National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. WEST. Mr. Chairman, I thank Chairman Wittman, and I do rise to support this amendment. Having spent time in the military, we were taught that there were some basic principles. A couple of those basic principles are unity of command and unity of effort.

I will take nothing away from the civilian appointee that we have in this position currently, but as we said, this is the Army national cemetery. And it being the Army national cemetery, I feel it is very important we have a chain of command, a chain of leadership. That could fall under the Military District of Washington.

As a matter of fact, the sergeant major of the Military District of Washington is someone that I served with at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, when I was a young major, and we understand chain of command. We understand responsibility and accountability. And I talked to him about this, and he feels that will be something that will be very well appropriate, to have a military commissioned officer.

When you look at our arsenals, our arsenals out there have strong civilian leadership and also strong civilian employees, but yet we have a military commander. When you look at an organization such as the Army Material Command, which is some 60 to 70 percent civilian, but yet we have a four-star general, General Ann Dunwoody, someone that I also know very well and served with, who is in charge of that organization.

So I think if we want to make sure that we have right type of unity of command, unity of effort, chain of command in place, we need to make sure that we have a uniformed military person that's in control and in command of this Army National Cemetery.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

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Mr. WEST. I rise in opposition to this amendment.

I find it very interesting that back in 1942, when there were German Nazi saboteurs that were captured off the coast of Long Island, that they were prosecuted in a military commission. One of them was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment; others were sentenced to death. And I understand that this is a different type of battlefield that we're on, the 21st century battlefield. We're all on this battlefield. No one would have ever thought that Major Malik Nadal Hasan would stand in Fort Hood, Texas, and shoot 43 Americans and 13 of those would be killed.

I find that we have to understand that we are at a war. We are not in a police action. We cannot look to guarantee to those who seek to harm us the constitutional rights that are granted to Americans. If we extend that to them, then we are starting to say that this war on terror, now it's a criminal action.

And I find it very interesting that a sponsor of this amendment is the Council for American Islamic Relations, which is an unindicted coconspirator for the largest terrorist financing act here.

So I say we should not support this amendment.

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