Linguistic pieces that stand out here: Sen. Dodd quotes Churchill on "fool's paradise;" the term "supplicant" (as in U.S. not wanting to appear to be one) appears in Secretary Rice's remarks.
[Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut)]
Thank you Mr. Chairman, and thank you Madame Secretary. Let me thank you as well, we have had some conversations over the last couple of weeks prior to the trip that Sen. Kerry and I took to the region and then on the return as well. I thank you for that, and I thank you for being here this morning. And again I thank the chairman for holding the series of hearings we are going to have on this subject matter that offer, I hope, an opportunity for us to not only listen to you, as we did the President last evening, but also an opportunity for you to hear from us as well.
I think it's important that there be a conversation here as we try to sort out this policy and begin to make sense of it. It's not about Democrats and Republicans, it's about getting this right. And I couldn't agree more with Sen. Biden, I don't know of another foreign policy crisis that's been as compelling as this one. Over the past 32 years as a member of the house, and as a member of this body, and a member of this committee for a quarter of a century, I've never been to a region where it's felt it was more in crisis that it is today, and at greater risk. I'd like to share just some opening thoughts and comments and then get to a quick question.
On the eve of the Second World War, the twentieth century's most daunting and difficult struggle, Winston Churchill explained in the following words a compelling thought. He said,
Madame Secretary, I'm sorry to say today, and I think many hold this view, that a fools paradise describes nothing as aptly as our Iraq policy today. I think most Americans know it painfully; the Iraqi people, of course, know this in compelling numbers. If the president did grasp, I think, the sad extent of that failure, I sincerely doubt he would have ordered yet more troops into Iraq. The President's plan simply strikes me as a continuation of Operation Together Forward which has been described already, which far from improving Iraq's security climate produced the unintended consequences of heightened sectarian violence.
I fail to see, and I think many others share this view, that the outcome will be different this time. And that is a true disservice to the American troops, which have shown nothing other than professionalism and courage, and they should not be asked to risk their lives for an unsound strategy, and an unsound and unsure purpose.
The Baker-Hamilton report should have disabused us of the notion that, caught in the midst of sectarian, ethnic, and religious political hatreds, we can simply bludgeon our way to victory. As many have been saying for some time now, only political and diplomatic possibilities hold out any real hope of reversing this spiral into chaos.
The time for blunt force I think is long past, and many hold that view. Instead, we ought to withdraw, I think, our combat troops from these large urban area of sectarian conflict, where they simply are cannon fodder. There are twenty three militias operating in Baghdad alone. It's hard to identify exactly who is the enemy here. We have Shi'ias and Sunnis, you have Ba'athists, you have insurgents, some al-Qaeda elements. Here, asking our military people to sort out who the enemy is in all of this is extremely difficult, to put it mildly.
Instead, we ought to be focusing our attention on training reliable Iraqi security forces, providing some security at the border areas, and as several of our junior officers that I talked with in Baghdad suggested, providing the kind of security around some of these critical infrastructure areas that provide the kind of water, sewage, electrical grids, that is so critical to people having some sense of opportunity, or hope for the future.
If the only solution to Iraq is a political one, then diplomacy happens to be the weapon that we have left and must use. The President's solution to all of this is to ignore the most important recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, namely, robust diplomacy, and instead must settle instead on an escalation of our current combat strategy. This is a tactic in search of a strategy in my view, and will not bring us a more stable Iraq.
The American people have spent 14 billion dollars training and equipping three hundred thousand Iraqi police and security forces. As I've said a moment ago, 23 separate sectarian militias operate with impunity throughout Baghdad alone. Sectarian killings continue, largely unabated, averaging scores of deaths every day, thousands a month.
This is not random violence. This is targeted civil war, complete with ethnic cleansing. Those of us who have been to Iraq recently have seen it with our own eyes, heard it with our own ears.
Beyond that, the President's own intelligence experts have told us that the Islamic world is growing more radical, and that the terrorist threat is greater today than it was in nine-eleven. Not despite, but because of the continuing war in Iraq. Their conclusion: it has become the physical and ideological training ground for the next generation of extremists.
The wider region has been further plunged into violence, we know: Hezbollah has crippled the Lebanese government, civil war in the Palestinian territories now seems more likely than ever, Syria and Iran are more powerful and emboldened than they have been in recent memory. We are farther away from stabilizing Afghanistan, as drug traffickers and tribals warfare now threaten to destroy its nascent democracy, and the Taliban is growing stronger by the hour.
And perhaps most troubling of all is our standing in the world. According to the Pew Center for Global Opinion, most people in Great Britain, France, Spain, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, India and China think that the war in Iraq is a greater danger to world peace than either Iran or North Korea. Stunning as those numbers are, the President says we are in a war of ideas. But how can we possibly win that kind of a war, between democracy and extremism, when so much of the world considers us to be the threat? It's deeply troubling to me, as I hope it is to you as well.
