S.J. Res. 54--Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, pursuant to section 1013 of the Department of State Authorization Act, fiscal years 1984 and 1985, and in accordance with the provisions of section 601(b) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, I make a motion to discharge S.J. Res.

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Mr. SANDERS. Thank you, Mr. President.

Article I, section 8 of the Constitution states in no uncertain terms that ``Congress shall have power to . . . declare war.''

Let me repeat it. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution states it is Congress that has the power to declare war.

The Founding Fathers gave the power to authorize military conflicts to Congress, the branch most accountable--not to the President but to Congress--and that is the issue we are going to be debating today.

For far too long, Congress, under Democratic and Republican administrations, has abdicated its constitutional role in authorizing war. The time is long overdue for Congress to reassert that constitutional authority, and that is what today is about.

That is why I and 14 cosponsors of this resolution--Senators Lee, Murphy, Warren, Booker, Durbin, Leahy, Markey, Feinstein, Wyden, Merkley, Blumenthal, Gillibrand, Schatz, and Baldwin--that is what we are doing with S.J. Res. 54.

What we are saying is, if Congress wants to go to war in Yemen or anyplace else, vote to go to war. That is your constitutional responsibility. Stop abdicating that responsibility to a President, whether it is a Republican President or, as in the past, Democratic Presidents.

I expect that colleagues today will be arguing about what the word ``hostilities'' means within the context of the 1973 War Powers Resolution. What does the word ``hostilities'' mean? Some will argue that American troops are not out there shooting and getting shot at, not exchanging gunfire with their enemies, and that we are not really engaged in the horrifically destructive Saudi-led war in Yemen. That is what some will argue on the floor today--that we are really not engaged in hostilities; we are not exchanging fire.

Well, please tell that to the people of Yemen whose homes and lives are being destroyed by weapons marked ``Made in the USA'' and dropped by planes being refueled by the U.S. military on targets chosen with U.S. assistance. Only in the narrowest, most legalistic terms can anyone argue that the United States is not actively involved in hostilities alongside Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

Let me take a minute to tell my colleagues what is happening in Yemen right now because a lot of people don't know. It is not something that is on the front pages of the newspapers or covered terribly much on television.

Right now, in a very poor nation of 27 million people--that is the nation of Yemen--in November of last year, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator told us that Yemen was on the brink of ``the largest famine the world has seen for many decades.'' That is from the United Nations. So far, in this country of 27 million people--this very poor country--over 10,000 civilians have been killed and 40,000 civilians have been wounded. Over 3 million people in Yemen, in a nation of 27 million, have been displaced--driven from their homes. Fifteen million people lack access to clean water and sanitation because water treatment plants have been destroyed. More than 20 million people in Yemen--over two-thirds of the population of that country--need some kind of humanitarian support, with nearly 10 million in acute need of assistance. More than 1 million suspected cholera cases have been reported, representing potentially the worst cholera outbreak in world history. That is what is going on in Yemen today as a result of the Saudi-led war there.

Here is the bottom line: If the President of the United States or Members of Congress believe that support for this war is in the U.S. interests--and I think some do--if you think that the United States right now, for our own interests, should be involved in the civil war in Yemen, being led by Saudi Arabia, then Members of the U.S. Senate should have the courage to vote for U.S. participation in that war. It is nothing more complicated than that.

If you want to come to the floor of the Senate and make the case as to why you think it is good public policy for us to be involved in the civil war in Yemen, come to the floor and oppose our resolution, but what I hope very much that we will not see today is the tabling of this motion and the refusal by Members of the Senate to vote up or down as to whether we wish to continue aiding Saudi Arabia in this humanitarian disaster.

If you believe, as I do, that we should not get sucked into this civil war, which has already caused so much human suffering, please vote against tabling the motion to discharge and vote with us on final passage. If you believe the United States should continue to assist Saudi Arabia in this war, I urge you to have the courage to tell your constituents that is your decision and why you have made that decision when you vote against final passage. In other words, if you support the war, have the courage to vote for it; if you don't, support the resolution Senator Lee, Senator Murphy, and I have introduced.

Let me give my colleagues at least two reasons why Congress must reassert its constitutional authority over the issue of war and why we cannot continue to abdicate that responsibility to the President, and those have everything to do with the two most significant foreign policy disasters in the modern history of the United States--the war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam. In both of these cases, Congress sat back and failed to ask the hard questions as two administrations--one Republican, one Democratic--led us into conflicts with disastrous consequences.

Interestingly, today is a historically significant day for us to debate this resolution. Fifteen years ago today, on March 20, 2003, the war in Iraq began, and the bombs started falling in Baghdad--15 years ago today. I was one of those who opposed the Iraq war in the beginning, and today it is now broadly acknowledged that the war--that war--was a foreign policy blunder of enormous magnitude. That war created a cascade of instability around the region that we are still dealing with today in Syria and elsewhere and will be for many years to come. Indeed, had it not been for the war in Iraq, ISIS would almost certainly not exist.

