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January 09, 2007
Speech at the National Press Club in Washington. D.C.
By Senator Ted Kennedy
(AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY)
Thank you, President Jonathan Salant, for that generous
introduction. It’s an honor for me to be here at the National
Press Club. I had hoped to speak today about health care and my
agenda as Chairman of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and
Pensions Committee. I will speak to those concerns on another
day soon, but an issue of grave importance requires our
immediate action. President Bush will address the nation
tomorrow about his decision to send tens of thousands of
additional American troops to the war in Iraq. That war is the
overarching issue of our time, and American lives, American
values and America’s role in the world are all at stake. If
ordered into battle, we know our brave men and women will serve
us with pride and valor, just as they have throughout this
troubling war. All Americans will support them fully, as will
those of us in Congress. We will always support our troops in
harm’s way.
It’s a special honor to have here with us today a person who
symbolizes that commitment – Brian Hart of Bedford,
Massachusetts. His presence reminds us who is being called to
sacrifice and service – husbands and wives, fathers and mothers,
sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors.
Brian Hart’s son John, at the age of 20, gave his life in Iraq
in 2003, defending his patrol from ambush. Brian and his wife
Alma turned that enormous personal tragedy into a remarkable
force for change.
He’s worked skillfully and tirelessly ever since to ensure that
our soldiers have better equipment to protect them. Today and
every day, I salute his patriotism and his own dedicated service
to our country – Brian Hart.
As the election in November made clear, the vast majority of
Americans oppose the war in Iraq, and an even greater number
oppose sending even more troops to Iraq today.
Families like the Harts and all Americans deserve a voice in
that profound decision. Our Constitution gives them that right.
The President is Commander-in-Chief, but in our democracy he is
still accountable to the people. Our system of checks and
balances gives Congress – as the elected representatives of the
people – a central role in decisions on war and peace.
Today, therefore, I am introducing legislation to reclaim the
rightful role of Congress and the people’s right to a full voice
in the President’s plan to send more troops to Iraq. Congressman
Ed Markey of Massachusetts will introduce similar legislation in
the House of Representatives. Our bill will say that no
additional troops can be sent and no additional dollars can be
spent on such an escalation, unless and until Congress approves
the President’s plan.
Our proposal is a straightforward exercise of the power granted
to Congress by Article I, section 8 of the Constitution. There
can be no doubt that the Constitution gives Congress the
authority to decide whether to fund military action. And
Congress can demand a justification from the President for such
action before it appropriates the funds to carry it out.
This bill will give all Americans – from Maine to Florida to
California to Alaska and Hawaii – an opportunity to hold the
President accountable for his actions. The President’s speech
must be the beginning – not the end – of a new national
discussion of our policy in Iraq. Congress must have a genuine
debate over the wisdom of the President’s plan. Let us hear the
arguments for it and against it. Then let us vote on it in the
light of day. Let the American people hear – yes or no – where
their elected representatives stand on one of the greatest
challenges of our time.
Until now, a rubber stamp Republican Congress has refused to
hold the White House accountable on Iraq. But the November
election has dramatically changed all that.
Over the past two years, Democrats reached for their roots as
true members of our Party. We listened to the hopes and dreams
of everyday Americans. We rejected the politics of fear and
division. We embraced a vision of hope and shared purpose. And
the American people voted for change.
We campaigned as Democrats in 2006. And we must govern as
Democrats in 2007. We have the solemn obligation now to show the
American people that we heard their voices. We will stand with
them in meeting the extraordinary challenges of our day – not
with pale actions, timid gestures, and empty rhetoric, but with
bold vision, clear action, and high ideals that match the hopes
and dreams of the American people. That is our duty as Democrats
and as Americans on the war in Iraq.