How weakened is our standing in the world and our support from foreign peoples? How may tools have we thrown away, and how safe are we now?
Senator Lugar raised an important question in his opening comments that I would like you to address if you can. And that is, none of us are suggesting at this table that we engage Iran or Syriaas if they were an ally, or a friend. We are talking about conferences where we give them a status that they do not deserve.
But it's awfully difficult to understand, Madame Secretary, why we would not try to engage very directly with people here whocould play a critical role in providing some stability. We heard in Syria the president say that he is interested in a secular Arab state operating on his border. He does not want a Shi'ia dominated fundamentalist state on his border. That was just a comment to us in the room with embassy personnel present.
It seems to me it's worth examining and exploring those areas where we can have a common ground here rather than just neglecting or ignoring that kind of an offer if we are going to bring stability to the region.
I wish you'd once again address again, the issue raised by Senator Lugar in the context in which he raised it. Not diplomacy as a favor or a gift, or some acknowledgement that we agree with these people, but rather the necessity for the United States to lead in a region where we have not been able to do so.
[Secretary Rice]
Thank you Senator, let me address the question first Iran and Syria. And they are different. And I think we need to separate the two. First of all, on Syria. We did engage. For quite a long time. Colin Powell engaged. Rich Armitage engaged. Bill Burns engaged. And in fact, we got nowhere. And indeed I would argue that the situation from our point ofview is worst today, in terms of the terms on which we would be engaging, than it was at that time.
The terms on which we would be engaging now, and on which we are being asked to engage, is that we go to the Syrians and say, help us to stabilize Iraq, or, lets join in our common interest to stabilize Iraq. That's what we would say to them.
The problem of course, is that if they have an interest in stabilizing Iraq, I assume that they will do it on the basis of their national interest, and that they will do it because it is in their national interest. To do anything more with them is to suggest that a trade-off is possible. You help us stabilize in Iraq, and perhaps we will overlook some of your activities in Lebanon. You help us stabilize in Iraq, perhaps we can do something to shave some of the teeth from the tribunal.
I think it's extremely important to note that we have talked to the Syrians, we've generally gotten nowhere, and now we would be going in a way that I would fear looks like a supplicant.
[Sen. Chris Dodd]
Can I just ask you, Madame Secretary, is that speculation on your part...
[Secretary Rice]
No...
[Sen. Chris Dodd]
... or has that been the reaction you have heard?
[Secretary Rice]
Well I would also just note that an awful lot of people have engaged the Syrians recently to no good effect. The Italians, the Germans, the British, all engaged them.
[Sen. Chris Dodd]
How about us?
[Secretary Rice]
Senator Dodd, if I really thought that the Syrians didn't know how to help stabilize Iraq and we needed to tell them, then perhaps that would be worth doing. They know how to stabilize Iraq, they just need to stop allowing terrorists to cross their borders.
[Sen. Chris Dodd]
Thank you. [time has run out].
[Secretary Rice]
Shall I go to Iran? Because I do think they are different. When it comes to Iran... First of all there is a twenty-seven year history of not engaging Iran, so this would be a major shift in policy. Of course we did talk to them about Afghanistan, when that made sense.
But what we are looking at, again, is an Iran that is engaging activities to try to kill our troops. They know how to stop that. They know how to stop it tomorrow. They know how to stop destabilizing the young Iraqi government. And I assume that if they believe it's in their interest, they would do so.
But I just don't believe for a moment that the conversation with the Iranians is going to in the following way, "help us stabilize Iraq," and they don't want to talk about a price on their nuclear program.
We are, I think, dealing with Iran in the proper fashion. Which is to insist with the rest of the international community, that any negotiations with Iran are going to be on the basis of suspension of their nuclear program. We are reaching out to the Iranian people. We just had a group of Iranian medical doctors here. In exchange we will have some American sports teams go there.
We are making it difficult for Iran to continue its policies of terrorism and WMD pursuit, because we are sanctioning, and designating their banks that are engaged in those activities. And it is having an effect, on whether people are willing to invest in Iran, whether they are willing to take the reputational [sic] risk of handling Iranian assets. That's why banks are leaving Iran, that's why they are having trouble finding a way to support their investment in their oil and gas industry. We do have a pretty comprehensive way of dealing with Iran.
I have made the offer. If they are prepared to suspend their enrichment capability, I'm there. With their people at any time they would like, in any place they would like. But I think that that's the proper context.
And finally, we do have the opportunity, within the International Compact,
to have Iran and Syria play a positive role in Iraq if they wish to do it. They have been at those meetings of the International Compact and they should play a positive role. And so I don't think there is an absence of diplomacy, an absence of policy toward Iran and Syria. It's just that direct negotiations on this matter put us in the role of supplicant, and I think that's a problem.
[Chairman]
Thank you.
[During the Dr. Rice's concluding remarks, a male demonstrator who has held up a small cloth sign is addressed, and shortley after, during Sen. Hagel's statement, is removed, shouting while being dragged up the aisle. The time clock is reset.]
