Iraq, History and the Members of the United States Congress
Excerpts from the debate in both the Senate and the House last week on the Iraq War.
Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)
Mr. President, I don't have a dog in this fight, you might say, but I have been listening to this debate, and I wonder about history. I wonder about the amendment of the Senator from Florida. I remember reading so clearly that after the War Between the States, the North lined up those from the South and took their guns and let some of them take them home. I remember so well that after World War II, we went through a process of trying to urge the governments involved in the access to obtain a pledge from the former members of the military that they would support the new democracy. That was amnesty. In Japan, we certainly had a period under General MacArthur which was probably the greatest period of amnesty that has ever been known. We helped that country immediately to form a democracy and we never prosecuted the people who killed Americans…
I believe we ought to try to find some way to encourage that country, to demonstrate to those people who have been opposed to what we are trying to do, that it is worthwhile for them and their children to come forward and support this democracy. And if that is amnesty, I am for it, I would be for it.
And if those people who come forward and want to obtain a better life for their families in the future are willing to support that democracy--if they bear arms against our people, what is the difference between those people who bore arms against the Union in the War Between the States? What is the difference between the Germans and the Japanese and all the people we have forgiven? When I left the war and came home, I had a deep hatred for the Japanese. Today, Mr. President, I have a granddaughter who is Japanese. I have a daughter-in-law who is Japanese. And her parents were involved in World War II. Now, are we to understand that time can heal, heal the pain of the past?
Congressman Bill Schuster (R-Pennsylvania)
Mr. Speaker, there are many members of the minority that have forgotten an important lesson of history, and that is you cannot appease tyrants and evil. We need to remember the 1930s, the voice of Winston Churchill that said we must confront Hitler and the Nazis as they began to build up the German military machine. Well, we waited and we waited until they invaded their neighbors. And it was the blood and lives of hundreds of thousands of Europeans and Americans that defeated that evil. In the 1960s and the 1970s, we failed to confront the growing Soviet threat. We waited and we waited until Ronald Reagan inspired this Nation to have the will to stand up to the Soviets and engage them in an arms buildup that cost Americans billions of dollars, but bankrupted the Soviets, and we defeated that evil. In the 1990s the terrorists attacked us over and over again. We failed to respond, as President Clinton dismantled our intelligence capabilities. Appeasement does not work. History shows us that over and over again.
Congressman Rob Bishop (R-Utah)
When a foreign country violates its treaty with us and shoots at our servicemen, that is a legal justification for our actions. In fact, it is odd enough that we probably have a greater legal justification for this war than any other conflict with which this country has been involved in the last 50 years. In Korea, we went in after one U.N. resolution, not 17. In Vietnam, we made it a national priority because of a treaty we had, not with Vietnam but with an ally, France. We bombed Serbia and went into Bosnia, not because of a legal pretext or compelling national interest, but because our European allies asked us to assist them with their particular issue. The quarantine during the Cuban missile crisis was an aggressive act of war that was condemned by the U.N. Secretary General and protested in dozens of cities throughout the world, but was, in my mind, not a legal act but a right act of President Kennedy. In Iraq, what we are doing is both legal and it is right.
Every war we have had has been littered with protests. Historians tell us in the Revolutionary War a third of Americans were opposed to it and a third were indifferent. The War of 1812, Mr. McGovern's State tried to secede from the Union. In the Civil War, we had the greatest riots proportionately we have ever had in this country, and the Governor of New York inflammatorily said President Lincoln's goal was to kill all of the Irish. In the Spanish American War, the Speaker of the House postwar resigned in protest. In World War I, the Secretary of State prewar resigned in protest. Only World War II has been atypical in those concepts of what we had. As a history teacher, I see mass amounts of parallels with what we are doing now and what has happened in history. I don't have the time to go into any of those.
Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois)
Mr. President, after wars are completed, history stands in judgment of the leaders, not just whether there was a victory or defeat in the war but whether the war was conducted properly. Almost without fail, history has been a brutal, sometimes difficult judge of the conduct of war. Caught up in concern about protection and security, nations do things which don't stand the test of time and reflection.
The man I think was our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, in the course of the Civil War suspended the writ of habeas corpus. By suspending that writ, he held prisoners without charges and without due process for long periods of time. It was controversial. Later on, it was judged that perhaps President Lincoln had gone too far. In the midst of the First World War, with our concern over espionage, Congress enacted the Sedition Act which unfortunately tarred and condemned innocent Americans, and later on we came to realize that. In World War II, the most notorious conduct by our own Government was against our fellow citizens of Japanese ancestry who were interred in camps, innocent people. I know some of them. I have grown up with some of them. I know they carry scars from that incarceration.
Throughout our history, as we reflect, we find there are things we should not have done in the course of a war.