WASHINGTON, DC- U.S. Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) today spoke on the Senate floor about the war in Iraq and how U.S. efforts there have exacted a direct cost on the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates in Afghanistan.
Full text of his remarks are below:
Mr. President, I rise today to convey my concerns, shared by so many of my constituents, on the war in Iraq and how our efforts there have exacted a direct cost on the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates in Afghanistan.
The bills introduced today by Senator Feingold and Majority Leader Reid have prompted an important debate on our national security. It is our duty as elected officials to level with the American people on the war in Iraq – both on the reality of the situation on the ground and in the context of our nation’s broader strategic priorities. We must speak truth to the anxiety of the American people on what we are doing to make this country more secure.
Our nation recently marked the one year anniversary of the President’s decision to initiate a troop escalation into Iraq; we are quickly coming up on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. As President Bush said in January 2007 when announcing the goals of his troop escalation, “Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas.” Judged by those standards, enunciated by the President himself, the surge has not worked. While we all welcome a reduction in violence, that metric was never the be-all and end-all in determining whether or not the surge worked.
On Monday, the Pentagon said it expected 140,000 U.S. troops would remain in Iraq this July — 8,000 more than when the President’s troop buildup began in January 2007.
These extended troop deployments have imposed a significant toll on a U.S. military already stretched dangerously thin by this war. We have provided Iraqis with some “breathing space” and violence in many parts of Iraq is down. That fact is a tribute to the fine men and women of our Armed Services and to their skill as the finest professional fighting force in history. Yet, Iraq is still not a secure nation because progress on the essential task of political reconciliation has not been achieved by the Iraqis themselves. General Petreaus himself has been clear on this point: the war in Iraq can only be won politically, not militarily.
Although the Bush administration immediately praised the three reform measures recently passed by the Iraqi Parliament, the package served only to postpone crucial discussions on the future of the country and underscored the fractured state of the Iraqi government. The Parliament approved the 2008 budget, passed a provincial powers law defining division of responsibility between the central government in Baghdad and regional authorities, and issued an amnesty bill that may free thousands of prisoners from the disaffected Sunni community. But the potential details and implementation of the laws, especially on the amnesty bill, remain a critical question mark.
What the Iraqi leadership failed to achieve, and the decisions the Parliament chose to kick down the road, is perhaps more notable than their short-term successes. The government has yet to tackle the most divisive issue in Iraq: who controls the country’s oil and how to distribute the proceeds. To take the most egregious example, the Kurdistan Regional Government in the north passed its own oil law last August, signing dozens of contracts with international oil firms, which the central government in Baghdad deems illegal. The Iraqis have devised a de facto approach for splitting oil proceeds in the short term, but that arrangement is vulnerable to breakdown at any time.
Legislative accomplishments by the Iraqi Parliament are welcome, but can be deceiving. So long as the very Parliamentarians who passed these recent bills cannot leave the Green Zone without fear of assassination attempts or suicide bombings, Iraq remains an unsecure nation.
Just as Iraqi progress on internal reconciliation is sorely lacking, I am also distressed by our own short-term strategy of pacifying local actors in Iraq to improve security while ignoring the underlying political and sectarian fault-line in Iraq. In short, this approach is not sustainable and is undermining our overarching objective of national reconciliation. At the same time we speak of bridging the sectarian divides, the U.S. “awakening strategy” in western and central Iraq is arming Sunni tribal leaders and integrating former insurgents into the rough equivalent of militias – all in a process separate from and parallel to the national armed forces of Iraq.
As an article in Time recently noted, a number of these “Concerned Local Citizens” militias, organized and supported by the U.S. military, are now turning on each other in a contest for influence and territory. The Shia-led central government views these armed militias as undermining its central authority and has balked at integrating large numbers of Sunnis into the national Iraqi Security Forces. So we must ask ourselves whether the U.S. government, in service of a short-term objective of suppressing violence in Iraq, is only paving the road for a large scale future conflict by arming sectarian groups separate from the national army and police.
