Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2005
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
SENATE
Sept. 10, 2004
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005
AMERICA HAS CHANGED
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this week we mark two significant dates. Tomorrow, September 11, the third anniversary of our attack which will truly live in infamy as the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is a moment when we reflect on what has happened to America since that time.
A member of the diplomatic corps once asked me: Did Osama bin Laden win that battle? The answer, clearly, is no. But did he change America? The answer, clearly, is yes.
We are debating in the Senate a bill for billions of dollars to be spent in defense of America, which we might not have even considered 3 years ago. Now it is reality.
In a few moments I will leave to go to National Airport. Before I board my flight back to Illinois, I will take off my shoes and my belt and my watch and I will hold my arms out to be "wanded," to make certain that I am safe enough to go on the airplane. America has truly changed.
But our values have not changed. Ted Sorensen may be one of the greatest speech writers in the history of our Nation. On May 21 he delivered a commencement address at the New School University of New York where a friend and former colleague, Bob Kerry, is president.
I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Sorensen's commencement address be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS OF THEODORE C. SORENSEN UPON RECEIVING AN HONORARY DOCTOR OF LAWS DEGREE FROM NEW SCHOOL UNIVERSITY
A TIME TO WEEP
As a Nebraska émigré, I am proud to be made an Honorary Doctor of Laws by another Nebraska émigré, President Kerrey . . . at an institution founded by still another, Alvin Johnson.
Considering the unhealthy state of our laws today, they probably could use another doctor.
My reciprocal obligation is to make a speech.
This is not a speech. Two weeks ago I set aside the speech I prepared. This is a cry from the heart, a lamentation for the loss of this country's goodness and therefore its greatness.
Future historians studying the decline and fall of America will mark this as the time the tide began to turn-toward a mean-spirited mediocrity in place of a noble beacon.
For me the final blow was American guards laughing over the naked, helpless bodies of abused prisoners in Iraq. "There is a time to laugh," the Bible tells us, "and a time to weep." Today I weep for the country I love, the country I proudly served, the country to which my four grandparents sailed over a century ago with hopes for a new land of peace and freedom. I cannot remain silent when that country is in the deepest trouble of my lifetime.
I am not talking only about the prison abuse scandal-that stench will someday subside. Nor am I referring only to the Iraq war-that too will pass-nor to any one political leader or party. This is no time for politics as usual, in which no one responsible admits responsibility, no one genuinely apologizes, no one resigns and everyone else is blamed.
The damage done to this country by its own misconduct in the last few months and years, to its very heart and soul, is far greater and longer lasting than any damage that any terrorist could possibly inflict upon us.
The stain on our credibility, our reputation for decency and integrity, will not quickly wash away.
Last week, a family friend of an accused American guard in Iraq recited the atrocities inflicted by our enemies on Americans, and asked: "Must we be held to a different standard?" My answer is YES. Not only because others expect it. WE must hold ourselves to a different standard. Not only because God demands it, but because it serves our security.
Our greatest strength has long been not merely our military might but our moral authority. Our surest protection against assault from abroad has been not all our guards, gates and guns or even our two oceans, but our essential goodness as a people. Our richest asset has been not our material wealth but our values.
We were world leaders once-helping found the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and programs like Food for Peace, international human rights and international environmental standards. The world admired not only the bravery of our Marine Corps but also the idealism of our Peace Corps.
Our word was as good as our gold. At the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, President Kennedy's special envoy to brief French President de Gaulle, offered to document our case by having the actual pictures of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba brought in. "No," shrugged the usually difficult de Gaulle: "The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me."
Eight months later, President Kennedy could say at American University: "The world knows that America will never start a war. This generation of Americans has had enough of war and hate . . . we want to build a world of peace where the weak are secure and the strong are just."
