Editor’s note: Len Lazarick, State House bureau chief of The Examiner, sat down with Rep. Wayne Gilchrest this week as Maryland?s longest serving Republican congressman faces yet another challenge in both his primary and the general election.
Gilchrest?s opponents have been especially critical of his votes with Democrats on the Iraq war.
Question: What changed your views on the Iraq war?
Gilchrest: I?ve been to Iraq several times.
It took me about two years to figure out that the Bush administration has never listened to the advice of his generals, and has fought the war with too few troops, too few allies and too little information about the complexities of the oldest culture in the world.
The troops are doing a stunningly competent job on the ground in Iraq, but they have been implementing a flawed policy.
We have not pursued enough allies; we have not pursued dialogue with Iraq?s neighbors. This administration has ignored advice from former generals and former statesmen and scholars
The administration is fighting a war in the Middle East against insurgents and terrorists, thinking it?s like World War II. Using our grandfather?s military to fight a 21st century war of attrition is not going to work
Gen. [Anthony] Zinni said it best: It used to be America was in the same room with a cobra, — that?s World War II and the Cold War . Then, we woke up one morning and the cobra is gone, and in its place is a room filled with bees. We?re using the same policy against the bees as we used against the cobra. It?s not going to work.
We?re in a globally integrated world; the U.S. cannot be isolated, like we were prior to World War II. This globally integrated world is integrated politically, economically, militarily and socially. To be successful is this globally integrated world, we need all of those attributes and the administration is using only one of those attributes [military] to the detriment of everything else.
You can?t defeat an insurgency or a terrorist by attrition. You need dialogue and consensus. America?s influence is not where it needs to be right now.
Q: What has changed recently?
Gilchrest: Two major things have happened.
Secretary of Defense [Robert] Gates has reversed almost everything that Rumsfeld did in the Pentagon, he reversed his policies.
Two, Gates was on the Iraq study group and since Gates came on board, we are now seeing America having a dialogue with Syria and Iran. That was absent before.
Q: Why do you think some people are so upset with you about your war vote? Is it about Bush, is it about loyalty?
Gilchrest: I think there?s a complete misunderstanding perpetrated by President Bush and the Republican leadership. They?re calling the Democratic war supplementals surrender bills, cut-and-run bills.
They?re none of that. Not one vote have I taken to pull American troops out of Iraq. The actual legal language of those bills is to redeploy American troops in Iraq, away from sectarian violence and to focus on terrorists.
The first one we voted on did not have any redeployment of troops until March of 2008. This is key here ? the recommended completion of the redeployment was August of 2008.
If you see the word recommended, and then you see the word goal ? that?s not hard and fast. That gives the president all of the latitude he needs. And part of the rationale behind that language was to give the president the latitude he needs as commander in chief but two, to show the Shias and the Sunnis ? where most of the violence is coming from right now ? that they?ve got to get together because the U.S. is not going to stay there forever and they?ve got to reconcile their differences.
If you actually talk to the Sunnis, they don?t want American troops to pull out too soon. If you talk to the Shias, they don?t want American troops to pull out too soon either because there will be this conflict ? this bloody civil war.
If you send a signal — it?s already beginning to work ? that America is not going to have a permanent presence there, two things happened. The Shias and Sunnis begin to resolve some of their differences, which is important. And Gates says this is actually beginning to happen because of our votes. Number two, the Sunnis do not want Al Qaida in Iraq.
All this debate that has caused angst among some Republicans is actually furthering the prospects for reconciliation in Iraq. It will be able to remove American soldiers from getting in between.
Q: Because they have a sense that they have to solve it on their own?
Gilchrest: Right.
The pressure from the American people on this administration is growing all the time to pull American troops out.
Most people know that unfortunately we?re there; we didn?t follow the recommendations of the generals, so we?re in Iraq in a pretty, bad messy situation.
We had Saddam Hussein contained. We contained him for 10 years with no-fly zones. With no cost to the American taxpayer. You know who paid for all that? The Arab League paid for us to be there.
Now we?rein Iraq and we are not going to pull out economically, politically or militarily or the Middle East. You just can?t we?re there for some time to come.
The Arab League wants us to fight Al Qaida.
Q: One Republican delegate called your stand current stand opportunistic. Now that public opinion has shifted, he shifted his opinion.
Gilchrest: I shifted my opinion a long time ago. I?ve been pretty open about that.
Q: You?ve got serious opposition.
Gilchrest: What?s serious is people getting their legs blown off for a flawed policy. Doing a magnificent job. Their courage and determination need to be respected by their government. The troops go over with an assumption that their government is competent and informed, and that?s not necessarily the case all the time.
There is an absence of wisdom in the policy and the policymakers, and the ignorance is pervasive, especially among elected officials.
Q: You?ve had multiple challengers over the years? Do you see this election as much different?
Gilchrest: No. No. No.
Q: There?s always been a more conservative wing of the party that?s never been happy with you.
Gilchrest: On abortion, guns, gay rights, flag burning, God, evolution, intelligent design.
Q: You have a problem with God?
Gilchrest: I don?t have a problem with God.
Q: Does God have a problem with you?
Gilchrest: I think God and I get along quite well.
Q: You?re a great fan of God?s world.
