America Must Resist Temptation to Start a War with Iran
Jim McDermott delivered the following speech on the floor of the House on April 25, 2006.
Mr. Speaker, I know it is an election year, and I know President Bush's ratings are at an all-time low, and I know gas prices are very high and the people are restless. Nevertheless, I call upon my colleagues and the President to resist the temptation to start yet another war.
There is an old saying: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Well, friends, if we fall for the case being made to go to war against Iran, it will be "shame on us." And I define bombing from 40,000 feet as war.
Just as we did in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, a country which had no connection to 9/11 and no weapons of mass destruction, this administration intentionally confused us with regard to Iraq. It is doing the same with Iran. The administration says they want compliance with nuclear treaties but makes it clear that they really will settle for nothing less than regime change.
When I said before the Iraq war that I believed the President would be willing to mislead us into the war if he believed misleading us was necessary to fulfill his plans, I was excoriated, but I was right. I do not characterize the President's motives. I assume he took us into war in Iraq because he sincerely believed it was the right thing to do. We know now that he was wrong about that. The world is less safe. The Iraqis are in turmoil. More Americans have died in the President's plan in Iraq than died in New York City and at the Pentagon.
What the President did with our Iraq policy is being replicated with our Iran policy. There was much to criticize about Saddam Hussein, and there is much to criticize about the ayatollahs and their front men in Iran. We have every right to demand that Iran adhere to its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and to pursue sanctions and other penalties. What we do not have the right to do is to make it impossible for Iran to satisfy our demands without regime change.
When we started demanding regime change in Iraq instead of demanding compliance with U.N. inspectors, we put ourselves on the path to war in Iraq. We are on the same plan and the same path in Iran. We will not talk with the Iranian government, and we will not stop talking about overthrowing it. It is impossible for the Iranian government to satisfy this administration and remain a government, although this administration will immediately deny that.
Every time it appears something is going to work out with the Soviet Union, or whatever, we pull the rug out from the negotiators. Because we don't want negotiation. We don't want to solve the problem. We want regime change. Somehow this administration has got it in its head that it has the right to tell other governments to step aside for people we like better. That is wrong.
We tried it with Mosaddegh and put in the Shah and we are back at it again. What we should do instead is to call their bluff and let them save face at the same time. If they say they want nuclear energy, we should say, okay, if it is nuclear energy you want, you won't mind having wall-to-wall U.N. inspectors watching every move you make to keep people from getting the wrong idea.
We make sure that they can't build bombs and let them have what they are entitled to under the NPT: civilian energy. We must quit making the leaders more popular. And we are doing it by making them the guys who stand up to the U.S. We must quit acting like we are going to invade any country that has the wrong regime.
If we attack Iran, as I fear we are on a course to do, we will unleash a hell unlike anything this region has seen. Iran is not Iraq. It has not been under sanctions for 10 years. It has not been bombed flat by the Gulf War. It is a strong nation with weapons. We will make ourselves once again less safe if we attack them.
Mr. Speaker, this administration has now been told on this floor, in public, on the record. The President will come here in about 6 or 8 or 9 months and give us a State of the Union. If he has taken us into a war in Iran, he will deserve what happens.
This country does not need another war. We have already proven the failure of that in Iraq; and because they won't change their mind, they keep doing the same thing over and over again. And now there is an election coming up. The 2006 election is coming and they want to distract us. That is why they are leading us towards Iran.
Revision date: April 27, 2006
