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'We Stand At a Precipice': Senator Biden Speech on Iraq, January 28

Remarks by Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, former Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, United States Senate, January 28.

... [A]s President Bush prepares to address the Nation on the state of the Union, we stand, to state the obvious, at a precipice of a momentous decision: War, war with Iraq.

The American people, and the world, for that matter, are waiting to hear what the President's decision is and his rationale for it. They are waiting to hear a clear explanation of why war may be the only remaining alternative and what will be expected of them not only in winning the war but what will be expected of the American people for us to win the peace.

A generation ago, I and my entire generation learned a very important lesson. That lesson was: No matter how brilliant or how well thought out a foreign policy may be, it cannot be sustained without the informed consent of the American people.

To date, there has been no informed consent. That is not a criticism; it is just an objective observation. For the President, to date, has not had the requirement, in the hope of avoiding war, to inform the American people in detail of what the consequences of war will be and what will be expected of them.

To date, the American people only know that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator, who has used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, and that he is the man who invaded Kuwait, and we expelled him. They are not sure as to whether or not he is an imminent threat; that is, a threat to those security moms, not soccer moms, who are in their living rooms and are worried about the health of their children and the safety of their homes.

The American people are confused, I would respectfully suggest, by the President's talk and the administration's talk of a new doctrine of preemption, and whether or not this is the basis upon which we are arguing we should act, or that we are acting to enforce, essentially, a peace agreement, a peace agreement signed by Saddam Hussein at the end of the Kuwaiti war that said: In return for me being able to stay in power, I commit to do the following things.

They are under the impression - the American people - because of the signals being sent by the Secretary of Defense and his civilian subordinates, that this war will be short, essentially bloodless, and, just as in 1991, Johnny will come marching home again in several weeks, if not several months, after a decisive, bloodless military victory.

The American people are assuming we will lead a very broad coalition of other nations and have the world behind us in our effort. They further assume, contrary very much to the hard evidence, that the defeat of Saddam Hussein will be a major setback for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations.

In short, they are under the assumption that one of the reasons we are moving against Saddam is that we will literally make terrorists' actions much less probable in the United States of America than they are today. For why else would we use all this power we have assembled in the gulf to go after Iraq rather than using all this power to go after Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and in northwestern Pakistan where he most probably is according to our intelligence community?

They put it together. Obviously, the President would not take 250,000 forces, invade, if we must, Iraq, if he didn't think that would materially affect what I, as an American man, or woman thinks is the greatest threat to me, another 9/11. They also assume, contrary to any hard evidence, that Saddam Hussein is months away from developing a nuclear weapon that could strike American soil, for which he has no capacity, nor in any reasonable prospect in the future would he have any capacity to send a nuclear weapon airborne from Iraq to the United States.

Lastly, they seem to think the financial cost of this war will be manageable and not cause any further economic disruption, for why else for the first time in American history is the President of the United States calling for war, the possibility of war involving 250,000 American troops, at the very same time he is going to call, tonight, for a $650 billion tax cut? That has never been done in the history of the United States of America. Obviously, they think the President wouldn't do that unless this was going to be pretty costless, this war.

In short, I don't think the American people have been told honestly what will be expected of them and what additionally may be asked of them if things don't go so well. I think they will go well. I am one who has not been happy in the way we have proceeded, who thinks this war will be prosecuted in a way that will absolutely, to use the expression younger people use, blow the mind of the world in terms of our military prowess. But it may not.

Why is it so critical to inform the American people? Why, beyond their democratic right to know, is it so vital? I will answer that by telling you a story.

On December 8, 2002, I was in Qatar being briefed by General Franks, witnessing the preparation for war, and the war games were being carried on. There were assembled in this secure room - a gigantic hangar with a movie screen literally larger than the size of the wall behind the Presiding Officer, probably somewhere around 30 feet high and 40 feet wide - 200 generals. I have never seen so many stars in my life, other than when I was a little kid lying on my back looking up on a crystal clear night in the middle of the summer.

