Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act -- Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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ISIS

Mr. McCAIN. Today, Senator Graham and I, on the 13th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001--this anniversary--sadly, and unfortunately, we cannot agree and we cannot say, as President Obama did last night, that America is safer.

In fact, in many respects, America is in more danger than at any time since the end of the Cold War. We look around the world at the challenges, the aggression, the provocations, and the continued slaughter of innocent Ukrainians.

It is a classic example of what happens when the United States of America decides to withdraw from the world and create a vacuum. That vacuum is filled by the forces of evil, innocents throughout the world suffer, and America's security is threatened.

So I strongly disagree--and I believe that most objective observers would strongly disagree--with the President's assertion last night that America is safer. By no objective measurement is America safer. In fact, when we look at Twitter and Facebook, we will see that ISIS is threatening the United States of America and urging others to come to the United States of America and attack the United States of America.

Yesterday, from a hearing before the Department of Homeland Security, it was very clear that our border is not secure. That is a recipe for at least attempts by those of ISIS who have dedicated themselves to the destruction of the United States of America to be made possible.

Mr. Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, was once a resident in the U.S.-run prison camp in Iraq called Camp Bucca. He spent 4 years there and then left. On his way out he said to his American captures: ``I'll see you guys in New York.'' I am not making that up. He said: ``I'll see you guys in New York.'' The leader of ISIS, Mr. Baghdadi's message has been: Attack and destroy the United States of America.

So, no, Mr. President, America is not safer. In fact, because of a feckless foreign policy, America is in greater danger than it has been, in some respects, in my lifetime--not in all but in some.

The fact is the President of the United States sees ISIS as some kind of terrorist organization. It is not. ISIS is a terrorist army. ISIS has the largest area in history of wealth, of military equipment and capability than of any terrorist organization in history, and they spread in an area larger than the size of the State of Indiana.

I would like to say the President got some things right in his speech on ISIS. He seems to have read the op-ed piece my colleague Senator Graham and I wrote in the New York Times 2 weeks ago because he adopted most of our proposals--most but not all.

The President compared his plan to the counterterrorism approach he has taken in Somalia and Yemen. It is so disturbing to think that a strategy against ISIS would be the same as against Al Qaeda in Somalia and Yemen. There are terrorist organizations in Somalia and Yemen and, yes, we have been killing with drones, but we have by no means defeated them.

To compare what ISIS has done and the slaughter that ISIS is carrying out to the terrorist organizations in Somalia and Yemen reflects a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of the President of the United States of the threat that we face.

The problem also is that even Al Qaeda has not been defeated in those countries. The President says he wants to degrade and defeat the way they are attacking Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia--but they are not defeated.

So what the President proposed last night can possibly, if done correctly, degrade ISIS, but it can't destroy ISIS. And we must destroy ISIS. Sooner or later, according to our heads of intelligence--whether it be the Director of the CIA or the Director of the FBI or the Secretary of Homeland Security--they want to attack the United States. Their goal is to attack the United States of America.

So let's start with what the President got right. He described the right goal: to degrade and to ultimately destroy ISIS. He called for expanding air strikes, to go on offense against ISIS. He explained the need to hit ISIS both in Iraq and Syria. He called for training and arming moderate Syrian opposition forces, and he described elements of a comprehensive strategy--diplomatic, economic, and military--all of which Senator Graham and I have long championed.

He talked about the formation of a coalition--his Secretary of State has said he wanted as many as 40 nations. So far there are 9, and the interesting thing is there is not a single Middle Eastern country that has joined this so-called coalition.

Why is that? Is it because they are not afraid of ISIS? Of course they are afraid of ISIS. But they don't trust the United States of America. I hear that directly from leaders all over the Middle East.

They don't trust us because of the President's bungling, incredibly bad decision after he once said that if Syria crossed certain reds lines and used chemical weapons, then we would respond. They crossed that line. He then said we were going to respond, and then, after a 45-minute walk with his chief of staff, he announced to the world that we were not going to strike; he was going to

Congress, knowing full well he would not get that permission from Congress. That nuance was lost on countries in the Middle East that were prepared to join us with air strikes into Syria.

So it is not surprising. It is not surprising at all that so far the President and his Secretary of State have been unable to convince any of these Middle Eastern countries--and we need them. We need them very badly.

One of the main things the President didn't say and should have said is that he recognizes he made a mistake. Every President has made mistakes. Certainly George W. Bush did in Iraq. He at least had the courage to fire his Secretary of Defense and adopt the surge which basically stabilized Iraq. It had stabilized Iraq--before we made the decision not to do so.

Every one of the President's military advisers--the smartest people that any of us know: General Petraeus, General Keen, General Allen--I could go down the list--argued strenuously for leaving a residual force behind. The President of the United States decided not to. Now we are trying to rewrite history and say: Well, the President really wanted to.

Find me one statement the President of the United States made publicly that he wanted to leave a residual force behind, and I can find you 50 where he bragged about the last combat troop had left Iraq and we had left a safe, stable, prosperous Iraq behind--a lot of howlers about how well we had done in Iraq.

