| We Stand Passively Mute THIS IS NO SMALL CONFLAGRATION WE CONTEMPLATE By SENATOR ROBERT BYRD Senate Floor Speech Wednesday February 12, 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WASHINGTON, D.C. (2/12) - To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war. Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent -- ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events. Only on the editorial pages of our newspapers is there much substantive discussion of the prudence or imprudence of engaging in this particular war. And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world. This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of preemption -- the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future -- is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self defense. It appears to be in contravention of international law and the UN Charter. And it is being tested at a time of world-wide terrorism, making many countries around the globe wonder if they will soon be on our -- or some other nation's -- hit list. High level Administration figures recently refused to take nuclear weapons off of the table when discussing a possible attack against Iraq. What could be more destabilizing and unwise than this type of uncertainty, particularly in a world where globalism has tied the vital economic and security interests of many nations so closely together? There are huge cracks emerging in our time-honored alliances, and U.S. intentions are suddenly subject to damaging worldwide speculation. Anti-Americanism based on mistrust, misinformation, suspicion, and alarming rhetoric from U.S. leaders is fracturing the once solid alliance against global terrorism which existed after September 11. Here at home, people are warned of imminent terrorist attacks with little guidance as to when or where such attacks might occur. Family members are being called to active military duty, with no idea of the duration of their stay or what horrors they may face. Communities are being left with less than adequate police and fire protection. Other essential services are also short-staffed. The mood of the nation is grim. The economy is stumbling. Fuel prices are rising and may soon spike higher. This Administration, now in power for a little over two years, must be judged on its record. I believe that that record is dismal. In that scant two years, this Administration has squandered a large projected surplus of some $5.6 trillion over the next decade and taken us to projected deficits as far as the eye can see. This Administration's domestic policy has put many of our states in dire financial condition, under funding scores of essential programs for our people. This Administration has fostered policies which have slowed economic growth. This Administration has ignored urgent matters such as the crisis in health care for our elderly. This Administration has been slow to provide adequate funding for homeland security. This Administration has been reluctant to better protect our long and porous borders. In foreign policy, this Administration has failed to find Osama bin Laden. In fact, just yesterday we heard from him again marshaling his forces and urging them to kill. This Administration has split traditional alliances, possibly crippling, for all time, International order-keeping entities like the United Nations and NATO. This Administration has called into question the traditional worldwide perception of the United States as well-intentioned peacekeeper. This Administration has turned the patient art of diplomacy into threats, labeling, and name calling of the sort that reflects quite poorly on the intelligence and sensitivity of our leaders, and which will have consequences for years to come. Calling heads of state pygmies, labeling whole countries as evil, denigrating powerful European allies as irrelevant -- these types of crude insensitivities can do our great nation no good. We may have massive military might, but we cannot fight a global war on terrorism alone. We need the cooperation and friendship of our time-honored allies as well as the newer found friends whom we can attract with our wealth. Our awesome military machine will do us little good if we suffer another devastating attack on our homeland which severely damages our economy. Our military manpower is already stretched thin and we will need the augmenting support of those nations who can supply troop strength, not just sign letters cheering us on. The war in Afghanistan has cost us $37 billion so far, yet there is evidence that terrorism may already be starting to regain its hold in that region. We have not found bin Laden, and unless we secure the peace in Afghanistan, the dark dens of terrorism may yet again flourish in that remote and devastated land. Pakistan as well is at risk of destabilizing forces. This Administration has not finished the first war against terrorism and yet it is eager to embark on another conflict with perils much greater than those in Afghanistan. Is our attention span that short? Have we not learned that after winning the war one must always secure the peace? And yet we hear little about the aftermath of war in Iraq. In the absence of plans, speculation abroad is rife. Will we seize Iraq's oil fields, becoming an occupying power which controls the price and supply of that nation's oil for the foreseeable future? To whom do we propose to hand the reigns of power after Saddam Hussein? Will our war inflame the Muslim world resulting in devastating attacks on Israel? Will Israel retaliate with its own nuclear arsenal? Will the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian governments be toppled by radicals, bolstered by Iran which has much closer ties to terrorism than Iraq? Could a disruption of the world's oil supply lead to a world-wide recession? Has our senselessly bellicose language and our callous disregard of the interests and opinions of other nations increased the global race to join the nuclear club and made proliferation an even more lucrative