THE FACE OF THE TERRORIST FOE
(House of Representatives - Sept. 13, 2004)
[Page: H4752]
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, there are, of course, a wide variety of views and opinions on the situation that we now face in Iraq and around the world. I am compelled to come to the floor tonight to talk about one aspect of this, I suppose, not necessarily to take sides in this debate that has been going on for the last hour but to look into the nature of the foe that both we face and much of the civilized world faces. When you look into the face of the foe, of the enemy, what you see is pure, unadulterated evil. That evil manifested itself just a short time ago in a faraway place, in Russia, more specifically in a small community and even more specifically in a school in that community, where people devoted to a cause, to a set of ideas, decided that one way to advance that cause would be to enter this small town in Russia and to take hostage the children and the parents and the teachers in this small school. Because it was the first day of school and as is the custom in this area, parents and even grandparents will accompany their children to school for the first day of opening festivities. So they knew they would have a large congregation of people, all there to enjoy the day, parents there to encourage their children, children looking back at their parents and grandparents for that encouragement. Something that goes on, of course, an event, an activity that goes on throughout the world in many different countries and in many different ways but essentially that same expression of support and hope and love that we see throughout the world.
These people, acting under the guise of ideology, decided to go in and take these folks hostage, because it would be an act of terror almost unparalleled. In fact, I will say unparalleled in the annals of human history. They did so and hundreds of people died, most of them children. The most innocent among us died horrible deaths because terrorists decided to take an action that they believed would advance their cause. It has not advanced their cause. We know that. The civilized world has reacted in horror and disdain and has in every way imaginable sent the message to those who perpetrated this crime that your cause is not advanced. We see you for what you are. You are, in fact, evil incarnate. Evil does exist on this planet. It prowls. It looks. It strikes. It struck in Russia and hundreds of people today, thousands of people there, millions of people around the world, are in mourning and in grief for what happened.
There will be people who will try to suggest that even though this was a horrible event, the people who perpetrated this had just cause, that they had been ill treated in the past by the government of Russia going back to the czars. Certainly it may be true that there were injustices and that in fact horrible things have happened in the past. But nothing, Mr. Speaker, nothing, nothing that I can conceive of or I think for the most part anyone in the civilized world can conceive of could justify the acts that were taken in Beslan by these terrorists. Nothing can justify that. No amount of rationalization, no amount of historical injustice, nothing can justify the taking of the most innocent lives, not just the taking of their lives but the torture of these innocent human beings for days before the lives were taken. Nothing can justify the horror that was inflicted upon the community in Beslan. Nothing.
My community, the place in which I live, is Littleton, Colorado. Several years ago, we experienced an event of unimaginable horror in our little community. I know what that did when two individuals went into a school, Columbine High School, and killed their fellow students and teachers. I know what happened. I know the kind of trauma that existed and that everyone had to deal with, not just even the parents of the children involved but the entire community. I know how long it lasted. I know that to this day we have not found a salve that could, in fact, heal those wounds, even to this day. We still gather in April to pay our respects and to remember the dead and to express our condolences to the parents and families of those who survived.
So I know a little bit about the pain that I know exists in this community of Beslan and, of course, in surrounding areas. I know that there are no words, that no one, not Presidents or Premiers or no one can ever, ever, ever state what would be necessary in order to salve all the wounds that now exist. But we try, because we have nothing else. We have no other way. Today in my district, in Littleton, Colorado, in the Columbine school area, children are signing posters, preparing notes of sympathy that I will collect from them on Thursday and then I will take with me to Russia the next day. We hope to be visiting Beslan and we hope to be able to express the sympathy of the people in my district and they, of course, represent the bulk of the world who are heartsick at the events in Beslan. We need to talk about it more, although it is very difficult to do. It is extremely painful to even discuss these things, I know. But it is important for us to do so. It is important for us to try to think about what motivates people to do what they did, what the terrorists did there and what the rest of the world must do in response to it in order to not fall victim to the same kind of barbarism. It is an incredibly difficult challenge we all face, the world faces. How it is that we can respond? What do we do in the face of such evil?
