A War of Choice, and One Who Chose It
A very good find, Karen. I think that is the real Wolfowitz. You can say he is dead wrong on what he has done, but he did it for all the reasons the Liberals normally love. He took a real beating Thursday when he got back from Iraq. From College Students.
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Presenter: Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz Thursday, October 30, 2003
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Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz remarks at Georgetown University
Wolfowitz: Thank you.
As a few of you no doubt noted in the news, we had a fairly exciting trip to Iraq this weekend and I'd like to give you a report. But before I do that let me first turn to my old friend Bob Galucci and thank you, Bob, for that very generous introduction.
I'm reminded of what Lyndon Johnson said on a similar occasion -- "I wish my late parents could be here. My father would have been very proud, and my mother would have believed it." [Laughter]
It's also good to see a couple of old friends in the audience, two very distinguished former ambassadors -- Tom Pickering and Mark Palmer.
And I'm not going to get myself in more trouble by recognizing more people, but I'm quite sure looking around this room that between former ambassadors and future ambassadors there are enough people here to staff the Foreign Ministry of a medium-sized country.
A few years ago, as Bob mentioned, I would not have been encouraged to speak at the "other school" as we called it. It's nice now that I am recused and have no conflict of interest in speaking anywhere. This is a great institution. I'm pleased to be here.
Actually Bob and I have spent most of our adult lives in government service as well as some long detours in schools like this one. I'm very proud. I don't think there's a more honorable or frankly more rewarding career than to, as John McCain puts it, work for something larger than yourself.
The dirty little secret is I think we both started our careers in the national security bureaucracy in a now-extinct institution called the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. We both worked at the time on non-proliferation on the Korean Peninsula. Bob, I think you even did some papers for me as we successfully got the South Koreans to give up nuclear reprocessing.
Bob did such a good job on that part of it that I thought I'd leave the harder job of the North Koreans to him and I backed out. [Laughter]
We've also both taught at Johns Hopkins. Admit it. Most importantly of all, we were both born in Brooklyn. Back in the time when there was still an Ebbitts Field and a Brooklyn Dodgers.
I am now in my third tour at the Pentagon. When I was sworn in by Secretary Rumsfeld he said, "Paul, we're going to keep bringing you back until you get it right." And I was tempted to ask him what then was the significance of him coming back for a second tour. But let's just say if you've been in government for a few years you learn something about dealing with your superiors, and the students at the School of Foreign Service will no doubt realize that that would not have been a diplomatic point to make. Or wise. Unless, of course, you believe that diplomacy is defined Brooklyn style as turning on your turn signal before you decide to cross three lanes of traffic. [Laughter]
I had a lesson in diplomacy which unfortunately is enshrined in George Schultz's memoirs, otherwise I might not want to tell this story on myself, but I was able to accompany Secretary of State Schultz on his first visit to Asia as Secretary of State in 1983. I was a newly minted Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia. I'd been in the job barely two months, and of course I was eager to impress.
The first evening at a dinner in Japan I encountered a challenge that I believed was superhuman and certainly beyond my powers. Exhausted by jet lag, I had to listen to Secretary of State Schultz give the requisite toast at the end of dinner, which he himself in his memoirs admits was straightforward, if bland.
For some reason I nodded off and quite dramatically apparently my chin hit my chest. Ray Sites, another distinguished former ambassador eventually to England passed me a note saying, "Rule number one for a new Assistant Secretary, never fall asleep during the Secretary's toast." [Laughter]
Now I was conscientious and I was determined to take that lesson to heart so I asked Ray how he managed to stay awake. "Simple," he replied. "I've been sitting on my fork." [Laughter]
Of course none of this escaped Schultz's notice and he's written it in his memoirs, and he concludes the account by saying "Diplomacy is a cagy art."
I'd venture that Bob and Howie would agree with that assessment, and I think they can certainly appreciate from their present positions the art in another story that came by way of George Schultz that I used to tell when I was a Dean.
Schultz was once asked what's the difference between management -- after all, he had been the Dean of the Chicago Law School, I think served in four different Cabinet positions, and he'd been the CEO of Bechtel, a major corporation. He was asked how would you compare management in the private sector with government and academia?
