| U.S. Rep. Tom Allen
speaks out against the war - defending our troops 
Edited by Emily Graham
U.S. Representative Tom Allen toured Iraq and
came home with insights. In a speech to the World Affairs Council of Maine he described
his experiences and what he is doing in Congress to bring our troops home.
Following are Allen’s remarks:
"I want to thank the World Affairs Council
for inviting me to speak at this critical moment of decision on our most urgent problem:
The War in Iraq.
We face a grim and sobering situation in Iraq. It
is the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Today none of our choices can be
described as good. More than 160,000 courageous and capable American forces are in the
dangerous position of trying to referee a bloody and intractable religious civil war that
has been brewing in one form or another for 1300 years.
The president and his supporters remain committed
to continue fighting this war in the hope that more American lives, more maimed American
personnel and more billions of American dollars will somehow achieve what nearly 3,800
American military deaths, 25,000 wounded and half a trillion dollars have failed to
achieve in the last four and a half years.
A majority of Americans long ago concluded that
this war was a mistake in the beginning, it has inspired more enemies determined to do us
harm, it cannot be won militarily, and it is time to end it. They are desperate for new
leadership that won’t just keep rearranging the deck chairs but will grab the wheel
and steer us clear of the disaster lying ahead on the current course. That is why I am
convinced that we need more than a change in mission for fighting the war in Iraq.
We need a change in policy that ends the war,
compels the Iraqis to assume responsibility for their own security and their own future
and allows us to focus on the greatest threat to our nation’s security: al Qaeda and
others promoting global Islamic terrorism.
To make this change in course, we need two
things. We need a Congress that instead of compromising over how to fight the war will
provide the leadership that forces this president to change policy by adopting a statutory
deadline to end the war. We need to reset our military forces and develop a new regional
strategy that engages Iraq’s neighbors and our allies to create a security framework
that gives all the countries of the region a stake in stability, both within Iraq and
throughout the Middle East.
My conclusions are based on living with this
tragedy for five years, on my observations and conversations during my recent trip to
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the recent reports on the president’s surge
strategy, and the hearings this week in both the House and the Senate.
I visited Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Pakistan
during the first week of August as a member of a bipartisan congressional delegation. It
was my first trip to Iraq and my second to Afghanistan. The trip gave us opportunities to
listen to the soldiers, discuss the situation with commanders and assess firsthand the
state of affairs in Iraq and the region.
We flew into Baghdad on Black Hawk helicopters,
wearing helmets and flak jackets for our protection. In Baghdad and Kabul, we traveled in
armored SUVs with the same protective equipment. That speaks volumes about the security
situation.
Our delegation met with General David Petraeus,
Ambassador Ryan Crocker, several Iraqi politicians, and some American troops. General
Petraeus told me that "the U.S. can change its policy in Iraq, but my job is to react
to conditions here on the ground." In other words, General Petraeus understood that
he is not the commander-in-chief. He was clear that his responsibility was military
strategy and tactics. He conceded that policy makers in Washington must set overall policy
in the region.
I anticipated, as we have seen, that some
politicians and pundits would portray his report as confirmation of the president’s
overall policy, rather than a status report on a limited set of political and military
benchmarks.
General Petraeus told me that the Army and
Marines cannot sustain a force of 160,000 troops in Iraq without lengthening tours of duty
again. He admitted that the cycle of troop rotations, on its own, without a change in
policy, will reduce the size of the force in Iraq. Most importantly, the general told me
that an American troop presence would be required in Iraq in some form for another nine to
ten years.
Nine to ten more years of Americans at war in
Iraq is unacceptable to me and to the American people. We cannot wait 9 or 10 years to
reset our armed forces and address national security challenges put on hold by this
misadventure in Iraq. There are two fundamentally different approaches that policy makers
can take concerning Iraq.
We can choose to keep U.S. troops in Iraq, either
under the current mission or under a "changed" mission. This strategy presumes
that U.S. military operations are essential to a political solution. Under this approach,
conditions on the ground will determine the departure of American personnel.
