Resolution, to Remove United States Armed Forces From Hostilities with Iran

Floor Speech

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Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman and ranking member for this important debate.

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening carefully to my Republican colleagues, and they will get no argument from me on the notion that we have been at war with Iran for decades. They will get no argument at all.

As Mr. Mast keeps saying, this is a bad and evil regime. Yes, we have been at war, but at no point in those decades have we been so obviously losing that war in any strategic sense.

The Iranian Navy is at the bottom of the ocean. We have broken a bunch of their missile launchers, and I guess the nuclear material is a little more buried than it was when we obliterated it 9 months ago, but let's look at the balance here.

Let's set aside the constitutional issues that the majority has been quite happy to set aside now for a month and a half and let's talk about the regime change which occurred. We changed the regime to a younger, much more vicious regime that is now in power in Iran. We also demonstrated that Iran can sustain the most brutal military attack that we have to offer and that regime can still survive.

We have shown the regime--and this is the key point--that they have a weapon more powerful than any of ours, which is they control the energy markets on the globe right now.

As we speak, each and every one of our constituents is paying about $1.25 more per gallon of gasoline than they did before this ill-advised war.

By the way, we have broken the alliance with Israel. Joe Kent, the former National Counterterrorism Director, is running around saying that we are in this war because of Israel. Now, I wasn't in the Oval Office, but that is not a good thing for that alliance. We have spent billions of dollars for what? Most importantly, there are 13 dead Americans, precious lives given for something where the mission is unclear.

We should support our troops, but our troops deserve a strategy. They deserve a sense of mission. They deserve to know that the people's House debated their life or their death.

Yes, this is a terrible regime, and, yes, we are at war, but you are in the process of losing it. Now is the time for Congress to finally reassert its constitutional authority and give a sense of mission and give a sense of meaning to those young men and women who were deployed.

Mr. Speaker, vote for H. Con. Res. 40 so we can finally do our duty.

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