Agricultural Act of 2014

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

I attended, as did all of my colleagues, the President's State of the Union Message the night before last. Obviously, as always, the President delivers an excellent speech.

I must say that in the years I have attended the President's State of the Union Message, I have never seen a message on national security and foreign policy as disconnected from reality as the President's speech. Obviously it had minor importance by the amount of time that was taken in the speech, but what was most interesting was the President portrayed a Middle East, in particular, that has little relation to the reality today and the ongoing tragedies, deaths, and sacrifice because of a failure of American leadership.

In interesting polling data today, a Pew Research poll indicates:

More Now See Failure than Success in Iraq, Afghanistan Little Partisan Gap in Views of Whether U.S. Has Reached Goals.

It continues:

After more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the public does not think the United States has achieved its goals in either country. About half of Americans (52%) say the U.S. has mostly failed to achieve its goals in Afghanistan while 38% say it has mostly succeeded.

Opinions about the U.S. war in Iraq are virtually the same; 52 percent say the United States has mostly failed in reaching its goals there while 38 percent say it has mostly succeeded.

Continuing:

In both cases, evaluations of the wars have turned more negative in recent years. In November 2011, as the U.S. was completing its military withdrawal from Iraq, a majority (56%) thought the U.S. had achieved its goals there.

So the American people, despite the rhetoric from the administration--some of it incredibly bizarre--have figured out that after many years of sacrifice, expenditure of American blood and treasure, we are looking at and staring failure in the face.

I will quote from the President's speech the night before last.

On Iraq, the President said:

When I took office, nearly 180,000 troops were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, all our troops are out of Iraq.

Yes, that is a correct statement. But what the President didn't go on to say was that Iraq is now collapsing under the weight of sectarian violence that now has exceeded that of 2008, one of the most dangerous years of the war. What the President didn't say was that there is sectarian violence, Sunni and Shia, initiated largely by President Maliki, which is causing attacks throughout Iraq--bomb detonations, IEDs, attacks on various institutions. President Maliki has driven his own vice president out of the country. The list goes on and on.

I say to my colleagues, there is no greater example of our failure in Iraq than Fallujah today. In the second battle of Fallujah, in 2007, the United States of America lost 96 marines and soldiers killed, over 600 wounded. Today, vehicles are driving through the streets of Fallujah flying Al-Qaeda flags. Al-Qaeda is now in charge in Fallujah.

I wonder what we tell families of those brave soldiers and marines who were killed and wounded in the first and second battle of Fallujah. Because in the words of General Petraeus, who was the architect of the surge--which most of my colleagues, including the President of the United States, said would fail, when actually there were many of us who knew that it would and did succeed: We won the war but lost the peace.

We lost the peace because the United States of America did not leave a residual force behind, thereby allowing the situation to deteriorate to where it is today with Al-Qaeda now in charge of the city of Fallujah, Ramadi--the Syria-Iraq border now being the headquarters and staging areas of Al-Qaeda in both Syria and Iraq. Their black flags now fly over cities where brave Americans, marines and soldiers, sacrificed their lives and their well-being.

Gen. James Conway, who commanded the marines in the first battle of Fallujah in April 2004, commenting on failures of the administration's policies in Iraq stated: "In some ways, the al-Qaeda grand strategy is vindicated.'' He deplored U.S. policies, appeared weak and confused in the wake of how hard we fought to get those cities back in the first place.

What did the President of the United States say? Did he mention Fallujah? Of course not.

He said:

When I took office, nearly 180,000 troops were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, all our troops are out of Iraq.

Yes, the troops are out of Iraq and the place is going to hell in a hand basket.

Don't think that these people, Al-Qaeda and Al Nusra, are not intent on pursuing their goals of radical Islam right to the United States of America. This should concern every one of my colleagues and every American citizen.

Yesterday there was a hearing in the Senate Intelligence Committee:

Al Qaida faction in Syria contemplating U.S. attack, intelligence officials warn.

