure its adoption? Will not the good people respond to a united and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by any other means, so certainly, or so speedily, assure these vital objects? We can succeed only by concert. It is not ‘can any of us imagine better?’ but “can we all do better?” Object whatsoever is possible, still the question recurs “can we do better?” The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
“Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We – even we here – hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just – a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.”
My friends, history harkens your honorable hearts to reconsider supporting this immoral resolution. If one believes all human beings are equally God’s children, whether they be free or yearning to breathe free, one cannot, after a cruel sip of hope, condemn twenty million of God’s equally beloved children to a saturnalia of slaughter. If one supports our troops, one cannot deride their cause as injurious to our country. If one seeks our victory in the War on Terror, one cannot advocate a retreat and defeat in the face of our enemy.
My friends, through the fog of war our fiery trial illumes and creeps ever nearer along the trail. Rather than curse the darkness and dread the echoes of history’s verdict, let us acquit our selves with lasting honor by leading our searching nation through these trying, transformational times and into a transcendent, triumphal tomorrow.
Let us earn the esteem of the latest and later generations of all free people by reaffirming our revolutionary republic cherishes the self-evident truth all human beings yearn to breath free.
Let us, in our nation’s finest traditions and truest character, remove the Iraqi people’s bonds of oppression and replace them with bonds of brotherhood amongst our free, sovereign and secure peoples.
Let us, in the face of terror, march always in the ranks of honor and courageously and selflessly secure the Iraqi people’s blessings of liberty and, so doing, secure our own blessings of liberty for unnamed generations of American children.
Mister/Madam Speaker, fully cognizant of my moral duty to our troops, my constituents, my country, and my Creator, I cannot in good conscience support this resolution, which is injurious to the cause of our nation’s victory and, in consequence, is patently immoral. Therefore, I urge this resolution’s rejection; and pray God graces, guards and guides the steps of all who bear the burden of our decisions made on behalf of the majestic American people.