Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

With the new arrangement--or rearrangement--of alliances, the Syrian Kurds now will have an alliance with someone who will remain in Syria. Whether you like him or not, the Assad government is there to stay. There was never going to be a U.S. presence for long enough or one great enough to preserve or to create a homeland for them. I think there is every possibility, in alliance with Assad, that there will be some Kurdish arrangement. It happened in Iraq. In Iraq, the oil proceeds are shared. The Kurdish wanted more in Iraq. They didn't get as much as they wanted, but they got some degree of autonomy within their province.

I think that sort of encouraging the Syrians Kurds to abandon their country is really premature and doesn't really recognize the fluidity of what is going on on the ground there. There is actually the potential, for the first time in 8 years, to break through to a peace agreement. Peace agreements have been unable to be achieved in the past because people have refused to acknowledge that Assad is staying. It is easy to say Assad is all of the things that he likely is, but it is harder to acknowledge that no matter who he is, he is staying and that peace on the ground will, ultimately, for the Syrian Kurds, probably come through an arrangement with Assad's regime.

There has been a huge diplomatic breakthrough. As much as we have all of the talk of Sturm und Drang--that the world is ending and there is going to be a Kurdish genocide--perhaps the opposite is going to happen. I don't think we yet know, as no one can predict the future with certainty, but it actually looks as if there has been a somewhat reasonable withdrawal. You have the Syrian Kurdish generals now saying they have agreed to the withdrawal. There is now in place, hopefully, a long-term cease-fire.

So, while nothing is ever perfect in Syria and while nothing is ever perfect in the Middle East, I think, rather than saying it is the end of the world, we should say that this is a big transition, that this is a big realignment of interests there, and that there is a possibility that the Kurds could get a homeland.

The last thing you would want is to say to all of the leaders in the Kurdish community, to all of the intellectuals, to those who speak English, and to those who are open to western ways, ``Hey, come over here, and abandon your country.'' It would be equivalent to France's saying to George Washington during or after the war, ``Hey, guys. Hey, Founding Fathers. Why don't you all come to France?'' It is not a good notion to ask the leaders of a country and a movement to leave and abandon their country.

With that, I respectfully object.

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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I think one of the interesting things about the Kurdish situation and about Syria in general is how quickly the Kurds and Assad actually did align.

If you watched the war over the last 8 years, the Kurds and Assad have largely not fought each other. There isn't a great deal of the blood sort of lust or curdling animosity between the two, and it was actually pretty remarkable how quickly they came together.

One of the things is we think we are doing best, and we try to do the best when we insert ourselves in the Middle East, but sometimes we get unintended consequences.

So we have been there. We want peace, but we refuse to allow the Kurds to talk to Assad. There is a stalemated civil war that has gone on 8 years. Had we never been involved, Assad likely would have crushed the rebellion in 6 months, maybe 500,000 people wouldn't have died, maybe 3 million people wouldn't have left, and you would still have a dictator.

Instead, we have 500,000 people dead, 3 million refugees, and we still have a dictator.

So I think we need to question our strategy as to what our intended goal is and what ends up happening.

Syria is an utter disaster but made no better by our intervention, the Saudis' intervention, and the Qataris' intervention.

There is a great deal of unknowns as to whether the Sunni extremists who were supported by the Saudis, Qataris, and sometimes us would actually be more humanitarian or more for human rights than Assad is.

I think we can agree that Assad has abused his people, has used chemical weapons, et cetera, et cetera, but on the other side were Sunni extremists allied with the ideas of radical Islam, with radical jihad, with the things that led to 9/11.

So it is a very complicated situation over there, but I think we cannot say with certainty that there will not be a deal that sticks, actually, between Assad and the Kurds.

If the Kurds want a homeland and they believe Assad is staying, it makes all the sense in the world for them to work together. If Assad wants to actually protect that region of north Syria, either from Turkey or from others, and the Kurds are willing to help him do it, the Kurds have proven they are good fighters.

The Kurds would probably have to acknowledge there is a greater Syria and that they are part of it. If they want to break off from Syria, there will be continual war. If they are able to make an arrangement with Assad, there is a chance that there could be an oil-sharing arrangement like we have in Iraq.

The bottom line is, we sometimes see the world in black-and-white terms and think we can get Thomas Jefferson in Syria or in Libya or in Iraq, but what happens is, time and time again, we topple a dictator, we get chaos, we get more terrorism. ISIS sprang out of the vacuum that was Iraq after a government that was incapable of doing it after we get rid of the same. The same thing happened when we got rid of Qadhafi in Libya. I think we need to rethink our approach to the Middle East.

For example, I might run into Hunter Biden in the airport. I know he is an American citizen, but this bill doesn't prevent American citizens from being an agent of a foreign principle. Hunter Biden also worked for a Ukrainian oligarch and a company with mysterious origins that may well have something to do with our foreign policy.

So if I meet Hunter Biden, I am concerned that now it may be against the law or I could be reprimanded or fined by the FEC for talking to Hunter Biden.

The same might also exist--I enjoy going to the Indian New Year in Louisville, and I sometimes see 5,000 to 6,000 Indian Americans, but I can't tell you how many of them are brand new to the country, what their visa status is, whether they have a relative from government there who might come up to me.

So I think we need to be very careful about putting forward law, particularly by unanimous consent, that hasn't been scrutinized and might end up having a burden that we don't really agree with.

There has been a certain degree of hysteria over the Russian thing. Some on the other side of the aisle can't get over they lost the Presidential election, and so they continue to blame the Russians for losing the election.

It is so bad that their candidate from the last election, Hillary Clinton, had to go after Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic Member of the Congress, a sitting Congresswoman, the first female combat veteran to run for President, and she has been labeled by Hillary Clinton a Russian asset.

So you can see that the hysteria over Russia is a little bit concerning; that we may be going too far in this hysteria.

Then, once we apply this to the world, is there going to be a hesitancy to talk to someone who looks different than you, who dresses different than you, who has a different color skin than yours because you are concerned they might be from a foreign country?

So I think this would have the ability of stifling speech--stifling political speech--and I think it is a reactionary way to look at things, and it really fits in with this unseemliness of Hillary Clinton's thinking everybody is a Russian agent to many of the Democrats saying: Donald Trump is a Russian agent.

We spent $35 million on this notion. This was probably a notion promulgated by people within the intelligence community who already hated Donald Trump before he was elected. I hope we get to the bottom of this, but I am not about to allow, by unanimous consent, an attempt to politicize our election process and make it so absurd that you would have to worry about whom you talk to as you travel the country.

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