Congressman Brian Higgins, who begins his second term this week, has quickly built a reputation for delivering to his 27th Congressional District. The relicensing settlement he helped to negotiate with the New York Power Authority yielded $279 million for development of the city’s long-derelict waterfront. He opened that window of opportunity a little wider by brokering the transfer of the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority’s waterfront acreage to the agency that will oversee development of Buffalo’s coastal properties. He helped to abolish the 75-cent toll to take the I-190 into the city. Along with his fellow Democrat, US Representative Louise Slaughter of the 28th Congressional District, Higgins has worked hard to ensure that Western New York receives a healthy share of transportation and homeland security funds. (Higgins is a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.)

However, until recently he has ceded to Slaughter the role of strident critic of President George W. Bush’s foreign and domestic policies. While Slaughter issues at-least-weekly press releases decrying the war in Iraq, the curtailing of civil liberties, the declawing of environmental regulations—the multifarious depredations of the Bush administration—Higgins has concentrated on local issues and generally voted with the administration on national security and foreign policy issues. His vote to renew the Patriot Act and in favor of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 earned him the scorn of local progressives and left-leaning members of his own party. His reluctance to speak out against the war in Iraq has irked peace activists.

Higgins’s reticence evaporated in August, however, when he and several of his colleagues on the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations embarked on an 11-day journey to, among other places, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and the Sudan. The junket was a followup to a report by the Government Accounting Office, requested by committee chairman Christopher Shays of Connecticut, that comprised a scathing critique of the Bush administration’s management of the war in Iraq. The report, released in July, prompted an equally scathing letter from Higgins to the White House, noting that the reconstruction of Iraq was costing American taxpayers $1.5 billion a week and producing no results.

Since then, the Democrats have won both houses of Congress. The Iraq Study Group has issued a report that is most notable not for the solutions it offers but for its scolding of the administration. Donald Rumsfeld has resigned his position as secretary of defense, replaced by former CIA director and Texas A&M president Robert Gates, who—whatever else one may say about him—advised the administration against the invasion of Iraq from the beginning. And the president spent the holidays in conference with top advisers, seeking to formulate some new strategy in Iraq to unveil to the American public. That strategy is likely to include a short-term escalation of the war and then a hasty, if incomplete, draw-down of troops.

Democrats, too, are preparing new ways of speaking about the Iraq war, as they prepare to set a legislative agenda for the 110th Congress. (Iowa Governor and presidential hopeful Tom Vilsack, for example, has rolled out a condescending new line about needing to wean Iraqis from the “culture of dependency” that the US occupation has created.) Higgins, who has been a lecturer on economics and world history, now appears ready to engage battles far afield of his district.

Last week, Higgins sat down with Artvoice for a lengthy conversation about his trip and the impact it has had on his thinking about foreign and domestic policy. He talked about our dependence on foreign oil, explained the votes for which he is most often criticized by the left and described how he imagines the war in Iraq will be resolved. The following are excerpts from that conversation:

Brian Higgins: Here are my impressions about Iraq. Number one: the only really confidence-inspiring presence is the American military. It was professional, it was disciplined and highly committed. The rest of the situation there was a mess. Physically, administratively. There was no sense of urgency on the part of the National Unity government, Shia, Kurd, Sunni. We met with President Talabani, who’s a Kurd, about reconciliation. And it just didn’t seem there was a commitment to making this experiment succeed. And this is an experiment—trying to create a state of democracy in the Middle East, with the goal of providing a model for other countries. It’s been an abject failure thus far.

We met with some of the Shia leaders—Malaki is a Shia—and he was very dismissive of our express concerns: We’re losing too many American lives, this is costing too much, the United States’ standing in the world has been diminished significantly. You know, what are we creating here? And what are we trying to create?

The conclusion is, I think, that democracy has to emerge from within, however you want to define it, and it’s very difficult to impose it from the outside if there’s not a willingness to make it work from inside. I’m not sure there was ever a willingness.

The consequence of the United States going into Iraq is we have unleashed this centuries-old battle that we were very ignorant about going in. Members of Congress, members of the administration—they don’t know the difference between Shia and Sunni. It’s one big network to them…There’s probably about four wars being fought today in Iraq. We’re involved in probably two of them, but we’ve unleashed all of them.

Artvoice: Are they lacking urgency and willingness or are they lacking opportunity? Neither Sunni nor Shia feel like they can afford to align themselves with the American occupation and reconstruction. To do so, they risk their political credibility and their lives. Many Iraqis say that no effective steps toward stability can be taken until the US withdraws its military presence.

