Brownback Touts Foreign Policy Experience

After finishing behind Romney and Huckabee in the Iowa Straw Poll, Sam Brownback is trying to gain ground by focusing on his foreign policy experience:

Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback on Tuesday criticized President Bush and two GOP rivals, saying the presidency isn’t a foreign policy classroom.

Brownback’s criticism that governors often do not have the foreign policy experience necessary to be president was aimed primarily at rivals Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, both former governors. But in the process, he also took a jab at the man they all seek to replace, former Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

“We’ve got to walk more humbly and a lot more wisely than the current president,” said Brownback, a Kansas senator and former member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“I really believe this next president needs to go in with knowledge on foreign policy and not learn it on the job,” said Brownback, who has been a vocal activist against the genocide in Darfur.

“We have a tendency to elect governors as president because people like executive experience. I don’t have any problem with that. The problem is most governors don’t have foreign policy experience.”

As for his foreign policy experience, Brownback was, when the Republicans had a majority in the Senate, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was for a time the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, which included Iraq. So as you can imagine, he had a lot of comments over the yeas on Iraq. Here’s a few:

In August of 2002, Brownback laid out his philosophy on Iraq clearly and succinctly:

Saddam Hussein is an evil man. He has chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. He has the means to use them and he has used them in the past against his own people and against his opponents. The world must confront Saddam Hussein.

“We should support by every means available to us - including militarily - the Iraqi National Congress, the Kurds in the North and the Iraqi opposition in the South, to limit Saddam’s control of Iraq and remove him from power.”

Brownback was mostly in favor of using the INC and other groups to overthrow Saddam for the US. Take this quote from March 2001 when Brownback chaired a subcommittee meeting into US policy towards Iraq:

“The threat that Iraq poses to its own people and to the decent nations of this world will continue as long as Saddam remains in power. To my mind, there is only one way to deal with this problem - to get rid of Saddam. This is how I propose we start this process:

– We should use our available resources (in the form of drawdown and economic support) to bolster the opposition and fully implement the Iraq Liberation Act. — We must stop spending money holding conferences for the opposition and begin to train and, when necessary, arm them. — We ought to unilaterally declare that the southern no-fly zone will be a no-drive zone as well. — We should expand our rules of engagement to include WMD targets and potentially other targets as well.

“This is where we should begin. I look forward to hearing what you think,” Brownback said.

Brownback repeatedly met with the Iraqi National Congress and said the following after meeting with the INC and Ahmad Chalabi in October 2002:

“The U.S. must increase its support for the Iraqi opposition within and outside of the country. With their help, the U.S. could do a great deal toward affecting regime change with a relatively small military footprint. There are reports that the Pentagon is preparing to train and fund Iraqi opposition groups. I hope we move forward with this. It is critically important that the Iraqi people be part of the liberation of their country.

“These leaders here today are providing important insights and contributions - not only toward a military victory if one is necessary, but also toward the re-construction process. A newly democratic Iraq will need strong, fair and conciliatory leaders - and these gentlemen have dedicated their lives toward seeing that dream become reality,” Brownback said.

Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress was present, and provided perspective on the current situation with Iraq. They discussed the liberation of Iraq, the mobilization of opposition forces, and planning for a post-Saddam democracy.

A week later, Brownback said the following regarding the prospects for Iraqi democracy:

“During World War II, Americans liberated the Nazi death camps. The world was shocked to see such manifest hatred so systematically employed. The stories from Iraq are only now beginning to make their way into the public sphere, but they are no less tragic.

“There are many who felt that the German people could not return to democracy - that Nazism had so totally taken over the character of the nation, that re-building democracy would be impossible. It was difficult, but not impossible. The same will be true of Iraq,” Brownback said.

In December of 2002, Brownback practically laid his reputation on the line that a democracy in Iraq was not only possible, but necessary, and that Iraqi opposition groups were comparable to groups in America during the Revolution:

“I have long believed in the Iraqi opposition groups. They have kept this issue alive and have helped bring to light the horrors of Saddam’s regime.

“The differences held by these groups go to the very foundation of what a future Iraq should be. So, some may ask, how can they put them aside and come together?

“History has provided us with numerous examples where just this sort of scenario has played out well. Look at the American Revolution. This was a group of very different people who had strongly divided views about what the new country should be. It took a great deal of compromise on some of the most important issues faced in order to establish a republic - which could then later sort out these important differences.

“Democracy is difficult, but ultimately, it is the only form of government that allows people to progress. To harness the great potential of liberty, people must be free.

“One of the greatest gifts God ever gave to humanity was that of liberty. We love freedom and bloom under it. We cannot and should not try to force people to live by a certain religious code. To do so negates our free will. Men and women must be free to choose a moral life - only then, is it a tribute to God.

