The Little Brown Reader

Byrd: Marshall Plan to Bush Iraqi Plan: No Comparison

Marshall Plan to Bush Iraqi Plan: No Comparison

West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd
Wednesday 24 September 2003

Opening remarks to the Senate Appropriations Committee considering Bush Administration request for 87B additional dollars in funding for the Iraqi occupation.

The American people want to know more about what the Administration has planned for Iraq, and it is the responsibility of Congress to help inform our public. But rather than explanations of the Administration's long-term plan for Iraq, we only hear comparisons to the Marshall Plan.

I can understand the Administration's desire to equate in the minds of the American public Saddam Hussein's Iraq to Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. World War II invokes images of the "Greatest Generation" -- the entire country united to defeat the Axis powers, and then, after victory, stayed behind to rebuild the cities of their conquered foes.

But with World War II, Japan had attacked us. The Axis Powers had declared war on us. The U.S. occupation of Germany and Japan took place in the wake of a widely supported defensive war, under a commitment to internationalism and multilateralism.

We're seeing none of this in Iraq. For one, the war in Iraq was not defensive. It was a preemptive attack. Secondly, we have alienated most of the international community in fighting the war. Third, the Germans and Japanese did not resist the U.S. occupation through sabotage, assassinations, and guerilla warfare.

The Marshall Plan was not a huge bill presented to Congress for its rubber-stamp approval. It was a comprehensive strategy to provide $13.3 billion to 16 countries over four years to aid in reconstruction. In current dollars, the U.S. share would be about $88.2 billion spread over four years - very nearly the same amount that has been requested by the President for one country for a period of mere months.

...

The $87 billion package that the President is seeking has little in common with the Marshall Plan. We should not learn our history through sound bites. Congress has an obligation to understand what this $87 billion is supposed to do for Iraq, and whether those goals can ever be achieved.

Full statement

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