The War on Terrorism Five Years After September 11 - How Safe Are We?
THE WAR ON TERRORISM FIVE YEARS AFTER SEPTEMBER 11--HOW SAFE ARE WE? -- (House of Representatives - September 06, 2006)
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from California (Mr. Schiff) and thank you for your leadership on these very important national security issues, and as you have suggested, national security issues should not be devoted to just 1 month. We need to make sure that we are watching after the national security every day of this year.
I am pleased to join you and Mr. Scott here this evening to discuss these issues because the President has said he wants a national conversation on national security issues in Iraq, but in the same speech, he begins finger pointing; he begins name-calling. Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney are out around the country name-calling and pointing fingers and trying to malign anybody that disagrees with them. That is not a national conversation.
Let us have a national conversation. I say, bring it on when it comes to a national security discussion here in the Nation's Capital and throughout the country because, unfortunately, if you look at Iraq, if you look at our national security policy and the implications of that policy around the world, you can see we have created a mess and that in so many ways we have made ourselves less safe than we could be if we had been smart, smart and tough as we went about it.
And it is very difficult to listen to President Bush and Vice President Cheney talk about how if we only stick with their plan, we would begin to see a way out of here. After all, we all remember President Bush when he was on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln back in May 2003, with a big banner in front of him declaring ``mission accomplished.'' May 2003. Well, here we are today in Iraq and we just had a report come out a few days ago from the Pentagon saying things are worse than ever before. Clearly, we are a long way from mission accomplished.
We had Vice President Cheney say more than a year ago that the insurgency in Iraq was in its final throes, and yet the report that came out just a few days ago from the Pentagon, a report I must say was required by Congress, it wasn't volunteered by the administration, Democrats in Congress pushed for a little small measure of accountability. Not what we need, but we got this report. And while the Vice President said the insurgency was in its last throes more than a year ago, the report says the Sunni-based insurgency remains ``potent and viable.''
And Secretary Rumsfeld, from day one has looked at Iraq through these rose-colored glasses. I remember when he sort of referenced an estimate by people at the Office of Management and Budget regarding the costs of the war as just a few million dollars. I mean, the figure he gave was peanuts compared to what we already have spent in Iraq.
So I say to all those people who for all these years have said to us, trust us, we know what we are doing, just look at your record. Let us have that debate and let us have a real national conversation on these issues. Because the mantra ``stay the course'' is not a strategy.
Do we really want to keep doing exactly what we have been doing when just a few days ago the report that came out of the Pentagon said things are worse than they have been in Iraq? Is that a strategy for success? Is that the plan for victory that the President announced last November at the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland?
I represent a congressional district in Maryland. The President went there and unveiled his plan for victory, he called it. Again, we have a report just a few days ago out of the Pentagon saying things are worse than ever. So I say we need a national conversation. We need to work together to find our way forward here.
Mr. SCHIFF. If I can interject for just a second, we had a nonclassified briefing, so I can raise this point, before we had the August recess with Secretary Rice, Secretary Rumsfeld, Director Negroponte, and General Pace, and I asked a question that is based on your comments. It was acknowledged at that time that the sectarian violence now exceeded the violence from the insurgency.
I asked them how are we changing our strategy, militarily or politically, because the strategy used in dealing with the counterinsurgency effort and the strategy you use in trying to bring a halt to a civil war are two very different animals. So I asked, how are we adjusting to these new conditions on the ground? And the long and short of it was, we are not adjusting to the conditions on the ground. We are doing the same thing, the same strategy, the one-size-fits-all, the stay-the-course.
That, I think, given the history you have outlined, where this congressionally compelled report indicates things have gotten worse across almost every metric, not better, that stay the course just doesn't cut it any more.
Mr. Van Hollen.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. It doesn't. And what is unfortunate is people on the one hand are saying let us have this national conversation and then finger-pointing at people who raise questions about what is happening in Iraq and elsewhere in our national security policy, when any sensible person looking at what is going on would have questions. So let us really get together and have a genuine national conversation about these very important issues.
Now, you mentioned, and others have mentioned, that we are coming up very shortly to the tragic fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on our country, and I do think it is important to take a moment to reflect again on where those attacks came from and the reaction of the international community, which you have outlined a little bit. Because we all know that those attacks were launched from Afghanistan. They were launched by al Qaeda. They were launched by Osama bin Laden as the head of al Qaeda, and they were launched from Afghanistan because the Taliban government gave al Qaeda sanctuary there in Afghanistan.
When we were attacked on September 11, this country, and in fact the international community, responded. You already referred to the action taken by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But in fact also the United Nations unanimously passed a resolution saying they were with the United States in its fight against terror and they were with us in going after al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. And in fact, when we went into Afghanistan, we were united as a country and the world was united behind us.
You would think, given a lot of the recent talk and rhetoric out of the administration, until just a few days ago, that Osama bin Laden had kind of been forgotten. We weren't talking a lot about Osama bin Laden. But now, just the other day, as we approached September 11 and the anniversary of that tragic attack, the President again raised the words of Osama bin Laden and the very real threat that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and their virulent form of extremist Islamic ideology poses.
