Anna Eshoo: “Mr. Speaker, the Congress is now debating the most serious and sobering of issues, whether we go to war, war against…”

“Mr. Speaker, the Congress is now debating the most serious and sobering of issues, whether we go to war, war against Iraq. We do this as we stand on the threshold of a new century. I believe this debate is as much about voting to declare war as it is about what kind of country we are and what we want our country to be in the future. This resolution of war is an extraordinary and unwise departure from our history of a principled American tradition, that we stand foursquare against unprovoked attacks and for a foreign policy of deterrence. The Bush doctrine reverses this policy and sets forth that the United States of America has the unrestricted right to attack other nations. This resolution trades deterrence for preemption. This resolution trade multilateralism for unilateralism. This go-it-alone policy has become the imprimatur of this administration. We have witnessed their abrogation of nearly every international treaty they inherited from previous Republican and Democratic administrations.”