I was asked, after being briefed by these warriors, whether or not I would address the assembled crowd, all active military personnel planning this war. These men and women to a person were ready to go and were secure in their knowledge that they would successfully complete their mission if asked to by defeating Saddam Hussein, if ordered to do so. What they were unsure of was us, the politicians, and whether we were willing to tell the American people exactly what was likely to be asked of them and were the American people willing to continue to give them the support they were going to need over a long haul, not the short haul? And it will be a long haul, regardless of how quickly and successfully we wage this war.

For those fighting men and women in this room know it is going to be necessary to stay in Iraq for a long time, to have tens of thousands - I predict over 75,000 American forces remaining in Iraq a minimum of a year and a half and, I predict, 5 years after we secure victory. And they wanted to know whether or not the American people knew that, for they don't want to be over there a year from now when the debate comes up and it is between another $20 billion to stay in Iraq and $20 billion for education or for a tax cut. We have no right to put them in that squeeze again, as happened a generation ago.

They also wanted to know if Saddam, as some suggest - and I am revealing nothing; I am not speaking from classified reports - and his 120 to 150,000 Republican Guard, the only ones we are really worried about, their capacity, if they retreat to Baghdad, a city, a city of 5 million people, are the American people prepared to continue to support our military when they see the inevitable happen? Innocent women and children being killed. We know what will happen. We know if they retreat to Baghdad they will retreat to hospitals, apartment complexes, and our fighting women and men, if this happens - and it is not sure it will - would have to go door to door. They were worried that the response would be the same response that occurs seeing Israelis knocking down a building or seeing a child killed in the crossfire.

They are worried they will become the bad guys, particularly, as I said, if the Republican Guard falls back to a city of 5 million people. Imagine going house to house in Philadelphia or Houston, routing out 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 70,000 fighters. I told them that I believed this generation and the American people would pay whatever price and pledge its support to them, but only if they had informed consent. But that has not been done yet, and it must be done.

For while it is reasonable to expect the best, it would be irresponsible not to prepare for the worst. Iraq could lash out against Israel, Saudi Arabia and/or Kuwait in an effort to start a wider war. It could use weapons of mass destruction against our troops or its neighbors. It could destroy its oil fields and those of its neighbors. It could start giving away its weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. It could create a humanitarian nightmare among the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south, denying them food or medicine, even using chemical weapons against them, as Saddam has done in the past, and as I saw for myself when I met the survivors a month ago in northern Iraq.

Maybe none of these unintended consequences will occur, but there is a decent chance that one or more will. We must put every chance on our side and prepare the American people for what is bad as well as what is good. Hopefully that will be done tonight or sometime soon by the President, but not after the fact. The world, our allies, also are waiting for a clearer explanation of why war.

I just returned from the World Economic Forum and found myself confronted with the most uniform and significant anti-American sentiment I have ever encountered in my career of 30 years dealing with foreign leaders abroad. Not a single American diplomat, elected official, American journalist, businessman or labor leader would disagree with the assessment I just gave you.

It raises several questions that need to be answered. Why do they feel this way? Why should it matter? And if it does matter, what should we do about it? Why? There are multiple reasons, and my pointing them out to a predominantly non-American audience of hundreds if not thousands of world leaders was not always appreciated the last 4 days, let alone agreed with. Let me give you some of the reasons why they feel the way they do, not all of which are legitimate, by any means.

There is a lack of strong leadership in the respective countries that has been unwilling to tell their people the truth about Saddam Hussein and the commitment their country and the world made to deal with him when he sued for peace over 10 years ago. There are selfish economic motives on the part of some of our allies with regard to their favored position with regard to oil or telecom and scores of other areas.

Another reason is the resentment of America's predominant position as the world's most powerful military and economic nation as well as our cultural dominance, from Coca-Cola to rap music to English on the Internet, all of which they resent in the same way we would all resent if tomorrow our States predominantly said, we are going to switch to a different language because a predominant number of people in our State speak that language.

This is compounded by the belief that the President is being pushed by the right wing of his administration to further leverage this predominant position into an even more dominant position relative to the rest of the world. It is also compounded by an inability to contribute much in the way of a fight, either by augmenting our military strength or their own, as well as a seething resentment at our unwillingness to use the forces they offered us in Afghanistan after declaring that an article 5 breach had occurred under our NATO treaty.