What defenses do we prepare? What armies do we send into the field and where? What are the things that we tell the people in our own country that can make them feel more at ease and safer as they tuck their children into bed at night? Because these things we face, this evil that we face, really, is powerful. It feeds upon a number of emotions that are difficult to deal with.
Yet we must do so. We must think about what kind of defenses we can erect, how we can defend ourselves, what do we do around the world, and what do we do even in our own country. What are the principles and ideas that we live by that we can extol? How can we convince the rest of the world that there are ways to live in peace with each other regardless of the faith that one ascribes to? How can we exist on a planet if there are hundreds of millions of people who believe that if one does not believe in their God, if one does not accept their principles of religious ideology, that they do not deserve to exist and that they are, in fact, some sort of threat to them?
These ideas have to be fought with ideas. We have to talk about who we are in the United States and in Western Civilization. We have to talk about what principles we believe in and espouse. We cannot just be against others. We have to talk about who we are and what is at stake. Everyone in the world, certainly Americans, when this happened, they felt some degree of angst and certainly horror, but also some fear, some basic kind of internalized fear about the possibility that it could happen there, here, in our community, in our school, with our children.
And it develops a sort of paranoia about the world, and people do not know what they can do about this. And I suggest that there are answers to this question, and I do not believe for a moment that I am the person that can give all of the answers to all of the questions, but I do feel it is incumbent upon us to talk about some of the things that are important and some of the things that could and should be done in order to both defend ourselves and advance the cause of liberty and freedom throughout the world.
We must talk about the value of Western Civilization and the principles embodied therein. We must begin to explore them in a way that perhaps has not happened in a century or more in this country or certainly even around the world, in the Western world anyway. Because, after all, if we are just simply people who exist in a particular place on the planet, that is all, we are just residents of an area with no particular philosophy, set of ideas or ideals that are worth our allegiance, then the opponents of Western Civilization, the terrorists who seek to kill us because we do not see the world in the same way they do, they will have an advantage because they know exactly who they are, Mr. Speaker. They know the world in which they exist and the world that they represent. They have been thoroughly indoctrinated and are convinced of the righteousness of their ways.
It is not just enough to simply juxtapose our civilization against theirs. We have to, again, as I say, talk about in America and the rest of the Western world, what it is that makes us different and why we deserve to defend ourselves, what is it about our society that is worth defending. Are there principles? Are there ideas and ideals that we should hold on to and defend at all costs?
I certainly think so. I certainly think the ideas of individual liberty, the rule of law, the concepts embodied in both the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and even going back to the Magna Carta, I think these things are worthy of our allegiance. I wonder how many children in our schools learn them, know about them. I certainly do not want our schools to turn into madrasas where children are indoctrinated day in and day out with the propaganda of their civilization. I want our schools to be true places of learning where children are confronted with a series of ideas and facts and then asked to incorporate them into what they believe and think, to analyze them, become objective observers, and to come to a conclusion, which I think would be inescapable that what we have and what we have put forward on this Earth in terms of a method of living, a system of living together, regardless if we are Muslims or Christians or Jews or Buddhists or nothing at all in terms of a religious persuasion; but the fact that we can create a society in which all these people can live is, I think, a good thing. It is worthy of our talking about. It is worthy of our allegiance. That is talking about who we are and what we believe in and why it is worthy, and it is a good thing and we need to do that.
We need to do other things that encourage Islam to look internally and to reform itself. There are many people, I read comments by leaders in the Islamic faith, Muslim leaders, that suggested that they too had come to the conclusion that something was very, very wrong inside their religion. Some even called it a corrupted religion. They lamented the fact that in recent history, although terrorists had different kinds of nationalities and ethnicities, they had one thing in common: they were Muslims. And they lamented that fact, and they said there is something wrong with this religion. There is something wrong with a religion that, in fact, promotes a cult of death. So there is hope that reform can come to Islam.
