Tuesday in the Senate they were debating the Cochran amendment, a bill to strike the language about a timetable for withdrawal from the Emergency Supplemental request:
Chuck Hagel, (R) Nebraska
"There will be no victory or defeat in Iraq."
"Honorable intentions are not policies or plans or responsible; it may take many years before there is a cohesive political center in Iraq."
"Some of my collegues say we should dispense with this frivolous debate, 'the president has threatened to veto, what a waste of our time'. Well, if you logically follow that through, Mr. President, why do we need a congress? Why don't we let the president make all the choices? I suspect there are some in this administration who would liike that, some in this country who would like that...We tried a monarchy once, it wasn't suited for America...This idea that somehow you don't support the troops if you don't continue in a lemming like way to accept whatever this administration's policy is, that's what's wrong...and that is dangerous."
Lindsey Graham, (R) South Carolina
"I would leave tomorrow if I thought the Iraqi people were incapable of solving their own problems."
"I was at Guatanamo listening to Sheik Muhammad, the mastermind of 9/11, explaining why he was at war with us, he will be at war with us til his last breath."
John Thune, (R) South Dakota
"Our colleagues on the other side also like to note that there were no Iraqis on the planes that attacked us on September 11th. Well, there weren't any Afghanis either. In fact, if we follow this line of thinking to its logical conclusion about who was on those planes, then perhaps this Congress should change the 2002 authorization for the use of force and allow the president to attack Saudi Arabia, because the majority of the hijackers were Saudis. But of course such a line of thinking is ridiculous, because this conflict is not about national identity, it is about ideology; it is about good vs evil, right vs wrong, freedom vs tyranny, and hope vs cynicism...Our greatest export should be freedom"
Kay Bailey Hutchison, (R), Texas
"We're just going to leave, we're not stating any benchmarks, we're not stating any success strategies...what does it say to the enemy? It says the greatest country in the world is going to be there as long as it's not very hard. And when it gets too tough we will just leave and we will walk out...that is not the message of the greatest country on earth."
Mitch McConnell, (R), Kentucky
"We've seen enough to believe that this new approach was exactly the right thing to do"
"President Bush has repeatedly said he will veto...I urge my colleagues not to take us down this path, not to delay the delivery of emergency funding to our troops by forcing a presidential veto."
Joe Liebermann, (I), Connecticut
"The biggest cause of the violence in Iraq is not the split between Sunnis and Shias, but a specific ideology, the ideology of Islamist extremism that is trying to exploit that divide for it's own evil ends."
"We cannot redeploy from our moral responsibility in Iraq or in our foreign policy more generally."
Dick Durbin, (D), Illinois
"Voting for the Cochran amendment says its enough that the president sends us, every 60 or 90 days, a report; 'tell us how things are going Mr President, how are we doing?'. Is that why we're here in Congress to receive reports from the president, to put them on a bookshelf somewhere and hope that a staffer has time to read them? (side note: or perhaps you could read them, oh honorable senator)
1 comment:
"Our greatest export should be freedom." Excuse me senator, but you speak in absolutes in a world where there are no such things. Since when did American's gain the duty to IMPOSE, based on OUR observations and assumptions of another society, what is in their best interest? What gives the US the right to determine good from bad? Doesn't our nation stand for tolerance of other ideas and cultures?
I acknowledge the logical critique of the aforementioned train of thought, namely that "hey man, leaders were killing their people and that is why the US may jump in;" murdering your populace and genocide is not to be condoned. Accepted. However I posit in opposition that perhaps unilateral, cowboy-styled, "screw you if you aren't with us" attitudes espoused by the US are not the most efficacious methods of preventing further attrocities/tragedies by dictators and tyrants and spreading freedom. Isn't the truth of the raging debate concerning the war on terror that the US willingly jumped into a pool of quicksand? Isn't it the truth that the US literally created the problems plaguing the war effort?
Has history taught us nothing? How many inconclusive and excessively costly wars/conflicts have been fought over ideology? For me the most important truth the US should be exporting is the value of human life. Because human life is equally incalculable no matter your origin, the democratic process of the US becomes much more important as a stop-gap for reckless action in heated passions, e.g. the US' actions post-9/11. We need to get back to the basics congresspeople: discussion, voting, governmental transparency and informing the populace - these are the tasks we should be concentrating on rather than starting wars over events which, although deplorable and tragic, are consistent occurances for the majority of other civilized nations (i.e. bombings in French subways, the Red Brigade terorrist acts in Italy, Basque separatists in France...) Why is the US obligated to KILL OTHERS IN ORDER TO CREATE PEACE? I simply do not understand how violence creates peace. I do not understand how our destruction of the only stable governing body Iraq ever had, admittedly violent as it was, gave the Iraqi people "freedom." These selfsame people are now caught as innocents in a vicious guerilla, urban war.
The US needs to get behind the most important value of all: peace. And peace is not found via violence and coercion. My solution would entail abasement before our [former] European allies. We need to plead 'mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maima culpa' and eat crow. We need to give up concessions. Global solidarity and cohesive action by the international community is the way to solve the historically incurable plight of the less privileged nations.
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