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Stop Playing Politics, Get the Troops Out Now
The Republicans Have Done a Heinous Thing
By Rep. CYNTHIA McKINNEY
[The following is the text of Rep. McKinney's floor remarks on the
November 18 debate over the "Murtha" withdrawal resolution.]
11/19/05 -- --
The Republicans in this House have done a heinous thing: they have
insulted one of the deans of this House in an unthinkable and
unconscionable way.
They took his words and contorted them; they took his heartfelt
sentiments and spun them. They took his resolution and deformed it:
in a cheap effort to silence dissent in the House of
Representatives.
The Republicans should be roundly criticized for this reprehensible
act. They have perpetrated a fraud on the House of Representatives
just as they have defrauded the American people.
By twisting the issue around, the Republicans are trying to set a
trap for the Democrats. A "no" vote for this Resolution will obscure
the fact that there is strong support for withdrawal of US forces
from Iraq. I am voting "yes" on this Resolution for an orderly
withdrawal of US forces from Iraq despite the convoluted motives
behind the Republican Resolution. I am voting to support our troops
by bringing them home now in an orderly withdrawal.
Sadly, if we call for an end to the occupation, some say that we
have no love for the Iraqi people, that we would abandon them to
tyrants and thugs.
Let us consider some history. The Republicans make great hay about
Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against the Iranians and
the Kurds. But when that attack was made in 1988, it was Democrats
who moved a resolution to condemn those attacks, and the Reagan
White House quashed the bill in the Senate, because at that time the
Republicans considered Saddam one of our own.
So in 1988, who abandoned the Iraqi people to tyrants and a thugs?
In voting for this bill, let me be perfectly clear that I am not
saying the United States should exit Iraq without a plan. I agree
with Mr. Murtha that security and stability in Iraq should be
pursued through diplomacy. I simply want to vote yes to an orderly
withdrawal from Iraq. And let me explain why.
Prior to its invasion, Iraq had not one (not one!) instance of
suicide attacks in its history. Research shows a 100% correlation
between suicide attacks and the presence of foreign combat troops in
a host country. And experience also shows that suicide attacks abate
when foreign occupation troops are withdrawn. The US invasion and
occupation has destabilized Iraq and Iraq will only return to
stability once this occupation ends.
We must be willing to face the fact that the presence of US combat
troops is itself a major inspiration to the forces attacking our
troops. Moreover, we must be willing to acknowledge that the forces
attacking our troops are able to recruit suicide attackers because
suicide attacks are largely motivated by revenge for the loss of
loved ones. And Iraqis have lost so many loved ones as a result of
America's two wars against Iraq.
In 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said on CBS that the
lives of 500,000 children dead from sanctions were "worth the price"
of containing Saddam Hussein. When pressed to defend this
reprehensible position she went on to explain that she did not want
US Troops to have to fight the Gulf War again. Nor did I. But what
happened? We fought a second gulf war. And now over 2,000 American
soldiers lie dead. And I expect the voices of concern for Iraqi
civilian casualties, whose deaths the Pentagon likes to brush aside
as "collateral damage" are too few, indeed. A report from Johns
Hopkins suggests that over 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq since
the March 2003 invasion, most of them violent deaths and most as
"collateral damage" from US forces. The accuracy of the 100,000 can
and should be debated. Yet our media, while quick to cover attacks
on civilians by insurgent forces in Iraq, have given us a blackout
on Iraqi civilian deaths at the hands of US combat forces.
Yet let us remember that the United States and its allies imposed a
severe policy of sanctions on the people of Iraq from 1990 to 2003.
UNICEF and World Health Organization studies based on infant
mortality studies showed a 500,000 increase in mortality of Iraqi
children under 5 over trends that existed before sanctions. From
this, it was widely assumed that over 1 million Iraqi deaths for all
age groups could be attributed to sanctions between 1990 and 1998.
And not only were there 5 more years of sanctions before the
invasion, but the war since the invasion caused most aid groups to
leave Iraq. So for areas not touched by reconstruction efforts, the
humanitarian situation has deteriorated further. How many more Iraqi
lives have been lost through hunger and deprivation since the
occupation?
And what kind of an occupier have we been? We have all seen the
photos of victims of US torture in Abu Ghraib prison. That's where
Saddam used to send his political enemies to be tortured, and now
many Iraqis quietly, cautiously ask: "So what has changed?"
A recent video documentary confirms that US forces used white
phosphorous against civilian neighborhoods in the US attack on
Fallujah. Civilians and insurgents were burned alive by these
weapons. We also now know that US forces have used MK77, a
napalm-like incendiary weapon, even though napalm has been outlawed
by the United Nations.
With the images of tortured detainees, and the images of Iraqi
civilians burned alive by US incendiary weapons now circulating the
globe, our reputation on the world stage has been severely damaged.
If America wants to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, we
as a people must be willing to face the pain and death and suffering
we have brought to the Iraqi people with bombs, sanctions and
occupation, even if we believe our actions were driven by the most
altruistic of reasons. We must acknowledge our role in enforcing the
policy of sanctions for 12 years after the extensive 1991 bombing in
which we bombed infrastructure targets in direct violation of the
Geneva Conventions.
We must also be ready to face the fact that the United States once
provided support for the tyrant we deposed in the name of liberating
the Iraqi people. These are events that our soldiers are too young
to remember. I believe our young men and women in uniform are very
sincere in their belief that their sacrifice is made in the name of
helping the Iraqi people. But it is not they who set the policy.
They take orders from the Commander-in-Chief and the Congress. It is
we who bear the responsibility of weighing our decisions in a
historical context, and it is we who must consider the gravest
decision of whether or not to go to war based upon the history, the
facts, and the truth.
Sadly, however, our country is at war in Iraq based on a lie told to
the American people. The entire war was based premised on a sales
pitch-that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction menacing the United
States-that turned out to be a lie.
I have too many dead soldiers in my district; too many from my home
state. Too many homeless veterans on our streets and in our
neighborhoods.
America has sacrificed too many young soldiers' lives, too many
young soldiers' mangled bodies, to the Bush war machine.
I will not vote to give one more soldier to the George W. Bush/Dick
Cheney war machine. I will not give one more dollar for a war
riddled with conspicuous profiteering.
Tonight I speak as one who has at times been the only Member of this
Body at antiwar demonstrations calling for withdrawal. And I won't
stop calling for withdrawal.
I was opposed to this war before there was a war; I was opposed to
the war during the war; and I am opposed to this war now--even
though it's supposed to be over.
A vote on war is the single most important vote we can make in this
House. I understand the feelings of my colleagues on both sides of
the aisle who might be severely conflicted by the decision we have
to make here tonight. But the facts of US occupation of Iraq are
also very clear. The occupation is headed down a dead end because so
long as US combat forces patrol Iraq, there will be an Iraqi
insurgency against it
I urge that we pursue an orderly withdrawal from Iraq and pursue,
along with our allies, a diplomatic solution to the situation in
Iraq, supporting the aspirations of the Iraqi people through support
for democratic processes.
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