practice for nations which need the income? In only the space of two short years this reckless and arrogant Administration has initiated policies which may reap disastrous consequences for years. One can understand the anger and shock of any President after the savage attacks of September 11. One can appreciate the frustration of having only a shadow to chase and an amorphous, fleeting enemy on which it is nearly impossible to exact retribution. But to turn one's frustration and anger into the kind of extremely destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy debacle that the world is currently witnessing is inexcusable from any Administration charged with the awesome power and responsibility of guiding the destiny of the greatest superpower on the planet. Frankly many of the pronouncements made by this Administration are outrageous. There is no other word. Yet this chamber is hauntingly silent. On what is possibly the eve of horrific infliction of death and destruction on the population of the nation of Iraq -- a population, I might add, of which over 50% is under age 15 -- this chamber is silent. On what is possibly only days before we send thousands of our own citizens to face unimagined horrors of chemical and biological warfare -- this chamber is silent. On the eve of what could possibly be a vicious terrorist attack in retaliation for our attack on Iraq, it is business as usual in the United States Senate. We are truly "sleepwalking through history." In my heart of hearts I pray that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for a rudest of awakenings. To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is "in the highest moral traditions of our country". This war is not necessary at this time. Pressure appears to be having a good result in Iraq. Our mistake was to put ourselves in a corner so quickly. Our challenge is to now find a graceful way out of a box of our own making. Perhaps there is still a way if we allow more time. Senator Robert Byrd |
By SENATOR ROBERT BYRD Senate Floor Speech Tuesday March 1, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mr. President, in 1939, one of the most famous American movies of all time, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," hit the box office. Initially received with a combination of lavish praise and angry blasts, the film went on to win numerous awards and to inspire millions around the globe. The director, the legendary Frank Capra, in his autobiography, "Frank Capra: The Name Above the Title," cites this moving review of the film, appearing in the Hollywood Reporter, November 4, 1942: Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," chosen by French Theaters as the final English language film to be shown before the recent Nazi-ordered countrywide ban on American and British films went into effect, was roundly cheered. . . . Storms of spontaneous applause broke out at the sequence when, under the Abraham Lincoln monument in the Capital, the word, "Liberty," appeared on the screen and the Stars and Stripes began fluttering over the head of the great Emancipator in the cause of liberty. Similarly, cheers and acclamation punctuated the famous speech of the young senator on man's rights and dignity. "It was . . . as though the joys, suffering, love and hatred, the hopes and wishes of an entire people who value freedom above everything, found expression for the last time. . . ." For those who may not have seen it, "Mr. Smith" is the fictional story of one young Senator's crusade against forces of corruption and his lengthy filibuster -- his lengthy filibuster -- for the values he holds dear. My, how things have changed. These days, Mr. Smith would be called an obstructionist. Rumor has it that there is a plot afoot to curtail the right of extended debate in this hallowed Chamber, not in accordance with its rules, mind you, but by fiat from the Chair -- fiat from the Chair. The so-called nuclear option -- hear me -- the so-called nuclear option -- this morning I asked a man, What does nuclear option mean to you? He said: Oh, you mean with Iran? I was at the hospital a few days ago with my wife, and I asked a doctor, What does the nuclear option mean to you? He said: Well, that sounds like we're getting ready to drop some device, some atomic device on North Korea. Well, the so-called nuclear option purports to be directed solely at the Senate's advice and consent prerogatives regarding Federal judges. But the claim that no right exists to filibuster judges aims an arrow straight at the heart of the Senate's long tradition of unlimited debate. The Framers of the Constitution envisioned the Senate as a kind of executive council, a small body of legislators, featuring longer terms, designed to insulate Members from the passions of the day. The Senate was to serve as a check on the executive branch, particularly in the areas of appointments and treaties, where, under the Constitution, the Senate passes judgment absent the House of Representatives. James Madison wanted to grant the Senate the power to select judicial appointees with the Executive relegated to the sidelines. But a compromise brought the present arrangement: appointees selected by the Executive, with the advice and consent of the Senate confirmed. Note -- hear me again -- note that nowhere in the Constitution of the United States is a vote on appointments mandated. When it comes to the Senate, numbers can deceive. The Senate was never intended to be a majoritarian body. That was the role of the House of Representatives, with its membership based on the populations of States. The Great Compromise of July 16, 1787, satisfied the need for smaller States to have equal status in one House of Congress, the Senate. The Senate, with its two Members per State, regardless of population, is, then, the forum of the States. Indeed, in the last Congress -- get this -- in the last Congress 52 Members, a majority, representing the 26 smallest States, accounted for just 17.06 percent of the U.S. population. Let me say that