Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, there is so much good flowing through the veins of this country. We are, by and large, a compassionate, just people. It hurts us deeply to see pain and suffering in places that don't enjoy the relative safety and security of America.

We are, more so than ever before, a powerful people. We are the one remaining superpower with a military that dwarfs all others and a record of throwing our weight around in all corners of the globe.

Mixed correctly, this combination of goodness and power can be a transformation. It can lighten the load of oppressed peoples. It can lift the disenfranchised. It can cure diseases.

There is one fatal trap that comes with these defining characteristics of 21st century America, a tripwire that has ensnared our Nation too many times in recent history. This is the belief that there are no limits to what this combination of goodness and power can achieve. In a word, that trap is hubris. I rise because I fear we are on the verge of falling into this trap once again.

In April, the Presiding Officer and I, as well as several other Members of the Senate and the House, visited the Kilis refugee camps of Turkey and Syria. These were reportedly the best of the refugee camps set up to shelter Syrian families fleeing the blood and carnage of that country's civil war. It is not a place I would have wanted to stay for another hour.

We met a girl who had half her face scarred by a Syrian rocket attack. I met a little orphan boy whose parents had been felled by the ruthless tactics of Bashar al-Asad. We were there for an afternoon, but we didn't need to spend more than 10 minutes in that place to be deeply moved by the case of the refugees.

Of course, Syria presents not only a humanitarian imperative, Syria is of immense strategic importance to the United States. The Asad regime has been a thorn in our side for years, and now his refusal to step down has created a bloody conflict that is in real time destabilizing a region that is critical to our national security interests. Even worse, the fight has drawn in Islamist groups affiliated with al-Qaida. A failure to root out their influence and reduce their presence threatens to hand them a new base of operation with which to plot attacks against Americans.

It is easy to see why American intervention is so tempting. It is easy to see why President Obama has chosen to act: a humanitarian crisis, a strategic interest, a uniquely American blend of goodness and power tells us we can, that we must try to make things better.

Here is the rub. It is not enough for there to be a will. There also has to be a way.

Today in Syria I do not believe there is that way. I do not believe this Congress should give the President the ability to escalate America's role in the Syrian conflict without a clear set of goals and a clear sense that we can achieve these goals.

Let's start with the odds attached to our first objective, overthrowing Bashar al-Asad. The unfortunate reality is that the momentum is with the Asad regime. With the help of Hezbollah and Qasem Soleimani, a senior Iranian Quds Force commander, Asad has driven the rebels from the key town of Qusayr, and his forces are now battering the rebels' positions in Aleppo.

American-supplied automatic weapons are not going to be enough to change this reality. While antitank and anti-aircraft weapons, along with armored vehicles, could give the advantage to the Syrian opposition, this would, frankly, invite another more sinister problem. The Syrian opposition is not a monolithic force. It is an interlocking, sometimes interdependently operating, sometimes independently operating, force.

Our favored faction is the Free Syrian Army, but they are currently far from the most effective fighting force of the opposition.

Today the most effective fighting unit of the rebels is Jabat al-Nusra, an Islamist extremist group with demonstrable ties to al-Qaida. If we give heavy weaponry to the FSA, there is virtually no guarantee these weapons will not find their way to Jabat al-Nusra, a group that represents the very movement we are fighting across the globe.

In fact, we have been down this road before. In the eighties, we gave powerful weapons to the mujahedin in Afghanistan, freedom fighters that we supported in their war against the Soviets. Of course, as we all know, after kicking out the Soviets, those fighters later formed the foundation of the Taliban, providing a staging ground in Afghanistan for al-Qaida's plans against the United States.

Let's take our second objective. Even if we are successful in toppling Asad, it matters to us greatly who takes the reins of Syria next. I can't imagine we are getting into this fight just to turn the country over to the al-Nusra front or another Iranian- or Russian-backed regime. But if we do care about which regime comes next, and we should, then we need to admit we aren't intervening in Syria for the short run. We are in this for the long haul. Why? Because as we all learned in history class, these upheavals run a pretty predictable course. There is first the revolution and then there is the civil war.

Iran nor Russia will allow a U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army to simply stand up a new government. Certainly, Jabat al-Nusra and other extremist groups are not going to do the lion's share of the early fighting and then just walk away with no role in the new government.

Then we have to admit we are in the medium and in the long term deciding to arm one side of what promises to be a very complicated multifront heavily proxied civil war.

One may say there is still an interest to negotiate the politics and the military logistics of this second conflict. To that I would ask, what is the evidence we have ever gotten this tightrope right in the past? Recent history tells us America is pretty miserable at pulling the strings of Middle Eastern politics. In Afghanistan, after 10 years of heavy military presence, many experts think that when we leave, the place is going to look pretty much like it did before we got there. If we can't effect change with tens of thousands of troops, how are we going to do it in Syria with just guns and cash?

There is a risk that our assistance could actually make things worse. Would it not embolden the Iranians, the Russians or the extremists to fight harder against the new regime if they know they are backed by American money and arms?

As we saw in our disastrous occupation of Iraq, American presence often attracts extremists, not repels them. Our money and arms become bulletin board material for extremist groups around the globe. Why would we want to help al-Qaida's recruitment by putting a big red, white, and blue target on Damascus for years to come?

The bottom line is this: Not everywhere where there is an American interest is there also a reason for American military action. In Syria, with a badly splintered opposition, a potential nightmare follow-on civil war, I believe the odds are slim that U.S. military assistance will make the difference that the President believes it will make. And I worry that our presence could harm, not advance, our national security interests.

There is, thankfully, another way. Given the atrocities occurring within Syria and the potential for further destabilization in the region, the United States cannot and should not simply walk away from Syria. We should dramatically increase our humanitarian aid--both inside and outside Syria. We should help improve conditions at the refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan, and help other nations bearing the burden of displaced persons, such as Lebanon and Iraq, deal with the influx of people. Put simply, we should concentrate our efforts on humanitarian help inside Syria and on making sure the conflict doesn't spill outside of Syria's borders.

At the very least, our Nation's role in Syria deserves a full debate in Congress before America commits itself to a course of action with such potentially huge consequences for our national interests. According to published press reports, the administration has indicated it does not intend to seek congressional approval before shipping arms to the Free Syrian Army--at a time, I would note with some irony, when the United States still officially recognizes the Asad government.

The Foreign Relations Committee has done its work here, and I commend Chairman Menendez. We have had hearings, we have held a debate and a vote on a resolution, but now that the President has announced these new steps, it is incumbent upon the full Senate to ask questions of the administration's short-term and long-term goals, and to debate the consequences of American intervention fully. This is serious business, and the American public deserves a full debate.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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