The third thing we must do and to hope for is to construct a defense of our own civilization and of our own country against terrorist activities. And, believe me, this is a tough one. This gets us into, I guess, a little bit of the battle that went on there or at least the discussion that went on here the hour preceding this one about why are we in Iraq, was it the right thing to do, was the President motivated by all the right reasons or all the wrong reasons? Was Iraq the proper thing for us to do, the logical extension of our war against terror? Specifically, was it the right thing to do in our war against fundamentalist Islam? Because that is really what we are at war with.
I agree with some of the comments made earlier by some of the folks over here that said that terror is not the thing with which we are at war. It is simply a tactic. I have said this on this floor many times and now for several years, and I am glad to hear it being repeated by others because, of course, it is important for us to understand who the enemy really is.
I think our friends on the other side did not go as far as they needed to go to actually describe them. It is fundamentalist Islam with which we are at war, make no mistake about it. And whether that fervor, that Islamic fervor leads you to do things like press for a separation from Russia because you want to create an Islamic republic, it is still fundamentalist Islam with which the world is at war. Or whether it manifests itself as it did here by planes crashing into buildings and into the Pentagon and into fields in Pennsylvania, it is fundamentalist Islam with which we are at war. Around the world, incidents occur. There are motivating factors that combine to create them, but when you sort of get to the bottom line, what is the common element? It is fundamentalist Islam.
We are not used to saying things like that here in this body; we are certainly not used to saying things like that on the political stump, because this is America, and we do not talk about people's religion, certainly not in disparaging ways. Among other things, it will probably cost us votes. But seriously, it is uncomfortable and it is just not done. But we have to do it. It is uncomfortable. I certainly do not like having to say these things, but I see absolutely no alternative to saying them, because I believe these things are true, and I believe most of the world knows them to be true.
So we have to talk about who we are. We have to hope for reform of Islam, and we have to defend ourselves. I do not know of another set of alternatives. I do not know of another strategy that we can employ.
I do not know whether or not the President of the United States was thinking about one or all of these things when he led us into the war in Iraq. I hope that, in fact, it was part of his strategy. I hope with all of my heart that what we are doing in Iraq will advance our cause, will weaken our enemy, will somehow force that reformation, or at least a movement toward that reformation, and certainly I hope that it helps defend us against further attacks.
I hope the President is right when he says we are fighting them there because we do not want to be fighting them here. I hope he is right when he suggests that planting the seeds of a democracy in an area of the world in which it has never existed will bear fruit. I hope he is right. We have set a course. We have taken a vote in this House. We have sent men and women off to war. So I hope we were right.
There was an interesting thing today, my chief of staff called me and said, we have this questionnaire from one of the local papers in our community and it has to go in today and we want you to answer these things. I had not seen it before, so we had to go through them. One question I think toward the end was, would I have voted differently knowing what I know now. Would I have voted differently about going to war in Iraq.
This was a very interesting question, one that has certainly been in my mind many times since embarking upon the course of action that we have taken. And I finally, after a lot of discussion, and we had the staff come in and we talked about this, and we had sort of, it was really kind of an interesting and neat discussion about this, everybody sort of venting their feelings and attitudes and ideas. Finally I said, the reality is it is too early to tell, because we just do not know yet. I mean, I want to believe that what we are doing is the right thing to do. I think it is too early to determine whether or not the course of action upon which we have set ourselves will lead to all of the things that we hope. I believe that it is certainly a noble endeavor. I believe that if the goals are accomplished; if, in fact, we can change the world because we changed the political environment in the Middle East, and there is some hope that that is exactly what has happened. I mean, after all, Libya did a complete about-face after we went into Iraq. It admitted to a nuclear program leading to nuclear weaponry being developed and said, we are not going to do that anymore. Although there may have been other reasons for them to do that, the fact is that Qadhafi did it and I think, to a large extent, it was as a result of what we did in Iraq and what he saw happening in his neighbor's land.
It does not mean that all the dominoes will fall. It certainly does not mean that in a month or 2 or a year or 2, we will be able to say the troops can come home, but there is that hope out there. It is a challenge to us all.
I wish I could say with an absolute and unequivocal sort of mindset that yes, it was the right vote to cast. I cast the vote because I believed what I was told: that we faced clear and present danger in the existence of Saddam Hussein and his regime. There is certainly a great deal of evidence to suggest that it is true; there is also evidence to suggest that perhaps it is not, it was not as great a threat to our immediate survival as we had anticipated or had been told or thought.