BH: You know, it’s a catch-22 situation. Everyone we met with, you know, they didn’t want Americans to leave. But publicly they say that they do.

There are two separate issues: The United States invaded Iraq based on bad information—whether it was deliberate or just the result of sloppy intelligence gathering. And we did it with a small mobile army, which was highly effective in removing Saddam Hussein; but the real challenge was not Saddam Hussein, it was securing borders, it was securing major roads into the major cities, and the airports, to ensure that after the removal of Saddam Hussein, we were creating an environment to allow this National Unity government, however long it took, to establish a military security force and a functioning government. It never happened.

The miscalculation and mismanaging on the ground is pervasive and compelling, and this is the problem we’re still dealing with today. What we have demonstrated to other potential threats throughout the region—not only to us but to moderate Arab countries—is a vulnerability that has never been demonstrated before. This is a problem.

Now, look at what’s happened in the last couple of days: Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death. All of a sudden, he’s talking about “love thy neighbor.” All of a sudden, he’s talking about “don’t hate anybody.” The irony is that Saddam Hussein has been saying what needs to be said by a credible secular or religious figure in the Middle East. Where are the moderate Arab Muslim voices, secular and religious, in the Middle East, who are trying to help take people over the horizon? They don’t exist. There’s no leadership there. I don’t care if they’re from Jordan or from Saudi Arabia or from Iraq or from Iran, wherever. Where does rationality find its footing? It is in very short supply in the Middle East—there are no leaders.

And that’s part of this experiment: We assumed that these people were going to rise up and they were going to be able to articulate a vision for reconciling Islam and modernity. These religious leaders who point to the Koran as a justification for violence…there’s a Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, and at the base of each of them is love and compassion, redemption, forgiveness. It’s not about killing somebody. That’s why I have a hard time ascribing any level of credibility to any of these so-called leaders in the Middle East. You know, why is it that a Danish cartoonist results in violent protests in the streets against the West and yet they tolerate blowing up mosques, blowing up weddings, blowing up kids at schools, beheading teachers? What’s going on here?

AV: Don’t you think that the majority do not condone violence? Most religious leaders, Sunni and Shia, condemn violence and say that’s not what Islam is about. It’s a minority that advocates violence.

BH: Well, I gotta tell you, it’s a very powerful minority.

Here’s a point that I want to make on the economics of the Middle East: It’s oil. It’s our addiction to oil. That’s one of the reasons I voted against the energy bill, because we gave $16 billion in subsidies to American oil companies that didn’t want them and obviously didn’t need them, and did very little to invest in the development of alternative fuel cells. There’s no discussion of increasing energy or efficiency standards, relative to the auto manufacturing in this country. The problem with that is there’s an inverse relationship between the price of oil and the pace of freedom…when oil prices increase, places like Syria and places like Iran are insulated from the pressure to do economic and political reform. Where does Hezbollah, that basically provoked a war with Israel, where do they get the three billion dollars that’s required to rebuild southern Lebanon? They get it from Iran. But you know, Hezbollah, they’re not a productive society; they don’t tax their people; they don’t have companies that trade on the NASDAQ. Their only source of revenue is from Iran. Iran sells two and half million barrels of oil a day, but they’re so backward they have to import a lot of their fuel, because they don’t have the refining capacity. They subsidize Hezbollah at three billion dollars—and more, moving forward—and yet their society is not advancing. Same is true with Syria. Because our addiction to oil, and the price we’re willing to pay for it, slows political and economic reform there. Much like Iran, Syria’s population is probably 75 percent under the age of 25. They’re highly Westernized. Ahmadinejad’s regime in Iran and Assad’s regime in Syria are very fragile, but so long as the price of oil is where it’s at, the day of reckoning is delayed.

The price of oil shouldn’t only be the concern of the Secretary of Energy; it should be more the concern of the Secretary of State, because that’s what’s killing us. That’s what’s hurting us in the Sudan. Because you have emerging economies in China and other eastern countries. The demand for what they have goes up, so the Sudanese government snubs the US, because they don’t need us anymore. They’re not dependent on our purchases of the natural resources that they have. They have other folks they can sell to.

AV: You’ve been criticized by people inside and outside your own party for voting with the Bush administration on numerous national security and foreign policy issues.

BH: It’s been an issue for me. Just to give you an example: In early spring, a group of folks from the Western New York Peace Center came in, very sincere folks for the most part—there were some folks there that were less respectful and rational—and they came in with a folder of resolutions, and they had one question: “Why aren’t you on these resolutions?” I said, “What are they?” They said, “Well, they’re all Congressional resolutions to get out of Iraq.”

