Syria War Powers Resolution

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gaetz) for sponsoring this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, there is no legal authority for the U.S. to be involved in the Syrian civil war. There is no authority.

Section 5(c) of the War Powers Act does not say, and I am quoting the chairman now, it does not say, ``without authorization.'' That is not the language. The language says, ``specific statutory authorization.'' You either declare war or you have specific statutory authority.

Do you know what that 2001 AUMF says? It says those who ``aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.'' It doesn't say ``ISIS.'' It doesn't say ``Syria.'' It is talking about the events of 2001, as the gentleman from Florida just referenced.

It is a quaint idea to say we are going to rely on that 2001 AUMF. I thought they were going to say they were relying on the 2002 AUMF. Either way, neither one works. You don't have authority, and you are going to be there and put U.S. soldiers in harm's way. This is a civil war.

One Syrian analyst said this recently: ``Until we see the externals confront each other directly rather than on the Syrian ground, I don't see an actual end to the Syrian conflict.''

Do you know who the externals are? The U.S., the Russians, and Iran. That is the externals, and we have no authority to be one of those externals. The analyst went on to say this is a proxy war. That is what is happening. It is another U.S.-Russia proxy war.

When the Syrian civil war began with protests during the Arab Spring of 2011, U.S. President Obama went to the regime in Syria and said: ``The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in the way. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.''

Is that our objective--regime change? Is that what it is? No. We don't know what the objective is. You can't even define what the exit ramp is.

Assad responded that time by fueling the civil war, the exacerbation of that problem, and it has just grown. Now, you have us with our allies the Turks and our allies the Kurds. They are fighting against each other. They don't want each other.

ISIS, in 2019, was declared to be defeated. Even the inspector general recently said they don't have an ability to cause damage and fear and harm in the homeland.

The result is, in the last 13 years, the U.S. has spent more than $15 billion on humanitarian aid, and we don't even know what we have spent in Department of Defense costs. Do you know why? Because they are grouping it with what is going on in Iraq. We tried to obtain information. How much have we spent? Nobody will tell us.

When General Milley says--by the way, he was the architect of that disastrous Afghanistan retreat, and he is a believer in a ``however long, no matter the cost'' approach in Ukraine. He insists we prolong our involvement in the civil war in Syria in order to help our allies.

General Milley, who are our allies? Is it the Kurds? Is it the Turks? Who is it? Is it the Assad regime?

He can't tell you. No one can tell you.

All of this is being done, though, without legal authority. It is time for us to stop fighting proxy wars. It is time for us not to say next time we will take care of these AUMFs. We have had time. This is the time to get rid of them. I urge us to vote for this.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source