Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last night Iran fired more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two military bases in Iraq where American troops were based. It was a brazen escalation with dangerous implications for the United States and the world.
We are fortunate. As of today, at this moment, none of our personnel have been reported to have been harmed, but the outrageous act was a clear and unsurprising retaliation to President Trump's killing of Iranian General Soleimani.
Our first order of business must be the safety of our military and civilian personnel in Iraq and the region, and I call on the Trump administration to make that the highest priority. Another immediate requirement is that the Congress step up and play one of the most important and long-neglected constitutional roles that we can envision. Article I, section 8, of the U.S. Constitution is clear in stating that the power to declare war is an explicit authority and power of Congress, as it should be. One should never send our sons and daughters into conflict without the knowledge and consent of the American people. Our Founding Fathers were wise in making sure that this awesome power did not rest with a King-like leader but with the people's elected representatives. I have made this same argument regardless of whether the occupant of the White House was a Democrat or a Republican.
Some have had the audacity to argue that the 2001 authorization for the use of military force approved by this Congress to respond to the September 11, 2001, attacks or the 2002 AUMF, the war with Iraq, apply to the situation today in Iran. That is clearly wrong.
Let me be clear. I cannot imagine that anyone--anyone--who took either of those votes nearly 20 years ago--and I was here at that time--thought that they were approving a war with Iran two decades later. I certainly didn't.
This Congress should not be a troubling rubberstamp for President Trump's worst instincts by marching into another war in the Middle East. Simply, it is time for Members of this important body to show some courage and do their constitutional jobs. If you want a war with Iran, step up and face your constituents and record your vote accordingly.
The War Powers Resolution I filed last week, with the leadership of Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, will be a first step regarding Congress's role in any conflict with Iran but not a last step. Ultimately, this President cannot start a war with Iran without the approval, under the Constitution, of Congress, and the Republican leadership should not roll over and play the role of lapdog when it comes to such a serious, life-and-death matter.
Tragically, this escalation with Iran--and the heightened risk to our personnel and security interests--was entirely predictable, except, it appears, to President Trump and Secretary Pompeo. The question was never the simplistic canard over whether killing Soleimani, a genuinely loathsome terrorist actor, was warranted or not, but, clearly, whether taking him off the face of the Earth was in the best interest of the United States.
Would such an act really advance the cause and interest and policies of our country or precipitate another war in the Middle East? The answer is increasingly upon us, and we here must debate this crisis before President Trump drags us even closer to this precipice.
Mr. President, sadly, President Trump's erratic and incoherent policies toward Iran have greatly contributed to the current crisis.
Before taking office, Iran's nuclear weapons program was halted in a historic agreement President Obama negotiated in cooperation with our European allies, China, and Russia.
Iran continued its malign behaviors in the region, but containing them was much easier without the threat of a nuclear bomb.
President Trump petulantly withdrew from the nuclear agreement and tried to starve Iran of benefits it was to receive from that deal.
He pursued an incomprehensible erratic policy of regime change by trying to flatter and meet with Iranian President Rouhani to negotiate a supposedly better deal . . . threating Iran militarily . . . and tightening sanctions.
Those efforts were going nowhere. Iran was lashing out at American interests, we were alienated from our key allies, and Iran inched closer to restarting its nuclear program.
And in just the last week alone, President Trump's impulsive actions managed to reverse the recent Iraqi protest sentiment that wanted Iran to stop meddling in its politics, leading instead to a vote this weekend in the Iraqi parliament to expel all U.S. forces.
Similarly, after months of anti-government protests in Iran, he almost instantaneously united Iranian public opinion in hostility toward the U.S.
Iran now announced it is restarting its nuclear program and our interests around the region are on high alert and are at risk from further Iranian attack for considerable time to come.
Tragically, all President Trump has to show for his foolish, quote, ``maximum pressure'' campaign is an enflamed region, attacks on our personnel, the U.S. military potentially being evicted from Iraq, greater U.S. troop deployments to the Middle East, and an America less safe and on the brink of war.
Most certainly not ``all is well.''
Have we learned nothing from the thousands of lost lives and injuries and trillions of dollars spent on the war in Iraq--a war sold to this country on false pretenses?
Are we going to be led to yet such another fiasco by some of the same voices around President Trump who have yet to account for their failures in their disastrous war in Iraq?
Will my Republican colleagues finally show some backbone to an unchecked, uninformed, and untrusted President about to bumble into another war in the Middle East?
For the sakes of the sons and daughters who would be sent to any war with Iran, I certainly hope so.
I see that my colleague from Illinois is here and has asked for permission to speak on the floor.
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Mr. DURBIN. Warren) are necessarily absent.
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