AT&T Webmail

Gingric=
h Transcript

Former House Spe=
aker Newt Gingrich delivered the following remarks to aJewish =
National Fund meeting Nov.  15=
 at the Selig Center:
----------------------<=
/pre> &n=
bsp;      I just want to talk to you from t=
he heart for a few minutes and share 
with you where I think we are.  I think it is very stark.  I don't think it is yet desperate, but it is v=
ery 
stark.  =
And if I had a title for today's talk, it would be sleepwalking into=
 a 
nightmare.  =
'Cause that's what I think we're doing.
=
 
 &n=
bsp;      I gave a speech at the American E=
nterprise Institute Sept.  10 =
at which 
I gave an alternative history of the last=
 six years, because the more I thought 
about how much we're failing, the more I =
concluded you couldn't just  n=
itpick 
individual places and talk about individu=
al changes because it didn't capture 
the scale of the disaster.=
 
 &n=
bsp;      And I had been particularly impre=
ssed by a new book that came out called 
Troublesome Young Men, which is a study o=
f the younger Conservatives who opposed 
appeasement in the 1930s and who took on Chamberlain=
.  It's a very revealing =
book and a very powerful book because we =
tend to look backwards and we tend to 
overstate Churchill's role in that period.  And we tend to understate what a 
serious and conscientious and thoughtful =
effort appeasement was and that it was 
the direct and deliberate policy of very pow=
erful and very willful people.  We 
tend to think of it as a psychological we=
akness as though Chamberlain was 
somehow=
 craven.=
  He wasn't craven.
 
 &n=
bsp;      Chamberlain had a very clear visi=
on of the world, and he was very 
ruthless domestically.  And they believed so deeply in avoiding war with Germany 
that as late as the spring of 1940, when =
they are six months or seven months 
into they war, they are dropping leaflets=
 instead of bombs on the Rohr, and they 
are urging the British news media not to =
publish anti-German stories because 
they don't want to offend the German people.<=
span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'>  And you read this book, and i=
t 
makes you want to weep because, interesti=
ngly, the younger Tories who were most 
opposed to appeasement were the combat ve=
terans of World War I, who had lost all 
of their friends in the war but who under=
stood that the failure of appeasement 
would result in a worse war and that the =
longer you lied about reality, the 
greater=
 the disaster.
 
 &n=
bsp;      And they were severely punished a=
nd isolated by Chamberlain and the
Conservative machine, and as I read that,=
 I realized that that's really
where we are today.  Our current problem is tragic.  You have an
administration whose policy is inadequate=
 being opposed by a political left
whose policy is worse, and you have nobod=
y prepared to talk about the
policy<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'> we need.  Because we are told if you are for a strong America, you
should back the Bush policy even if it's =
inadequate, and so you end up
making<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'> an argument in favor of something that c=
an't work.  So your choice is<=
o:p>
to defend something which isn't working o=
r to oppose it by being for an even
weaker<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'> policy.=
  So this is a catastrophe for this country and a catastrophe
for freedom around the world.  Because we have refused to be honest about =
the
scale of the problem.<=
pre>

 &n=
bsp;      Let me work back.  I'm going to get to Iran since that's the topic, but <=
/span>

I'm going to get to it eventually.

 &n=
bsp;      Let me work back from Pakistan.  =
The dictatorship in Pakistan has never

<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'>Had control over Wiz=
iristan.  Not for a day=
.  So we've now spent six year=
s since

9/11 with a sanctuary for Al-Qaida and a sanctuary for the Taliban, and

every time we pick up people in Great Britain who are terrorists, they were=

trained=
 in Pakistan.

 &n=
bsp;      And our answer is to praise Musharraf because at least he's not as bad <=
/o:p>

As the others.  But the truth is Musharraf has not gotten control of terrorism

in Pakistan.  =
Musharraf doesn't have full control over his own =
government.

The odds are even money we're going to dr=
ift into a disastrous dictatorship

at some point in Pakistan.  =
And while we worry about the Iranians acquiring a<=
/pre>nuclear weapon, the Pakistanis already ha=
ve 'em, so why would you feel=
secure in a world where you could present=
ly have an Islamist dictatorship in<=
pre>Pakistan with a hundre=
d-plus nuclear weapons?  What'=
s our grand strategy for

that?

