Motion to Discharge--S.J. Res. 39

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Paul and pursuant to the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, I move to discharge the Foreign Relations Committee from further consideration of S.J. Res. 39, relating to the disapproval of the proposed foreign military sale to the Government of Saudi Arabia.

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am going to speak briefly in support of the resolution. Senator Lee, a cosponsor of this resolution, is on the floor, and he will speak after I do.

Let me say at the outset that I believe in a strong U.S. global presence. I believe the United States is at its best when it is a global leader. We can and we should be a force for good and for peace in the world.

I also believe, quite frankly, that peace comes through strength. I don't apologize for the size of our military budget, nor do I think it would be wise for this Congress to give up this country's massive military edge over every global adversary and friend. Having the world's biggest, baddest military keeps us safe, and, frankly, it keeps a lot of our friends safe as well.

My last stipulation before I talk about the resolution would be this: I also believe there are times when we should use that military power. There are times when war or military action is just. If you want to provide safe harbor for terrorists who plan a massive attack against this country, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, then they can expect a visit from the U.S. Army.

But increasingly we all have to reconcile with the fact that there are more and more limitations on the effectiveness of U.S. military power. Today, our adversaries and our enemies practice something we call asymmetric warfare, which means they concede our conventional military advantage and use other means and methods to exert power and project strength. China does it through economic aid, Russia does it through bribery and the extension of its natural resources to its neighbors, and ISIL does it through terror and through the perversion of religion. Yet this country and this Congress continue to believe that most conflicts around the globe can be solved with just a little bit more American military hardware.

That is what brings us here today to talk about this arms sale to Saudi Arabia, particularly in the context of the ongoing conflict inside Yemen--a civil war inside Yemen in which the United States has become a participant.

This is a picture from war-ravaged Yemen--an ongoing humanitarian disaster. We don't have the full extent of the numbers, but there have already been thousands of civilians killed. If we talk to Yemenis, they will tell us that this is perceived inside Yemen as not a Saudi-led bombing campaign, which it is broadly advertised as in the newspapers, but as a U.S. bombing campaign or, at best, a U.S.-Saudi bombing campaign.

There is a U.S. imprint on every civilian death inside Yemen which is radicalizing the people of this country against the United States. Why is this? Well, it is because, while the conflict inside Yemen started as a civil war--the Houthis overrunning the government inside Sana'a-- the Saudis and a coalition of other Gulf States have entered the conflict, largely through air operations, to try to push the Houthis back, and they have asked for our assistance, which we have given, and we have given it in substantial means and methods. We provide the bombs, we provide the refueling planes, and we provide the intelligence. There really is no way this bombing campaign could happen without U.S. participation.

The United States is at war in Yemen today. The United States is at war in Yemen today, and this Congress has not debated that engagement. This Congress has not debated that war. It is yet another unauthorized U.S. military engagement overseas.

But the scope of this disaster for the purposes of U.S. security interests is not just the radicalization of the Yemen people against the United States or the thousands of people who have been killed but also the fact that this war has given ground--an opportunity for Al Qaeda and ISIS to grow--grow by leaps and bounds.

Let's be honest. Our first responsibility here is to protect this country from attack, and the most likely arm of Al Qaeda that would have the means or the inclination to attack the United States is the branch that exists inside Yemen. Their recruitment has grown by multiples over the course of this conflict. For a period of time, AQAP was able to use this conflict to grab control of a major port city inside Yemen, which radically changed the ability of AQAP to recruit and to grow their capacity to do harm outside of Yemen, because they had control of resources and taxation inside this city.

One would think that if the United States was providing all of these resources to the Saudi-led coalition, that some of them would be used to try to push back on ISIS's growth or AQAP's growth inside Yemen, but the exact opposite has happened. None of the Saudi bombs are dropping on AQAP; they are all dropping on Houthi targets and civilian targets. So we are arming the Saudis to fight an enemy--the Houthis--whom we have not declared war against, and the Saudis are not using those weapons to fight our sworn enemy whom we have declared war against: Al Qaeda. So the civilian casualties mount, ISIS and Al Qaeda grow, yet this is the first time we have had the opportunity to discuss the wisdom of this engagement.