Senate hears Nusra Front has "aspirations for attacks on the homeland'' amid concern over civil war's terrorism implications.

Intelligence officials have claimed that a faction linked to al-Qaida in Syria has a desire to launch a domestic attack on the US, an assertion that underscored the growing importance of the Syrian civil war to global terrorism.

The Nusra Front, one of the jihadist factions in Syria, that aligns itself with al-Qaida, "does have aspirations for attack on the homeland,'' James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, yesterday.

We know that with Al Nusra, Al-Qaeda, and other radical Islamist organizations, which, by the way, are attracting young men from all over the world, including Europe, is now one that is contemplating attacks on the United States of America.

I want to again mention General Conway, who commanded the marines during the first battle of Fallujah in 2004.

At the Heritage Foundation he said:

"We fought and died taking those cities,'' Conway said Wednesday at the Heritage Foundation. Conway became the Marine Corps commandant before retiring as a four-star general.

A blunt-talking general who rarely seeks the spotlight, Conway described his reaction to recent events in stark terms during his brief remarks.

It causes Iraqi and U.S. policies to look a little weak and confused in the wake of how hard we fought to get those cities back in the first place.

Continuing:

"In some ways, the al-Qaeda grand strategy is vindicated,'' Conway said, referring to the organization's desire to wait out American forces.

Why did they wait out American forces? They waited out American forces because as soon as President Obama took office he announced we were leaving. He didn't announce a strategy for success. He didn't say we have to reach certain goals before we leave. He told everybody we were leaving.

It is very clear, when we look at electoral history, that his vote against the resolution concerning military action in Iraq was one of the factors that led him to the Presidency. But for him to stand before the American people and say:

When I took office, nearly 180,000 Americans were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, all our troops are out of Iraq.

This is, at best, a very incomplete depiction of what has happened since all of those troops are out of Iraq.

Finally, General Conway said:

Those who lost people, those wounded, I think, are now stripped of a coping mechanism, Conway said. "If you have a young Marine or soldier sitting with his legs missing, he could at least previously say, `Well what we did was the right thing. Iraq is better for it, and we won.' '' I'm not sure that same individual sitting in that chair is thinking those things these days. That's truly sad.

I have talked to and heard from so many of these brave young Americans who feel exactly as General Conway described. They don't know and they don't understand after the enormous sacrifices that they made that somehow now black Al-Qaeda flags are flying over Fallujah.

On Afghanistan, the President said:

More than 60,000 of our troops have already come home from Afghanistan. With Afghan forces now in the lead for their own security, our troops have moved to a support role. .....

After 2014, we will support a unified Afghanistan as it takes responsibility for its own future. If the Afghan government signs a security agreement that we have negotiated, a small force of Americans could remain in Afghanistan with NATO allies to carry out two narrow missions: training and assisting Afghan forces, and counterterrorism operations to pursue any remnants of Al Qaeda. For while our relationship with Afghanistan will change, one thing will not: our resolve that terrorists do not launch attacks against our country.

On the one hand, the President said there would be two narrow missions and yet our goal is still that terrorists don't launch attacks against our country. Again, he failed to put forward a true proposal for our strategy in Afghanistan and once again avoided offering any specifics on troop numbers.

Why did we not leave a troop presence behind in Iraq? Because they would never give a troop number. Anybody who tells you the problem was not getting it through the Iraqi Parliament is not telling you the truth.

Senator Graham, Senator Lieberman, and I were in Erbil when President Barzani said: I will go to Baghdad. When we met with Allawi, he said: I will sit with Maliki. We went to Maliki and Maliki said: I will agree to have a force of troops in my country. How many? We could not give him an answer nor would the administration give him an answer.

In the words and testimony of our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the number cascaded down to 3,500, and that would have been a force that spent its time defending itself. Therefore, we did not leave a troop force behind in Iraq, and I have just described the consequences.