He said well, it's sort of like this. In the private sector you have to be very careful what you ask for because people will go out and do it, so you better want what you wish for. In government you don't have to worry about that. You tell people to do something, check back two months later and nothing's happened. But in the university you tell people to do something, they look at you strangely and they say, "Who the hell do you think you are giving us orders?" [Laughter]
Well,now to be serious. I'd like to give you a report about my trip to Iraq, and I suppose I have to begin where the newspapers would always begin, which was Sunday morning. I was in my room getting ready for an early meeting when I heard a loud explosion like something had gone off in the distance. A lot of people have asked me how I felt at the moment, and I have to tell you, you don't have a lot of time to think, but after you account for your people and do what you can for the wounded, our focus was on figuring how to get going about our business because what we were there to do was important work. We had lots of work to do and I was going to be damned if this act was going to stop us.
The strongest emotion came when I was told that one of the Army people working for CPA, that's the Coalition Provisional
Authority headed by Ambassador Bremer, that one of the Army colonels in that office had died. I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and anger.
We learned later that Army Lieutenant Colonel Charles Buehring was killed in that attack. Chad Buehring was an 18-year Army veteran. He was helping the Iraqi people by helping to build new media in that country. We deplore the act of violence that caused Chad Buehring's death. With gratitude, we remember what he gave doing the work he wanted to do. He died doing noble work on behalf of the people of this country, and the people of Iraq so that we can all be safer some day.
Sixteen people were wounded in that act of savagery and I was able to visit the five seriously wounded in the hospital. Symbolically enough it was a coalition -- one British, four Americans. One military, four civilians.
I asked the British, a civilian from the Finance Ministry who had helped to produce Iraq's new currency that gets rid of the butcher's face, I asked him if he was in a lot of pain and he said no. I said either you're lying, another diplomatic art, or it's that British stiff upper lip. He said well actually, I have a lot of American blood in me also, and he was proud to be serving.
I talked to a State Department secretary who had just been there a couple of weeks, having volunteered to come from Guatemala, and asked if she was sorry she was there. She said no, this is important work.
The one that I'll always remember the most, I think, was an American colonel who was still getting oxygen when I came to see him and obviously in some pain. They lifted the mask so that we could talk and I asked him where he was from. He said, "Do you mean where do I live or are you asking about my accent?" I hadn't noticed the accent, but I said why don't you answer both questions.
He said I live in Arlington, Virginia but I grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. I asked him how he felt about building a new Middle East, and he gave me a thumbs up and a pretty big smile for someone who was in that much pain. Then he asked the nurses to prop him up and take off the oxygen mask so that we could have a photo together. And it's a photo that I will cherish as long as I live.
When it comes to acts of courage we saw in just three packed-in days in Iraq hundreds of individuals performing acts of courage every day. We saw it in those five in the hospital by their reaction and by their bravery. There wasn't a single complaint from them. Instead they told me, each one, how proud they were to be there, and proud of what they were accomplishing in Iraq. They have a wonderful defiant spirit. Their colleagues in the CPA were hard at work on a Sunday, even after that terrible attack which had touched hundreds of them and killed one of their number.
We're proud of them -- civilians and military, State Department and Defense Department and Department of Justice, and I could go on with a long list. People were wounded in that attack not only from the United States and the United Kingdom but from Kosovo and Italy and Nepal. They're all heroes, as are the Iraqis who are fighting with them, for a future of freedom.
We went out later to inspect a devilish device with some 40 rocket launcher tubes in it that had been found not too far away. It was a true engine of death which fortunately didn't function as well as its perpetrators had hoped. And it may very well be when we get to the whole story, that in fact they were interrupted in the act of setting it up by two courageous Iraqis members of the new Facilities Protection Service who were wounded when shrapnel from the blast hit them, bouncing off the walls.
But it's a reminder that it doesn't take very many people to mount an attack like that. We know it in this country. It took 19 people to kill 3,000 plus on September 11th. It took only two -- Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols -- to kill 150 people in Oklahoma City. Dramatic violence like that can not only grab attention and drive news coverage, but it can effectively obscure the larger picture which is, of course, one of the terrorists' main goals.
