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Des Moines Register – February 16, 2007
Congressman Steve King says:
Muslims think it is 'their right and duty to make war'
Representative Steve King of Iowa says that Muslims think it is their right and duty to make war. He made this claim during a debate in the House of Representatives on president Bush’s decision to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq
Following is the complete statement of Rep. Steve King:
I thank the gentlelady for yielding this time, and I appreciate very much the privilege to address you, Mr. Speaker, and the message that is coming, at least from our side of the aisle.
Mr. Speaker, I take us back to how do we identify this enemy that we are fighting? So I looked back through some of the history. In 1783, we made peace with Great Britain. The Revolutionary War, for combat purposes, was over. 1784, American merchant marines were being attacked in the Mediterranean by Barbary pirates.
In 1786, two diplomats, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, went over there to meet with them, and their idea was, we will be able to talk them into peace.
Well, they talked to them all right, and the representative of the Barbary pirates, Mr. Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, responded to them, and this is in the Congressional Record from Thomas Jefferson’s report.
He asked him, why do you fight us, why do you attack us, why do you kill us?
We have done nothing hostile towards you. His answer was, it is founded on the laws of our Prophet. It was written in the Koran. All nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found and to make slaves of all they could not take as prisoners, and that every Muslim who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.
I take you back to today. We call our Marines leathernecks. The reason for that is they wore a heavy leather collar to diminish the odds that they would be beheaded by this enemy who has, to this day, at least fairly recently, is still beheading Marines. That is how this started.
Now, we are in a war. Von Clauswitz wrote that the object of war is to destroy the enemy’s will and ability to conduct war. That means take away their munitions, take care of their armies, destroy them if you can. But in the end, whatever you might do doesn’t break their will. You have to destroy their will. There is nothing going on on this side of the aisle that is diminishing the will of our enemy.
I will tell you, they will interpret it as encouraging the will of the enemy. I would point out this quote from Moqtada al Sadr. I heard this over al Jazeera TV when I was in the Middle East, actually in Kuwait City, waiting to go into Iraq the following morning, June 11, 2004. He said, “If we keep attacking Americans, they will leave Iraq the same way they left Vietnam, the same way they left Lebanon, the same way they left Mogadishu.”
June 11. Where does he get this from? Well, he gets part of it from General Jeaps’ book in Vietnam, the successful general there. They understand, as I heard to my own shock and sorrow, a World War II veteran said to me on one of the days we were honoring him, We haven’t really won a war since World War II.
Think about what that means. Think about what that means to our enemies who are encouraged by this kind of debate and this kind of behavior. We must have the resolve. I point out also our casualties. We have lost 2,534 brave, patriotic Americans in hostile action. We have lost 591 to accidents within that theater.
The loss in American lives as a price to be ready between Desert Storm 1 and the beginnings of Operation Iraqi Freedom, that 10 years, was a little over 5,000, averaging 505 a year. There is a price to be ready, and they pay that price. Those lost lives are every bit as precious to us.
I listened to the debate over on this side of the aisle. A brave American, former admiral from Pennsylvania, stated that he believes his job now is to come in and help manage a successful conclusion to the war.
Well, I want to compliment Judge Louie Gohmert, who had the urge from the bench, to legislate from the bench, and realized that his constitutional responsibility, if he wants to legislate, is to run for Congress. So now we have Representative Gohmert in Congress actually legislating instead of legislating from the bench.
I would submit my question to the gentleman from Pennsylvania: Do you really think your job is to come here and micromanage the war? Do you really think that is constitutional? Regardless of that question, do you think it is wise?
How would you like it if Congress made a decision that you really only needed one destroyer in your task force, or you get along without the submarine or maybe you only needed half the supplies on your supply ship?
That would be micromanagement that I think he would raise a powerful objection to. And so I would point out that here on the floor of this Congress when we had Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq, speaking from that very podium behind me, July 26, 2006, a short half a year ago, he said, “The fate of our country and your’s is tied. Should democracy be allowed to fail in Iraq and terror permitted to triumph, then the war on terror will never be won elsewhere.”
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070216/NEWS/70215035/1001
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