The same thing is happening in Afghanistan. The President will not say the force level he wants left behind in Afghanistan. Why is it he will not?

I want to point out that President Karzai of Afghanistan is a paranoid individual, and he has been incredibly unhelpful. It has been terribly disappointing to me--and I have known him for 14 years--that he is behaving as he is. But President Karzai's paranoia is somewhat understandable when he does not know whether the United States will remain, he doesn't know whether he can count on the United States, and he knows he has to stay in the neighborhood and accommodate for the likelihood now that the United States leaves completely. So his paranoia, to some degree, is much more understandable.

On our last trip to Afghanistan in early January, we saw firsthand the progress that has been made by American and Afghan forces, and such progress is a true testament to the positive impact our troops have had and the long-term benefits of our partnership with the Afghan people. The Afghan people, though, and military will need our continued support. If we pull out, if we see the Iraq movie again,
we will see the same thing happen in Afghanistan that is now happening in Iraq, and it doesn't take a lot of smarts to know that.

So now we turn to Syria. In Syria "we will support the opposition that rejects the agenda of terrorist networks.'' What does that mean?

Despite promise after promise, the administration has refused to provide aid to the moderate opposition forces in Syria who are committed. It was 2 years ago when the President of the United States said: It is not a matter of whether Bashar al-Assad will leave office, it is a matter of when. It was over 2 years ago, at the Senate Armed Services Committee, when Secretary of Defense Panetta and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in answer to my question: Sir, it is inevitable, it is inevitable that Bashar al-Assad will leave office.

Does anybody believe that now?

Our failure to help the Free Syrian Army over time was negated and overwhelmed by the presence of 5,000 Hezbollah sent in by the Iranians, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, planeload after planeload of weapons that now land at the Damascus Airport from Russia, while they are loaded onto Russian-built helicopters, and barrel bombs, which are explosives packed with all kinds of nuts and bolts and other metals, are dropped out of those helicopters on men, women, and children.

But not to worry--not to worry--because the chemical weapons are leaving, apparently, according to the President, because he said: American diplomacy, backed by the threat of force, is why Syria's chemical weapons are being eliminated, and we will continue to work with the international community to usher in the future the Syrian people deserve, a future free of a dictator, terror, and fear.

The chemical weapons he is hailing as a success--how much has been accomplished? The Syrian Government has delivered less than 5 percent of its deadliest chemical weapons agents to international authorities so far. This is a quote from an L.A. Times story:

Syria unlikely to meet deadline on its deadliest chemical agents. President Bashar Assad's government has delivered less than 5 percent of its deadliest chemical weapons agents. The deadline is next week.

So even this claim about chemical weapons being removed does not bear scrutiny. But far, far, far more important--far more important, I say--is that if we got rid of the chemical weapons Bashar al-Assad had, that would not change the equation on the ground. I am sure a Syrian mother cannot differentiate very well if her child is killed by a chemical weapon, a barrel bomb or is starved to death, as 120,000 men, women, and children have met that fate.

It is unbelievable. Now we are watching a charade take place in Geneva, and that of course has turned into a farce. Anybody who believes that Bashar al-Assad is going to willingly leave office, when he is winning the battle on the ground, obviously has no idea of the nature of Bashar Assad.

Again, the slaughter goes on, and one of the huge aspects of this happens to be the fact that it is no longer a civil war. I would remind my colleagues this conflict began because in homes there were some children who wrote some anti-Assad graffiti on the wall. They were rounded up by Assad's police and were tortured and beaten, and that began an Arab spring in Syria. That spread throughout the country and now has spread throughout the region.

As I just said, the Iraq-Syria border is now Al Qaeda. It is now controlled by them. The Iranians are all in, with 5,000 Hezbollah; Lebanon is destabilized; Jordan is overwhelmed by refugees; Turkey is even under strain; 100,000-some refugees are even in Kurdistan. It has turned into a regional conflict and one which, sooner or later, will finally erupt into a major conflict which is going to affect the United States of America.