I certainly wouldn't imply that the situation in Iraq is not dangerous. It is. Every single life that is lost, American or Iraqi or international partner, is a tragedy not just for the families of our service members but for all those who serve. It is a very close community.
As the President pointed out earlier this week, it's dangerous in Iraq because there are people who can't stand the thought of a free and peaceful Iraq. The Ba'athists try to create chaos and fear because they realize that a free Iraq will deny them the privileges they had under Saddam Hussein. The foreign terrorists are trying to create conditions of fear and retreat because they are afraid of a free and peaceful state in the middle of that part of the world where terror has found most of its recruits.
It is dangerous in Iraq because there are some who believe that we are soft, that the will of the United States can be shaken by suicide bombers. It's the same mentality, the President correctly said, that attacked us on September 11th, 2001.
Iraq is dangerous but our troops and their Iraqi and international allies are making progress. Monday morning the Wall Street Journal had an editorial that observed, in my view correctly, that while the headline news was the attack on the Al Rashid Hotel, the real news was that with Secretary of State Powell's leadership 70 nations had assembled at Madrid and pledged billions of dollars to build a free Iraq in the future.
That tangible support for Iraq proves once again that the investment in Iraq's success is not just an American investment -- it is one shared by the entire international community.
The attacks and headlines that we've seen in recent days should not overshadow some other things. The hundreds and thousands of Iraqis who were standing up to fight for their future and the many coalition partners -- some 31 nations and 23,000 troops -- that are now fighting for the future of that country.
Last Thursday, we went to Iraq to assess that country's progress towards stability and democracy, and particularly to look at how we, the United States, with the prospect now of additional billions of dollars that was just approved by the Conference Committee of the House and Senate last night, can accelerate that progress. And I will admit, particularly from a Defense Department perspective, how we can get even more Iraqis on the front line fighting for their own freedom. And when I say even more, let me say something because I don't think it's said very often, or noticed if it is said. There are already more than 90,000, 90,000 Iraqis. Many in the police, but many others in the Border Guard and the Facilities Protection Service and the new Iraqi army, and perhaps most promising of all in a new institution that we started in July, the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, who are literally fighting and dying for their own freedom.
Today, there is plenty of good news in Iraq. Plenty of good news and hope for the future among one of the most intelligence and able populations in the Middle East.
Reports from the World Bank meetings in Doha a few weeks ago with the members of the new Iraqi Cabinet said this may be one of the most talented and capable Cabinets in any Arab country.
Seeing the joy in the faces of people who have been freed from Saddam's republic of fear underscores the courage and wisdom of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair in acting to free those people from the ghastly prison in which they have lived for 35 years, and it means that we will be safer eventually in this country too.
It's no surprise that the progress that is being made is itself the principal target of an enemy -- an enemy that does not stand and fight. They hit and run.
In this, the holiest month of the Muslim year, they target progress in Iraq. They refuse to accept the reality of a free future. They take aim at the prospect of a country freed from their control, and moving to become an Iraq of, by and for the Iraqi people.
As I said earlier, it doesn't take many people, sometimes only one or two, to set a bomb that can kill scores or hundreds. That happened in the Shia holy city of Najaf two months ago and it killed a very important Shia leader -- Ayatollah Bakar al Hakim. That was big news, but I believe the more important news was the aftermath, and the incredibly restrained response of the Shia community to that shocking event.
Sunday night I was privileged to have dinner in Baghdad with the younger brother, the last surviving brother by the way of Ayatollah Mohammed al Hakim. His name is Abdul Aziz al Hakim. It was an extraordinary three hours.
It was impossible not to be impressed by this man's intelligence, his sense of humor, and his understated courage. He is the last of seven brothers. The first six, counting his recently martyred brother, who were murdered by agents of the old regime. They are among 63 members of his family who he says were victims of Saddam and his thugs.
Today Abdul Aziz al Hakim is a member of the new Governing Council of Iraq, and he said to me, and he laughed when he said it, that he did not himself want to become number 64. Anyone who can laugh at something like that has a strong sense of humor.
