Iraq
IRAQ -- (Senate - February 07, 2007)
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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, we have heard a debate over the last hour about where we stand on the resolutions and debating the escalation of the war in Iraq. Here is where we are at the end of the day. We can dot all the i's, cross all the t's, and do all of the legalistic parsing that we want. The minority is blocking a vote on the issue that the American people wish to hear us on: Do you support or oppose the escalation? It is that simple.
The minority's action ratifies the President's escalation. And any Senator who voted to prevent the Warner resolution from coming to the floor is saying to his or her constituents: I support that escalation.
We know what is going on. The minority is torn between loyalty to their President and following the will of their voters. I have not seen a single State where, at least from the polling data, the public supports the escalation. There should be a simple vote, and not as an end to this debate but as a beginning to this debate. The minority is tying itself in a pretzel so that there will not be a vote.
Now, the Gregg resolution is missing two words. Look at it. Read it. It doesn't have the word ``surge,' and it doesn't have the word ``escalation.' It is ambiguously worded so that it tries to tie support for the troops with the escalation, but without saying so. It is a resolution that is intended to befuddle, perplex, obfuscate, and to hide.
The good news is that the American people don't follow the details of all of this debate. They don't have the time. They are busy with their lives, their families, their jobs, the joys and sorrows of life. But they follow the big picture. The big picture is simple: Senator Reid has labored mightily to have a clear, unobstructed, unobliterated vote on whether you support or oppose the escalation.
The minority leader, backed by all but two of his membership, has said we do not want to vote; we want to let the President go forward with the escalation, without taking responsibility for it. The public is seeing that. The public understands.
My good friend from Mississippi was talking in the hallway. He said the job of the Senate is to take the tough votes. You bet it is. It is not whether we are saying we support the troops--which everybody agrees that we do--in an ambiguously designed amendment to support escalation and get their way, and those against it get their way. The bottom line is simple: the tough vote is ``yes' or ``no' on the escalation.
Again, I salute our majority leader. He has done everything to try to bring that vote to the floor. The minority leader has done everything to obstruct that vote. The good news is that we will have plenty of further opportunity to get that vote and, make no mistake about it, this majority, in the belief that the escalation is wrong, in the belief that there is no strategy in Iraq other than to police a civil war, which no one
bargained for, will be resolute and we will find ample opportunities to not only get a sense-of-the-Senate vote on whether you support or oppose the escalation, but to move further and ratchet up the pressure on the President so that he changes his strategy.
The number of people in America who believe that our strategy in Iraq is succeeding gets smaller every day. I think it is below 1 in 4 right now, which means that close to a majority of Republicans don't agree with the strategy. Obviously, if the President came here 3 years ago and said we are going to have our troops on Haifa Street patrolling a civil war between the Sunnis and Shiites--how many people would have voted for that? How many Americans would have supported it? But that is exactly what we are doing. The vast majority of the troops that the President is asking for will continue to do just that and only that.
So this debate is coming only to a temporary close. One thing stands out clearly: the Republican minority is allowing the President to go forward with the escalation. It is supporting the escalation but doesn't want to vote to say so. My colleagues, that will not wash. The American people are too smart. They are too concerned. They are too worried about the brave men and women over there risking their lives as Sunnis shoot at Shiites and Shiites shoot at Sunnis. To hold the minority's feet to the fire, we will be resolute in making sure that happens.
The Gregg resolution is obfuscatory. It is designed to give people cover who don't want to say yes or no. But make no mistake about it, the people want a yes or a no. They want us to act on that yes or no as we come forward with the supplementary budget request next month. And this majority, limited as it may be, will endeavor to do just that.
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Mr. SCHUMER. Indeed. I thank my colleague for asking the question. Again, the minority says it is our job to take some tough votes. Here, here. We want to take what is a tough vote for some: Are you for the surge? Are you for the escalation or are you against it? They are doing everything they can to avoid it. But as my good friend from Massachusetts has so aptly pointed out, the bottom line is that now is the time to go on record--now, before most of the troops are there; now, when we can ratchet up pressure on the President to change his policy, as the independent study group said, and so many generals have said. I might add, from the press reports, the Prime Minister of Iraq doesn't want them. We are almost in Alice in Wonderland here.
I will say one other thing. The good news is simple: the American people get it. They know that the war in Iraq doesn't have a strategy. They know it is headed toward a dead end. They know that policing a civil war makes no sense, and they know what we are trying to do, which is forcing a ``yes' or ``no' vote--get a ``yes' or ``no' vote and move forward to change that strategy. No amount of wordsmithing on the other side is going to change that fact.
Today, the Republican minority said: We are for the surge, and we will let the President go forward and do it.
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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, the Senator is exactly right. And I will add one other point to his very prescient comments. Let us say we have this surge and then troops leave after a certain amount of time--some say the end of the summer, some say it will go on 3, 4, 5 years. What is going to happen then if we don't have a political solution the good Senator asks about? The Sunni and Shia will resume fighting, and we will have accomplished nothing. We will have seen the lives of some of our brave men and women be taken from them, American soldiers. We will have created more havoc in Iraq. And we will have, again, delayed the very political solution my friend from Massachusetts talks about, which is essential.
If there had been a change in Government, if there had been a change in strategy, perhaps--I can't say because I don't know what it would be, given this administration hasn't changed anything--maybe the American people, maybe some on this side of the aisle would say: Give it a chance. But to send more of our brave troops over there when there is no change in strategy, when it is just increasing policing of a civil war, and when, at the end of this so-called surge, this escalation, nothing will have changed, the American people have every right to ask: To what end?
That is what we are asking. That is why we want a simple vote. And that is why today is going to go down in history as a day when this Republican minority in this House said to the President: We are supporting your surge. We don't want to vote on it, but we are allowing it to happen. We are encouraging it to happen. And the very rubberstamp nature, when the minority was in the majority, that brought them to such trouble in November of 2006 is simply continuing.
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Mr. SCHUMER. The Senator is right on the money, and it is, again, a pattern. The experts--intelligence, military, diplomatic--tell the administration what they are doing is wrong, tell the administration that all the signs on the ground point to a policy that is failing, and they keep their head in the sand and just go forward. It is a tragedy. It is a tragedy when truth is not exalted and when there is a desire to stifle debate, as has happened in the administration and is happening on the floor of the Senate today.
We all love this country, everyone in this Chamber, regardless of politics, but at least for me--and I dearly love America--every day we delay hurts us a little more and a little more and a little more. We dig ourselves deeper in a hole from which it will be harder and harder to extricate ourselves.
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