With regard to Iraq specifically, many don't see Saddam as a credible threat to them. Their people don't believe our assertions. They say he no longer has the weapons of mass destruction that we know he has. They believe in the aftermath of victory, we will not stay until there is a stable Government in Iraq - as we have not stayed in Afghanistan sufficiently - and they believe the resulting power struggle within Iraq, in their region, will have disastrous consequences for their Governments because they have all heard this administration say it will not be engaged in nation building. And they all know, and everyone knows, we are going to have to be engaged in nation building after we win the war.

All of this is compounded by the obvious discussion within the administration: The announcement of a new doctrine of preemption that has yet to be explained to us, let alone them; the appearance of a great power being petulant when a President stands before the world and says "I am growing impatient, I am getting tired"; the apparent contradiction in the rest of the world's mind of the treatment of the threat from North Korea, which has weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, has a record of proliferation, and has violated international agreements, and we are talking to them; whereas, Iraq, which has no nuclear weapons - we cannot find the weapons of mass destruction, and there is scant evidence of similar proliferation - they say we speak with two different voices - the feeling that the administration has acted, without serious consultation, unilaterally in unceremoniously withdrawing from further negotiations, from international structures, such as climate control, criminal courts, ABM, and others.

Isn't the only thing that matters whether we make it work in the long run, which is what they hear from some in this administration? Won't it all disappear when we succeed, as we hear some in this administration say, because everybody loves a winner, right? Wrong. It matters what other nations think because our most basic immediate interests cannot be fully secured without a longer term cooperation with these other nations because we must convince them and not coerce them.

Let me give a few examples of what our most immediate vital interests are. Crushing international terror: How can you do that without cooperation from the intelligence services from Jakarta to Berlin, from Paris to Beijing, from Moscow to Rio? Preventing North Korea from escalating its nuclear programs and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and doing so without a war: How can we succeed without the cooperation of Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea, other than through war? All of this leads to the perception that some within the administration argue that it is better to go it alone. They have a belief that is the President's position. I don't believe it is his position, but what do they hear? They hear the theories proffered by some in the civilian Defense Department saying, if we move in the face of world public opinion, the rest of the world knows we will mean business and the more we do it alone, the more we will impress upon the rogue nations that they better change or they are next. They also hear us saying that Europe is tired, indecisive, and ultimately unwilling to do what is necessary to keep the peace and commands too much of our resources and attention, particularly, as the Secretary of Defense said, "old Europe," France, and Germany. They keenly resent these characterizations.

I think this is an inaccurate description of where President Bush is, but I do believe, though, that his choice of words and failure to clearly explain his choices and basis for action when we do act has been dangerous to our standing in the world, which leads me to a second question.

Why should it matter what our standing is - what the rest of the world thinks of us? I believe it matters a lot. Preventing a nuclear war on the subcontinent between India and Pakistan matters. But as we announced a unilateral pronouncement of a "new" doctrine of preemption - whatever that means is yet to be explained - that leads to the conclusion in India and Pakistan that if we can act preemptively, why can they not act preemptively against one another? Conveying our values to the rest of the world so as to diminish the misunderstanding of our motives runs constantly into some of the assertions that come from some in this administration.

Let me get right to it... It matters what other nations think, and it matters that although we can force other nations to do things, it matters how we do it. Here is an example. There is a new Government in Turkey - newly elected, represented by an Islamic Party. That Islamic Party recently won the election, and the Prime Minister is a guy named Gul. The real operator is a guy named Erdogan. They were leading this Islamic Party and they have decided they want to have Turkey remain a secular state and they want to be integrated into Europe with regard to the EU. It is very much in the interest of the United States of America - very much - that that happens. We do not want an Islamic state; we want a secular state looking west.

So what is the problem? We can offer $5 billion and essentially buy the support to allow us to launch from Turkey. But if we do that in the absence of a worldwide consensus that what we are doing is right, we may meet our immediate goal and lose a heck of a lot. Here is an example. Right now, in Turkey - which I recently visited and I know the Presiding Officer knows this - over 85 percent of the Turkish people are unalterably opposed to a war with Iraq and unalterably opposed to Turkey cooperating with us in being able to successfully prosecute that war. So what happens if we go to war and we launch from Turkey with the support of the new Islamic leadership without having changed the minds of the people in Turkey and/or the world, to suggest that this is not merely us, but that it is sanctioned by the world that we do this? Well, the roughly 35 to 40 percent of this Islamic Party that is radical Islamic will play to its populist instincts and cause incredible trouble for the existing administration in Turkey and, I believe, force them to move away from their commitment to a secular state.