again. Fifty-two Members, a majority, representing the 26 smallest States -- two Senators per State -- accounted for just 17.06 percent of the U.S. population. In other words, a majority in the Senate does not necessarily represent a majority of the population of the United States. The Senate is intended for deliberation. The Senate is intended for deliberation, not point scoring. The Senate is a place designed, from its inception, as expressive of minority views. Even 60 Senators, the number required under Senate rule XXII for cloture, would represent just 24 percent of the population if they happened to all hail from the 30 smallest States. So you can see what it means to the smallest States in these United States to be able to stand on this floor and debate, to their utmost, until their feet will no longer hold them, and their lungs of brass will no longer speak, in behalf of their States, in behalf of a minority, in behalf of an issue that affects vitally their constituents. Unfettered debate, the right to be heard at length, is the means by which we perpetuate the equality of the States. In fact, it was 1917, before any curtailing of debate was attempted, which means that from 1789 to 1917, there were 129 years; in other words, it means also that from 1806 to 1917, some 111 years, the Senate rejected any limits to debate. Democracy flourished along with the filibuster. The first actual cloture rule in 1917 was enacted in response to a filibuster by those people who opposed the arming of merchant ships. Some might say they opposed U.S. intervention in World War I, but to narrow it down, they opposed the arming of merchant ships. But even after its enactment, the Senate was slow to embrace cloture, understanding the pitfalls of muzzling debate. In 1949, the 1917 cloture rule was modified to make cloture more difficult to invoke, not less, mandating that the number needed to stop debate would be not two-thirds of those present and voting but two-thirds of all Senators elected and sworn. Indeed, from 1919 to 1962, the Senate voted on cloture petitions only 27 times and invoked cloture just 4 times over those 43 years. On January 4, 1957, Senator William Ezra Jenner of Indiana spoke in opposition to invoking cloture by majority vote. He stated with great conviction: We may have a duty to legislate, but we also have a duty to inform and deliberate. In the past quarter century we have seen a phenomenal growth in the power of the executive branch. If this continues at such a fast pace, our system of checks and balances will be destroyed. One of the main bulwarks against this growing power is free debate in the Senate . . . So long as there is free debate, men of courage and understanding will rise to defend against potential dictators . . . The Senate today is one place where, no matter what else may exist, there is still a chance to be heard, an opportunity to speak, the duty to examine, and the obligation to protect. It is one of the few refuges of democracy. Minorities have an illustrious past, full of suffering, torture, smear, and even death. Jesus Christ was killed by a majority; Columbus was smeared; and Christians have been tortured. Had the United States Senate existed during those trying times, I am sure that these people would have found an advocate. Nowhere else can any political, social, or religious group, finding itself under sustained attack, receive a better refuge. Senator Jenner was right. The Senate was deliberately conceived to be what he called "a better refuge," meaning one styled as guardian of the rights of the minority. The Senate is the "watchdog" because majorities can be wrong and filibusters can highlight injustices. History is full of examples. In March 1911, Senator Robert Owen of Oklahoma filibustered the New Mexico statehood bill, arguing that Arizona should also be allowed to become a State. President Taft opposed the inclusion of Arizona's statehood in the bill because Arizona' State constitution allowed the recall of judges. Arizona attained statehood a year later, at least in part because Senator Owen and the minority took time to make their point the year before. In 1914, a Republican minority led a 10-day filibuster of a bill that would have appropriated more than $50,000,000 for rivers and harbors. On an issue near and dear to the hearts of our current majority, Republican opponents spoke until members of the Commerce Committee agreed to cut the appropriations by more than half. Perhaps more directly relevant to our discussion of the "nuclear option" are the 7 days in 1937, from July 6 to 13 of that year, when the Senate blocked Franklin Roosevelt's Supreme Courtpacking plan -- one of my favorite presidents. Earlier that year, in February 1937, FDR sent the Congress a bill drastically reorganizing the judiciary. The Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the bill, calling it "an invasion of judicial power such as has never before been attempted in this country" and finding it "essential to the continuance of our constitutional democracy that the judiciary be completely independent of both the executive and legislative branches of the Government." The committee recommended the rejection of the court-packing bill, calling it "a needless, futile, and utterly dangerous abandonment of constitutional principle . . . without precedent and without justification." What followed was an extended debate on the Senate floor lasting for 7 days until the majority leader, Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas, a supporter of the plan, suffered a heart attack and died on July 14. Eight days later, by a vote of 70 to 20, the Senate sent the judicial reform bill back to committee, where FDR's controversial, court-packing language was finally stripped. A determined, vocal group of Senators properly prevented a powerful President from corrupting our Nation's judiciary. Free and open debate on the Senate floor ensures citizens a say in their government. The American people are heard, through their Senator, before their