That war deepened hostilities between Sunni and Shia communities in Iraq and elsewhere. It exacerbated a regional conflict for power between Saudi Arabia and Iran and their proxies in places like Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, and it undermined American diplomatic efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The devastation experienced by Iraq's civilians was enormous. A recent academic study by U.S., Canadian, and Iraqi researchers found that over 400,000 Iraqi civilians--nearly half a million people--were killed directly or indirectly as a consequence of that war.

That war led to the displacement of nearly 5 million people, both inside and outside Iraq, putting great stress on the ability of surrounding countries to deal with these refugee flows.

We have also seen this more recently in Europe as the large numbers of people fleeing the Syrian war have generated a backlash in European countries, giving rise to anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiments.

The war in Iraq led to the deaths--to the deaths--of some 4,400 American troops and the wounding, physical and emotional, of tens of thousands of others, not to mention the pain inflicted on family members. By the way, that war in Iraq cost us trillions of dollars-- money that could have been spent on healthcare, education, infrastructure, and environmental protection.

The Iraq war, like so many other military conflicts, had unintended consequences. It ended up making us less safe, not more safe.

It must be said that the Bush administration and the President lied when he told the American people: ``[Saddam's] regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.'' That was not true.

Vice President Dick Cheney lied when he told us:

There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.

Dick Cheney--not true.

No one disagrees that Saddam Hussein was a brutal, murderous dictator, but it is now known he had nothing to do with 9/11. The Bush administration lied to the American people. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. It was not connected to 9/11.

The American people were misled by the Bush administration into believing that the Iraq war was necessary to prevent another 9/11, and Congress did not challenge them on those claims in a way that Congress should have--with disastrous consequences.

That was a Republican administration. Now let me tell you about a Democratic administration where, once again, Congress refused to assert its constitutional responsibility.

Let us go back to 1964, to a conflict that began under similarly false premises. President Lyndon Johnson cited an attack on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin as a pretext for escalating the U.S. intervention in Vietnam and sending more and more and more troops into that quagmire.

But we now know from declassified recordings that Johnson himself doubted that the USS Maddox had come under fire on August 4, 1964. As we all know, that alleged attack was used to push for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing Johnson to escalate U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, and we now know that the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, misled Congress and the public in order to generate support for that resolution.

You don't have to believe me. This is what LCDR Pat Paterson wrote in a paper for the U.S. Naval Institute: ``The evidence suggests a disturbing and deliberate attempt by Secretary of Defense McNamara to distort the evidence and mislead Congress.''

Paterson, interestingly enough, also quotes another author who wrote:

To enhance his chances for election, [Johnson] and McNamara deceived the American people and Congress about events and the nature of the American commitment in Vietnam. They used a questionable report of a North Vietnamese attack on American naval vessels to justify the president's policy to the electorate and to defuse Republican senator and presidential candidate Barry Goldwater's charges that Lyndon Johnson was irresolute and ``soft'' in the foreign policy arena.

Interestingly enough, that author is H.R. McMaster, President Trump's current National Security Advisor.

Lyndon Johnson's administration misled both Congress and the American people into that war, just as the Bush administration misled us into the war in Iraq, and what disasters both of those wars were. The war in Vietnam nearly destroyed an entire generation of young people. Almost 60,000 died in that war, and God knows how many came back wounded in body and in spirit. It almost destroyed an entire generation. Yet Congress abdicated its responsibility in Vietnam, as it did in Iraq.

The truth about Yemen is that U.S. forces have been actively engaged in support of the Saudi coalition in this war, providing intelligence and aerial refueling of planes whose bombs have killed thousands of people and made this humanitarian crisis far worse. U.S. involvement in the Yemen war has also proved counterproductive to the effort against al-Qaida's affiliates. The State Department's ``Country Reports on Terrorism 2016'' found that the conflict between Saudi-led forces and the Houthi insurgents has helped al-Qaida's and ISIS's Yemen branch to ``deepen their inroads across much of the country.'' In other words, as we see again, when there is chaos, when there is mass confusion, ISIS and their allies are able to jump in.

Furthermore, while Iran's support for Houthi insurgents is of serious concern for all of us, the truth is that this war has increased, not decreased, the opportunities for Iranian interference.

The Trump administration has tried to justify our involvement in the Yemen war as necessary to push back on Iran. Well, another administration told us that invading Iraq was necessary to confront al- Qaida, and another told us that the Vietnam war was necessary to contain Communists. None of that turned out to be true.

The Congress, at those times, should have asked the hard questions, which they didn't ask. The Congress should have taken its constitutional role seriously and should have done what the Constitution demands that it do, and that is what my cosponsors and I are doing today.