Or we can choose to remove troops from Iraq and
bring them home or redeploy them elsewhere. This strategy presumes that U.S. military
operations can no longer determine the fundamental dynamics on the ground in Iraq. Under
this approach, the departure of U.S. forces would not depend on conditions on the ground.
Advocates of the "Stay-in-Iraq"
approach argue that withdrawing U.S. troops is more dangerous than keeping them in the
middle of the Iraqi civil war. This is the argument made by President Bush and his
supporters.
Advocates for leaving Iraq believe that failing
to withdraw troops will, in the long run, be even more dangerous for us than keeping them
there. This is what I believe, along with many other Democrats in Congress and some
Republicans, including Senator Olympia Snowe.
The central premise of the president’s Iraq
policy since 2004 has been that a reduction in violence would lead to political
reconciliation. His surge strategy was designed for American Armed Forces to provide
increased security to give the Iraqi political leaders what President Bush in January
called "breathing space" to promote reconciliation. In his House testimony on
Monday, General Petraeus asserted that the surge has reduced violence in Baghdad, although
other reports and experts dispute those conclusions. By the Administration’s own
criteria, the surge has not worked. It has not led to political reconciliation.
During my visit to Iraq, the deputy prime
minister, Dr. Barham Salih, told me that "we will not resolve our political
differences by this September or even next September." I found a remarkable lack of
political progress by the Iraqi government, despite the urgent demands of the U.S.
government. But don’t just take my word for it.
In July, the president’s nominee to be the
next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, testified that
"there does not appear to be much political progress."
Last month’s National Intelligence Estimate
on Iraq found that "Iraq’s sectarian groups remain unreconciled" and that
there is "widespread Sunni unwillingness to accept a diminished political
status."
The new report on Iraqi security forces by a
panel headed by former Marine Commandant Gen. James Jones found that the national police
force is so rife with corruption and infiltrated by militia forces that it should be
disbanded. Gen. Jones acknowledged that the grim political situation was hampering
military efforts.
The seriousness of the current Iraqi leadership
is also in question. My colleague, Rep. Jim Moran from Virginia, reported that during a
meeting last month in Baghdad with Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffak
al-Rubaie, his congressional delegation had difficulty keeping Rubaie’s attention
because he was distracted by a children’s cartoon on a television. When Congressman
Moran asked him to turn it off, Rubaie responded, "But this is my favorite television
show."
General Petraeus told Congress that he could not
project whether there would be any troop reductions after next summer and promised to
report back to Congress in six months. But General Petraeus gave no rationale for why the
administration’s strategy will work in the future.
I doubt it ever will, because the current U.S.
force is too small to control the violence throughout the whole country, and sectarian
loyalties divide the Iraqi security forces, rendering their loyalty to the government
questionable. In fact, the Jones report called for disbanding of the Iraqi national police
because it had become so infiltrated by Shi’ite militias.
The administration’s strategy is a
kick-the-can-down-the-road policy, designed to hand the problem of having some 130,000
troops in Iraq to President Bush’s successor.
Because of the mismanagement and poor judgment of
administration policy makers and their supporters in Washington, we are no longer able to
influence events within Iraq in a positive direction. At best, our influence operates on
the margin of changes in the country. By following the Stay-in-Iraq strategy, we will
still have 130,000 American troops a year from now. This is unacceptable and is not in our
national security interest. I believe it is more dangerous to keep U.S. troops in Iraq
than to withdraw troops from Iraq and redeploy them to fight the real threat of terrorism.
Drawing down our forces in Iraq will probably be
accompanied by increased violence, at least for some time. But our choices today are not
good, better, best. They all are problematic, including staying the course indefinitely.
The central question that General Petraeus and
Ambassador Crocker tried to answer was, "is the surge working?" I believe this
is the wrong question.
I believe the more relevant question is, "is
a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq in the national security interest of the United
States?" We need a dramatic change not just in our Iraq policy, but an entirely new,
strategic approach in the Middle East.