Our founding fathers believed this country could be a beacon of light to the world, a model of democratic and humanitarian progress. We were. We prevailed in the Cold War because we inspired millions struggling for freedom in far corners of the Soviet empire. I have been in countries where children and avenues were named for Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. We were respected, not reviled, because we respected man's aspirations for peace and justice. This was the country to which foreign leaders sent not only their goods to be sold but their sons and daughters to be educated. In the 1930s, when Jewish and other scholars were driven out of Europe, their preferred destination-even for those on the far left-was not the Communist citadel in Moscow but the New School here in New York.
What has happened to our country? We have been in wars before, without resorting to sexual humiliation as torture, without blocking the Red Cross, without insulting and deceiving our allies and the U.N., without betraying our traditional values, without imitating our adversaries, without blackening our name around the world.
Last year when asked on short notice to speak to a European audience, and inquiring what topic I should address, the Chairman said: "Tell us about the good America, the America when Kennedy was in the White House." "It is still a good America," I replied. "The American people still believe in peace, human rights and justice; they are still a generous, fair-minded, open-minded people."
Today some political figures argue that merely to report, much less to protest, the crimes against humanity committed by a few of our own inadequately trained forces in the fog of war, is to aid the enemy or excuse its atrocities. But Americans know that such self-censorship does not enhance our security. Attempts to justify or defend our illegal acts as nothing more than pranks or no worse than the crimes of our enemies, only further muddies our moral image. 30 years ago, America's war in Vietnam became a hopeless military quagmire; today our war in Iraq has become a senseless moral swamp.
No military victory can endure unless the victor occupies the high moral ground. Surely America, the land of the free, could not lose the high moral ground invading Iraq, a country ruled by terror, torture and tyranny-but we did.
Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein-politically, economically, diplomatically, much as we succeeded in isolating Khadafy, Marcos, Mobutu and a host of other dictators over the years, we have isolated ourselves. We are increasingly alone in a dangerous world in which millions who once respected us now hate us.
Not only Muslims. Every international survey shows our global standing at an all-time low. Even our transatlantic alliance has not yet recovered from its worst crisis in history. Our friends in Western Europe were willing to accept Uncle Sam as class president, but not as class bully, once he forgot JFK's advice that "Civility is not a sign of weakness."
All this is rationalized as part of the war on terror. But abusing prisoners in Iraq, denying detainees their legal rights in Guantanamo, even American citizens, misleading the world at large about Saddam's ready stockpiles of mass destruction and involvement with al Qaeda at 9/11, did not advance by one millimeter our efforts to end the threat of another terrorist attack upon us. On the contrary, our conduct invites and incites new attacks and new recruits to attack us.
The decline in our reputation adds to the decline in our security. We keep losing old friends and making new enemies-not a formula for success. We have not yet rounded up Osama bin Laden or most of the al Qaeda and Taliban leaders or the anthrax mailer. "The world is large," wrote John Boyle O'Reilly, in one of President Kennedy's favorite poems, "when its weary leagues two loving hearts divide, but the world is small when your enemy is loose on the other side." Today our enemies are still loose on the other side of the world, and we are still vulnerable to attack.
True, we have not lost either war we chose or lost too much of our wealth. But we have lost something worse-our good name for truth and justice. To paraphrase Shakespeare: "He who steals our nation's purse, steals trash. 'Twas ours, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands. But he that filches our good name . . . makes us poor indeed."
No American wants us to lose a war. Among our enemies are those who, if they could, would fundamentally change our way of life, restricting our freedom of religion by exalting one faith over others, ignoring international law and the opinions of mankind; and trampling on the rights of those who are different, deprived or disliked. To the extent that our nation voluntarily trods those same paths in the name of security, the terrorists win and we are the losers.
We are no longer the world's leaders on matters of international law and peace. After we stopped listening to others, they stopped listening to us. A nation without credibility and moral authority cannot lead, because no one will follow.
Paradoxically, the charges against us in the court of world opinion are contradictory. We are deemed by many to be dangerously aggressive, a threat to world peace. You may regard that as ridiculously unwarranted, no matter how often international surveys show that attitude to be spreading. But remember the old axiom: "No matter how good you feel, if four friends tell you you're drunk, you better lie down."