Well, first of all I can speak for myself. I don’t need to affix my name to a meaningless resolution that will have no effect in law, no force of law behind it, no force of budget behind it. They’re ass-covering, these documents, is what they are. If you look at the Murtha resolution, what it says is “redeploy, but be ready to deploy again.” It’s about three paragraphs. It says nothing, and it’s meaningless.

The point is, there are two different issues. I wasn’t in Congress when this war was authorized, when this horrible disaster was authorized by Congress. Now the question is, do you just pull out? And under what circumstances do you just pull out? Most of the resolutions that folks want people to get behind, they had nothing more than political timetables associated with them.

I think what we need to do in Iraq is negotiate in a very aggressive way with Prime Minister Malaki and the National Unity government a plan that includes an American withdrawal. But it has to be mutually agreed to and certain benchmarks have to be achieved. Reconciliation. How are you going to deal with power sharing? How are you going to deal with the redistribution of oil revenues? That’s your responsibility—Shia, Sunni, and Kurd. We can’t afford, both in terms of dollars and in terms of lives and in terms of credibility, to be involved here anymore. We’re leaving. Let’s discuss when we’re leaving, and you’re going to get this thing moving forward.

The easier thing for me to do is get on a resolution [that says], “Bush is an asshole and he’s mismanaged this war.” Of course he’s mismanaged the war. Don’t talk about Rumsfeld; talk about Bush. He’s the commander-in-chief. Bush has grossly mismanaged, grossly distorted the real situation in Iraq. Because I think he doesn’t want to deal with the reality that we’ve created over there.

AV: In the coming weeks, President Bush is likely to ask for an increase in US troop levels by 20,000-30,000, mostly in and around Baghdad. What do you think of that?

BH: I think that probably it’s the best of nothing but bad choices. Whether you agree with the United States forces, or the coalition forces, going into Iraq or not, the fact of the matter is that once we went in, it was a different situation. The question is, what happened there? Well, we didn’t have enough troops to secure the borders. It’s Bush jingoism; it was all about getting the bad guy. But there was no afterthought about what was necessary to secure the country—secure the borders through which the insurgency is happening, and through which people are leaving.

I don’t think this administration is capable of producing a decent outcome in Iraq. My concern is that even if they’re going to surge—or whatever it is they’re calling it today, because they don’t want it to be analogous to escalation—I think there is a general disconnect with this president relative to Iraq and reality. I think he is going to have left this mess to somebody else to clean up.

What people don’t talk about, but which any objective, knowledgeable analyst of the situation says, regardless of what their political persuasion, is that, we’re stuck there for 10 years. That’s just being honest about it. I go back to Colin Powell, who I think was the most credible foreign policy voice in the administration. Despite what he said to the UN, he didn’t support the policy. He believed that you exhaust every diplomatic opportunity, and then if you choose to go in, you use overwhelming force. This administration didn’t provide the means to achieve the end.

Again, we’re not arguing the decision [to invade Iraq]; that’s a separate issue. That will be discussed in the 2008 presidential election, I’m sure, but they are really two different issues—what is needed now versus what was needed initially are really two different things.

What the administration is essentially doing without acknowledging it—because they never acknowledge their mistakes, which is gutless—they are basically vindicating Colin Powell. This is the Powell doctrine: Negotiate. If this does not work, if every opportunity to negotiate is pursued, and the conclusion is that the situation is so dire that our national interest is at risk and we have to go in, you go in with overwhelming force. We didn’t do that; we tried to win it on the cheap and we’re stuck there.

Those who are admonishing us not to cut and run are enabling reckless and highly irresponsible foreign policy. The administration is doing now, in the latter part of its second term, what it should have been doing in the early part of its first term. That is, being aggressively engaged diplomatically with our friends and with our enemies. You don’t need diplomacy with your friends; you need diplomacy with your enemies. Diplomacy requires a strategic mind that has an appreciation for all of the players in the Middle East. Does Iran want Iraq to fail with its Shia-led government? No. Do Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, want Iraq to survive with its Shia-led government? Kind of.

Enlightened self-interest, which is fundamental to effective diplomacy, is all about taking into account the interests of others. But that requires and expansive mind, it requires a sophisticated mind, and I don’t know that this administration, this president, has that—or, worse, an appreciation for it.

