Tuesday, November 8, 2005

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Floor Statement on Iraq and the War on Terror
Remarks as Delivered on the Senate Floor

First of all, I want to associate myself entirely with the remarks of the Senator from Nevada. I wanted to rise for the same purpose--to talk for a minute about our men and women in Iraq, the successes that have taken place there, and how proud I am of it.

But I can't help but, at the outset of my remarks, for a second, respond to the remarks of the Senator from Illinois a few minutes ago. I had a flashback as I listened to that speech--a flashback to my generation's war in the 1960s in Vietnam, a flashback that reminded me of what happened when American politicians began to slowly but surely question America's intentions in a war while our people were deployed, which slowly resulted in the end of withdrawal of a military that never quite had the support anymore that it deserved while in harm's way.

I would like for a moment to talk about what we do know. We have had lots of questions raised about what we don't know, what we should have done, what somebody may or may not have done. Let us talk for a second about what we do know.

Senator Ensign has done a great job talking about what we knew leading up to going into Iraq. I would like to remind us of a few other things.

We know that war was declared on America in the 1990s by Osama bin Laden, and we were attacked seven times without responding. It was finally with the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that this President changed America's policy to one of preemption, committed himself to going after terrorism wherever it existed, and doing everything we could to liberate the world from the tyranny of terrorism.

We must remember that today we are not in a war like past wars. We are in the ultimate war between good and evil. The terrorists don't want to beat us, they want us to lose our resolve so they can rule the world through intimidation. Terrorists don't want what America has. They do not want America to have what it has: the first amendment, freedom of speech, the right to worship as we see fit, the right to bear arms--all the things that stand in the way of the tyranny they would like to employ around the world, and have employed in a couple of places very successfully, in Afghanistan that we liberated and now in the nation of Iraq.

There are those who would have you believe, by their speeches, that we are fighting the Iraqi people. We are fighting terrorism in Iraq. This war is about Iraq, the United States of America, our soldiers, the future of our generation, and our way of life as we have known it.

I commend and respect anyone who would raise a question or a doubt and seek an answer. But we must not forget that the truths that we know are compelling, that we are fighting the right war in the right place at the right time for the right reason.

For those who say we never found a weapon of mass destruction, I would submit to you that Saddam Hussein himself was a weapon of mass destruction. In 1990, when he went into Kuwait and we went in and liberated, it was Saddam Hussein who rained missiles upon Israel that wasn't even in the fight. It is Saddam Hussein who gassed his own Kurds. It is Saddam Hussein who systematically ordered the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi people and buried them in mass graves.

It is no coincidence that al-Qaida operates today as the head of the insurgency that fights our troops in Iraq because this is their war--their war against what America stands for, and what the future of the world can be if we are successful. We have some tough days ahead, but we must stay the course.

In one year, we have caused the Iraqi people to have an interim resolution, to draft a constitution, ratified, and to seek a permanent election to elect permanent representatives, something that would have been unthinkable just 2 or 3 years ago.

But we did it because of the resolve of these men--the American soldiers and the Iraqi soldiers fighting shoulder to shoulder with them today in the final stages in Iraq.

Yes, we have battles to fight. Yes, there will be more terrorist attacks. And, yes, there will be tragic losses that all of us grieve. But we cannot, as a nation, lose our resolve, or have politicians quibble on the edges while our men and women are standing in harm's way.

I commend our troops and our soldiers. I commend our country. I commend our citizens to look to the future and appreciate that everything we enjoy and have today is because of those who have sacrificed in the field of battle, those who have led in this Congress and in this Nation's Government in the past to defeat dictators and tyranny wherever it existed.

We are in the ultimate battle between good and evil. Compromise and quitting is unacceptable. Seeing it through to its course is essential for our men and women in harm's way and for the children of the United States of America and the children of the world because, you see, unlike history under Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the children of Iraq now understand that there is a future, that there is the potential for a bright future, and success and good times with no fear. They do so because this brave Nation, when attacked by the tyranny and the evil of terrorism, decided it would follow it wherever it took us and we would preempt it so it could not stand and it could not exist.

On behalf of our men and women in harm's way, the children they protect, the dreams and aspirations of Americans for a bright future, as bright as our past, I commend our men and women in harm's way. I stay the course as a Member of this Senate to support them in the war on terrorism, and I ask all of us to be careful when we raise questions that must be raised to never raise them in such a way that would compromise this effort or compromise the commitment and dedication of these brave men and women.