I see my colleague Senator Lee here. He has been very active in standing up for the Constitution on this issue, and I will yield to him in a minute. But here is the bottom line--and it is not a complicated line; the Constitution is clear: The U.S. Congress decides whether we go to war. There is no question in my mind that by aiding Saudi Arabia in the way that we are doing, we are assisting in war. We are in a conflict.

If Members of the Senate think that conflict makes sense and is good public policy for the United States of America, vote down our resolution. If you agree with Senator Lee and me that it is a bad idea, support us. But what I would urge in the strongest possible terms is that Members of the Senate have to end the abdication of our constitutional responsibility. Accept it; vote yes or vote no. Do not vote to table this resolution and duck the constitutional responsibility that we have.

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, may I ask my colleague from Utah a very simple question? Whether or not he agrees with me that we are talking about two separate issues.

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Mr. SANDERS. It seems to me we are talking about two separate issues, one of which is really a no-brainer. The no-brainer is that the Constitution is very clear that it is the Congress, not the President, that determines whether we go to war; that we are currently in an unauthorized war in Yemen; and that the first vote--if there is an attempt to table this, that would be absolutely unacceptable because we would be abdicating our decisionmaking. And then the second vote is the vote on whether we think it is a good idea to be in Yemen.

Would the Senator agree with me that at least on the motion to table, every Member of the Senate should allow us to go forward and vote against tabling so that people in the Senate accept their constitutional responsibility to vote yes or no on the war in Yemen?

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Mr. SANDERS. Let me concur with what Senator Lee just said. There may be disagreements about the wisdom of being allied with Saudi Arabia on the war in Yemen. There will be honest disagreements about that. But there cannot be and there must not be an abdication of constitutional responsibility in terms of making that decision.

If you think that U.S. participation in the war in Yemen is a good idea, you can vote against our resolution. If you agree with us that it is a bad idea, support our resolution. But simply to abdicate your responsibility on this issue would be absolutely irresponsible.

I hope we have virtually unanimous support in voting against the effort to table. Then let's get into the debate about the wisdom of the war and vote it up or down. Needless to say, I hope the Members support our resolution. Let's at least have that vote and not abdicate our responsibility.

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I speak only for myself on this issue and will tell you why I am so motivated about this resolution.

If we think back on the modern history of our country and if we think of the two most significant foreign policy decisions--the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq and the unbelievable unintended consequences that those two destructive wars had--what we conclude is that in both of those wars--one under a Democratic President and one under a Republican President--the Congress abdicated its responsibility. It did not ask the right questions. In both instances, we got into those terrible wars based on lies. The Johnson administration lied as to why we should get involved in the war in Vietnam, and the Bush administration lied as to why we should get involved in the war in Iraq.

It just seems to me that if nothing else, based on those two examples of what the war in Vietnam did and what the war in Iraq did, Congress has to take a deep breath and understand that the people who wrote the Constitution were not fools when they said it must be the elected people who are closest to the constituents who have to debate these issues and who know that decisions being made will result in the loss of lives of the people in their own States, and we have abdicated that responsibility.

No one can predict whether the decisions made by Congress are going to be good decisions with regard to war and peace, whether we are going to do better than Presidents did. I don't know. At the very least, we have to accept our responsibility and not simply take the word of Presidents who in the two most recent, significant wars have lied to the American people.

Once again, I know there may be differences of opinion regarding the wisdom of involvement by the United States in the war in Yemen. If you think it is a good idea, vote against our resolution. There should be no difference of opinion about accepting our responsibility under the Constitution and voting on whether it is a good idea.

I yield to the Senator from Utah.

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Mr. SANDERS. Let me ask my friend from Connecticut the same question I asked Senator Lee, and that is whether he agrees with me that we are really dealing with two separate issues here.

The first issue is really, in a sense, a no-brainer. It is whether the Congress or, in this case, the Senate of the United States accepts its constitutional responsibility on issues of war. We are now engaged in a war in Yemen with Saudi Arabia. The Constitution is very clear in article I, section 8 that it is the Congress that determines whether this country goes to war.

I believe what will happen in a few hours is that a motion to table will come up. Would you agree with me that it would be an act of cowardice, in a sense, an irresponsibility, an abdication of congressional responsibility, for somebody to vote to table that resolution?

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Mr. SANDERS. In other words, no matter what one's view may be about the wisdom of the war, to vote to table is to abdicate our constitutional responsibility?

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Mr. SANDERS. All right. Let me just concur with Senator Murphy.

If you think it is a good idea for the United States to be involved in the war in Yemen with Saudi Arabia, you can vote against our resolution. Yet I can think of no reason at all as to why any Member of Congress would vote to table this resolution and prevent that discussion, and I would hope that we would have strong support against any motion to table and allow that debate to go forward.

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