If you look at what’s going on: Saddam—“We got him.” “Mission accomplished.” How insulting. It’s insulting personally, it’s insulting as an American citizen, that these things were trumped up to be some kind of accomplishment. The big thing is, we haven’t got Osama bin Laden yet. Folks, that was four years ago. Bin Laden has morphed into a worldwide network of Islamic terrorists. Whether you get him or not is irrelevant, because there are new, emerging leaders who are more aggressive, and you don’t even know their names.

There is no possibility for a decent outcome that we can influence. That issue has been tested. Whether you surge or pull out of there, whether it’s five years from now or tomorrow, it’s going to be the same. We have unleashed something that we didn’t know existed, or pretended we didn’t know existed.

AV: Doesn’t that argue for immediate withdrawal?

BH: I think it depends on how you withdraw. Do you just pull everyone out and let Iraq and the greater Middle East fall? It’s not going to be a civil war in the traditional definition; it’s going to be a civil war from a regional standpoint, it’s going to pit Shia against Sunni. It’s going to create a lot of problems for the United States relative to oil prices, which will cause further economic distress relative to our addiction to oil.

I’m trying to be thoughtful about this. There’s no good solution. I’m just concerned that those who propose unilateral withdrawal entirely—while I think a lot of those people are sincere and thoughtful—I think there’s a consequence right around the corner that is also really bad. I think it’s a question of aggressive diplomacy; I think that while we’re still there an effort has to be made to come to some kind of accommodation with Iran and Syria, because we’re not going to be dealing with Ahmadinejad five years from now. His government is very fragile, he just took a beating in local elections.

AV: Many argue that the election of Ahmadinejad was a reaction to US policy in the Middle East, that our invasion of Iraq helped to derail Iran’s reform movement.

BH: What happened was the reformers who preceded Ahmadinejad raised expectations and didn’t follow through aggressively on their reforms…when there is instability, it empowers those on the fringes, the extremists; that’s how radical people come into power, and we contribute to that.

What is lacking is leadership, both in the Arab Muslim world and in the United States. Leadership that has moral authority. Natan Sharansky, who wrote A Case for Democracy, a Soviet dissident and also an Israeli politician, said that in order to move the earth, you have to have someplace to stand, and moral authority and moral clarity gives you a place to stand. Our credibility as a nation has taken such a beating. In fact, we have exposed vulnerabilities that have empowered others. The situation in Afghanistan, the situation in Africa—they’re all thumbing our noses at us, because they have other folks they can economically partner with, so they don’t depend on us anymore.

AV: How do you anticipate the new Democratic Congress will engage the war in Iraq?

BH: How did the Vietnam war end? Congress stopped appropriating funds for it.

This past election was a referendum on the war in Iraq, in large part. Democrats won Congressional seats that we had no right winning. There is going to be real pressure now on this administration. I think this is leading to an American withdrawal from the region, it’s just a question of how and when it’s done. It’s going to be in the near term, not in the long term, and I think what the president is going to propose is this surge toward saying, “All right, things are a lot better at the moment, there’s civility, let’s go. We did our job.”

AV: And then chaos pours back in.

BH: Yeah. And that’s part of the problem.

One-party dominance is not good. I’m a student of government as much as a practitioner, and what I’ve watched over the past two years during my short time in Congress, both in foreign policy and domestic, is that the American people are not well served by Congress. The issues that are put before Congress are not issues that are meaningful to people. They are politically charged issues. Every Iraq war resolution was a politically charged resolution that had no force of budget behind it, no force of law behind it. It’s essentially designed to put people in a tough situation. If you ascribe a level of credibility to them, then you fall into their trap, and I think that’s the problem with the very sincere and genuine peace advocates who want names on a resolution. Read the Murtha resolution. It’s not strong, it’s not compelling, it’s a political statement.

These are called nonbinding expressions of the Congressional will. They’re meaningless. Who cares? Flag burning. Gay marriage. These are all issues that are never going to be decided within Congress. They are politically charged issues intended to embarrass people into tough votes so that they can spend a million dollars against you in the next election and say, “He’s un-American.” I had a guy come up to me a couple weeks ago: “Don’t cut and run.” People are dealing with the generalities of these things because they represent a particular point of view, but there’s a higher expectation of me. I can’t sit on the sidelines and simply point fingers based on political motivation. There’s a higher expectation. You have to be more thoughtful about these things.

AV: Why did you vote to renew the Patriot Act?

BH: First of all, the Patriot Act essentially was all about removal of the barriers that existed between various federal law enforcement agencies. Canadian intelligence people will tell you that the Patriot Act was very helpful in thwarting the terrorist network in Toronto.

