Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 2004, pages 21-23

What They Said

Setting the Record Straight on His Mideast Newspaper Column

By Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings

I have, this afternoon, the opportunity to respond to being charged as anti-Semitic when I proclaimed the policy of President Bush in the Mideast as not for Iraq or really for democracy in the sense that he is worried about Saddam and democracy.…

I want to read an article that appeared in the Post and Courier in Charleston on May 6; thereafter, I think in the State newspaper in Columbia a couple days later; and in the Greenville News—all three major newspapers in South Carolina. You will find that there is no anti-Semitic reference whatsoever in it.

The reason I emphasize that upfront is for the simple reason that you cannot put an op-ed in my hometown paper that is anti-Semitic. We have a very, very proud Jewish community in Charleston. In fact, it is where Reform Judaism began. The earliest temple, Kadosh Beth Elohim, is on Hasell Street. I have spoken there several times. I had the pleasure of having that particular temple put on the National Register. This particular senator, with over 50 years now of public service, has received a strong Jewish vote.…

Now…the senator from Virginia, Mr. George Allen, and I are good friends. Maybe after this particular thing he might feel different, but I know his role as the chairman of the campaign committee. And so I have an article here where Senator Allen denounces Senator Hollings’ latest political attack, Senator Hollings’ anti-Semitic, political conspiracy statement.

Let me read my column here from the May 6 Post and Courier, and you be the judge:

With 760 dead in Iraq, over 3,000 maimed for life—home folks continue to argue why we are in Iraq—and how to get out. Now everyone knows what was not the cause. Even President Bush acknowledges that Saddam Hussain had nothing to do with 9/11. Listing the 45 countries where al-Qaeda was operating on Sept. 11, the State Department did not list Iraq. They listed 45 countries and at that particular date on Sept. 11, 2001, they did not even list Iraq.

Richard Clarke, in Against All Enemies, tells how the United States had not received any threat of terrorism for 10 years from Saddam at the time of our invasion. On page 231, John McLaughlin of the CIA verifies this to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. In 1993, President Clinton responded to Saddam’s attempt on the life of President George H.W. Bush by putting a missile down on Saddam’s intelligence headquarters in Baghdad. Not a big kill, but Saddam got the message—monkey around with the United States and a missile lands on his head. Of course there were no weapons of mass destruction. Israel’s intelligence, Mossad, knows what’s going on in Iraq. They are the best. They have to know. Israel’s survival depends on knowing. Israel long since would have taken us to the weapons of mass destruction.....

“You can’t have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.”

Let me divert for a second there. I was here when Israel attacked the nuclear facility in Baghdad during the 1980s. In all candor, when President Bush, on Oct. 7, 2002, said, after all that buildup by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and everybody else, that facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait until the smoking gun is a mushroom cloud, I thought we were attacking for Israel. I thought that they knew about some kind of nuclear development there. And rather than getting them in further trouble with the United Nations and the Arab world, that its best friend, the United States, would knock it out for them. That is why I voted for it. I got misled. Our attack on Iraq, the invasion of Iraq is a bad mistake. I will get into that later. But let me read even further:

.....With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush’s policy to secure Israel. Led by Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Charles Krauthammer, for years there had been a domino school of thought that the way to guarantee Israel’s security is to spread democracy in the area. Wolfowitz wrote: “The United States may not be able to lead countries through the door of democracy, but where that door is locked shut by a totalitarian deadbolt, American power may be the only way to open it up.”

Namely, invasion. That is Wolfowitz talking.

And on another occasion: Iraq as “the first Arab democracy…would cast a very large shadow, starting with Syria and Iran but across the whole Arab world.” Three weeks before the invasion, President Bush stated: “A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example for freedom for other nations in the region.”

I referred to those three gentlemen because I know them well. They are brilliant. I have been for years associated one way or the other with each of them. I read Charles Krauthammer. I wish I could write like he can. With respect to Richard Perle, he was sort of our authority in the Cold War, best friend of [former Sen.] Scoop Jackson. That is how I met him 38 years ago, almost. I followed him and I followed his advice, and that is in large measure how we prevailed in the Cold War. So I have the highest respect for Richard Perle.

And, of course, the other gentleman, Paul Wolfowitz…I met him in Indonesia when he was ambassador. He came back. We were good friends. He was looking around for a position, and I know I offered him one—in fact, we might go to the records and find temporarily he might have been on my payroll for a few weeks. But I have always had the highest regard for Paul Wolfowitz.