Mr. President, let me relate a short, but telling, anecdote. Iranian President Ahmadinejad will make a visit to Baghdad next week for talks with Prime Minister al-Maliki and other officials. This visit has already been announced, with details of his itinerary available to the press and the public. By sharp contrast, when President Bush, Secretary Rice, or Secretary Gates visits Iraq, they travel to Baghdad unannounced and rarely leave the fortified walls of the Green Zone. When Senator Durbin and I visited Iraq last August, we flew from the airport to the Green Zone in low flying, fast moving helicopters practicing evasive maneuvers. Why can the Iranian President drive in an open manner into Baghdad while U.S. leaders must sneak into the country under the cloak of darkness? Five years into our occupation of Iraq, what does this say about our role in Iraq and the security of this nation?
As Iraq continues to dominate the attention and resources of our government, it clouds and confuses our long-term U.S. strategic priorities. I remain troubled that a Declaration of Principles, signed on November 26, 2007 by President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki, commits our nation to ‘Providing security assurances and commitments to the Republic of Iraq to deter foreign aggression against Iraq that violates its sovereignty and integrity of its territories, waters, or airspace.’ Although Secretary Rice assured me during a recent Senate Foreign Relations hearing that no such commitments will be extended to Iraq, I remain deeply skeptical. In concert with my colleagues, I will continue to exercise vigorous oversight to ensure that President Bush does not lock the U.S. into a binding and long-term security commitment to Iraq.
It is time to turn the page and refocus our energies and efforts on the “forgotten war” in Afghanistan. Our myopic focus on Iraq has distracted from, and undermined, the central front in the war on terrorism. Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently testified before Congress: “In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.” With all due respect to Admiral Mullen, he has it wrong. We should do what we must in both places.
Six years ago, America was fighting and winning the war in Afghanistan, and al Qaeda and the Taliban were on the run. But instead of staying and accomplishing our mission in Afghanistan – by hunting down those who planned the 9/11 attacks -- this Administration diverted our attention to Iraq. Today, the Taliban has returned with a vengeance and controls more territory than at any time since its ouster in 2001. Afghanistan is on the brink of becoming yet again a failed state and thus a safe haven for al Qaeda to launch deadly attacks – including against the American homeland.
Three recent bipartisan reports on Afghanistan concluded that the situation on the ground is dire. One report, co-authored by retired General Jim Jones and Ambassador Thomas Pickering, puts it bluntly:
“The progress achieved after six years of international engagement is under serious threat from resurgent violence, weakening international resolve, mounting regional challenges and a growing lack of confidence on the part of the Afghan people about the future direction of their country. The United States and the international community have tried to win the struggle in Afghanistan with too few military forces and insufficient economic aid, and without a clear and consistent comprehensive strategy"
When the Secretary of Defense is forced to go public with his criticism of the refusal of our NATO allies to deploy more forces in Afghanistan and his skepticism of their ability to conduct counterinsurgency operations, we must admit that the situation on the ground is getting worse, not better. Military officials expect the coming year to be even more deadly, as the Taliban controls more territory and deploys greater numbers of suicide bombers and roadside explosives. U.S. forces remain largely isolated in Afghanistan, with key NATO allies refusing to provide ground troops or imposing onerous restrictions on where and how they can fight. The end result is that the very future of NATO, the most successful alliance in modern history, is now in grave danger.
In a welcome display of straight talk, Secretary Gates admitted that the reason large segments of the European public do not support NATO operations in Afghanistan is due to their antipathy toward U.S. policy in Iraq. Secretary Gates recently asserted in Munich that “Many of them, I think, have a problem with our involvement in Iraq and project that to Afghanistan, and do not understand the very different — for them — the very different kind of threat.”
Mr. President, the war in Iraq has strained our military, limiting the number of combat divisions we can provide in Afghanistan. It has undermined our global leadership, depriving us of the moral authority to demand more of our allies. It has diverted the attention of our senior military and civilian leadership, allowing the Taliban to mount a comeback under our very eyes. We are losing a war we cannot afford to lose – in a futile and misguided effort to force success in another conflict that can only be won politically, not militarily. Our priorities are tragically mistaken – and our nation is paying a severe cost.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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