The President of the United States may want to leave the Middle East alone, but I can assure my colleagues the Middle East will not leave America alone. Look at the statement made just today by our Director of National Intelligence who said that al-Nusra, an affiliate of Al Qaeda, is planning attacks on the United States of America.

The President said: Finally, let's remember that our leadership is defined not just by our defense against threats but by the enormous opportunities to do good and promote understandings around the globe, and no one is better positioned to take advantage of those opportunities than America.

I couldn't agree more. But when the United States is viewed by the world, particularly the Middle East, as weak, withdrawing, no longer involved or trying to disengage, then I am not sure we can have the effects the President outlined in his State of the Union speech.

I think it is very clear that a seminal moment, as far as the entire Middle East is concerned, was when the President of the United States said that because Bashar Assad had crossed the red line in the use of chemical weapons--there was indisputable evidence that 1,400 men, women, and children had been killed in chemical weapons attacks--we were going to have to enact strikes against Bashar Assad in Syria. A few days later, our Secretary of State, in one of the more incredible statements I have ever heard--said: Yeah, but the strike will be ``unbelievably small.'' I am not making that up. He said the strike would be ``unbelievably small.''

That must have really frightened the Syrians when they heard that any military strikes would be "unbelievably small.''

The President of the United States then, without informing our allies--specifically the Saudis--according to published reports, took a 45-minute walk with his Chief of Staff and then decided he would go to the Congress of the United States for permission or for ratification of any attack he might make, and, obviously, that wasn't going to happen.

I say to my colleagues, I travel a lot in the Middle East. I can tell you--and I would even name names but not on the record--that at that moment our allies lost confidence, they lost belief in the United States. We are now watching countries in the region openly stating--for example, the Saudi Arabians refusing a seat on the National Security Council of the United Nations--and this is published everywhere--they no longer believe in the United States of America.

By the way, one of the other aspects of this, and there are many, is a Washington Post story of this morning:

Europeans are flocking to the war in Syria. What happens when they come home?

The story is about a couple of people who went from England.

The distress among security officials is pervasive in European capitals and in Washington. U.S. Intelligence Chief James R. Clapper, Jr. told a congressional panel Wednesday that the Syrian war had attracted about 7,000 foreign fighters from as many as 50 nations and that at least one of the main jihadist groups in Syria aspires to carry out an attack in the United States. But Europe is a far closer and more accessible target. The International Center for the Study of Radicalization estimated last month that nearly 2,000 Western Europeans had traveled to Syria to fight and that the number was rising fast.

Continuing to quote from the article:

French officials say 700 came from France. French Interior Minister Manuel Valls asserted this month that returning fighters represent "the biggest threat the country faces in the coming years.'' The anxiety has been especially acute in Britain, where memories are still fresh of the July 2005 transit bombings. These attacks, which claimed 52 lives, were carried out by homegrown radicals, at least two of whom had received training in Pakistan. "The penny hasn't dropped. But Syria is a game-changer,'' Richard Walton, who leads counterterrorism efforts at Scotland Yard, told the Evening Standard newspaper. "We are seeing it every day. You have hundreds of people going to Syria, and if they don't get killed they get radicalized.''

So we are in a situation of failed leadership over the last 5 years and the chickens, unfortunately, are beginning to come home to roost. When the President of the United States, in his address to the Nation, describes things in the Middle East as he did, I think it is very, very, very unfortunate because that does not comport with the actual facts on the ground.

I say to my colleagues, the American people no longer believe our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan was the right thing to do. I can tell my constituents that in 2008 things were very different. The surge had worked. We were gradually withdrawing from Syria. We had the Taliban in Afghanistan largely under control. In Syria, Bashar Assad was losing. Now the terrain throughout the Middle East is dramatically different.

As much as I regret to say, it is my obligation to tell my constituents my view; that is, we have very, very difficult times ahead. I do not like to predict that bad things are going to happen, but right now I don't see how they can be avoided.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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