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February 26, 2007: Rep. John Lewis Argues for the Iraq Resolution |
Please click here to view Congressman Lewis speak on the house floor
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The
U.S. House of Representatives has passed House Concurrent Resolution
63, which indicates that members of the House disapprove of the
President's decision to send twenty thousand more troops to Iraq. Rep.
John Lewis (D-GA) spoke during time given to House leadership in this
debate. At 8:16 AM, on February 16th, he made the following statement:
"Mr. Speaker, I rise with deep concern that this President has chosen
to escalate the war in Iraq, instead of charting a course towards
peace. Today, I am reminded of the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
when he spoke out against the Vietnam War on April 4, 1967. He said,
"The world now demands a maturity of this nation that we may not be
able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from
the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam," we could substitute Iraq,
"and that our actions have been detrimental to the people of that
Nation."
Mr. Speaker, war is messy. War is bloody. It tends not just to
hide the truth but to sacrifice the truth. And the truth is that this
was a war of choice and not a war of necessity. It was ill-fated from
its inception at the highest levels of Government, and persisting in
error will not fix a policy that was fundamentally flawed from the very
beginning.
Thousands of our sons and daughters have been left dead on the
battlefield, and tens of thousands are changed forever, wounded
physically and spiritually by the brutality of war. Our soldiers are
the best men and women in the world, willing to sacrifice all they have
at a moment's notice to protect our freedom. They do not deserve to pay
with their lives for the errors of this administration.
Mr. Speaker, we will never find the answer to the problem we have
created in Iraq down the barrel of a gun. The lasting solution to this
crisis will rise from skillful diplomacy, not military might. The Good
Book said, "Come let us reason together." We must never, ever be afraid
to talk. What harm comes from sitting down in Syria, Iran and our
allies in the Middle East to help bring the warring parties together?
John F. Kennedy once said, "Those who make peaceful revolution
impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
My greatest fear here is that the young people growing up in the Middle
East will never forget this American invasion. My greatest fear is that
they will grow up to hate our children, our grandchildren and
generations yet unborn, because of what we are doing today in Iraq.
Yes, we must maintain a strong national defense. We must defend our
borders. We must bring an end to terrorism, But not at the expense of
our democracy, not at the expense of the very principles this Nation
was founded upon.
I want to close by asking a question of old, Mr. Speaker. What does it
profit a great Nation to gain the whole world and lose its soul? Gandhi
once said, "It is either nonviolence or nonexistence."
Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, "We must learn to live together as
brothers and sisters or perish as fools." It is better to heal than to
kill. It is better to reconcile than to divide. It is better to love
than to hate. That is why we must vote for this resolution. We must do
more.
We must not place more of our young people in harm's way. We must not
continue to make our soldiers sitting ducks in a civil war. As Members
of Congress, we must continue to stand up, speak up and speak out, It
is our duty, it is our right, it is our moral obligation. We must find
a way toget in the way until we bring our young men and women home, and
not to continue to escalate this war.
Vote for this resolution. It is the right thing to do. We must send a
powerful and strong message to this administration to stop this
madness."
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