 &n=
bsp;      Then you look at Afghanistan.  =
Here's a country that's small, poor,

isolated, and in six years we have not be=
en able to build roads, create economic

opportunity, wean people off of growing drugs.  A third of the GDP is from

drugs.  =
We haven't been able to end the sanctuary for the Taliban in

Pakistan.  =
And I know of no case historically where you defeat a guerrilla=

movement if it has a sanctuary.  So the people who rely on the West are

out-bribed by the criminals, out-gunned b=
y the criminals, and faced with a

militant force across the border which pr=
acticed earlier defeating the

Soviet empire and which has a time horizo=
n of three or four generations.

NATO has a time horizon of each quarter o=
r at best a year, facing an

opponent whose time horizon is literally three or=
 four generations.  It's a

total mismatch.

 &n=
bsp;      =
Then you come to the direct threat to the United States, which is

<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'>Al-Qaida. Whi=
ch, by the way, we just published polls.&n=
bsp; One of the sites I commend to

you is AmericanSolutions.com.  Last Wednesday we posted six national surve=
ys,

$428,000 worth of data.  We gave it away.  I found myself in the unique

<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'>position of calling Howard Dean to tell h=
im I was giving him $400,000 worth

of polling.  We have given it away to both Democrats and Republicans.  It is

fundamentally<= /span> different from the national news media.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> When asked the

question "Do we have an obligation t=
o defend the United States and her

allies<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'>?" the answer is 85 percent yes.  When asked a further question &q=
uot;Should

we defeat our enemies?" - it's very st=
rong language - the answer is 75

percent=
 yes, 75 to 16.

 &n=
bsp;      The complaint about Iraq is a performance complaint, not a values=

complaint.  =
When asked whether or not Al-Qaida is a threat, 89 percent of the country=

says yes.&nb=
sp; And they think you have to defeat it, you can't negotiate with i=
t.

So now let's look at Al-Qaida and the rise of Islamist terrorism.

<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'>

 &n=
bsp;      And let's be honest: What's the p=
rimary source of money for Al-Qaida?

It's you, re-circulated through Saudi Arabia.  =
Because we have no national energy

strategy, when clearly if you really care=
d about liberating the United

States from the Middle East and if you really cared about the surviv=
al of

Israel, one of your highest goals would be to m=
ove to a hydrogen economy

and to eliminate petroleum as a primary sour=
ce of energy.

 &n=
bsp;      Now that's what a serious nationa=
l strategy would look like, but that

Would require real change.

 &n=
bsp;      So then you look at Saudi Arabia.  =
The fact that we tolerate a country

saying no Christian and no Jew can go to =
Mecca, and we start with the presumption<=
/o:p>

that that's true while they attack Israel for being a religious state is a

sign of our timidity, our confusion, our cowa=
rdice that is stunning.

 &n=
bsp;      It's not complicated.  We're inviting Saudi Arabia to come to <=
span
      style=3D'font-family:Verdana'>Annapolis=

to talk about rights for Palestinians whe=
n nobody is saying, "Let's talk about

rights<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'> for Christians and Jews in Saudi Arabia.  =
Let's talk about rights for

women in Saudi Arabia."

 &n=
bsp;      So we accept this totally one-sid=
ed definition of the world in which our

enemies can cheerfully lie on television =
every day, and we don't even have

the nerve to insist on the truth.  We pretend their lies are reasonable.  This

is a very fundamental problem. And if you look at who some of the larg= est

owners<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'> of some of our largest banks are today, =
they're Saudis.

 &n=
bsp;      You keep pumping billions of doll=
ars a year into countries like

Venezuela, <=
span
      style=3D'font-family:Verdana'>Iran and Saudi Arabia, and Russia, and you are presently going to have

created=
 people who oppose you who have lots of m=
oney.  And they're then going<=
o:p>

to come back to your own country and fina=
nce, for example, Arab study

institutes whose only requirement is that they neve=
r tell the truth.  So you=

have all sorts of Ph.D.s who now show up =
quite cheerfully prepared to say

whatever it is that makes their funders happy - in the name, of course, of

academic freedom.  So why wouldn't Columbia<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'> host a genocidal madman?  It's

just part of political correctness.  I mean, Ahmadinejad may say terriblethings, he may lock up students, he may k=
ill journalists, he may say, "We
should wipe out Israel," he may say, "We should defea=
t the United States,"
but after all, what has he done that's inapp=
ropriate?  What has he done th=
at
wouldn't be repeated at a Hollywood cocktail party or a nice gathering in
Europe?
 