I live on an international border. Removing the communication barriers existing between Border Patrol and FBI, CIA, etc., is important relative to enhancing border security and thus national security. The situation in Lackawanna, the terrorist cell there, the Patriot Act was very helpful—provisions of the Patriot Act. What happens, that I can’t control, is that all these other issues are bundled into the package. They’re bundled in order to make it difficult not to support it. Given where I live, given a thoughtful approach to these issues, understanding that they are not black and white, I draw conclusions based on my analysis of these things and my responsibilities to this constituency.

I think a lot of it is symbolic objection. They say, “How can you vote for the Patriot Act?” but what they mean is “How can you support President Bush?” But he won’t always be there. Look, I have disdain for this administration for what it did to this country over the past six years. But I can’t just say, “Stop and let’s wait for a new administration.”

AV: How about the Military Commissions Act?

BH: In times of war, civil rights take a beating. Washington used military tribunals during the American Revolution. Lincoln used military tribunals during the American Civil War. Roosevelt used military tribunals during World War Two. It’s not good. But suspected terrorists in a very precarious time in the world, I think, require special consideration, and there are historical precedents for this. I voted for all the Democratic substitutes leading to the final vote. But in the end, if I err, it’s on the side of national security. I understand, and I appreciate, the sincere concerns about that and other votes, and I’m willing to discuss them with people. But again, I think people just want to generalize, and they want it to be black and white. I think most of the opposition to that is opposition to Bush and disdain for him. I have in many ways the same disdain for what he has done—because of a lack of leadership, because of an administration that domestically and in terms of foreign policy has been an abject failure. But I still have a responsibility.

AV: But it’s not just opposition to this president. Isn’t the argument that the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act create a new, more restrictive baseline for civil liberties in this country? If the war that justifies these rollbacks is a war on terrorism—rather than a war on a specific adversary whose defeat can be affirmed—then the war will never end and those curtailments of civil rights become permanent.

BH: I think it has been used before effectively, not that it was good choice, in the American Revolution and the American Civil War and World War Two. And it was temporary. This is a new set of circumstances with great uncertainty. Al Qaeda has morphed into al Qaeda-ism. There are terrorist cells everywhere, and it creates huge challenges in finding that balance between security and civil rights.

It was a tough vote, no question about it, but I think there were some historical precedents, and I think there were some changes made to it beyond what Bush had proposed initially. I was watching a guy like John McCain on that. Not that that was overriding, but certainly he had an interesting point of view as a former prisoner of war. This is for terrorist suspects—I think there is a tendency to an overreaching interpretation of that. I think the discomfort for me with the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act is the potential for abuse. I don’t take that lightly. In my committee position on Government Reform, which has oversight, we inquire about these issues on a regular basis. I understand people’s discomfort with it. But I think there is a transference, an interpretation that because you support something that the administration wants, or a variation of it, you are supporting all of the things that the administration represents, and that’s not the case.

AV: During your first term, the House was controlled by Republicans. Did you feel that politically—in order to do well by your district and to protect yourself—it was better not to stick your neck out by opposing the administration on national security and foreign policy?

BH: There are a number of variables that go into every decision you make relative to your vote, and they are certainly political. Anyone who suggest that there aren’t political considerations isn’t telling the truth. That’s the bottom line. But I believe that if you do your job, the politics will take care of itself. I never felt pressured by the prospect of a Jim Kelly or whoever else the Republicans were running, and I don’t think I ever felt pressured to take a strong conservative vote. And I didn’t receive the Conservative endorsement. The local [Conservative Party] folks wanted me not because of any national security or foreign policy votes; they wanted to endorse me because of my work on local issues, hydropower and a number of others. Because of my position on the choice issue, the Conservative Party guy in New York City wouldn’t go along with their recommendation.

My votes aren’t really contingent on looking at an election. In the end, I have to be able to justify personally, internally—and externally, because I have an obligation to communicate—the basis for my votes. Do political considerations go into them? Always. Anyone who tells you that they don’t, they’re not being truthful. They do. And that’s what decision making is all about. Particularly when you’ve got a populace or a constituency that’s…it’s not evenly divided, but there’s no clear cut…you take positions on issues that are sometimes very inconsistent with what your constituency wants. But I always believe you have to get beyond the generalities; there’s more to it than either side gives credit to.

I’m in constant learning mode. Just because you’re in Congress doesn’t mean you stop learning; just because you’re in Congress doesn’t mean you stop making mistakes. In my household I was taught that mistakes are good, so along as you learn from them.