The Future of American Operations in Iraq

Transcript

SEN. JOHN KERRY:
I begin by asking a simple question: What does it gain America to win a war and potentially lose a peace? Last spring our fighting men and women bravely swept across the battlefields of Iraq. But now, as summer turns to fall, the Bush administration's lack of courageous leadership, its scorn for shared sacrifice, its stubborn dogmatism has put our troops at risk, creating a potential new sanctuary for terrorism and weakening America's leadership in the world. Today our soldiers' lives, the future of Iraq, and the solidarity of free nations are being threatened not by a tin-horn dictator but by a tin-eared administration which insists that it is always right, refuses to admit when it is wrong, and over and over again misleads the American people.

Our country is paying a high price for the Bush failures. The clearest symbol of that price is the target that is on the back of young Americans serving in a distant desert. Today a soldier in Iraq fears getting shot while getting a drink of water. A squad at a checkpoint has to worry about whether or not an old station wagon driving towards them is a mobile bomb. And the price is paid not only in their security and, too often, their lives, but in the erosion of America's international standing, the prospect of a new danger down the road, and an endless drain on our national treasury.

The Bush administration is asking us to pay more and more for its failures—another $87 billion that the American people are being asked to shoulder alone and which America's middle class is being asked to shoulder disproportionately, money that could be used here at home to make health care more affordable, to pay for homeland security, to keep this president's promise to leave no child behind.

This is an extraordinary moment for America and for the world. Just as in Vietnam, arrogance and pride stand in the way of common sense and integrity. "If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us; if we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us." Those aren't my words. They're the words of George W. Bush running for president three years ago next week. How far we have come since then.

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