Tuesday, June 20, 2006

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

Mr. President, I heard the distinguished deputy minority leader speak last Friday morning in about a 15-minute speech, and he just added another minute, about Iraq. So I come to the floor to address the specific points the distinguished Senator just raised and the potential amendments that will be offered on the floor.

I want to tell you about the flashback that went through my mind as I sat in that chair and listened to that speech. The flashback was to my generation's war in the 1960s and 1970s in Vietnam. The flashback was to what I remember started in 1970 and culminated in 1972.

I commend my staff, in particular Andrew Billing, for spending the weekend accumulating the speeches on the floor of the Senate from August of 1970 to May of 1972, speeches by Cranston and McGovern and Kennedy and Byrd and Humphrey. They talked about it was time for us to start withdrawing, first not on a time certain, but by just a certain number of troops, until the crescendo built so loud over 18 months it became a date certain, August 31, 1972.

The debate on the Senate floor drove the policy of the United States of America against communism and in defense of freedom, and all of us remember what happened. The first steps were it wasn't a date certain, it was 120,000 troops, and we went from a half million to 380,000 and then to 240,000, and then when we got to 240,000, the resolution became: Withdraw by August 31, 1972.

Anyone who was alive on that date who remembers that scene remembers precisely what happened: the last of the Americans to leave Saigon on the roof of our Nation's embassy being shot at by the Vietcong as they were climbing a rope ladder into a Huey helicopter.

We lost over 50,000 American lives in Vietnam and a lot of them between the beginning of that debate to withdraw in August of 1970 until the end of it in August of 1972.

I know there is a proposed amendment, probably by the Senator from Michigan, that will begin the same way the amendments began over 30 years ago on this Senate floor: not a date certain, but a scaling down of our commitment. And to that I want to address the damage that will do to our effort.

First and foremost, it hands a victory to our enemy they cannot win on the battlefield. The terrorists have said it is to psychologically destroy the will of America that they want to win the battle. They know they can't win it on the battlefield. Why should we begin to question our resolve and, worst of all, why should we repeat the horrible mistake of the way in which we managed our conflict in the seventies?

It is time we recognized that we are winning a great victory for mankind, not just the Iraqi people; that America went to enforce a U.N. resolution when the U.N. would not; that we deposed a dictator that everybody said was bad. We won in Afghanistan over the Taliban, and we are winning in Iraq today over the insurgency headed by al-Qaida.

Have some of us forgotten 9/11/2001? Have we forgotten the USS Cole? Have we forgotten the fatwa issued in 1996 when war was declared by al-Qaida on the United States of America? Most Americans haven't.

I want to conclude by three little stories about the past month in my life.

I stood on the courthouse steps in Walton County, GA, this Saturday welcoming home eight members of the 48th Brigade from Iraq. I stood there with all the citizens of Monroe and Walton Counties cheering them on--all the citizens, including Robert Stokely, the father of SGT Mike Stokely who died in August of 2005 in Iraq. He came up and gave me Michael's dog tag, hugged me, grabbed my hand, and he welcomed home those eight soldiers, knowing that his son, Michael, the ninth, was not home with them, but he was proud of his effort.

Let's make sure Michael didn't die in vain. Let's not lose our resolve on the floor of the Senate.

The second incident I want to describe is what happened yesterday in the Atlanta airport. I was late. I was running for my flight. I went through the atrium. All of a sudden a huge round of applause erupted. I stopped. I didn't know what in the world was going on. I turned and looked, and there marched about 30 members of the United States Army in their desert fatigues on the way to an airplane, probably on their way to Iraq, and all those citizens in that airport from around the world flying through Atlanta stopped to give them a standing ovation.

I don't think those people would want us to set deadlines, timetables, and withdraw from the ultimate battle.

And my last analogy is in Margraten in the Netherlands 3 weeks ago when Senators Craig, Specter, Burr, and myself sat on a beautiful sun-lit day before 7,000 Dutch in the American Cemetery in the Netherlands as the Royal Dutch Air Force flew over in a missing-man formation and as the Royal Dutch Senior Man's Choir sang ``God Bless America.''

I stood there for the better part of an hour having my hand shook by citizens of Holland thanking me for what Americans did 62 years ago when they invaded Normandy, fought the Battle of the Bulge, and deposed Adolph Hitler.

There is nothing different about the hatred and intolerance for humanity, race, and religion of Adolph Hitler and the intolerance for race, religion, and faith of al-Qaida. The battle is just as great. The warriors may be different, the site may be different, the methodology may be different, but the result would be the same.

Had we not stayed the course in the 1940s, the world would have lost. If we do not stay the course today, if we turn our back, the world will lose again.

Once again, the sons and daughters of the United States of America are fighting the right war in the right place at the right time for the right reason. For us to talk about timetables or suggest drawdowns or compromise our commitment is just plain wrong.