If we had left a residual force, the situation in Iraq would not be where it is today, which allowed Iraqi security forces to weaken, squandered our influence in Iraq, and harmed our ability to check Prime Minister Maliki's worst instincts.

Then there is his failure to support and arm the Free Syrian Army 2 years ago. I have been in Syria. I know how brave these people are. I know how disappointed they were when we failed to arm and equip them.

Two years ago, his entire national security team--including his Secretary of State, Secretary Clinton--strongly urged the President of the United States to arm, train, and equip the Free Syrian Army. The President of the United States turned them down. The President of the United States overruled the unanimous opinion of his national security team. That, my friends, was a huge impact--again giving rise to ISIS, giving Bashar al-Assad the ability and capability to slaughter innocent Syrians.

It breaks my heart that 192,000 Syrians have been massacred by Bashar al-Assad. He continues to drop these barrel bombs which are horrible killers.

Bashar al-Assad continues to have 150,000 Syrians dying in his prison camps.

I wish every American could see those pictures that were smuggled out of the tortured, killed, and starved-to-death Syrians--192,000 of them. We could have turned that around 2 years ago.

Then 3 years ago was when the President of the United States said: It is not a matter of whether Bashar al-Assad is leaving. It is a matter of when. He also said 3 years ago: It is time for Bashar Assad to leave.

Yet Bashar Assad today continues to slaughter innocent men, women, and children. Millions of refugees have fled the country. The horrors of this butchering continue, and what changed?

One aspect that changed the battlefield equation, when the President of the United States said it is not a matter of if but when, was when Iran--which some now are asking us to work with--sent in Hezbollah--5,000 of them from Lebanon--and it changed the momentum on the battlefield.

Senator Lindsey Graham and I were called over to the White House. We went in to meet the President, after the President had said that he was going to strike Syria. We sat there, and the President looked us in the eye and he said, I want to do three things: degrade Bashar Assad, upgrade the Free Syrian Army, and change the battlefield equation.

Senator Graham and I, taking his word for it, went out in the driveway and said: We are backing the President of the United States.

Several days later, without being notified, we were stunned to read that the President had changed his mind. He had not told us the truth in the Oval Office. That is a unique experience for me, where I have been in the Oval Office under many Presidents.

I am confident the steps the President laid out last night can degrade ISIS. But that is not sufficient to protect our people. We need Special Forces and advisers on the ground.

The President continues to say there will be no boots on the ground. There are 1,700 boots on the ground right now.

There will be more boots on the ground, but they won't be in the form of combat units. If we are really going to defeat ISIS, we are going to need close air support, forward air controllers, intelligence capability, Special Forces, and many others. We will soon have more than 1,500 there, and there will have to be more.

Tell the American people the truth, Mr. President. Those young men and women are going there, they are going to be in harm's way, and they are going to be exposed to combat. Tell the American people the truth. We need to do a lot more.

I wish to mention one other aspect before I turn to my friend from South Carolina, who was with me in 2008 at a townhall meeting.

A man stood up at the town hall meeting and said: Senator McCain, how long are we going to be in Iraq?

I said: We may be in Iraq for a long, long time because although we have sustained this situation and we have stabilized it--that was after the surge had been implemented and succeeded--it is very fragile. We are going to have to leave a residual force behind--as we did in Japan, in Germany, Korea, Bosnia, where we have left residual forces behind for the sake of stability.

Well, in case any of my colleagues have forgotten, I was pilloried: MCCAIN wants to stay in Iraq.

Yes, I wanted a residual force in Iraq--not to engage in combat but to provide stability, intelligence, and other capabilities. Now we know what happened when we left Iraq. Now we know the consequences.

I hope all those people who called me all of the names which I am not going to repeat here will render an apology, because I was right. I said that if we left Iraq completely, then we risked the great danger of it deteriorating.

I say to my colleagues, the situation today didn't have to be this way. None of the challenges we now face in Iraq and Syria had to be this dire. The rise of ISIS did not have to happen. We have lost too much time and missed too many opportunities. But we can still defeat our terrorist enemies, and we must protect our people and our partners and secure our national interests in the Middle East.

The President's plan, if he implements it--if he understands that this is not Yemen and Somalia, if he understands that this is a direct threat to the United States of America, if he comes to Congress and asks for--not welcomes, but asks for--debate and amendments and votes that show the American people's representatives will support them in this effort, then I think we have a chance of succeeding.

But I have to tell my colleagues I am not very optimistic from the start I saw last night.

I would like to yield to my colleague from South Carolina.

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Mr. McCAIN. I note the presence of our colleague from California, so I will make it short.

Last night I had an exchange with the former spokesperson for the White House, and again this issue came up and the assertion, the incredible assertion that it was the Iraqis who did not want to leave a residual force behind--a statement that continues to amaze me, that anyone would believe such a thing, particularly given the circumstances which the Iraqis were left under, including--by the way, every single one of our military leaders urged that we leave a residual force behind, and many of them, such as General Keen, General Petraeus, and others, predicted what would happen if we pulled everybody out.

I wonder if for the record the Senator from South Carolina would relate the experience we had in Iraq and our personal experience with regard to the issue of residual force behind.

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