Madame Speaker: When President Bush announced in January that he intended to escalate the number of American troops in Iraq, he sought to portray the increase in American combat forces as a necessary precondition for Iraq’s government to make the political compromises necessary to prevent Iraq’s civil war from spiraling completely out of control.
In that speech, the President pledged to hold the Iraqi leadership accountable and to demand progress in two main areas: political reconciliation and security.
Now, more than six months later, it is unfortunate, but also undeniable that little sustainable progress has been made on either front. Even as we speak, the Administration is downplaying the significance of an interim report on the effect of the "surge" in Iraq.
On reconciliation, the Iraqi government has failed to meet any of the political benchmarks endorsed by the President in January and which this Congress mandated earlier this spring. These political goals are the best indicator of the prospects for reconciliation in Iraq and, tragically, all signs indicate that political reconciliation has been non-existent.
The Iraqi Parliament has yet to begin consideration of the oil law or an associated revenue-sharing law. Given the disparate geographical distribution of Iraq’s oil reserves, these laws are essential if Iraq is to have any hope of remaining a united country.
More alarming, is the lack of progress in healing the Sunni – Shiite rift. Of greatest importance is the need to reverse some of the more draconian edicts of the postwar de-Baathification orders promulgated by former Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul Bremer. These decrees removed any incentive for Sunnis to participate in creating a better future for Iraq. Other laws - to disarm militias and to grant amnesty - are still being formulated, and most observers believe that the prospect of disarming militias is so remote that it will not be possible in the foreseeable future.
On the security front, the heroism and sacrifice of American force have caused a decline in sectarian killings and suicide bombings, leading to an overall drop in the number of Iraqi civilian deaths. But the reduction of Iraqi casualties has come with a horrific increase in the loss of our own troops – more than 600 Americans have been killed since January.
Moreover, as American troops leave cities they have quieted with their own blood, there is every indication that Iraqi troops will not be able to sustain the calm. If the past is any indicator, insurgents and militias are merely waiting for us to exhaust ourselves and move on before returning -- and Iraqi security forces will be powerless to stop them.
There has been one very positive development -- in al Anbar province, Sunni tribal leaders have decided that al Qaeda's indiscriminate killing makes them a bigger problem than we are, and they have taken up arms against our common foe. This alliance of American forces and former insurgents is desirable and should be encouraged elsewhere. But, like most marriages of convenience, it is not sustainable and cannot form the bedrock of a secure Iraq or reconciliation among Iraqi sects.
For almost two years, I have been calling for a change in our mission in Iraq -- from policing a civil war to training, containment and counter-terrorism. This necessitates a responsible redeployment of our combat forces from Iraq, and I believe that this bill does an excellent job of providing a framework for that redeployment, while still giving our armed forces the flexibility that they need to respond to contingencies.
Iraq’s future must be decided by the Iraqi people and that solution must come from political reconciliation. Every day that we maintain our forces in the crossfire between warring sects is another opportunity for hatreds to harden and radicals to consolidate their grip on Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian communities.
We should change our mission now, and begin the withdrawal of our combat forces.
In planning for the inevitable withdrawal, we must recognize that a poorly executed departure could result in an escalation of civil war violence as Iraqi sects compete for power. As we draw down our forces, we must make every effort to prevent a magnification of this catastrophic violence. In particular, we must not compound the error of the lack of pre-invasion planning, with an equally tragic failure to adequately anticipate the post-occupation environment.
Madame Speaker, it is long past time to begin to end the war in Iraq. I support this bill and urge its passage by the House today.