The American people sent a clear message in November that we
must change course in Iraq and begin to withdraw our troops, not
escalate their presence. The way to start is by acting on the
President’s new plan. An escalation, whether it is called a
surge or any other name, is still an escalation, and I believe
it would be an immense new mistake. It would compound the
original misguided decision to invade Iraq. We cannot simply
speak out against an escalation of troops in Iraq. We must act
to prevent it.
Our history makes clear that a new escalation in our forces will
not advance our national security. It will not move Iraq toward
self-government, and it will needlessly endanger our troops by
injecting more of them into the middle of a civil war.
Some will disagree. Listen to this comment from a high-ranking
American official: “It became clear that if we were prepared to
stay the course, we could help to lay the cornerstone for a
diverse and independent Asia…If we faltered, the forces of chaos
would scent victory and decades of strife and aggression would
stretch endlessly before us. The choice was clear. We would stay
the course. And we shall stay the course.”
That is not President Bush speaking. It is President Lyndon
Johnson, forty years ago, ordering a hundred thousand more
American soldiers to Vietnam.
Here is another quotation. “The big problem is to get territory
and to keep it. You can get it today and it will be gone next
week. That is the problem. You have to have enough people to
clear it…and enough people to preserve what you have done. ”That
is not President Bush on the need for more forces in Iraq. It is
President Johnson in 1966 as he doubled our military presence in
Vietnam. Those comparisons from history resonate painfully in
today’s debate on Iraq. In Vietnam, the White House grew
increasingly obsessed with victory, and increasingly divorced
from the will of the people and any rational policy. The
Department of Defense kept assuring us that each new escalation
in Vietnam would be the last. Instead, each one led only to the
next. Finally, in 1968, in large part because of the war,
Democrats lost the White House. Richard Nixon was elected
President after telling the American people that he had a secret
plan to end the war. We all know what happened, though. As
President, he escalated the war into Cambodia and Laos, and it
went on for six more years. There was no military solution to
that war. But we kept trying to find one anyway. In the end,
58,000 Americans died in the search for it.
Echoes of that disaster are all around us today. Iraq is George
Bush’s Vietnam.
As with Vietnam, the only rational solution to the crisis is
political, not military. Injecting more troops into a civil war
is not the answer. Our men and women in uniform cannot force the
Iraqi people to reconcile their differences. The open-ended
commitment of our military forces continues to enable the Iraqis
to avoid taking responsibility for their own future. Tens of
thousands of additional American troops will only make the
Iraqis more resentful of America’s occupation. It will also make
the Iraqi government even more dependent on America, not less.
General Abizaid made this point plainly when he told the Senate
Armed Services Committee last November, “I believe that more
American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more and from
taking more responsibility for their own future.” General
Abizaid was unequivocal that increasing our troop commitment is
not the answer. He said, “I’ve met with every divisional
commander – General Casey, the corps commander, General Dempsey
– we all talked together. And I said, ‘in your professional
opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does
it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq?’
