It's the kind of thing you'd expect to hear on Pacifica Radio, not in a
speech by a Republican senator.
"I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy
that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown
up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal,"
declared Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), a 10-year veteran of the Senate, in a speech
last night.
Did he mean it? Senators rarely throw around words like "criminal,"
especially when talking about actions by their own party. What's he going to do
about it? Well, Gordon has been known to act on his convictions when he thinks
a president has broken the law: he voted to convict President Bill Clinton in
1999, following the president's impeachment by the House.
The speech in its entirety below the jump.
Update: You can see video of the speech here.
Mr. President, I know it is probably appropriate to speak of our colleagues,
and I will do that on the record. I rise tonight, however, to speak about a
subject heavy on my mind. It is the subject of the war in Iraq.
I have never worn the uniform of my country. I am not a soldier or a
veteran. I regret that fact. It is one of the regrets of my life. But I am a
student of history, particularly military history, and it is that perspective
which I brought to the Senate 10 years ago as a newly elected Member of this
Chamber.
When we came to the vote on Iraq, it was an issue of great moment for me. No
issue is more difficult to vote on than war and peace, because it involves the
lives of our soldiers, our young men and women. It involves the expenditure of
our treasure, putting on the line the prestige of our country. It is not a vote
taken lightly. I have tried to be a good soldier in this Chamber. I have tried
to support our President, believing at the time of the vote on the war in Iraq
that we had been given good intelligence and knowing that Saddam Hussein was a
menace to the world, a brutal dictator, a tyrant by any standard, and one who
threatened our country in many different ways, through the financing and
fomenting of terrorism. For those reasons and believing that we would find
weapons of mass destruction, I voted aye.
I have been rather silent on this question ever since. I have been rather
quiet because, when I was visiting Oregon troops in Kirkuk in the Kurdish area,
the soldiers said to me: Senator, don't tell me you support the troops and not
our mission. That gave me pause. But since that time, there have been 2,899
American casualties. There have been over 22,000 American men and women
wounded. There has been an expenditure of $290 billion a figure that approaches
the expenditure we have every year on an issue as important as Medicare. We
have paid a price in blood and treasure that is beyond calculation by my
estimation.
Now, as I witness the slow undoing of our efforts there, I rise to speak
from my heart. I was greatly disturbed recently to read a comment by a man I
admire in history, one Winston Churchill, who after the British mandate
extended to the peoples of Iraq for 5 years, wrote to David Lloyd George, Prime
Minister of England:
"At present we are paying 8 millions a year for the privilege of living on
an ungrateful volcano."
When I read that, I thought, not much has changed. We have to learn the
lessons of history and sometimes they are painful because we have made
mistakes.
Even though I have not worn the uniform of my country, I, with other
colleagues here, love this Nation. I came into politics because I believed in
some things. I am unusually proud of the fact of our recent history, the
history of our Nation since my own birth. At the end of the Second World War,
there were 15 nations on earth that could be counted as democracies that you
and I would recognize. Today there are 150 nations on earth that are democratic
and free. That would not have happened had the United States been insular and
returned to our isolationist roots, had we laid down the mantle of world
leadership, had we not seen the importance of propounding and encouraging the
spread of democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and the values of our Bill
of Rights. It is a better world because of the United States of America, and
the price we have paid is one of blood and treasure.
Now we come to a great crossroads. A commission has just done some, I
suppose, good work. I am still evaluating it. I welcome any ideas now because
where we are leaves me feeling much like Churchill, that we are paying the
price to sit on a mountain that is little more than a volcano of
ingratitude.
Yet as I feel that, I remember the pride I felt when the statue of Saddam
Hussein came down. I remember the thrill I felt when three times Iraqis risked
their own lives to vote democratically in a way that was internationally
verifiable as well as legitimate and important. Now all of those memories seem
much like ashes to me.
The Iraq Study Group has given us some ideas. I don't know if they are good
or not. It does seem to me that it is a recipe for retreat. It is not cut and
run, but it is cut and walk. I don't know that that is any more honorable than
cutting and running, because cutting and walking involves greater expenditure
of our treasure, greater loss of American lives.