So that old biblical proverb, what does it profit a man if he gains the world and loses his soul - [I'm] paraphrasing it - what does it profit us to move prematurely on Iraq from Turkey if the end result is that we radicalize a government that is represented by the Islamic Party. What have we gained?

I will answer the third question, and then conclude. So what should we do? I have argued that out of our self-interest it matters what other nations think. So what should we be doing? I begin by saying, given where we are now, coupled with Saddam Hussein being in material breach - that is a fancy phrase for saying not explaining what he has done with the weapons of mass destruction we know he has - those two things may force us to choose between the better of two not-so-pleasant options.

The option I would choose in this circumstance, if we do not get world support, is that Saddam is in material breach of the latest UN resolution. Yesterday's damning report by the UN inspectors makes clear again Saddam's contempt for the world and it has vindicated the President's decision last fall to go to the UN

The legitimacy of the Security Council is at stake, as well as the integrity of the UN So if Saddam does not give up those weapons of mass destruction and the Security Council does not call for the use of force, I think we have little option but to act with a larger group of willing nations, if possible, and alone if we must. Make no mistake about it, we will pay a price if that is the way we go. We will have no option, but we will pay a price, a price that could be significantly reduced if from this moment on we act, in my humble opinion, more wisely.

What should we be doing from this point on? I will be very brief now and expand on this later. One, we should lower the rhetoric. We should not appear to be the petulant nation, wondering why the rest of the recalcitrant world will not act with us, showing our impatience. It does not suit a great nation well. It would not suit my father well, were he alive. It does not suit someone of stature well - and we are a nation of stature.

Two, we should make the case not only privately to our partners by sharing more proof of Saddam's crimes and possessions, but also to our people and in turn to the whole world. Legally, he is in breach, but going to war based on that legal breach will cost us in ways we would not have to pay if we go to war with the rest of the world understanding that there is something there beyond the failure to account.

The third thing we should do is give inspectors more time, for their very presence in Iraq diminishes the possibility of sharing weapons of mass destruction with terrorists or continuing their quest for nuclear weapons. Inspectors are not a permanent solution. We know from our experience of the last decade that Iraq will try to make their mission impossible. We also know that sustaining a massive deployment of troops is expensive and hard on our men and women in uniform. But right now the inspectors are helping us build support for our policy, both at home and abroad, and we should let them keep working in the near term.

The fourth thing we should do is articulate clearly and repeatedly not only the legal basis for our action, if we must move, but our commitment to stay until we have a stable Iraq, and that means the following: The President should state clearly tonight, we are not acting on a doctrine of preemption, if we act. We are acting on enforcement of a UN resolution that is the equivalent of a peace treaty which is being violated by the signatory of that treaty, and we have a right to do that and it is the world's problem. It is not what we hear out of the civilian Defense Department, this cockamamie notion of a new doctrine of preemption which no one understands.

Two, our objective has to be clearly stated as eliminating weapons of mass destruction and not the destruction of Iraq, for that is the President's purpose.

Thirdly, we will in fact participate in nation building; we will seek UN support and we will tell the American people what we are asking of them and why, for they have no idea now what is expected of them. They do not know what the costs will be to remove Saddam and they should. They do not know how many troops will have to stay in Iraq to secure the country, and we have estimates, and what it will take to get a representative government that lives up to its international obligations.

Can we count on our friends and allies to share the burden? Can we afford to attack Iraq, fully fund homeland security, cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, and finish the unfinished war on terrorism in Afghanistan and other places?

These questions should never be excuses for inaction, but they must be answered if we want the American people's support and we want to avoid the mistakes of the past.

Source: Transcript - Senator Biden Warns Bush Administration of Consequences of War With Iraq, US Department of State (Washington File), January 30.

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