Project for the New American Century

That is why I referred to him. I had their sayings and everything else. But let me go, diverting for a minute, right to the Project for the New American Century. I have a letter that was written on May 29, 1998, to Newt Gingrich, the [House] speaker, Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader. These are the gentlemen who said this: “We would use U.S. and allied military power to provide protection for liberating areas in northern and southern Iraq, and we should establish and maintain a strong U.S. military presence in the region and be prepared to use that force to protect our vital interests in the Gulf and, if necessary, to help remove Saddam from power.“

And that is signed by—and I want everybody to remember these names—Elliot Abrams, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John R. Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Robert B. Zoellick. There is a studied school of thought of the best way to secure Israel. We have been going for years back and forth with every particular administration, you can see where we are now.

But in any event, the better way to do it is go right in and establish our predominance in Iraq and then, as they say, and I have different articles here I could refer to, next is Iran and then Syria. And it is the domino theory, and they genuinely believe it. I differ. I think, frankly, we have caused more terrorism than we have gotten rid of. That is my Israel policy. You can’t have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here. I have followed them mostly in the main, but I have also resisted signing certain letters from time to time, to give the poor president a chance.

I can tell you no president takes office—I don’t care whether it is a Republican or a Democrat—that all of a sudden AIPAC will tell him exactly what the policy is, and senators and members of Congress ought to sign letters. I read those carefully and I have joined in most of them. On some I have held back. I have my own idea and my own policy. I have stated it categorically.

The way to really get peace is not militarily. You cannot kill an idea militarily. I was delighted the other day when General Myers appeared before our Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense and he said that we will not win militarily in Iraq. He didn’t say we are going to get defeated militarily, but that you can’t win militarily in Iraq.

The papers are the ones that pointed out Wolfowitz, Perle, and Charles Krauthammer were of the Jewish faith. They are the ones who brought all this Semitism in there. I can tell you that right now, I didn’t have that in mind. I had my friends in mind and I followed them. We had this in the late 1990s under President Clinton, when we passed a resolution that we ought to have Saddam removed from power, have a regime change. I was wondering how it went. I had to find my old file on this—Project for the New American Century.

Now, going back to my article, I wrote: every president since 1947 has made a futile attempt to help Israel negotiate peace. But no leadership has surfaced amongst the Palestinians that can make a binding agreement. President Bush realized his chances at negotiation were no better. He came to office imbued with one thought—re-election.”

I say that advisedly. I have been up here with eight presidents. We have had support of all eight presidents. Yes, I supported the president on this Iraq resolution, but I was misled. There weren’t any weapons, or any terrorism, or al-Qaeda. This is the reason we went to war. He had one thought in mind, and that was re-election. I say that about President Bush. He is a delightful fella, a wonderful campaigner, but he loves campaigning. You cannot get him in the White House or catch him there, hardly. He doesn’t work on these problems at all.…

Again, let me read: Bush thought tax cuts would hold his crowd together and that spreading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats.

Is there anything wrong with referring to the Jewish vote? Good gosh, every one of us of the 100, with pollsters and all, refer to the Jewish vote. That is not anti-Semitic. It is appreciating them. We campaigned for it.

I just read about President Bush’s appearance before the AIPAC. He confirmed his support of the Jewish vote, referring to adopting Ariel Sharon’s policy, and the dickens with the 1967 borders, the heck with negotiating the return of refugees, the heck with the settlements he had objected to originally. They had those borders, Resolution No. 242—no, no, President Bush said: I am going along with Sharon, and he was going to get that and he got the wonderful reception he got with the Jewish vote. There is nothing like…my friend from Virginia, Senator Allen, says—that it is an anti-Semitic, political, conspiracy statement.

“If the troops are there to fight, there are too few. If they are there to die, there are too many.”

That is not a conspiracy. That is the policy. I didn’t like to keep it a secret, maybe; but I can tell you now, I will challenge any one of the other 99 senators to tell us why we are in Iraq, other than what this policy is here. It is an adopted policy, a domino theory of The Project For The New American Century.

Everybody knows it because we want to secure our friend, Israel. If we can get in there and take it in seven days, as Paul Wolfowitz says, then we would get rid of Saddam, and when we got rid of Saddam, now all they can do is fall back and say: Aren’t you getting rid of Saddam?

Let me get to that point. What happens is, they say he is a monster. We continued to give him aid after he gassed his own people and everything else of that kind. George Herbert Walker Bush said in his book All The Best in 1999, never commit American GIs into an unwinnable urban guerrilla war and lose the support of the Arab world, lose their friendship and support. That is a general rephrasing of it.

The point is, my authority is the president’s daddy. I want everybody to know that. I don’t apologize for this column. I want them to apologize to me for talking about anti-Semitism. They are not getting by with it. I will come down here every day—I have nothing else to do—and we will talk about it and find out what the policy is.

Let me go back to this particular column: But George Bush, as stated by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and others, started laying the groundwork to invade Iraq days before the inauguration.