money is spent, before their civil liberties are curtailed, or before a judicial nominee is confirmed for a lifetime appointment. We are the guardians, the stewards, the protectors of the people who send us here. Our voices are their voices. If we restrain debate on judges today, what will be next: the rights of the elderly to receive social security; the rights of the handicapped to be treated fairly; the rights of the poor to obtain a decent education? Will all debate soon fall before majority rule? Will the majority someday trample on the rights of lumber companies to harvest timber or the rights of mining companies to mine silver, coal, or iron ore? What about the rights of energy companies to drill for new sources of oil and gas? How will the insurance, banking, and securities industries fare when a majority can move against their interests and prevail by a simple majority vote? What about farmers who can be forced to lose their subsidies, or western Senators who will no longer be able to stop a majority determined to wrest control of ranchers' precious water or grazing rights? With no right of debate, what will forestall plain muscle and mob rule? Many times in our history we have taken up arms to protect a minority against the tyrannical majority in other lands. We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men. But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends. Historian Alan Bullock writes that Hitler's dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law. Hitler needed a two-thirds vote to pass that law, and he cajoled his opposition in the Reichstag to support it. Bullock writes that "Hitler was prepared to promise anything to get his bill through, with the appearances of legality preserved intact." And he succeeded. Hitler's originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the State: the correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal. That is what the nuclear option seeks to do to rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate. (Go back to the top of this file.) I said to someone this morning who was shoveling snow in my area: What does nuclear option mean to you? He answered: Do you mean with Iran? The people generally don't know what this is about. The nuclear option seeks to alter the rules by sidestepping the rules, thus making the impermissible the rule, employing the nuclear option, engaging a pernicious, procedural maneuver to serve immediate partisan goals, risks violating our Nation's core democratic values and poisoning the Senate's deliberative process. For the temporary gain of a handful of out-of-the-mainstream judges, some in the Senate are ready to callously incinerate each and every Senator's right of extended debate. Note that I said each Senator. Note that I said every Senator. For the damage will devastate not just the minority party -- believe me, hear me, and remember what I say -- the damage will devastate not just the minority party, it will cripple the ability of each Member, every Member, to do what each Member was sent here to do -- namely, represent the people of his or her State. Without the filibuster -- it has a bad name, old man filibuster out there. Most people would be happy to say let's do away with him. We ought to get rid of that fellow; he has been around too long. But someday that old man filibuster is going to help me, you, and every Senator in here at some time or other, when the rights of the people he or she represents are being violated or threatened. That Senator is then going to want to filibuster. He or she is going to want to stand on his or her feet as long as their brass lungs will carry their voice. No longer. If the nuclear option is successful here, no longer will each Senator have that weapon with which to protect the people who sent him or her here. And the people finally are going to wake up to who did it. They are going to wake up to it sooner or later and ask: Who did this to us? Without the filibuster or the threat of extended debate, there exists no leverage with which to bargain for the offering of an amendment. All force to effect compromise between the parties will be lost. Demands for hearings will languish. The President can simply rule. The President of the United States can simply rule by Executive order, if his party controls both Houses of Congress and majority rule reigns supreme. In such a world, the minority will be crushed, the power of dissenting views will be diminished, and freedom of speech will be attenuated. The uniquely American concept of the independent individual asserting his or her own views, proclaiming personal dignity through the courage of free speech will forever have been blighted. This is a question of freedom of speech. That is what we are talking about -- freedom of speech. And the American spirit, that stubborn, feisty, contrarian, and glorious urge to loudly disagree, and proclaim, despite all opposition, what is honest, what is true, will be sorely manacled. Yes, we believe in majority rule, but we thrive because the minority can challenge, agitate, and ask questions. We must never become a nation cowed by fear, sheeplike in our submission to the power of any majority demanding absolute control. Generations of men and women have lived, fought, and died for the right to map their own destiny, think their own thoughts, speak their own minds. If we start here, in this Senate, to chip away at that essential mark of freedom -- here of all places, in a body designed to guarantee the power of even a single individual through the device of extended debate -- we are on the road to refuting the principles upon which that Constitution rests. In the eloquent, homespun words of that illustrious, obstructionist, Senator Smith, in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington": Liberty is too precious to get buried in books. Men ought to hold it up in front of them every day of their lives and say, "I am free -- to think -- to speak. My ancestors couldn't. I can. My children will." Senator Robert Byrd |