Congressional Progressive Caucus
Floor Speech
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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Tlaib for leading this conversation today. I am seeing some of my colleagues on the floor today who remember the story that I want to tell.
This was the fall of 2002, and there was a vigorous debate going on whether or not we should be sending our troops to declare war on Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein. The story went that there were weapons of mass destruction.
Yes, we had briefings. They were in the north. They were in the south, the west, and the east. They were there all right, we were told.
A vote was going to come up on the Authorization for Use of Military Force, AUMF, in Iraq. There was one voice in particular that stood out and still stands out to me, a woman who was the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. Her name was Nancy Pelosi. She stood up at our meetings and said, no, there is no intelligence to justify that we go to war in Iraq.
A group of us got together. I see Congresswoman Barbara Lee, the only Member who, because we were already in Afghanistan, voted against that war, who put together a group called the Out of Iraq Caucus. We went door-to-door, literally, and asked our Democratic friends in the House to say no to this war because it was not necessary.
At the end of the day, even though the press story had already been written that somehow it was almost a unanimous vote, 60 percent of the Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against that war in Iraq.
That was over 17 years ago. We still have troops in Iraq. We spent trillions, literally trillions of dollars, and the loss of life on all sides, including our precious American soldiers that we sent--most Americans today agree that that war was a disaster and that we shouldn't have done it. We learned a lesson.
When it came time to talk about the threat that we knew was there, the nuclear weapons program in Iran, we worked with President Barack Obama in a diplomatic way to pass the Iran agreement that actually stopped Iran from developing nuclear weapons that would threaten not only the United States and the region but the rest of the world. And it was working. There were inspectors that would report to us. Every month, we got a report that said it was working.
Along comes Donald Trump, who had said even in the campaign that this is a really bad idea, that this is a terrible agreement. Lo and behold, just a few weeks ago, he decided--it seems like a long time. Not long ago, he decides, all of a sudden, that it is a really important thing for us to go after Iran while Soleimani, the general, who is part of the government, is in Iraq.
No one is crying over the death of Soleimani. The question is: Is the United States safer now than it was? The answer is a resounding no.
That is why I am in strong support of the legislation by Barbara Lee that says we will sunset that 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq and the legislation by Ro Khanna that will prohibit the use of Federal funds for military action in or against Iran unless Congress specifically authorizes it or declares war or such actions are undertaken consistent with the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
In other words, come to Congress. That is who we are. That is our job. We are the ones who are supposed to say war or peace. The most important thing we could do is decide whether we send our young men and women into harm's way to sacrifice their lives.
We have to exert our authority. We have to exert our authority right now.
I stand in support of that legislation. We don't need, and the American people don't want, another endless war in Iran or anywhere in the Middle East. It is time to say no, to say that Congress is going to make those decisions, and to do it now.
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