Relating to A National Emergency Declared By the President on February 2019--Veto

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. The Constitution is quite clear on this subject. If the minority leader wishes to engage in the civil war in Syria that has been going on for nearly a decade, we should obey the Constitution. He should come to the floor and say we are ready to declare a war, we are ready to authorize force, and we are going to stick our troops in the middle of this messy, messy five-sided civil war, where we would be ostensibly opposed to the Turkish Government that has made an incursion. We would then be opposed to our NATO ally. It would be the first time in history that we would be inserting ourselves militarily against a NATO ally.

None of this is to excuse Turkey's action. In fact, today I will offer a resolution that would actually do something. The resolution that is being offered is simply a way to have petty, partisan criticism of the President infect this body. Mine, actually, would have the force of law and would prevent any arms from being sold to Turkey, which would be a serious rebuke to what they are doing in Syria.

The Constitution is quite clear. No authorization has ever been given for the use of force in Syria. There was no authorization of declaration of war and no permission to be there at all. So if they want to insert themselves in this civil war, by all means, let's have a debate. Let's have a constitutional debate, but I, for one, am not willing to send one young man or one young woman, one soldier over there without a clear mission.

There is no clear mission. There is no clear enemy. In fact, the war is largely over. Assad is going to remain, for better or worse. So we have a despot on one side, Erdogan. We have another despot on the other side, Assad. Here is the deal: The Kurds have to live there. It is despairing that they have to live there, but you know what, their best chance for survival is having an ally inside of Syria.

If they become allied, and it appears they are--if they become allied with Assad, you know what, there is a possibility of a Kurdish area within Syria. There may well be an opportunity for a Kurdish area similar to what has happened in Iraq.

My resolution would stop arms sales to Turkey, so I will object to this resolution.

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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, at this time I want to ask unanimous consent that we introduce S. 2624, Turkey arm sales, which would eliminate any further sale of arms to Turkey and, instead of sending a fake message or a sense of the Senate resolution, would actually be a binding resolution and would tell the Turks: Yes, we are serious. We object to your incursion into Syria. You need to respect the territorial integrity of Syria, and we therefore are no longer going to be selling you arms.

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