And they all said no.” That was General Abizaid. General Casey
reiterated this view just two weeks ago. He said, “The longer
that U.S. forces continue to bear the main burden of Iraq’s
security, it lengthens the time that the government of Iraq has
to make the hard decisions about reconciliation and dealing with
the militias… They can continue to blame us for all of Iraq’s
problems, which are, at base, their problems.” One of our
great military commanders, former Secretary of State Colin
Powell, put it this way last month: “I am not persuaded that
another surge of troops into Baghdad for the purpose of
suppressing this communitarian violence, this civil war, will
work. ”Such an escalation would be a policy of desperation built
on denial and fantasy. It is “stay the course” under another
name. It will not resolve the Iraq war, but it will exact a
fearsome new toll in American lives and further weaken our
nation. It will make America more hated in the world, and make
the war on terrorism even harder to win. For the sake of our men
and women in uniform in Iraq, the President should have heeded
these generals, not discarded them and gone shopping for advice
that matches his own wishful, flawed thinking. Cooking the
intelligence is how we got into this war. Ignoring the sound
counsel of our military is no way to end it. The American people
are also well aware that the military action authorized by
Congress in 2002 was for a very different war than we face
today. Our troops are now caught in the crossfire of a civil war
– a role that Congress has not approved and that the American
people rejected in November. Many of us felt the authorization
to go to war was a grave mistake at the time. I’ve said that my
vote against the war in Iraq is the best vote I’ve cast in my 44
years in the United States Senate. But no matter what any of us
thought then, the Iraq War resolution is obviously obsolete
today. It authorized a war to destroy weapons of mass
destruction. But there were no WMDs to destroy. It authorized a
war with Saddam Hussein. But today, Saddam is no more. It
authorized a war because Saddam was allied with al Qaeda. But
there was no alliance. The mission of our armed forces today in
Iraq bears no resemblance whatever to the mission authorized by
Congress. President Bush should not be permitted to escalate the
war further, and send an even larger number of our troops into
harm’s way, without a clear and specific new authorization from
Congress. In everybody’s reality except the Administration’s,
Iraq is now in the middle of a civil war. Sectarian violence is
on the rise. Militias continue to commit unspeakable acts of
violence and torture. Ethnic cleansing is a fact of daily life.
Millions of Iraqis are fleeing the violence and leaving their
country. No one can seriously deny that this civil war is
radically different from the mission Congress voted for in 2002.
Why should even more of our troops be sent to Iraq in the middle
of this civil war? The President may deny the plain truth. But
the truth speaks loudly and tragically. Congress must no longer
follow him deeper into the quagmire in Iraq. I recognize the
President’s almost certain determination to persist in his
failed course. It appears that he will not listen to the views
of Congress or of the American people. It is disappointing that
he seems ready – even eager – to reject the recommendations of
the Iraq Study Group. Instead of heeding the growing call for
genuine change, he has used the time since that report to root
out dissent in his own Administration and in our armed forces.
This Congress cannot escape history or its own duty. If we do
not learn from the mistakes of the past, we are condemned to
repeat them. We must act, and act now, before the President
sends more troops to Iraq, or else it will be too late. The
legislation that we will introduce today is brief but essential.
It requires the President to obtain approval from Congress
before he sends even more American soldiers to Iraq. And it
prohibits the President from spending taxpayer dollars on such
an escalation unless Congress approves it. Our proposal will not
diminish our support for the forces we already have in Iraq. We
will continue to do everything we can to make sure they have all
the support they truly need. Even more important, we will
continue to do all we can to bring them safely home. The best
immediate way to support our troops is by refusing to inject
more and more of them into the cauldron of a civil war that can
be resolved only by the people and government of Iraq. I will
seek a Senate vote on this proposal at the earliest realistic
date. I hope that instead of escalation without end and without
authorization, the President will follow through on his words
last week, when he said, “We now have the opportunity to build a
bipartisan consensus” on Iraq. If he truly means those words, he
will ask Congress for our approval. The heavy price of our
flawed decisions a generation ago is memorialized on sacred
ground not far from here. On a somber walk through the Vietnam
Memorial, we are moved by the painful, powerful eloquence of its
enduring tribute to the tens of thousands who were lost in that
tragic war that America never should have fought. Our fingers
can gently trace the names etched into the stark black granite
face of the memorial. We wonder what might have been, if America
had faced up honestly to its failed decisions before it was too
late. I often pause as well at Section 60 in Arlington National
Cemetery. Those from Massachusetts who have fallen in Iraq lie
there now in quiet dignity. Each time, I am struck by the heavy
price of the war in their young lives cut so sadly short. The
casualties are high. The war is long. The time is late. But as
Tennyson said, “Come, my friends. ‘Tis not too late to seek a
newer world.” Those words speak clearly to all of us
today. And we are inspired anew to wage this battle by the
concluding line of that great poem: “To strive, to seek, to
find, and not to yield.” Thank you very much.
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