Many things have been attributed to George Bush. I have heard him on this
floor blamed for every ill, even the weather. But I do not believe him to be a
liar. I do not believe him to be a traitor, nor do I believe all the bravado
and the statements and the accusations made against him. I believe him to be a
very idealistic man. I believe him to have a stubborn backbone. He is not
guilty of perfidy, but I do believe he is guilty of believing bad intelligence
and giving us the same.
I can't tell you how devastated I was to learn that in fact we were not
going to find weapons of mass destruction. But remembering the words of the
soldier--don't tell me you support the troops but you don't support my
mission--I felt the duty to continue my support . Yet I believe the President
is guilty of trying to win a short war and not understanding fully the nature
of the ancient hatreds of the Middle East. Iraq is a European creation. At the
Treaty of Versailles, the victorious powers put together Kurdish, Sunni, and
Shia tribes that had been killing each other for time immemorial. I would like
to think there is an Iraqi identity. I would like to remember the purple
fingers raised high. But we can not want democracy for Iraq more than they want
it for themselves. And what I find now is that our tactics there have
failed.
Again, I am not a soldier, but I do know something about military history.
And what that tells me is when you are engaged in a war of insurgency, you
can't clear and leave. With few exceptions, throughout Iraq that is what we
have done. To fight an insurgency often takes a decade or more. It takes more
troops than we have committed. It takes clearing, holding, and building so that
the people there see the value of what we are doing. They become the source of
intelligence, and they weed out the insurgents. But we have not cleared and
held and built. We have cleared and left, and the insurgents have come
back.
I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy
that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown
up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal . I
cannot support that anymore . I believe we need to figure out how to fight the
war on terror and to do it right. So either we clear and hold and build, or
let's go home.
There are no good options, as the Iraq Study Group has mentioned in their
report. I am not sure cutting and walking is any better. I have little
confidence that the Syrians and the Iranians are going to be serious about
helping us to build a stable and democratic Iraq. I am at a crossroads as well.
I want my constituents to know what is in my heart, what has guided my
votes.
What will continue to guide the way I vote is simply this: I do not believe
we can retreat from the greater war on terror. Iraq is a battlefield in that
larger war. But I do believe we need a presence there on the near horizon at
least that allows us to provide intelligence, interdiction, logistics, but
mostly a presence to say to the murderers that come across the border: We are
here, and we will deal with you. But we have no business being a policeman in
someone else's civil war.
I welcome the Iraq Study Group's report, but if we are ultimately going to
retreat, I would rather do it sooner than later. I am looking for answers, but
the current course is unacceptable to this Senator. I suppose if the President
is guilty of one other thing, I find it also in the words of Winston Churchill.
He said:
After the First World War, let us learn our lessons. Never, never believe
that any war will be smooth and easy or that anyone who embarks on this strange
voyage can measure the tides and the hurricanes. The statesman who yields to
war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the
master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
That is a lesson we are learning again. I am afraid, rather than leveling
with the American people and saying this was going to be a decade-long conflict
because of the angst and hatred that exists in that part of the world, that we
tried to win it with too few troops in too fast a time. Lest anyone thinks I
believe we have failed militarily, please understand I believe when President
Bush stood in front of "mission accomplished" on an aircraft carrier that , in
purely military terms, the mission was accomplished in the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq. But winning a battle, winning a war, is different than winning a
peace.
We were not prepared to win the peace by clearing, holding, and building.
You don't do that fast and you don't do it with too few troops. I believe now
that we must either determine to do that , or we must redeploy in a way that
allows us to continue to prosecute the larger war on terror. It will not be
pretty. We will pay a price in world opinion. But I, for one, am tired of
paying the price of 10 or more of our troops dying a day. So let's cut and run,
or cut and walk, or let us fight the war on terror more intelligently than we
have, because we have fought this war in a very lamentable way.
Those are my feelings. I regret them. I would have never voted for this
conflict had I reason to believe that the intelligence we had was not accurate.
It was not accurate, but that is history. Now we must find a way to make the
best of a terrible situation, at a minimum of loss of life for our brave
fighting men and women. So I will be looking for every opportunity to clear,
build, hold, and win or how to bring our troops home.
I yield the floor.