Yet we are also charged not so much with intervention as indifference-indifference toward the suffering of millions of our fellow inhabitants of this planet who do not enjoy the freedom, the opportunity, the health and wealth and security that we enjoy; indifference to the countless deaths of children and other civilians in unnecessary wars, countless because we usually do not bother to count them; indifference to the centuries of humiliation endured previously in silence by the Arab and Islamic worlds.
The good news, to relieve all this gloom, is that a democracy is inherently self-correcting. Here, the people are sovereign. Inept political leaders can be replaced. Foolish policies can be changed. Disastrous mistakes can be reversed.
When, in 1941, the Japanese Air Force was able to inflict widespread death and destruction on our naval and air forces in Hawaii because they were not on alert, those military officials most responsible for ignoring advance intelligence were summarily dismissed.
When, in the late 1940s, we faced a global Cold War against another system of ideological fanatics certain that their authoritarian values would eventually rule the world, we prevailed in time. We prevailed because we exercised patience as well as vigilance, self-restraint as well as self-defense, and reached out to moderates and modernists, to democrats and dissidents, within that closed system. We can do that again. We can reach out to moderates and modernists in Islam, proud of its long traditions of dialogue, learning, charity and peace.
Some among us scoff that the war on Jihadist terror is a war between civilization and chaos. But they forget that there were Islamic universities and observatories long before we had railroads.
So do not despair. In this country, the people are sovereign. If we can but tear the blindfold of self-deception from our eyes and loosen the gag of self-denial from our voices, we can restore our country to greatness. In particular, you-the Class of 2004-have the wisdom and energy to do it. Start soon.
In the words of the ancient Hebrews:
The day is short, and the work is great, and the laborers are sluggish, but the reward is much, and the Master is urgent.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, Mr. Sorensen said at one point in his speech something we should reflect on as we think about September 11. He said of America:
Our greatest strength has long been not merely our military might but our moral authority. Our surest protection against assault from abroad has been not all our guards, gates and guns or even our two oceans, but our essential goodness as a people. Our richest asset has been not our material wealth but our values.
We were world leaders once-helping found the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and programs like Food for Peace, international human rights and international environmental standards. The world admired not only the bravery of our Marine Corps but also the idealism of our Peace Corps.
Mr. Sorensen's words are a reminder that if we are to win this war against those who wish us ill, those terrorists and those who use terrorism as a tactic, we need not only a strong national defense, we need strong homeland security, but we also need to project the values of America in a positive way, not just with the forming of troops in formation but also with the forming of values in countries desperate to have a future that emulates the freedoms of the United States.
THE SACRIFICE OF OUR SOLDIERS
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the second noteworthy event this week was, of course, the acknowledgement that we have lost over 1,000 soldiers in Iraq. It has touched my State of Illinois. Some 50 people from my State have been killed in the war in Iraq, hundreds seriously wounded.
I ask unanimous consent that an article from the Chicago Tribune dated September 9, 2004, be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[From the Chicago Tribune, Sept. 9, 2004]
DOWNSTATE TOWN STUNG BY DEATHS; 2 SOLDIERS DEAD, 15 HURT IN IRAQ
(By Deborah Horan and H. Gregory Meyer)
PARIS, IL.-The worst attack yet on Illinois Army National Guardsmen serving in Iraq left two soldiers dead and 15 wounded, and it left the Downstate town where their unit is based stung by the news and fearful for the safety of survivors.
Mortar rounds pounded the 1544th Transportation Company southwest of Baghdad late Sunday afternoon, killing Sgt. Shawna Morrison, 26, of Paris and Spec. Charles Lamb, 23, of Martinsville, said Lt. Col. Alicia Tate-Nadeau, a Guard spokeswoman. Three of the 15 wounded were seriously injured, she said.
In Paris a radio station has put patriotic songs on heavy rotation while locals drive cars tied with yellow ribbons saying "Pray for our troops." Morrison was the unit's first female fatality, and the first soldier from Paris to die in Iraq.
