COMMITTED TO REAL PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST REGION -- HON. NEWT GINGRICH (Extension of Remarks - April 09, 1997)

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HON. NEWT GINGRICH

in the House of Representatives

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 1997

Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, the United States has been, and will continue to be, committed to seeing real peace in the Middle East region. All Americans need to look at the daily events in that region with as full an understanding as possible of what is happening and why. For that purpose, I enter into the Congressional Record my comments yesterday to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee.

There are military threats and intelligence threats, and I want to talk about them briefly. But I think there's a much deeper threat facing Israel today, and I want to spend more time on that topic.
Let me talk first, though, briefly about the military threat.

We have an absolute obligation to our young men and women in uniform and to our allies around the world to provide the best defense that science and engineering can develop. And we must not allow lawyers and diplomats to cripple our missile defense by setting phony standards based on a phony deal. This is exactly what happened in the '20s and '30s in the Pacific when we signed agreements with the Japanese which they violated while we kept them. It's exactly what happened in Europe where the Allies signed agreements which the Germans broke while the Allies kept them. And I don't want to lose a city, I don't want to lose a single soldier, sailor, airman or airwoman or Marine because we relied on lawyers and diplomats when, in fact, our engineers and scientists could have gotten the job done.

I also think it is tremendously important to look at the recent Helsinki agreement and understand how dangerous it is because we don't live in a world where the most likely threat is Boris Yeltsin's government. Now, you don't have to suggest that diplomacy is an inadequate protector when you look at how shaky that government is.

But forget Russia. Assume Russia didn't exist. An agreement that says the Russians won't threaten us is irrelevant if the largest threat on the planet's from Iran. Now, I don't want some legalese by a bunch of diplomats and lawyers, with Russians, preventing us from providing over Tel Aviv or providing over an American air base, or providing over an American expeditionary force, the finest technology that science and engineering can develop. We can defeat Iranian missiles if we allow our scientists and engineers to our job and if we work with the Arrow Program and Israel; and if we pay attention to capability, not promises.