The repeated deployments in Iraq have strained
the U.S. military. We need to reset our armed forces to have them rested and ready for
future threats. Instead of refereeing a civil war in Iraq, our troops should be
concentrating on the real threat to our nation’s security by rooting out and
eliminating militant Islamic terrorism.
We need a regional security policy under a
multinational process that involves Iraq and all of its neighbors: Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Jordan, Israel, and yes, even Iran and Syria. It should include a multilateral conference
on political reconciliation, much like the one for the Bosnian peace accords, and a plan
to solicit donations from Iraq’s oil-rich neighbors to help with Iraq’s
reconstruction. But our preoccupation with Iraq has limited our attention and compromised
our position as an honest broker of a lasting peace.
And then there is Al Qaeda, which the
intelligence community recently found has become resurgent in its home base in the
Afghan-Pakistan border region. Osama bin Laden’s reemergence this week reminds us
that six years after 9/11 he remains free and able to recruit new terrorists by building
on the resentment of our involvement in Iraq. These initiatives will be compromised as
long as we have U.S. forces bogged down in Iraq.
Just as our presence has created a culture of
dependency on the part of the stalemated Iraqi government, it has also created stagnation
within the region, by providing an excuse for Iraq’s neighbors not to take
responsibility for regional security. As long as we remain in Iraq, they know stability is
our problem. Once we announce we are leaving, we gain diplomatic leverage with countries
that have a self-interest in stability within Iraq. Congress must lead the way out of
Iraq.
No amount of recommendations by blue ribbon
panels, cajoling by elder statesmen, or nonbinding statements from Congress will move this
intransigent president from his position. We simply can’t trust that he will do the
right thing, when he is committed to policies that have proven to be disastrous for the
nation. The only realistic way to overcome the president’s resistance is for Congress
to set a firm, binding deadline to get U.S. troops out of Iraq. Nothing but the force of
law will compel the president to comply.
I have voted repeatedly for a binding timeline to
end U.S. military involvement in Iraq, and I will continue to fight for this until we
succeed. Real deadlines work.
As you know, I am now a candidate for the U.S.
Senate. Susan Collins and I have served together in Congress for nearly 11 years. She and
I both grew up here in Maine, we both deeply love our state and our nation, and we both
work hard on behalf of our constituents here in Maine. But elections are about choices and
choices have consequences. Susan and I have faced the same choices on the Iraq War. She
has voted consistently to support the president’s policies. I have voted consistently
to change the president’s policies. She now advocates a plan to "change the
mission" for fighting the war that could keep 100,000 Americans in Iraq indefinitely.
I opposed this war from the outset. I voted
against it in 2002 and predicted, correctly as it turns out, that it would create more
resentment and hatred of America in the Islamic world and make us less, not more secure.
For two years, I have advocated for a deadline to end the war and put the Iraqis on notice
that they must resolve their differences and take charge of their own security because we
are leaving.
The young service men and women from Maine I met
at Combat Outpost X-Ray in Iraq, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and other locations in
both countries make us all proud. They are talented, dedicated, and show more courage than
I can possibly convey. They have done everything they’ve been asked to do, and it has
been a job well done. They were sent to Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein, and they did it
swiftly and decisively.
Because of bad judgment, inept management, and
disastrous decisions by the president and past Congresses, our troops are now caught in
the middle of a sectarian conflict with no end in sight. The people of Maine and America
don’t want another compromise on how to fight the war. They want leadership to end
it. They want leadership to plot a new course in Iraq and throughout the region as the
best chance to bring some stability to that war-torn area. And they want leadership to
redirect our attention to real threat to our national security, militant Islamic
terrorism.
The war in Iraq poisons every aspect of our
foreign policy and undermines our important domestic priorities. We can wait no longer for
success from a policy that the president conceived erroneously, conducted ineptly, and
stubbornly refuses to change. We must change direction to protect the future safety and
prosperity of the American people.
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