Floor Statement Dedicated to the First D.C. Resident to Die in the War - 2/14/2007
Norton House Floor Statement Dedicated to the First D.C. Resident to Die in the War
and Other District Residents Who Have Died in Iraq Without a Vote:
February 14, 2007
As the House prepares to consider a bill for the first full House vote in two centuries for the American citizens who live in the nation's capital, I dedicate these words to the first D.C. resident to die in the Iraq War, 21 year old National Guard Specialist Darryl Dent of the 54th Transportation Company and to the other residents of the District of Columbia who have died in this war without a vote in this House. Like the soldiers from every state and territory, Specialist Dent did not have the luxury of equivocation. He acted. So must we. With uncommon bravery, loss of life, and unique injuries, our troops have acted. So must we. The resolution before us asks quite simply, whoseside are we on. Do we support our troops best by committing another 20,000 to a war where only they must act and only they are accountable? Do we support our troops by sending more of them to another battle of Baghdad while the insurgents scatter, to return as before, unless, of course, our troops are to be permanently deployed in the crosshairs of a civil war? Do we support our troops by sending 20,000 more whose lives will be in the hands of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the man we are asked to believe will help put down the militias responsible for civil war conditions, although their leaders are a part of his own government?
Madame Speaker, the vote this resolution seeks is about our troops, more than about this war. Four years of worsening insurgency have rendered a verdict of its own on the war - that even great powers cannot alone win another country's civil war without its leadership and without diplomacy. Yet another verdict on this war has been rendered by the migration of two million Iraqis, among them the physicians and other professionals who will be desperately needed in post-war Iraq. The 50,000 monthly who flee for safety have created the largest refugee crisis in the Mideast since 1948.
No, Madame Speaker, dispatching 20,000 more American troops to Iraq is not about the war. It is about those troops and the troops that are already there. Most tragically, this will be the war remembered for the citizen soldiers like Specialist Darryl Dent, the largest number to be uprooted from family and jobs since WWII. Recently more than 60% of the fatalities were National Guard soldiers who typify average Americans - computer operators, teachers and police officers - who joined to serve at home but were always ready and willing to serve anywhere. By what right do we call on them again, some for the second or third time? Devoted though they remain, declining enrollment in our military is part of the story of the war. Here in the capital, the Guard's unique mission to protect the federal presence is at risk just as those called away from every state have weakened the homeland protection and security. As Mississippi and Louisiana Guard troops were serving in Iraq, Guard units from every state except Hawaii plus 7,500 active duty soldiers were necessary during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
By what right do we surge more troops into Iraq? Are we about to throw more citizen soldiers and weekend warriors with truncated training into this war with results like those in 2005? Reserve and Guard Soldiers were 10% of the fatalities during "major combat" in March and April 2003, but by August 2005, 57 percent of U.S. fatalities that year were reservists. How can we ask our troops to give yet again? They have given to the preemptive war against weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. They have given as the war morphed into a war for democracy that is not in sight. The question before us therefore is not what will the President do or even what we will do. The question before us is what more can we ask our troops to do. After four years of repetitively brave combat duty, the question answers itself. Let our troops pass the baton to Iraqis and bring our troops home to their children, families, their mortgages, and yes, bring them home to us all.