So, Mr. Speaker, it is not clear-cut. There is no easy way out of this. There is no absolute way in which we can, or at least I can make a decision here, except to say it is too early to tell. We hope and we pray that we have made the right decision. We make these decisions, certainly I know I and I am sure almost all of my colleagues here made the decision in how to vote after thought, a great deal of thought and, for most of us, a great deal of prayer, asking for guidance, looking at all of the information available, and then doing what we are asked to do here and what we are elected to do: cast a vote.
Now, I hope and I pray that this country will begin to do what I suggested earlier needs to be done in terms of extolling the virtues of the American creed, of western civilization, and why we all should be proud to be part of it. I hope and I pray that Islam will begin to reform itself, look internally, and see that the path it is on, if it is allowed to be dragged into this quagmire of extremist violence, terrorist activities, murdering women and children; if the religion is allowed to be dragged into that quagmire, it can never, ever survive in the long run. It can create a great deal of damage, but it could never survive in the long run, and I hope it will begin to look internally.
Finally, I hope that we will defend ourselves in every way necessary, including the defense of our own borders.
This is something that, of course, I have taken issue with in terms of our own administration and, of course, with the position of the other party. Because up to this point in time, neither of these two parties and neither of the two candidates for the presidency of the United States have indicated a willingness to defend the borders.
Today's Time magazine comes out with a story that is absolutely incredible. I really commend it to anyone and everyone who has an interest, and everyone should have an interest. It is called, Who Left the Door Open? It starts off talking about the fact that we all go through, and today I went through the process, of course, as millions of other Americans did, of getting on an airplane, going through the security screening system, putting all the luggage through, taking off my shoes, going through the system, having my belt checked to make sure I was not carrying anything, all the people behind me doing the same thing, in front of me doing the same thing, everybody being significantly inconvenienced because we want to be safe. We want to try to make sure that no one's going to get on a plane and do something really horrible, and so we all put up with this frustrating sort of experience and annoying, time-consuming process because we believe that it is making us more safe.
In fact, of course, while we are doing all of these things here and while at ports of entry throughout the United States people are lined up in cars, while we are doing a little better at trying to determine who they really are that are coming into this country, we are trying to figure out whether the documents are any better. We are providing technology to the ports of entry to allow them to do a better job at making sure of the people who are coming into the country, as to who they are, who they say they are.
Time magazine, Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues know, is certainly no conservative icon. Even Time magazine has now come to the conclusion that we have got a big problem with porous borders and with an immigration policy that is dangerous, to say the least, in a variety of different ways.
It is a lengthy article. I am astounded, as a matter of fact, at some of the things they say, again because it is Time magazine, because one just does not expect this kind of a thing from Time magazine.
U.S. borders, rather than becoming more secure since 9/11, have grown even more porous, they say, and the trend has accelerated in the past year. It is fair to estimate, based on a Time investigation, not Tom Tancredo's point of view here, based on a Time magazine investigation, that the number of illegal aliens flooding into the United States this year will total 3 million. That is enough to fill 22,000 Boeing 737-700 airliners or 60 flights every day for a year.
Washington's failure to control the Nation's borders has a painful impact on workers at the bottom of the ladder and increasingly those farther up the income scale. The system holds down the pay of American workers and rewards the illegals and the businesses that hire them. It breeds anger and resentment among citizens who cannot understand why illegal aliens often receive government-funded health care, education benefits and subsidized housing. In border communities, the masses of incoming illegals lay waste to the landscape, create a costly burden for agencies trying to keep public order. Moreover, the system makes a mockery of the U.S. tradition of encouraging legal immigration.
It is so true. Today, Mr. Speaker, I had a call from a member of the press in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Gazette Telegraph, and she said she was working with an individual who was trying to get to stay in the United States but was having a very difficult time and had spent a lot of money. I said, well, do you mean this person is here illegally? Well, it turns out, of course, she is. Of course, yes, that her daughter now needs medical treatment and she is afraid if she is returned home and this kid is sent to Mexico, she would not be able to get the medical treatment, but that the task of getting the papers she needs is now very time-consuming and expensive.