"This is the first one to hit our community," said Jim Cooper, the father of a 20-year-old guardsman who is stationed at the base that came under attack. "It has really brought this home. It opens up a lot of people's eyes. They say, 'Hey, I know so-and-so. He may be next.' "
The deaths brought the unit's total fatalities to four as the nation's total military deaths in Iraq since last year's invasion edged past 1,000.
The 1544th, headquartered in a brick armory in this town of 9,000, contains about 260 soldiers from four states, Tate-Nadeau said.
Shirley Furry had posted a message under the price board outside her Citgo station in Paris reading "In memory of Shawna." The young woman worked there several years ago, Furry said. Morrison's mother called Furry Sunday night.
"I said, 'Oh, no,' " Furry recalled. "She said, 'Yeah, she's gone.' "
Morrison attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and worked two jobs, one as a waitress and the other as a bartender, to put herself through school.
"She's always been very independent," said her father, Rick Morrison. "She never asked us for a dime from day one when she moved out."
Morrison was called up in November, sent to Kuwait in December and arrived in Iraq by February where she worked in communications, her father said. And while she was nervous before the deployment, she was most worried about rumors of spiders the size of paper plates that could jump 6 feet.
"We spent many hours looking for spider spray," her father said. "And she never saw one."
Sgt. Scott Johnson, a member of the 1544th who was wounded in Iraq in May, said Morrison and Lamb had contrasting notions of comfort on base. "Shawna, she was really looking to settle in. She rounded up a couple of the nicer mattresses to make sure she slept well at night," he said. "Charles, he would rough it. He was kind of an outdoorsman. He didn't mind getting dirty."
Lamb, who grew up in a rural area near Martinsville, about 25 miles southwest of Paris, was a "farm boy," said Mark Harris, his agriculture education teacher at Casey-Westfield High School, where he graduated in 1999.
A live wire as a student, Lamb was active in the FFA, formerly known as Future Farmers of America, and trained for forestry, livestock and dairy competitions. A trip to Kansas City for an FFA convention was a big deal to him.
"I think one of the reasons he signed up for the service was to help other people out, make a better life and see the country," Harris said.
Before he was called up for active duty, he had worked as a mechanic in Martinsville and had recently married, said a former employer.
"He was planning on coming back," said a shop co-owner, Shirley Goodwin. In Iraq he also worked as a mechanic.
Cooper leads a support group for families of soldiers from the 1544th. He said that when attacks take place, he's the one who calls families whose sons and daughters weren't hurt.
"I can tell them they're OK, but I can't give them any guarantees," he said. "The unit is still running out there. It makes it scary."
His son is also based at Logistical Base Seitz, the camp outside Baghdad where Morrison and Lamb were killed, but he was uninjured in Sunday's mortar shelling.
"Everybody's upset," he added. "It is hard to walk into a store without somebody recognizing me and saying, 'How's your son?' "
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this article speaks of one National Guard unit, the 1544th Transportation Company from Paris, IL. This unit of the Illinois National Guard has sustained almost half of the deaths and more than half of the injuries that our National Guard in Illinois has sustained, and just this last week two soldiers were killed and 15 wounded after another attack in Iraq.
It is a grim reminder that we are in a situation in Iraq with no end in sight. With 140,000 of our best and bravest in the field offering their lives every day for America, the fact that we would invade this nation of Iraq without a plan to deal with its reconstruction and pacification is the strongest condemnation of any government, and yet that is where we are today.
This morning it was reported on the news that if there is an election in Iraq-and I pray there will be-some sections of that country will not even be able to vote because they are under the control of terrorists and guerrillas. That is an indication of how far we still have to travel before the day arrives when our troops can come safely home from Iraq, realizing that in reality their mission has been accomplished.
As we reflect on 9/11, we reflect on our values. As we reflect on the heroes of America and think of those on 9/11, remember, too, the thousands still serving our Nation overseas from towns such as Paris, IL, and many just like them who offer their lives every day in defense of the values of this Nation.
I yield the floor.