(Washington, DC) - U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia and Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight today convened a joint hearing entitled “The Proposed U.S. Security Commitment to Iraq: What will be in it and should it be a treaty?”

Witnesses included Kenneth Katzman, Ph.D., a specialist in Middle East Affairs at the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division of the Congressional Research Service; Michael J. Matheson, Esq., visiting research professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and Michael Rubin, Ph.D., resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior lecturer at the Center for Civil Military Relations, Naval Postgraduate School.

The following are Ackerman’s opening remarks:

“The war in Iraq remains deeply unpopular with most Americans as a review of any number of recent polls will tell you. Or, perhaps simply a review of the mail that comes to your office would suggest. So it strikes me as unwise that the President would want to go ahead and unilaterally commit the United States to a long-term security agreement with Iraq without trying to get the support of either the American people or the people’s representatives. But true to form the President has decided to go it alone on Iraq again, or so one would believe if you take the President’s Special Deputy National Security Adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, General  Douglas Lute at his word. 

General Lute made it clear that the White House would be flying solo on this question when he said “We don’t anticipate now that these negotiations will lead to a formal treaty which would then bring to formal negotiations or formal inputs from the Congress.”

I don’t think we can dispute General Lute’s view that the President certainly has the authority to enter into an executive agreement with the Government of Iraq. Certainly such agreements are a commonly used tool of U.S. diplomacy. And such agreements are not ordinarily subject to Congressional approval unless there are U.S. domestic laws that need to be amended in order for our nation to comply with the agreement. No the issue isn’t a question of legal authority, it’s a question of political wisdom and sustainability. And I think the President’s preferred course, as expressed by General Lute, is profoundly unwise and unsustainable.

Americans in vast numbers want our troops to come home. They are no longer certain, if they ever where, what we are fighting for. But I also think that most Americans, if you asked them, would agree that even after the U.S. withdraws its forces from Iraq, we will still need a framework for our relations with Iraq from that point forward and I think they would also agree that a President with less than 12 months left in his term shouldn’t be the sole arbiter of what that future relationship looks like. It is precisely because a long-term security agreement would be controversial that the President should involve the Congress in the deliberations that shape such an agreement. It’s my understanding that State Department regulations even call for consultations with Congress and that in deciding what form an international agreement should take the Department must expressly consider “the preference of the Congress as to a particular type of agreement.”

The concern held by many of us in the Congress is that the declaration of principles signed last November is so vague that it could cover anything from consulting with the government of Iraq about threats it faces to actually deploying U.S. troops to help Iraq defend it self. If all we’re really talking about is consultation with Iraq’s government in the face of a threat then maybe an executive agreement is OK. But if the President intends to indefinitely commit U.S. troops to defend Iraq against future threats, then I believe approval by the Congress of any such agreement is required.  Indeed, the American people would accept nothing less.

So I call on the President to reject General Lute’s proposed course and to instead instruct the State Department to consult with the relevant committees in Congress over the shape of our future relations with Iraq and what the exact nature of any future commitments will be. Trying to build a democracy in Iraq by ignoring the democratic process at home is ironic, and certainly in keeping with the habits of the President to date. But most of all, it is foolish, short-sighted and perilous. It should not be done and I suspect there could be and would be serious consequences if it is attempted.” 

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