Limiting Use of Funds for Armed Forces in Libya

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

The bottom line with this resolution--and I think the gentleman made a lot of very fair points. I certainly think that the White House could have handled it better in terms of communicating with Congress. But what this resolution would do that he has presented would be to end our mission in Libya. So all of the debates and arguments that you heard from the previous discussion apply to this just as well.

It has some limited options in terms of what the President could continue to do in support of NATO, but it very specifically disallows any effort at air support, any effort at suppressing opposition fire. It does allow for aerial refueling. It allows for rescue missions, but what the military has made clear is they will not do that without all of the other assets that are necessary to suppress enemy fire. We are not going to send up our aerial refueling apparatus or aerial refueling planes if we know we can't protect them from being shot down.

So the effect of this resolution is to, again, end the mission in Libya, and people have different opinions about where they should come down on that. I don't believe that we should end the mission in Libya. I do believe that Congress' voice should be heard on this issue, and that is why I supported the resolution that would have authorized that. So I don't think that we should stop what we're doing in Libya, and getting back to the previous debate, there have been some comments that have been made that I want to be sure and correct.

I think we have a much better idea of who the forces in Libya fighting against Muammar Qadhafi are than has been said, and we know this because they control roughly half the country right now. What our mission was able to do, it stopped Muammar Qadhafi from being able to crush the folks who are rising up against him and retake the territory that they have. So in Benghazi and in most of I think it's eastern Libya, it is controlled by these opposition forces, and by all accounts, they are running a very sensible government. It is not an Islamic state. It does not have al Qaeda influence. It has a bunch of people who are simply trying to exercise free expression that they have been denied for nearly 40 years by Muammar Qadhafi. We have a very good idea who these people are. They are precisely the type of people that the United States of America should be supporting.

And as I mentioned before, in our great struggle against al Qaeda, one of the centerpieces of it is ideological. The ideology that bin Laden and many others advance is very anti-Western, and their biggest argument is that the West has consistently supported governments that have repressed the Muslim people, that we have not been good for them, and there are at least one or two instances when that argument actually has some facts to back it up. And now we are presented with the chance to support a legitimate group of people who want basically what we have--democracy. They want the ability to vote for their representatives. They want a voice in their government, and we are going to pull the rug out from under them.

And keep in mind, this is a very limited mission. It is NATO-led, but we are offering critical support to make it possible, and if we vote for the Rooney resolution, we will pull all of that away and right at the moment--in fact, there was a newspaper story this morning about how Qadhafi is talking about leaving Tripoli because the pressure is getting too great on him. We have had continual members of the Libyan Government abandoning Qadhafi. He is ready to fall, and those voices of Libyan people who want the very freedoms that we all say we want for them are ready to rise, and we are going to reverse that by pulling out this minimal level of support that we are offering.

That is the effect of the Rooney resolution, and therefore I oppose it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SMITH of Washington. There are a number of arguments about this issue and arguments in favor of ending the mission in Libya. I think the Speaker articulated one, which is basically we support the idea of the removal of Qadhafi and they support the idea of supporting the people in Libya who are asking for a representative government. They just don't like our President's process. But that argument doesn't really make sense because if, in fact, their big complaint is that Congress hasn't had the opportunity to authorize this, then the Speaker of the House has had, by his own admission, a hundred days to offer that voice, to come up and say, No, we support the mission but here's how we want to limit it. They have not done that.

I agree very strongly with Mr. Berman's statements. You can't have it both ways. You can't say we would like to remove Qadhafi, we would like to support the Libyan people, but we're going to offer up resolutions that are going to stop that from happening. Now, we can argue back and forth about that process, but clearly the Speaker of the House had an option in front of him to deal with that process issue, and this isn't it.

As has been pointed out, this will stop what we are doing in Libya. If you support that--let me just say I support Mr. Kucinich in the sense that he is very honest. He doesn't like what is going on there. He wants it stopped. That's a legitimate position. But to stand up and say, Yes, we have to support the Libyan people; yes, Qadhafi should go, we're just going to cut the legs out from under the effort that would actually do that because of a complicated process argument is not a legitimate point.

I also want to point out people are legitimately concerned about the U.S. being too militant in our approach, and I agree with that. We cannot be the policeman for the world. We should not always carry the load. But in this case it is a very, very limited mission that we have. For once, NATO is actually carrying the bulk of the mission.

While I agree with Mr. Frank's comments from earlier that NATO needs to step up and do more, we finally have an instance when they are stepping up and doing more, and we want to pull the rug out from under them for the tiny little piece of help that we are giving that makes this mission possible. This is a limited role, and we must recognize that.

The Speaker also emphasized that we would like to have all the answers going in. We'd like to know what the mission to get rid of Qadhafi is exactly. Well, you don't always have all the answers, and this has evolved. Initially, our mission was clear: Stop Qadhafi from crushing the forces who are trying to rise up and have a voice in their own government. And we did that.

Incidentally, we do have some answers about who these rebels are. Do you want to know who they are? Look at Benghazi. What's going on in Benghazi, the place that is controlled by the people in opposition to Muammar Qadhafi? It is not the Muslim Brotherhood. It is not al Qaeda. It is the people of Libya wanting a representative government who are running that place. So let's stop acting conveniently like we don't know who these people are. We do have a very good idea who they are, and they are deserving of our support.

We have a clear, limited vision. If we vote for Rooney, we pull the rug out from under that mission. We put Qadhafi in a position to stay in power, and we undermine a group of people who are asking for a legitimate voice in their government. And keep in mind, again, this is a very limited use of U.S. power in a very positive way. Whatever the process arguments are that brought us to this point, don't let them have the United States look like we don't support people standing up for the very values that we continually espouse throughout the world.

I urge defeat of this resolution and support for what we are doing in Libya.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source