There is no question, he got a briefing. That was the first thing he wanted out of former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen. Then the nominee, about to take the oath of office as president of the United States, wanted to be briefed on Iraq. They had this policy in mind coming to town. Mr. President, 9/11 had nothing to do with it, and we all know it now. We have to understand it because that is the only way really to help Israel and get us out of the soup. Everybody is worrying about Iraq. We better worry about Israel because we certainly have put her in terrible jeopardy with this particular initiative.

Without any Iraq connection to 9/11, within weeks President Bush had the Pentagon outlining a plan to invade Iraq. He was determined. President Bush thought taking Iraq would be easy. Wolfowitz said it would take only seven days. Vice President Cheney believed that we would be greeted as liberators, but Cheney’s man, Chalabi, made a mess of de-Ba’athification of Iraq by dismissing Republican Guard leadership and Sunni leaders who soon joined with the insurgents.

Worst of all, we tried to secure Iraq with too few troops. In 1966 in South Vietnam, with a population of 16 million, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, with 535,000 U.S. troops, was still asking for more troops. In Iraq, with a population of 25 million, Gen. John Abizaid, with only 135,000 troops, can barely secure the troops, much less the country. If the troops are there to fight, there are too few. If they are there to die, there are too many. To secure Iraq we need more troops, at least 100,000 more. The only way to get the United Nations back in Iraq is to make the country secure. Once back, the French, Germans, and others will join with the U.N. to take over.

With President Bush’s domino policy in the Mideast gone awry, he can’t keep shouting “terrorism war.” Terrorism is a method, not a war. We don’t call the Crimean War, with the charge of the light brigade, the cavalry war, or World War II the blitzkrieg war. There is terrorism in Northern Ireland, there is terrorism in India, and in Pakistan. In the Mideast, terrorism is a separate problem, to be defeated by diplomacy and negotiation, not militarily.

Here, might does not make right. Right makes might. Acting militarily we have created more terrorism than we have eliminated.

The title of this article is “Bush’s failed Mideast policy is creating more terrorism,” and, I could add, jeopardizing the security of Israel.

A Big Fan of Israel

They say: He talks like a big fan of Israel. I am. I have a 38-year track record. I will never forget some 34 years ago meeting with David Ben-Gurion. He talked about little Israel, less than 3 million at that time in a sea of 100 million.

Let’s say Israel has 5 million people there now, but there are 150 million Muslims surrounding it. If you punch the particular buzzer I did with Yitzhak Rabin one day down on the Negev to scramble the air force, I think it was 21 seconds they were up in the air, and in a minute’s time, they were outside over Jordan.

Militarily, Israel is a veritable aircraft carrier. You can hardly fly and you are out of the country, and everybody has to understand that. You cannot play the numbers game Sharon plays. He thinks he can do it militarily.

I had a headline the other day. When I saw it, I showed it to my staff. I said: You all come in here, I want to ask you something. “Israel plans to destroy more Gaza dwellings.” You see that headline? I asked staff members: Suppose they bulldoze your daddy’s home. Wouldn’t you want to cut their throat? They said: In a New York minute.

How do you create terrorists? Where is the front line in the so-called war on terrorism? I learned the answer recently on a trip I was on with the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. We talked for over an hour with the King of Jordan. He finally cautioned at the very end, when we stood up, he said: You have to settle this Israel-Palestine question. That is the only way to get on top of this. We went over to Kuwait, to the prime minister. When he got through, he said: You have to settle the Israel-Palestine situation. I will quote Mr. Musharraf, the president of Pakistan. When we got there, he cautioned, if you can settle the Israel-Palestine question, terrorism will disappear around the world.

Then we came in on a Friday evening to make a little courtesy call with the French.…I was proud to appear with the senator from Virginia. But Chirac…said, look, we have to have Western solidarity.…He said he wanted to help in Iraq, but he needed a U.N. resolution to cover. He said what we have to do is do something about Israel and Palestine. I said, what would you do? He said, I would put in a peacekeeping force. I said, would French troops come? He said, French troops would come immediately. We would be part of it and we would separate them from killing each other every day.

My position is, and I believe in this particular policy as strongly as I know how, might does not make right, but right makes might. We have lost our even-handed posture and reputation in the Mideast. We…are throwing over the United States-Israel policy of some 35 years insofar as negotiating the settlements and the refugees. We are saying forget about all of that, let Sharon keep bulldozing them. Now in the morning paper on the front page one sees the killing of children, they are saying, we are defending Israel. That is the U.S. policy. That is not just Israel’s policy.

They are coming in there with U.S. equipment, U.S. gun helicopters, U.S. tanks that are bulldozing. That is our policy. That is the reason for 9/11, when Osama said, I do not like American troops in Saudi Arabia, get the infidel out.…Where do you think we get all this talk about hate America? I do not buy that stuff. I have traveled the world. They love Americans.