We begged the Saudis to change their conduct. We have asked them to target Al Qaeda. To the extent that Al Qaeda is shrinking a bit, it is not because the Saudis have targeted them, it is because other players in the region--the Emirates--have targeted them. We begged the Saudis to stop bombing civilians. Yet in a 72-hour period earlier this summer, the Saudi-led coalition bombed another Doctors Without Borders facility, a school, and the principal's house next door. We give them targets that they should stay away from because they are key parts of routes to bring humanitarian relief in a country that is ravaged by famine, and they still hit those targets even after we told them to stay away. We begged the Saudis to change their behavior inside this war, and they haven't listened.

But it is not the only time they haven't listened. The fact is, if you are serious about stopping the flow of extremist recruiting across this globe, then you have to be serious about the very real fact that the Wahhabi-Salafist branch of Islam that is spread around the world by Saudi Arabia and their Wahhabi allies is part of the problem.

In 1956, there were 244 madrassas in Pakistan; today there are over 24,000. These schools are multiplying all over the globe. Conservative Salafist imams and mosques are spreading all across the world. Don't get me wrong, these schools and Mosques by and large don't teach violence directly. They aren't the minor leagues for Al Qaeda and ISIS, but they do teach a version of Islam that leads very nicely into an anti-Shia, anti-western militancy. We begged the Saudis to stop setting up these conservative Wahhabi operations in parts of the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Indonesia. Again, they haven't listened.

Just take the example of Kosovo. Kosovo 10 years ago would never have been a place that ISIS would have gone to recruit people into the fight inside Syria, but today it is one of the hotbeds of recruitment. It is not a coincidence that during the same period of time the Saudis and Wahhabis spent millions of dollars there, trying to convert Muslims to their brand of religion--a brand of religion that essentially says that everybody who doesn't believe what we believe is an infidel, that the crusades never ended, and that the obligation of a true Muslim is to find a way to fight back against any brand of the religion that doesn't match ours.

So for those who are going to vote for this arms sale, who are essentially going to endorse our current state of the relationship with Saudi Arabia and our Gulf State allies, just ask yourselves if we can really defeat terrorism if we remain silent on the primary progenitor of this brand of Islam that feeds into extremism. How can you say you are serious about strangling ISIL when the textbooks that are produced inside Saudi Arabia are the very same textbooks that are handed out to recruit suicide bombers?

If we really want to cut off extremism at its source, then we can't keep closing our eyes to the money that flows out of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States into this conservative Salafist missionary movement around the world.

This arms sale is relevant to both of these questions--changing the war inside Yemen and sending a message that this export of the building blocks of extremism cannot continue. Why? Because the main part of this arms sale is a replacement of battle-damaged tanks--tanks that were likely in part damaged in the conduct of this war. It represents a piece of a very long ramp-up of arms sales into Saudi Arabia.

The numbers are pretty staggering. This administration has sold about six to eight times the number of arms to Saudi Arabia than the last administration did, and the Saudis do listen. They do pay attention to what we say here. They don't like the fact that there are Republicans and Democrats critiquing this relationship. They will not like the fact that there will be votes against this arms sale. So even if it ultimately doesn't become law--which is unlikely, given the fact that even if it passes, the President could veto it--this could impact both of these questions, the conduct of the war in Yemen and the conduct of the export of Wahhabism around the globe.

Lastly, let me make the case that rejecting or voting against this arms sale is not going to end or even permanently damage our relationship with Saudi Arabia. We are allies. We will continue to be allies. Our common bond was forged during the Cold War when American and Saudi leaders found common ground in the fight against communism. The Saudis helped ensure that the Russians never got a meaningful foothold in the Middle East. Today, this unofficial detente that exists between Sunni nations and Israel in the region is part of the product of Saudi-led diplomacy. There have been many high-profile examples of deep U.S.-Saudi cooperation in the fight against ISIL and Al Qaeda, notwithstanding these critiques. More generally, our partnership with Saudi Arabia, the most powerful and richest country in the Arab world is an important bridge to the Islamic community--a testament to the fact that we can seek cooperation and engagement with governments in the Middle East and people worldwide, which is a direct rebuttal to this idea the terrorists spread that asserts we are at war with Islam

