Date: 2006-09-13
Speaker: MARIO DIAZ-BALART (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Flor

ida. If I may. I would like to. because I think the gentleman from Tennessee brings up some really. really important points. I guess that some of the fine men and women on the Democratic Party side believe that if we just went away. if the United States just left the Middle East. I assume that would be stop supporting Israel. I dont know. But if we just pulled back from the Middle East as some have said. some have said we should pull back to Japan. to Okinawa. which. by the way. in military terms for the Navy is farther away than the Navy yards here in Virginia. So in other words if we left there. if we were just good. if we just behaved. that these terrorists would leave us alone. that they would go -away. I mentioned a little while ago a list of attacks against America that were way before 9/11. way before we were in Iraq. But I guess some just believed naively that if we just left Iraq. just left Afghanistan. that everything would be hunky dory. Yet. I think it is important to kind of listen to what our enemy is saying. When you have Hezbollah leaaer Nasrallah saying. "Death to America." and let me quotehim. regardless. this is a quote. regardless of how the world. has changed after 9/11. after the llth of September. death to America will remain a reverberating and powerful slogan. Death to America. I guess some believe that he doesnt really mean it. that if we just. I dont know. retracted from the world that they would go away. bin Laden. who. by the way. -very cleverly. started a media campaign to try to divide our country. very effectively. I might add. Let me quote you about that. by the way. what bin Laden said. He said. al Qaeda intends to launch a. quote. media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government. He also said that the media campaign. and I am quoting him now. aimed at creating pressure from the American people on the American Government to stop their campaign. There are some that. I guess. because they are naive. are doing exactly. exactly what our enemy says that has to happen in order to defeat the United States. in order to defeat the United States. Let us be very clear that the terrorists aim. the aim of the terrorists is total destruction of the United States of our way of life and everything that we believe in. It is not because we may have been in Iraq. it is not because we support Israel. All those things. obviously. upset them. But let me quote Osama- bin Laden again. where he says. quote. the war is for you or for us to win. talking about the West. If we win. if we win it. it means your defeat and disgrace forever. That is how they think. So I dont understand how. when there was such a consensus. how everybody understood that. how the terrorists continue to do the same thing. how to kill Americans. but because of the efforts of this President and this Cdngress. they have not been able to do so here. and the terrorists continue to say what they are going to do. How is it possible that some refused to listen. like I guess happened in the 1930s. when some refused to listen to Winston Churchill when he said there is an evil out there. the Nazis. They are not going to go away. we have to confront them. So I kind of pose that as a question to my colleague from Tennessee. because I dont get it. I dont get it. How much clearer can the actions and the words of the terrorists be before some of our men and women get it. understand it. Realize that we are not the bad guys. we are the good guys. It is the terrorists that we are fighting. and they are not going to stop. they are not going to go away if we just send our troops to Okinawa and Japan and pretend that they no longer exist. I mean. I dont get it.