 &n=
bsp;      And nobody says this is totally, =
utterly, absolutely unacceptable.  Why 
is it that the No. 1 threat in intelligence=
 movies is the CIA?
 
 &n=
bsp;      I happened the other night to be =
watching an old movie, "To Live and Die 
<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'>In L.A.," which is abou=
t counterfeiting.  But =
the movie starts with a Secret
Service agent who is defending Ronald Rea=
gan in 1985, and the person he is
defending Ronald Reagan from is a suicide=
 bomber who is actually, overtly a
Muslim fanatic.  Now, six years after 9/11, you could not get that scen=
e made
in Hollywood=
 today.
 
 &n=
bsp;      Just look at the movies.  Why is it that the bad person is eith=
er a
right-wing crazed billionaire, or the CIA as a government agency.  Go look at
the Bourne Ultimatum.  Or a movie like the one that George Clooney made,
which was an absolute lie, in which it im=
plied that if you were a reformist
Arab prince, that probably the CIA would kill you.  It's a total lie.&nb=
sp; We
actually have SEALs p=
rotecting people all over the world. =
 We actually risk
American lives protecting reformers all o=
ver the world, and yet Hollywood=
can't bring itself to tell the truth, (a)=
 because it's ideologically so
opposed to the American government and th=
e American military, and (b),
because it's terrified that if it said so=
mething really openly, honestly
true about Muslim terrorists, they might show=
 up in Hollywood=
.  =
And you might
have somebody killed as the Dutch producer wa=
s killed.
 
 &n=
bsp;      And so we're living a life of cow=
ardice, and in that life of cowardice 
we're sleepwalking into a nightmare.
 
 &n=
bsp;      And then you come to Iran.  =
There's a terrific book.  Mark Bowden is a
remarkable writer who wrote Black Hawk Down, has en=
ormous personal courage.
He's a Philadelphia a newspaper writer, actually got the mon=
ey out of the
Philadelphia newspaper to go to Somalia to interview the So=
malian side of
Black Hawk Down.  It's a remarkable achievement.  Tells a great story about
getting to Somalia, paying lots of cash, having the local w=
arlord protect

him, and after about two weeks the warlor=
d came to him and said, "You know,

we've decided that we're very uncomfortab=
le with you being here, and you

should<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'> leave."

 &n=
bsp;      And so he goes to the hotel, wher=
e he is the only hard-currency guest,

And says, "I've got to check out two=
 weeks early because the warlord has told me

that he no longer will protect me."  And the hotel owner, who wants to=
 keep

his only hard-currency guest, says, "We=
ll, why are you listening to him?

 &n=
bsp;      He's not the government.  There is no government."  And Bowden says, <=
/pre>"Well, what will I do?"  And he says, "You hire a bigger=
 warlord with more guns,"
which he did.=
  But then he could only stay one week because he ran out of
money.
 
 &n=
bsp;      But this is a guy with real coura=
ge.  I mean, imagine trying to=
 go out 
and be a journalist in that kind of world, O=
K?  So Bowden came back and wr=
ote Guest
of the Ayatollah, which is the Iranian ho=
stage of 1979, which he entitled,
"The First Shots in Iran's War Against America."&=
nbsp; So in the Bowden worldview,
the current Iranian dictatorship has been=
 at war with the United States
since 1979.  Violated =
international law.  Every conc=
eivable tenet of
international law was violated when they =
seized the American Embassy and
they seized the diplomats.  Killed Americans in =
Lebanon in the early '80s. 
 &n=
bsp;      Killed Americans at Khobar Towers in '95 and had the Clinton 
Administration deliberately avoid reveali=
ng the information, as Louis Freeh, the director
<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'>of the FBI, has said publicly, because th=
ey didn't want to have to confront
the Iranian complicity. 
 &n=
bsp;      And so you have an Iranian regime=
 which is cited annually as the leading
supporter of state terrorism in the world.  Every year the State Department=
says that.&n=
bsp; It's an extraordinary act of lucidity on the part of an
institution which seeks to avoid it as often as poss=
ible.
 
