Senate Floor Statement of Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA)

January 29, 2008

Mr. President, I rise today to convey the very real concerns of my constituents on our nation’s future course in Iraq. Although much of the news in Washington these days focuses on the perilous state of our economy, we cannot lose sight of the war that grinds on, without end, in Iraq. This war burdens our troops with repeated and prolonged deployments and drains our national resources. This war hampers our efforts in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan -- the real front lines in the global struggle against Islamic extremism. Traveling across Pennsylvania over the recess period, I was asked by my constituents, day after day, the following questions: What are we in the United States Congress doing about the war? When will the Iraqi government start serious discussions on national reconciliation? How will we know when we have achieved genuine success? When will the troops come home?

I was struck during my time home by the palpable sense of insecurity and uncertainty that Americans share over the war in Iraq. While the headlines have all but vanished from the front pages and television screens and the Administration continues to divert attention elsewhere, we have a fundamental obligation, as the elected representatives of the American people, to continue to focus on the war in Iraq until we change the policy and bring our troops home.

We just marked the one year anniversary of the President’s decision to initiate a troop escalation into Iraq, and we are coming up on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Last night, in his State of the Union address, the President described the surge as a dramatic and unqualified success. Make no mistake, our soldiers have executed their mission with bravery and heroism, and violence in many parts of Iraq is down. Yet, Iraq is still not a secure nation. It will not be secure until its leaders can leave the Green Zone without fear of assassination attempts or suicide bombings. It will not be secure until its own national army and police forces can stand up and protect all of Iraq’s people without regard to ethnicity or creed.

In assessing whether or not the surge in Iraq has worked, we should pay attention to the President’s words, not those uttered last night, but rather what he said a year ago. President Bush declared in January 2007, when he first announced the surge, “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, we can only conclude that the surge has not worked. The troop escalation has failed to prompt the Iraqi government to make the hard choices or meet the benchmarks laid out by this Administration. As General Petreaus told me in Baghdad last summer, the war in Iraq can only be won politically, not militarily. But on national reconciliation, oil-sharing, and the other key issues where Iraqis must forge agreement in order to allow U.S. forces to eventually withdraw without leaving behind a political vacuum, the evidence of progress is bleak and non-existent.

Although the Iraqi Parliament passed a de-Baathification measure this month, it is unclear how far the legislation will go toward addressing Sunni concerns, since serious disagreements exist on the law’s implementation. Some contend that former Baathists would still be barred from important ministries like Justice, Interior, and Defense. As has occurred too often in the past, once again the Iraqi political leadership has chosen to avoid the hard choices and instead kick the can down the road, ensuring further bloodshed and national fragmentation in the interim.

This war has now endured for a longer period than World War II and the cost has been all too high – over 3,900 dead, including 178 Pennsylvanians, and over 28,000 wounded. Our military forces have done everything we have asked of them; they have matched the bravery and success, in every way possible, of those great American warriors who preceded them in past conflicts. But our troops cannot force a foreign government to be stable; they cannot force the Iraqi National Police to put aside their deep-seated sectarianism and corruption; they cannot force Iraqi political leaders to want success as much as they do and as much as the Iraqi people deserve.

The absence of a genuine military solution is the reason why I continue to believe that a phased and responsible redeployment of our combat troops from Iraq by the end of this year. We must redeploy our troops in a manner that ensures the United States can help prevent any spread of the sectarian violence in Iraq beyond its borders. Any civil war in Iraq must not mutate into a broader regional war. I am under no illusions that this redeployment of U.S. combat forces will usher in peace and stability in Iraq. The violence there may well worsen in the short term. However, after almost five years, I see no reasonable prospect that our military forces can impose a working solution in Iraq.

Let’s take a hard look at the grim alternative. The President is showing every sign that he intends, in the waning days of his Administration, to lock the United States into a long-term strategic commitment in Iraq without any consultation with the elected representatives of the American people here in the Congress. He has signaled to the Iraqi government that the United States can maintain significant U.S. troop levels in Iraq for at least ten years, if not longer. He seeks to negotiate a long-term strategic agreement with the Iraqi government that would commit the United States to provide security assurances to the Iraqi government against external aggression, an unprecedented commitment that could embroil the United States in a future regional conflict or even an Iraqi civil war. The President’s senior aides have proposed that such an agreement would need to be ratified by the Iraqi Parliament, but can bypass the U.S. Congress. That is unacceptable, and it is why five other Members joined me in December in sending a letter to the President that the Congress must be a full and co-equal partner in extending such long-term commitments.
We now learn that the President, in signing the Department of Defense authorization bill into law yesterday, has once again taken the opportunity to issue another infamous signing statement, imposing his own interpretation of a law over the clear intent of the United States Congress. Let’s not forget that this important legislation has been needlessly delayed for weeks because the President wanted to defer to concerns of the Iraqi government over compensation for U.S. victims of Saddam Hussein’s acts of terrorism. Let me repeat that: a critical pay raise for our troops was delayed because a foreign government raised concerns with the White House.

In signing the DOD authorization bill into law, the President declared his right to ignore several important provisions, including the establishment of an important special commission to review wartime contracting. This provision was an initiative of the freshmen class, led ably by Senators Webb and McCaskill. The President also declared his right to ignore a provision prohibiting funding for U.S. military bases or installations in Iraq that facilitate the “permanent stationing” of U.S. troops in Iraq. Let me translate that into plain language: this provision sought to prevent the United States from establishing permanent bases in Iraq.

Every time a senior Administration official is asked about permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq, they contend that it is not their intention to construct such facilities. Yet this signing statement issued by the President yesterday is the clearest signal yet that the Administration wants to hold this option in reserve. Mr. President, that is exactly the wrong signal to send, both to the Iraqi government and its neighbors in the region. Permanent U.S. military bases gives a blank check to an Iraqi government that has shown no evidence it is ready to step up and accept its responsibility to take the training wheels off and demonstrate real leadership and governance for the Iraqi people. Permanent U.S. military bases feeds the propaganda of our enemies, who argue that the U.S. invasion in 2003 was carried out only to secure access to Iraq’s oil and establish a strategic beachhead for the U.S. military in the region. Permanent U.S. military bases means that U.S. troops will be in Iraq for years to come, ensuring that the great strain on the U.S. military we see today will continue indefinitely.

Mr. President, we have a lot on our plate this year: injecting a badly needed boost for our economy, getting a handle on the subprime mortgage mess, and ensuring that our nation’s kids receive the health insurance they deserve. But the war in Iraq continues to be the central foreign policy challenge facing the President and the nation. When this President departs office after eight years, he shouldn’t commit our soldiers and our nation to ten more years, if not longer, and hundreds of billions of dollars more spent in Iraq.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.