Report on Iraq by General Petraeus
Floor Speech
REPORT ON IRAQ BY GENERAL PETRAEUS -- (House of Representatives - September 10, 2007)
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Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Mr. Gingrey. I appreciate your allowing me to join you and these other very articulate people who are here tonight speaking on this issue.
I was not here as a Member of Congress on 9/11/2001, but I am very pleased to be here tonight. As we were outside singing The Star Spangled Banner and our colleagues in the majority were talking about our being united, I was thinking about the fourth verse of The Star Spangled Banner, which very seldom gets sung, but I think is something that is so appropriate for the time that we are in right now.
This is the way it goes. I know it by heart, but I didn't want to take a chance tonight, so I am going to look at my notes just in case. It is really my favorite verse.
``O, thus be it ever when free-men shall stand,
Between their lov'd homes and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us as a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: ``In God is our trust.''
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.''
When Francis Scott Key wrote those words in 1814, they meant a lot. They mean just as much or more now, and I am, like my colleagues, absolutely appalled at the approach that has been taken to the situation that we are in now by many on the Democratic side.
It is appalling that they would question the integrity of the very men and women who are giving them the chance to stand up and lambaste them and slander them the way they are. They completely have forgotten what happened on 9/11. Many American people have forgotten. They don't understand the threat that this country is under and what we are doing to preserve our freedom.
There is such irony in the fact that these people would get up and say this again against the people who are risking their lives so they can stand up in the safety of this country and speak freely. It just absolutely blows my mind that they are able to do that. They are being given the ability to speak freely by people risking their lives and people losing their lives every day.
There is an arrogance of this Congress too, I think, the arrogance that demanded this report, the arrogance that says we are failing, when, in the face of all of the statistics, things are going so much better. There is an arrogance that says that if there is no strong national government, then things aren't going right.
You know, people have forgotten that this country was founded to have a strong local and State governmental structure, and the local and state governmental structures in Iraq are working well. No, it is not going as well as the national level, but compare what we have done with what they have done. We have accomplished very little under the leadership of this Democratic house in the last 8 months; very, very little. You compare that to what they have been able to achieve and think about us.
I spoke to a class today, three classes, actually, in my district, and I said to those students, the American people really don't realize in many ways the radical idea that this country was when we were formed. When people came to the United States, before it was the United States, they came here for freedom. They came seeking freedom. All they had ever known was freedom.
When Britain tried to clamp down on us, people said we are not going to put up with that. All the people in this country have ever known is freedom. All the people of Iraq have ever known is repression. We have asked them to do in a couple of years what took many years to develop in this country; and, again, it was a totally radical idea never perpetuated anywhere before. And yet they are doing very well at the local and provincial level, just like we did.
And now this Congress comes in and says if you don't have a strong national government, you have nothing. You are a failure. That is just not true. And I am simply appalled, too, at the people who want us to lose. How can they not understand the impact of our losing the war against the radical Islamic jihadists? This is not a war in Iraq; this is a worldwide war. One piece is in Iraq, and in many ways we are blessed that we have a concentration there where we can deal with it, because we are stopping them all over. They have not attacked us again. We have successfully defended ourselves from another attack, but they simply do not want to acknowledge it. All they see are the negatives, nothing positive.
And I, again, am appalled at the attitude of the people who want the United States of America to fail. My attitude to them is if you can find a better place to live, go live there. If you can't, then stay here, help us defend this country. Help us support our troops willingly to fight for our freedom. Help us to bring liberty to other places in the world. Then we will see a safe world. If not, go someplace else and live.
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