Gilchrest: I am. My daughter [Katie, 25] and I went canoeing last night for the sole purpose of watching the sun set and the moon rise. So we stayed out there till after the sun was gone and we were paddling with the reflection of the moon on Turner?s Creek. But in between that, we came close to a bald eagle?s nest, and watched this bald eagle feed her young and listened to them cackle.
And we saw a beaver as we paddled further, a raccoon, osprey, it was just quite a beautiful scene.
Her future lies in the balance of people in a position to make policy. So is your short term vision the next election, or is it your children?s future?
The serious thing is still being able to listen to the bald eagles feed their young and to have a conversation with your daughter about the meaning of life.
Q: Was the issue of God “under God” in the pledge, or prayer in schools?
Gilchrest: It?s prayer in school, I guess. It?s the issue that for so many years while the war was raging in Iraq, politicians would bring to the floor of the House and debate for hours or days whether or not gays should get married, whether or not there should be prayer in school, whether or not we believe in evolution. While people were running over land mines and getting killed.
The war didn?t take the highest priority amongst my colleagues.
You leave religion to a person?s private home. You don?t force government to decide how you?re going to pray or where you?re going to pray. You do that on your own. You do that in the privacy of your life, of your home, and your own church.
Q: On immigration, it seems like such a difficult policy for a majority to agree on.
Gilchrest: What the Senate has done is bit off more than they can chew. They?ve created what they refer to as a comprehensive bill to deal with the issue.
This is such a big issue it should be taken in incremental steps. We have to secure our borders. How do we do that? We have to prevent people from entering the country illegally. So how do we do that? We have to prevent illegal aliens from getting jobs in the United States.
To do this incrementally, you figure out what you need to do to secure the border. That might be 18,000 or 20,000 more border agents. That may or may not be building a fence. The idea that our borders need to be secure is something we can do.
The second thing that you can do that people will agree on is that employers need to bear some of the responsibility of determining who?s legal and who isn?t legal. And you can do that. That?s a technological fix.
I hate to use the word “amnesty.” But all the other issues need to be looked at a lot closer. What are the economic needs of the United States as far as agriculture, the tourist industry, the poultry industry, the fishing industry, what are the economic needs of those communities as the seasons roll across the country?
I don?t think that?s fully understood. That?s in the Senate bill, and I think it?s too bureaucratic. So it needs to be taken out.
We need an economic evaluation of NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement]. Is that working? There needs to be economic investment in Mexico, and there won?t be economic investment in Mexico until you can get waste fraud, abuse and criminality out of the government, and you reduce the influence of drug cartels.
Q: The G-8 group of nations is apparently going to try to take up global warming again. The United States, the largest energy consumer, has been the most resistant to global warming proposals. Do you think anything is going to change under this administration?
Gilchrest: It looks like the administration is not going to change itself, so Congress is going to have to change the administration.
I and John Olver [D] from Massachusetts have a bill that will reduce greenhouse gases by the year 2050 in an incremental way to 70 percent below 1990 levels. It is market driven, and there are about 20 or 30 industry groups including power companies, DuPont, Caterpillar, GE, you name it, on board with this thing called “Cap and trade.”
It?s the way we reduced acid rain — sulfur dioxide — by a thousand power plants across this country. It worked sooner and faster than anyone could have expected. The government put a cap on sulfur dioxide and all these plants needed to meet that cap over a period of time, and they did it. We got lead out of gasoline; we got CFCs [Chlorofluorocarbons] out of the atmosphere. We did a whole range of things, and internationally, we?ve done those things.
We think we can get this passed through the House and the Senate, maybe even in this Congress. And since the administration has now said that human activity is causing the climate to change, unless the government sets a target, we?ll be floundering around like a fish out of water until that happens.
Q: You?ve been taken to task for not supporting the president?s tax cuts.
Gilchrest: I?ve actually supported most of the president?s tax programs. Not all of them. I?m probably up there about 90 percent in support of them.
Q: In the overall political scheme of things, are you still comfortable as a Republican?
Gilchrest: I grew up with Eisenhower as president. Nixon, Ford, then Reagan. I have always felt comfortable as a Republican because I?ve always felt Republicans were competent and informed and they had integrity. The president that had most impact on my life was President Eisenhower.
And Eisenhower said ? this is not a perfect quote ? put its something I?ll always remember: “A great country like the United States needs to have a strong military, it needs the best intelligence, but it needs to work with the international community with consensus and dialogue.”
What seems to be lacking now is consensus and dialogue. Not to mention that the reinterpretation of intelligence by this administration has gotten us into a lot of trouble.
Q: Are you still happy doing what you?re doing?
Gilchrest: I could go out there and shoot nature photography, and shop them around. Happy? I don?t look at this job as making me happy.
I had wonderful, wonderful friends in Vietnam, and over the years, I?ve developed great relations with people because we shared adversity together.
Wayne Gilchrest biography
Age: 61, born April 15, 1946, Rahway, N.J.
Military: U.S. Marine Corps, 1964-68, Vietnam, rising to rank of sergeant, Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and Navy Commendation Medal.
Education: B.A., History, Delaware State University, 1973
Occupation: Teacher in New Jersey, Vermont, and for eight years at Kent County High School; in 1986, worked for the Forest Service in the Bitterroot National Forest, Idaho.
Home: Kennedyville, Kent County
Political career: Elected to Congress in 1990, defeating Democratic incumbent Roy Dyson.
Family: Wife Barbara; three grown children.