Recently we met with the ambassadors of Germany and France and Britain in our policy committee, and they said the young people are disillusioned. They always look to the United States for the moral position and taking and defending that particular position. They do not look there anymore.

We are losing the terrorism war because we thought we could do it militarily under the domino policy of President Bush, going into Iraq. That is my point. That is not anti-Semitic or whatever they say in here about people’s faith and ethnicity. I never referred to any faith.…

This particular op-ed piece appeared in the Post and Courier. Never would they have thought, having read it, if it was anti-Semitic, that they would have ever put it in there. Nor would the Knight Ridder newspapers in Columbia, SC. Nor would the Metro Media newspapers in Greenville, SC. But the Anti-Defamation League picked it up and now they have given it to my good friend, Senator Allen of Virginia. I have his particular admonition how I am anti-Semitic, and I cannot let that stay there.…

“Let’s realize that we are in real trouble.”

Everybody is glad we have gotten rid of Saddam, but we can see what has happened. There is an old saying we learned in World War II that no matter how well the gun is aimed, if the recoil is going to kill the gun crew, you do not fire.

Did this White House and administration ever think of the recoil? It severely injured the gun crew. Yes, ordinarily to get rid of Saddam, like they put a missile on the intelligence head, they could have put a missile on him any time they wanted, but they did not want to do that. They wanted the domino policy to ensue.

No, no, getting rid of Saddam was not worth almost 800 dead GIs and over 3,500 maimed for life. Some say every time we want to criticize the policy, we are weakening the GIs. I am strengthening the GIs. I said let’s get enough in there so they can secure themselves. We have 135,000 now. A third of those are guarding the other third, and that means leaving a third, 35,000 or 40,000 troops, running out like a fire drill to any particular trouble and coming back in and eating. I have been there.…

So we have to go out and not speak sense with respect to policy, and when you want to talk about policy, they say it is anti-Semitic. Well, come on the floor, let’s debate it. Because my friend from Virginia admonishes me. Referring to me he says, “I suggest he should learn from history before making accusations.” I didn’t make any accusations. I stated facts. That is their policy. That is not my policy.

Mind you me, when we went into Iraq, the only people in the world who favored that policy were the people of the United States and the people of Israel. The people of Jordan, Iraq, Britain, Spain, Poland, Italy, Japan, everywhere around the world said you just don’t invade a sovereign country no matter how bad the rascal is. We have Kim Jong of North Korea—he has weapons of mass destruction, but we don’t do anything there.

Don’t give me this about how we saved this and we did this or did that. We have to sort of learn that the front line now is not the Pentagon but the State Department. We have to work through diplomacy. We live in a global economy and a global world. That is only going to come about economically, politically, diplomatically, and by negotiations.

A Domino Policy for Israel

The United States, until this invasion and this domino policy for Israel—don’t tell me it is otherwise, about spreading democracy. They know what they are talking about. They are insisting on it. It is not a Jewish policy or a Semite policy. It is their domino policy. That is exactly what it is. But they know how to make you tuck tail and run. Not the senator from South Carolina. We don’t run, we don’t win, we are not right, we are wrong a lot of times, but I have thought this out as thoroughly as I know how, and it worries me that here we are.…

What would the senator from South Carolina do if I were king for a day? Yes, I would put the troops in to get security, and I would step up the election. I can tell you right now, I have run for all kind of offices, 20-some statewide offices and campaigns. But don’t put me in on that temporary coalition. That fellow, El Baradei, who is running around the United Nations to get a temporary coalition or government to turn power over to on June 30—don’t put me in that. I immediately have to repudiate the United States, that I am not a stooge for the United States. We just have our fingers crossed that we can hold law and order so we can have an election. But don’t wait until 2005, or December; by September 30, let’s get that election going.

Let’s realize we are in real trouble. Saudi Arabia is in trouble. Israel is in trouble. The United States is in trouble. I am going to state what I believe to be the fact. In fact, I believe it very strongly.…Nobody is willing to stand up and say what is going on.…

So it has been ill prepared, ill advised, and ill administered. The entire thing is a mess. Don’t give me “support the troops, support the troops.” I have been with troops, about three years in combat, so don’t tell me about troops. I have always supported the troops.

You ask how many senators have gotten a Woodward Award from the U.S. Army. They don’t give that out lightly. I have been with every secretary of defense until this one, and I think he is brilliant, but I think he has made a mistake going along with this domino policy. We have it now out on the table, and we will all talk about it, and we will be around and ready to debate it.…

This is an edited version of remarks delivered on the Senate floor May 20, 2004. For the complete transcript, visit <http://www.senate.gov/~hollings/statements/2004521A35.html>.