But most impressive was his humanity and the conviction with which he spoke of his and his family's commitment to religious freedom. He told about how his recently murdered brother had intervened with Iranian authorities in Iran to permit Iraqi Christian prisoners of war to assemble to celebrate Christmas, and how his brother, a senior Shia cleric, had joined them for Christmas.
When his brother died, hundreds of Christians came by to pay condolences, many of them weeping unconsolably. As Adbul Aziz al Hakim observed to me on Sunday, quite shrewdly, "It might be possible for a few of them to be pretending, but certainly not all."
He then went on to talk about how their late father is described in the history of modern Iraq as having defended the Jews of Iraq even after 1967, when it became particularly difficult and dangerous.
This man clearly comes from a family that boasts of courage and tolerance, and he stands firmly in their tradition.
Let me hasten to add, before I once again get unfairly accused of painting rosy scenarios, that I don't believe that the person I talked to was necessarily a saint or that I can judge everything from a three hour dinner. I don't necessarily know that everyone in his organization shares the views that he expressed to me. And I imagine if we probed deeper that he and I would disagree, just as he would disagree with many Americans, about some important questions about the role of religion in society, or the role of women in society. It's not perfect.
But with leaders like that, particularly coming from the Shia clerical community, which so many people have told us we have so much to fear from, I think in fact there is strong reason to be hopeful.
We went to the predominantly Shia town of Hilla in the south which is known among other things for being the site of one of the most horrible of the scores of mass graves that have been discovered since the fall of Baghdad. We met with some amazing women who were organizing a center for women's rights. The majority of them I would say, or at least a great many of them, in traditional Muslim dress.
I was particularly taken with one young woman who stood up, dressed quite traditionally, and asked me what we would do to support women's rights in Iraq. I was also struck by her forthrightness when I turned the question around and asked her if there was any contradiction between her conservative dress and her feminist stand. She said with enormous conviction, there is no inconsistency between my religion and human rights and rights for women.
We also saw courage among those in that same town who were organizing a center for human rights in a country where those rights had been systematically trampled by a sadistic and evil regime for 35 years.
Then we visited Kirkuk, a very different city in northern Iraq with a very diverse population of Kurds and Arabs and Turkamen and Christians. We went on a foot patrol through a crowded part of the city with some of our soldiers. In the marketplace which is full of life and commerce, crowds gathered and enthusiastically shouted their thanks. Their thanks to the coalition, and their hatred of Saddam Hussein.
One cute young girl who identified herself as an Arab looked me in the eyes and said, "Saddam is a donkey," to the applause of a group of mostly Arab men that were surrounding us at this point.
But these crowds were a mixture of Kurds and Arabs and Turks. And despite some of the ethnic tensions that we know are simmering beneath the surface, and are a serious danger, Kirkuk so far has proceeded peacefully with a very ethnically mixed population.
There was a money-changer sitting at a card table. When he saw us he held up one of the old pieces of Iraqi currency with Saddam Hussein's face on the bill and he tore the bill apart with a big smile on his face. It probably wasn't worth very much anyway, but he enjoyed it. And he had reason to enjoy it because aside from the progress we're making to introduce the new Iraqi currency, now he can tear up Saddam's picture whenever he wants to. He can tear up anyone's picture.
Under the old regime that act of defiance could have cost him his life. Now it just cost him a bank note.
In many other instances we observed palpable hatred for Saddam Hussein and the remnants of his old regime. But even more striking than the enthusiasm we encountered was to see these ethnically mixed crowds thronging together in apparent and evident tranquility. Again, I don't mean to say there couldn't be trouble. We're very much concerned about that potentially volatile mix, but so far it's been a good story.
I think one of the reasons it's been a good story was revealed to us when we met at the newly opened museum with a group of religious clerics. One, an Arab who said he spoke for the entire group, urged us to wait until Iraq's new government was fully established before withdrawing our troops. But it was a mixture around that table. There were Sunni clerics, a few Shia clerics, there were Arabs, there were Kurds, there were Turkamen, obviously no Christians. It was a Muslim group, but very respectful of one another and very appreciative of the work they were doing with Colonel Mayville of the 173rd Light Infantry Brigade, and a wonderful British woman named Emma Sky, who is the coalition representative in Kirkuk.
END OF PART ONE |
