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(Delivered on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sept. 13, 2005)
Senator Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., on Tuesday called for a national debate on America's priorities. "I call upon the leaders of this country to come together and to work together to repair our storm- ravaged Gulf Coast and help salvage the lives of its victims, but more than that. I call upon the Congress to inventory our homeland with an eye to the future," Byrd told his colleagues. His prepared remarks are below.
Chapter 3, Verses 1-8 of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible begins, "To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven." It is time for a national debate, and its purpose is our country's future.
Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to put events into perspective -- to shake us and sharpen our clarity of vision. The wrath of Katrina, tragic and devastating for thousands, must certainly have caused many thinking Americans to consider anew the proper priorities for our country. Who among us has not wondered if the efforts to rescue and evacuate Gulf Coast residents suffered because too many National Guardsmen have been detailed and detained in Iraq? What thinking American has not pondered why we had such a painfully slow response to a behemoth storm which we knew for days would likely turn New Orleans into a cauldron of despair. Is there anyone in our great country that did not feel the painful outrage of the citizens of New Orleans and Louisiana and Mississippi as they waited for days without food and water or knowledge about loved ones?
Who among us did not shrink in dread from the specter of our fellow citizens' bodies floating in the murky flood waters or stacked in hospital stairwells for want of anywhere else to house them? Could this be happening in a major American city? Could we be so inept at dealing with this tragedy? The events of the past several days seem to have reduced our much touted American know-how and technology to little more than children's toys, strangely impotent in a real crisis. I know that many Americans cringed, as I did, at the vision of callous neglect of our poorest and most vulnerable citizens which flashed around the world, making the United States appear to be a nation unmindful of its own, a nation unable to handle a disaster about which it had ample notice, a country loudly touting our form of government to the world, while failing to provide even the most basic protections to our own citizens.
If Katrina has any redeeming impact, it must be to cause us to see ourselves as others must surely see us. I regret to say that the picture cannot be a pretty one. That image is certainly not one that reflects the humanitarian goodness and morality of the vast majority of the American people. The perception of the United States in these troubled times should be a cause of major concern for everyone who holds public office. Regardless of political party, it is time to look at where we are, and where we are going.
Few would now argue that the war in Iraq has improved the world's view of the United States. It was an unnecessary and ill-conceived conflict which distracted us from our proper course of bombing the terrorist training grounds of Afghanistan. I have never bought the absurd claim by some that we are fighting terrorists in Iraq so we will not have to fight them here at home. That claim is a non sequitur at best and, at worst, a patent distortion of what has happened in Iraq. The war in Iraq created a hot bed of terrorism where none existed before. And it insured Osama bin Laden an endless supply of recruits, now even more fanatic in their hatred after scandals at Abu Ghraib, and the destruction of so many innocent lives in Iraq as a result of our invasion.
"For everything there is a season. . ." sayeth the Bible. The season has come for Americans to look homeward. Instead of continuing to spend billions in Iraq, let us husband those our hard-earned tax dollars and spend them here at home. The Iraqi people must slowly find their own way now. Further U.S. dictated deadlines are counter productive. We cannot force-feed democracy to Iraq. To keep large numbers of American soldiers in Iraq much longer only earns the United States more enmity, reinforcing our unfortunate global image as conqueror not liberator. The Iraqi people must begin to take it from here. In fact, there is no longer a "war" in Iraq. We started that conflict and we met the goals established at its outset. Now there is a slow, festering, internal political struggle pitting Shiite against Sunni, against Kurd, which will play itself out, perhaps for decades, until it either devolves into outright civil war or resolves into some sort of compromise which suits those who live in the country of Iraq. We cannot resolve Iraq's internal issues. It is time for the United States to begin to bring our troops home.
The invasion of Iraq was never supposed to be an open-ended peacekeeping mission, with our troops mired amid the chaos of continuing urban warfare. We need to bring them home, with a hearty, "Job well done." We should begin with the National Guard. Obviously, they are needed here. They are an integral part of our first responder team in the event of a terrorist attack or if, God forbid, another natural disaster were to strike.
It is time to come home, America. Time to look within our own borders and within our own souls. There are many questions to be answered and many missions to accomplish right here on our own soil. We have neglected too much for too long in our own backyard. "To every thing there is a season, . . . a time to break down and a time to build up. . . ."
If we had spent the money a few years back to rebuild those levees on the Gulf Coast, thousands would be alive today. Perhaps we can finally see the value of that budgetary stepchild called public works. All across this country there are years of neglect of
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