 &n=
bsp;      And you have Gen.  Petraeus come to the <=
st1:place>U.S.  <=
/span>Congress and say publicly 
in an open session, "The Iranians ar=
e waging a proxy war against Americans in
Iraq."
 
 &n=
bsp;      I was so deeply offended by this,=
 it's hard for me to express it without
sounding irrational.  I'm an Army brat.  =
My dad served 27 years in the
infantry.  =
The idea that an American general would come to the American
Congress, testify in public that our youn=
g men and women are being killed by
Iran<=
/st1:place>, and we have done nothing, I find absolut=
ely abhorrent.
 
 &n=
bsp;      So I'm preparing to come and talk=
 today.  I got up this morning=
, and a 
Friend had sent me yesterday's Jerusalem =
Post editorial, which if you haven't read,
I recommend to you.  It has, for example, the following quote: "On=
 Monday,
chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said, 'Th=
e problem of the content
of the document setting out joint princip=
les for peace-making post-Annapolis
has not been resolved.  One of the more pressing problems is the Zionist
regime's insistence on being recognized as a Jewi=
sh state.  We will not agree
to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.  There is no country in the world=
where religious and national identities are in=
tertwined.' "
 
 &n=
bsp;      What truly bothers me is the shal=
lowness and the sophistry of the 
Western governments, starting with our ow=
n.  When a person says to you,=
 "I don't
recognize that you exist," you don't start a =
negotiation.  The person says,=
"I literally do not recognize" =
and then lies to you.  I mean =
the first thing
you say to this guy is "Terrific.  Let's go visit Mecca.  =
Since clearly
there's no other state except Israel that is based on religion, the fact=
that I happen to be Christian won't bother an=
ybody."  And then he'll s=
ay,
"Well, that's different."<=
/o:p>
 
 &n=
bsp;      We tolerate this.  We have created our own nightmare because we=
 refuse 
To tell the truth.  We refuse to tell the truth to our politicians.  Our StateDepartment refuses to tell the truth to t=
he country.  If the president =
of the
United States, and again, we're now so bitterly partis=
an, we're so committed
to red-vs.-blue hostility, that George W.=
 Bush doesn't have the capacity to
give an address from the Oval Office that=
 has any meaning for half the
country=
.  =
And the anti-war left is so strong in the Democratic primary that I<=
o:p>
think it's almost impossible for any Demo=
cratic presidential candidate to
tell the truth about the situation.
 
 &n=
bsp;      And so the Republicans are isolat=
ed and trying to defend incompetence. =
; 
The Democrats are isolated and trying to =
find a way to say, "I'm really for
strength as long as I can have peace, but=
 I'd really like to have peace,
except<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'> I don't want to recognize these people w=
ho aren't very peaceful."
 
 &n=
bsp;      I just want to share with you, as=
 a grandfather, as a citizen, as a
historian, as somebody who was once speak=
er of the House, this is a serious
national crisis.=
  This is 1935 or 1936, and it's getting worse every year.=
None of our enemies are confused.  Our enemies don't get up each mornin=
g and
go, "Oh, gosh, I think I'll have an =
existential crisis of identity in which
I will try to think through whether or no=
t we can be friends while you're
killing=
 me."  Our enemies get up every morning and say, "We hate the=
 West.  Wehate freedom."  They would not allow a meeting with women in the room.=
I was once interviewed by a BBC reporter, a nice young lady who was only=
about as anti-American as she had to be to kee=
p her job.  Since it was a liv=
e
interview, I turned to her halfway throug=
h the interview and I said, "Do you
like your job?"  And it was summertime, and she's wearing a short-slee=
ve
dress.  =
And she said, "Well, yes."  She was confused because I had just<=
pre>reversed roles.&=
nbsp; I said, "Well, then you should hope we win."  She said, "What
do you mean?"  And I said, "Well, if the enemy wins, you won't =
be allowed to
be on television." 
 &n=
bsp;      I don't know how to explain it an=
y simpler than that.
 
 &n=
bsp;      Now what do we need?
 
