Conference in Washington, August 30, 2014, commemorating 52 martyrs of 1 September 2013 massacre in Camp Ashraf
I’ve brought it with me just in case. Let me begin by saying I don’t know when I have agreed with so many Democrats in my life as I have here today. In all candor, I think the reason this meeting is so significant today is because this is not an issue that like so many in this town are horizontal, almost everything in this town is horizontal, left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican. But today we gather because the issue is vertical.
I’ve been all over the Middle East and the one thing that I do not understand is why it is so hard for some people to understand the difference between good and evil. And I don’t know why sometimes some people in our government don’t seem to be able to understand the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys are the people like the Kurds who have valiantly fought for freedom and have been the best friends that Americans have in Iraq. The good guys are the Iranian people, the people, who never shared the totalitarian takeover of their government and whose resistance we should had been and could be supporting, and God help us, that we haven’t. And the result is the birth, the growth, the proliferation of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda and ISIS, all of which are directly connected or funded by the government of Iran.
I always grew up believing that America was a great country and part because it believed in great things. It believed in freedom and it believed that the cause of freedom was the cause worth fighting, and I think back at this country, this country is rich with the tradition of keeping promises. George Washington promised we’ll cross the Delaware. Abraham Lincoln promised we’ll end slavery. We need a leader today who will say to the world the people of Iran will be free and they will not have to be martyred, they will not have to pay the price with their own blood because America will keep its promises. Should we do any less, but we must do more.