The War In Iraq

THE WAR IN IRAQ -- (House of Representatives - January 11, 2007)

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlelady for yielding. I thank Congresswoman MAXINE WATERS from California for bringing us together here and for her great leadership in the Out of Iraq Caucus. And I also thank Congressman DENNIS KUCINICH of Ohio for his great intellect and great passion. It is a joy to serve with all of you.

I made more formal remarks earlier this evening on the subject of the President's proposal to escalate the number of troops in Iraq. But I wanted to spend a couple of minutes this evening reemphasizing the broader region and how U.S. policy is really impacting a growing anti-Americanism not just inside Iraq, but in many other countries, and how the United States is serving to create destabilization inside nations that is very, very dangerous for those countries, yet we play an immense role in that.

We see what has happened in Iraq. That is kind of the prism that we are looking through now, and we see the Sunni and Shia pitted against each other, and Christians fleeing across the border by the hundreds of thousands, thinking they have no more home inside Iraq. We have done a lot of damage in that country.

And then we look at what is happening inside nations like Bahrain. In recent parliamentary elections, we saw that almost a dozen, 20 parliamentarians were elected from very, very anti-American postures. And, of course, our Fifth Fleet is ported in Bahrain. Were it not ported there, I doubt that the Government of Bahrain would hold.

We look at what is happening in Pakistan and in the provinces of Pakistan. And in every single one of those provinces, the most anti-American candidates are being elected to and rising within the political structure of those countries.

We think about what just happened at the Horn of Africa, and we look at Ethiopia and the arms that the United States is providing and the soldiers that have entered into Somalia and our gunships shelling off of the coast into Somalia itself and the conflict that is brewing between Ethiopia and Somalia.

And you begin looking at what is happening in the general region. It isn't just Iraq. That is kind of a place where we need to keep our eye, but we need to open our eyes to what is happening across the region.

Inside of Lebanon, a country that I remain very close to because of the constituency that I represent, and the struggles we have had during our tenure here in the Congress to try to help Lebanon to be a leader in terms of signing the peace agreement with Israel and remaining a major center for education, for trade, for business, for diplomacy in that part of the world, and the United States standing back and allowing Lebanon to be shelled around its entire perimeter, and a most unfortunate war between Lebanon and Israel, and we saw the Bush administration sit back.

And then we watch these demonstrations in the streets of Beirut. I mean, a million people from Hezbollah demonstrating against the United States. And then of course the Government of Lebanon, Prime Minister Siniora's government trying to hold on, trying to maintain a posture where all sects are able to participate.

But if you look at what is happening across the region in almost every single country, there is this destabilization.

In the Palestinian Authority where we thought during the Clinton administration we were making some progress, of course difficult, of course painstaking. Yet we see Hamas clashing in so many countries. What we have is destabilization rather than a movement toward reconciliation.

The policies of the Bush administration almost seem to result in destabilization in many, many countries in that region of the world.

In Afghanistan, we know that our work is cut out for us. Afghanistan in many ways is a capital without a country, and we are seeing the loss of more life from soldiers from the international community that are attempting to assist us to try to bring some functioning nation-state in place in Afghanistan.

I mention these issues because the President of the United States doesn't. He acts like they are not there. And the rising anti-Americanism that we see across the broader region is very, very dangerous. It is dangerous

not perhaps so much for my generation, but for our children and grandchildren that will follow us. There are 1 billion people who subscribe to Islam in this world, and we have to not alienate every single one of them. We have to help them reconcile their internal differences, their tribal tendencies, their tendencies to talk across one another rather than with one another.

I would like to thank my colleague for allowing me a few minutes this evening. I could speak about the oil imperative and my deep, deep concerns about what is happening not just inside Iraq but with the powerful, powerful involvement of global oil companies in letting their power be felt in what happens in this capital and with the likely placements of pipelines across the regions that I am talking about and who are likely to be winners and losers in those efforts. There isn't time to do that tonight.

Without question, the United States, when people ask what can we do at home, what we should be doing here at home is becoming energy independent within a decade. No question. No blinks, no hesitation, no doubts. Not by 2025, within one decade, because that would help free America from the bondage that we are held to from all of the dictatorships from whom we are importing oil. And those dictatorships are extremely important for the American to understand.

If you really look at where terrorism sprouts from, where did the majority of the 9/11 terrorists come from: Saudi Arabia. Why would they hit the United States? What might that have to do with? Where did they come from in Saudi Arabia, and what were they trying to do?

They were trying to get us out of Saudi Arabia. And you know what, they succeeded in doing that. We moved our forces out.

They are about the task of cleansing, in their view, their part of the world from those who control those important oil resources. The United States shouldn't be joined at the hip to oil dictatorships. The American people are beginning to understand who really controls rising oil and gasoline prices in this country, and the importance of us becoming energy independent here at home.

We need to focus the American people on what is happening across a broad region of the world that is extremely dangerous to us long term as the Bush policies are so narrowly focused and really counterproductive long term.

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