 &n=
bsp;      We need first of all to recognize=
 this is a real war.  Our enem=
ies are
peaceful when they're weak, are ruthless =
when they're strong, demand mercy
when they're losing, show no mercy when they'=
re winning.  They understand
exactly what this is, and anybody who rea=
ds Sun Tzu will understand exactlywhat we're living through.  This is a total war.  One side is going to win.
<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'> 
 &n=
bsp;      One side is going to lose.  You'll be able to tell who won and =
who lost 
By who's still standi=
ng.  Most of Islam is n=
ot in this war, but most of Islam
isn't going to stop this war.  They're just going to sit to one side and tel=
l
you how sorry they are that this happened.  We had better design grand
strategies that are radically bigger and =
radically tougher and radically
more honest than anything currently going=
 on, and that includes winning the
argument in Europe, and it includes winning the argument in=
 the rest of the
world.  =
And it includes being very clear, and I'll just give you one simple<=
o:p>
example because we're now muscle-bound by=
 our own inability to talk
honestly.
 
 &n=
bsp;      Iran produces 60 percent of its own gasoline.=
  It produces lots of crude 
Oil but only has one refinery.  It imports 40 percent of its gasoline.<=
span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'>  The entire<=
/pre>60 percent is produced at one huge refine=
ry.
 
 &n=
bsp;      In 1981, Ronald Reagan decided to=
 break the Soviet empire.  He =
was asked
what's<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'> your vision of the Cold War.  He said, "Four words: We win; they=
lose."&=
nbsp; He was clearly seen by The New York Times as an out-of-touch,<=
o:p>
reactionary, right-wing cowboy from California who had no idea what was
going on in the world.  And 11 years later the Soviet Union disappeared, but=
obviously that had nothing to do with Rea=
gan because that would have meant
he was right.  So it's just a random accident the Soviet Union disappeared.
 
 &n=
bsp;      Part of the war we waged on the <=
/span>Soviet Union involved their natural gas
supply<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'> because we wanted to cut off their hard =
currency.  The Soviets were
desperate to get better equipment for their pipeli=
ne.  We managed to sell
them through third parties very, very sop=
histicated American pipeline
equipment, which they were thrilled to bu=
y and thought they had pulled off a
huge coup.&n=
bsp; Now we weren't playing fair.&n=
bsp; We did not tell them that the
equipment was designed to blow up.  One day in 1982, there was an explosion=
in Siberia so large that the initial reflection on the satellites looked<=
/span>
like there was a tactical nuclear weapon.  One part of the White House was<=
o:p>
genuinely worried, and the other part of =
the White House had to calm them
down.  =
They said, "No, no, that's our equipment blowing up."=
 
 &n=
bsp;      In the 28 years since the Iranian=
s declared war on us, in the six years
since 9/11, in the months since Gen. Petraeus publicly said they are killing
young Americans, we have not been able to=
 figure out how to take down one
refinery.  =
Covertly, quietly, without overt war.  And we have not been able to
figure out how to use the most powerful n=
avy in the world to simply stop the
tankers and say, "Look, you want to =
kill young Americans, you're going to
walk to the battlefield, but you're not g=
oing to ride in the car because
you're<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'> not going to have any gasoline."
 
 &n=
bsp;      We don't have to be stupid.  The choice is not cowardice or tot=
al war.  Reagan unlocked Poland without firing a shot in an alliance wit=
h the Pope, with the
labor unions and with the British.  We have every possibility if we're=
prepared to be honest to shape the world.  It'll be a very big project.  It's
much closer to World War II than it is to any=
thing we've tried recently.  I=
t
will require real effort, real intensity, and=
 real determination.  We're
either going to do it now, while we're st=
ill extraordinarily powerful, or
we're going to do it later under much mor=
e desperate circumstances after
we've lost several cities. 
 &n=
bsp;      We had better take this seriously=
 because we are not very many mistakes 
Away from a second Holocaust.  Three nuclear weapons is a second Holoc=
aust.  Ourenemies would like to get those weapons a=
s soon as they can, and they
promise=
 to use them as soon as they can.
 
 &n=
bsp;      I suggest we defeat our enemies a=
nd create a different situation long 
before<=
span
    style=3D'font-family:Verdana'> they have that power.<=
/pre>