I suggested to her that, of course, the mistake that was made originally was coming into the country illegally and that that can only be rectified by going home to the country of origin and starting the process of coming into this country through the normal channels. The reporter for the Gazette Telegraph said to me, well, it is really too cumbersome, it is time-consuming, it costs a lot of money. I said, yes, of course, it does, that is absolutely true. It is hard to get in. It is hard to do it the right way.
Every Wednesday there is a service for the folks who are being sworn in as new citizens, and I tell them every time I go, I say, look, I have come to tell you two things: Welcome to the United States, number 1; number 2, thank you for doing it the right way because, in fact, millions of people choose not to do it this way. Every time we give them all the benefits that you now are going to get because you have done it the right way. It is a mockery of this process. It is an insult to everyone who has spent the time and the energy to actually become a citizen of this country.
So when we tell people, whether it is the President of the United States, or John Kerry, who tell people that do not worry if you are here illegally, we will, in fact, allow you to stay and give you amnesty, you are, in fact, spitting in the eye of every single person who has done it the right way and of the millions of the people around this world who are attempting to do it the right way.
So I want us to defend our borders, which is part of the defense of the Nation, a significant part of that defense. Of the 3 million people a year that even Time magazine says come in here illegally, we know that a significant percentage, perhaps 300,000 of the 3 million, come here from countries other than Mexico. Of the 300,000 who get in illegally from other countries, perhaps 100,000 are from countries that are identified, by the way, as countries of interest.
Thousands and thousands more are coming across those borders every single year from countries that we identify as being supporters of terrorism. They are coming in illegally. Some of them are paying huge, huge fees to come into this country illegally. Upwards of $50,000 is being paid by people who desire to come into this country under the radar, without our knowledge. People from the Middle East and from Asia are paying that much money, and you have to ask yourself, why would anybody do that? And where would they get the money if they do not have it themselves, who would be paying to get them in here? Some pretty frightening thoughts come to mind, because I do not think anybody is going to pay $50,000 to come into this country to work at the 7-Eleven down the street or to pick grapes. I think they have other reasons for coming in, and if somebody else pays for them to come in, what are the reasons anyone would have to put up such large sums of money to sneak people into this country?
Our borders are porous, and they are porous because we do not have the political will to close them. Neither party, neither candidate for President, will suggest this for fear of the political retribution that would come from interest groups inside their own party.
But I suggest that either candidate for President would be doing not just his country a favor and the right thing but would be doing his own candidacy and his own party a favor by talking about the need to secure our borders and by actually doing it, which we can do by the way. We absolutely can do.
We have the technology to do it tomorrow. We do not have the political will. It is amazing.
So one part of that three-legged stool they put out there is dependent upon our willingness to make hard, hard choices. Well, actually, I am sure in every way, to the extent that we have any ability to make decisions about any one of those three things, they are all tough choices. But in the area of our own national defense, this is not a hard choice. This is not a difficult sort of academic question to answer.
What would be the ramifications of closing the border to those people coming through without our permission? The ramifications would be we would shut down the flow of cheap labor. Hence, we would be confronted by a lot of interest groups that would raise hell about it. We would be confronted by the Democratic party infrastructure that would say, look, these people coming in would eventually become our voters. We cannot close down those borders.
But both of the reasons that are given by individual parties and individual candidates, even if they do not express them openly, those are the reasons why we do not do it, and those reasons pale in significance to the fact that we are ever more vulnerable to an attack because of our borders being porous.
Again, great article. I cannot believe that I am up here talking about a truly honest and definitive look at the issue of immigration coming out of TIME Magazine, but here it is. "Who Left the Door Open?" Great, great article. I suggest that everyone get a copy of it. And I suggest certainly that our colleagues in this Congress get a copy, read it, and take it to heart. Because although there are pressure groups that will attack us if we actually do something about immigration, the fact is that the citizens of this country, John Q. Citizen, and our own children and grandchildren will thank us, because it is the right thing to do.
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