“A democracy thrives on diversity. Tyranny oppresses it. This is truly a historic time for the Iraqi people. Amongst the opposition leaders who will be meeting in London later this week, are the Iraqi versions of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams - and they will be remembered by future free Iraqis as the people who created a free and prosperous Iraq.

“Destiny has called upon these leaders of the Iraqi opposition to accept the heavy burden of re-birthing a nation. It is an incredible opportunity, but one which will be lost if the opposition fails to unite.

“I have studied these groups for years - I know what they are capable of. I believe that they will unite and rise to the occasion afforded them by the support they are now receiving from the American and British governments. [My emphasis]

Earlier this year, he seemed to dismiss his experience entirely after visiting Baghdad:

And they are difficult circumstances. The country still feels like an occupation zone. I guess I can say I was physically present in Baghdad, but I certainly did not experience the city itself - only the concrete barricades inside the massive international zone. I would have to say the environment is no better now than during my last visit in March 2005. The three mortar rounds that exploded inside the international zone during one meeting with an Iraqi vice-president underscore the point.

My long-time interest in Iraq makes this assessment particularly disappointing. During my earliest days on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I chaired the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Middle East and held some of the first hearings on what to do about Saddam Hussein’s regime. I carried the Iraq Liberation Act on the floor of the Senate and help get $100 million for the Iraqi National Congress. I also attended some of the INC’s first meetings in London and New York. In short, I have been committed to a free, safe and secure Iraq from the very beginning.

But during my meetings this week, I found little reason for optimism that the sectarian violence will dissipate any time soon. The Sunni leaders blamed everything on the Shi’a, and the Shi’a likewise blamed everything on the Sunnis. The Kurdish leadership pointed out that the Sunni and Shi’a only meet when the Kurds call the meeting. All of this suggests that at the present time, the United States cares more about a peaceful Iraq than the Iraqis do. Given that reality, it is difficult to understand why more U.S. troops would make a difference.

On the other hand, Brownback talked about terrorists, Bin Laden, and Iraq in 1999, though as separate issues in a common problem:

U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, today chaired a hearing on ‘Extremist Movements and Their Threat to the United States’. “It is clear that the U.S. needs a coherent and comprehensive policy to deal with extremism,” Brownback said. “In addition to facing the existing terrorist threat, we need to be looking ahead and thinking about how to turn around what looks like a steeper and steeper slide into anti-western extremism in certain parts of the world. “There is a certain conventional wisdom gaining currency among experts that state sponsorship of terrorism has disappeared and that instead, the U.S. faces loosely-knit independent actors who are not beholden or answerable to any foreign government. Thus we have a Saudi national who once lived in the Sudan, based out of Afghanistan mounting terrorist attacks on U.S. installations in Africa. Who is to blame? “It is my firm belief that while we may not see states specifically planning and orchestrating terrorist attacks on the U.S., countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the Sudan can all be counted as state sponsors of terrorism because they provide safe-haven to terrorists; they allow the operation of terrorist training camps; they allow terrorists access to funds and may well facilitate their travel around the world. “Then there is the second tier of states: aiders and abetters. These are states which are otherwise friendly to the U.S. but are unwilling or unable to take the necessary steps to crack down on members of their government or on their citizens who are providing financial and logistical support to terrorist groups. Without such states, it would be infinitely more difficult for terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden to operate. “Take, for example, the case of Saudi Arabia: If last week’s USA Today article is accurate, significant funds are being funneled to Bin Laden from private citizens in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are good friends, but permitting this sort of thing is absolutely unacceptable. The Saudis have the responsibility to exert more financial control. We undertook to work with Saudi Arabia to protect their interests when they were threatened, but this is a two way street. “I am also worried about what appears to be a tacit compact between the Clinton Administration and the Saudis not to finger Iran for the Khobar Towers bombing. There seems to be a tendency to play down and even whitewash the involvement of certain states with terrorist groups: Syria, Lebanon, Iran and others. Another case in point is Iraq (Ambassador Sheehan, I have seen reports that Bin Laden has either been in Iraq or is contemplating setting up operations in Iraq. I hope you will address this). I must confess that I continue to be disappointed in the administration’s failure to match action to rhetoric in the case of Iraq. We are not moving nearly aggressively enough to remove Saddam Hussein. “In a nutshell, the Iraq question, the Iran question, Osama bin Laden, are challenges to U.S. leadership, and are symptoms of a phenomenon with which we must deal. As a nation, we cannot afford to tiptoe around this problem, we need a strong and comprehensive policy for dealing with this threat,” Brownback said.

We’ll have more research up shortly on this, but the point is that if you’re going to point to experience, point to what you have done, not simply that you have experience.