But I think we should ask the question, given the fact that the President has now reminded us again of where those attacks came from, what are we doing in Afghanistan and how much progress have we really made? If you look at the situation now and you look at the southern part of Afghanistan, we have seen, by all accounts, including from the testimony of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the head of that is General Maples, that you have seen a resurgence in Taliban activities in southern Afghanistan. That is the hotbed of the resistance in Afghanistan. Yet, while we are seeing that resistance grow, we have actually seen a reduction in U.S. military forces in that area. That is not the way you address a real threat.
Secondly, this administration disbanded the one unit, the one unit within the Central Intelligence Agency that was specifically dedicated to targeting al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. They got rid of it.
We have also seen reports today that opium production in Afghanistan is now at a record high, the highest levels ever recorded in terms of opium production. And those are funds that are able to be used by al Qaeda to help arm themselves and help promote their ideology and help promote their efforts against the United States and others.
At the same time, we learned today that Pakistan, Pakistan, has now entered into a deal with the pro-Taliban militia in the Waziristan portion of Pakistan, that rugged mountain area along the Pakistan-Afghan border, where the Taliban have been assembling and using as a launching pad for their attacks into Afghanistan. We have heard that Pakistan apparently is no longer going to sort of prosecute the war against al Qaeda.
So if you look at the state of play today, and you ask yourself what have we done to eliminate the threat that attacked us on September 11, I would say the answer is pretty clear. We have a long way to go before we can hang up a banner of mission accomplished. And we need to redouble our efforts in Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, what has happened is we have, as a result of the war in Iraq, diverted our resources and gotten ourselves bogged down in a very messy situation with a huge amount of sectarian violence, a budding civil war, civil war, whatever you want to call it. We heard from the Pentagon it is the worst situation they have seen. We have gotten bogged down there and we haven't finished the job against al Qaeda.
Yet, at the same time, we have actually fueled the forces that support the extremists. We have added to their allies. We have provided a great recruiting tool for them. And the biggest beneficiary of all has been Iran. The biggest beneficiary of all has been Iran, which is right there next to Iraq. They fought a long war with Iraq. During most of the 1980s Iraq and Iran were engaged in a very bitter war. But now, with Iraq in chaos, Iran is extremely well positioned and is taking advantage of the situation. They are emboldened and they are trying to expand their influence in the region through Hezbollah and through other proxies.
So I think as we have this national conversation, it is very important that the American people, not just looking at some of this rhetoric out there, but they really try to figure out what is going on. Because one of the biggest consequences of the administration's mistakes, and many of them are coming home to roost now, is that they refuse to listen. They refuse to listen to many generals regarding the best way to prosecute the war in Iraq. They refuse to listen to the experts at the Central Intelligence Agency about the possible consequences within Iraq of taking the lid off Pandora's box and unleashing the forces between the Sunnis, the Shiias, and the Kurds.
They have all the answers, the administration. We have got all the answers. Who are you to question us? And you know what this Republican Congress said? You are right, you have got all the answers, so we are not going to ask you the tough questions. This was a blank-check Congress. No tough questions. No accountability. And the result has been very clear: when you ignore failure, or when you reward failure, you are going to get more failure.
So what we are saying is, let us have a real national conversation. Let us have a Congress that will begin to ask the hard questions.
Let's hold people accountable when they make mistakes.
The finger pointing, you have got to scratch your head, as you pointed out. We have President Bush in the White House. We have Republicans controlling the Senate and the House. They really have no one to look around right now to blame. Yet they still are out there in the field trying to tell the American people that somehow it is the other guy's fault that we are in this mess now.
It is time to hold them accountable.
Mr. SCHIFF. On that point, Mr. Van Hollen, we had one of the very few hearings, you were in attendance, on Iraq in committee, after years of asking the committee leadership in International Relations to hold a hearing on the Iraq war. You would think it wouldn't be so difficult. We finally had a hearing.
During that hearing, I asked the administration witnesses, who has been held accountable for some of the disastrous decision making that has been made? Who has been held accountable for the standing down of the Iraqi army? Who has been held accountable for the intelligence failures that led to the Iraq war? Who has been held accountable for any one of these innumerable errors?
There was this long, painful, prolonged silence. And the answer was clear: No one. No one has been held accountable.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. We know what the consequence of that is. We know what the consequence is. When you don't hold people accountable for failure, you shouldn't be surprised when you get more of the same. But more of the same is not a good strategy in Iraq. More of the same is not a good strategy in terms of our national security. These are tough, difficult issues. Nobody has all the answers.
So, it is very important that the Bush administration and the Republican leadership stop pretending that they have all the answers, because their view of the world has gotten us to where we are now, and we can be doing a lot better.
I want to thank you and Mr. Scott for your very sensible leadership on these national security questions.
Mr. SCHIFF. I thank gentleman. You really put your finger on it. The reality is that ``stay the course'' is nothing but more of the same. That doesn't cut it anymore.
I yield to my good friend, a leader on national security issues, David Scott from the great State of Georgia.
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