This is not an either-or question, but we are strategic allies, which is different from being a values-based alliance. That means that when our strategic goals occasionally depart from one another, then we shouldn't be obligated to continue our cooperation on that particular front. The Saudis' guiding foreign policy goal is to gain regional supremacy over Iran. We certainly prefer a Middle East with more Saudi friends than Iranian friends; there should be no doubt about that. But our guiding foreign policy goal in that region is not for the Saudis to win the broadening proxy war with Iran; it is to protect our country from attack by terrorist groups that are metastasizing in Syria, Iraq, and now at worrying rates inside Yemen.

Today, our participation in the war inside Yemen is making us more vulnerable by attacks from AQAP and ISIS, not less vulnerable. Our bombs, our intelligence, our spotters, and our refueling planes are certainly helping the Saudis project power in the region, but it is fueling an arms race between Shia and Sunni nations that has no logical end other than mutual destruction, increasing chaos, and more ungovernable space for groups that want to attack the United States.

Said another way, is this really the right moment for the United States to be sending record numbers of arms into the Middle East?

Do we have any evidence from past conflicts in Afghanistan or the Iran and Iraq wars that more U.S. weapons end up in less, rather than more, bloodshed--an abbreviated rather than an elongated war?

It is time for the United States to press pause on our arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Let's make sure that the war in Yemen doesn't continue to spiral downward, jeopardizing U.S. national security interests. Let's press the Saudis to get serious about spending more time as firefighters and less time as arsonists, as they say, in the global fight against terrorism.

Let's ask ourselves whether we are comfortable with the United States getting slowly, predictably, and all too quietly dragged into yet another war in the Middle East. What will it take for this country to learn its lesson?

I thank the Presiding Officer and the body for the time, and I yield back.

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Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Senator.

Madam President, I do think this is an important moment. As I said in my opening remarks, I don't think a vote in favor of this resolution fundamentally breaks the alliance with Saudi Arabia.

They remain an incredibly important partner. We will still cooperate with them with respect to other counterterrorism measures. We understand the importance of the role they play in the Middle East with respect to providing some sort of detente between Sunni nations and Israel, but friends also have the ability to part ways. Friends have the ability to call each other out when their friend isn't acting in their interests.

As we have talked about over the course of the last few hours, there is no way to read the war in Yemen as in our national security interests. There is no way to understand how the growth of Al Qaeda and ISIS inside Yemen, as a result of a bombing campaign that is funded by the United States, is in our national interests.

I hope we have a good vote because I think it will send a strong message to the Saudis that their behavior has to change, but I hope we are able to find other ways where Republicans and Democrats can come together to talk about these issues because Senator Paul is right. We are not doing our constitutional duty. We are not performing our constitutional responsibility when we acknowledge multiple conflicts in the Middle East that are unauthorized today--when we don't come to the floor of the Senate and do what we used to do, which is debate matters of war and peace.

Maybe war looks different today than it did 20 years ago or 50 years ago or 100 years ago, when conventional armies marched against each other, but this smells, this looks, and this sounds like war. We are providing the ammunition. We are providing the targeting assistance. The planes couldn't fly without U.S. refueling capacity.

We may not be--American pilots may not actually be pulling the trigger to drop the bombs, but we are pretty much doing everything else that is necessary for this war to continue. It sounds like we should have a say, as a coequal branch, as the article I institution, as to whether this is in U.S. national security interests.

At the very least, by saying it is time to put a pause on these arms sales--which, by the way, are happening at a pace that is unprecedented. There are unprecedented levels of arms sales, not just to Saudi Arabia but to the region at large. By saying it is time to put a pause on arms sales, we send a strong message to our ally, Saudi Arabia, that if the conduct of this war doesn't change inside Yemen, if their continued export of Wahhabism to the world doesn't change, then we all have to rethink this partnership.

Friends occasionally disagree. I think this is a moment of important disagreement. This doesn't fracture the partnership with Saudi Arabia. Ultimately, it may make our partnership stronger.

I thank Senator Paul for leading us, and I encourage my colleagues to support this resolution.

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