Syria

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, my dad was a pilot in the Army Air Corps in World War II. He served in the Eighth Air Force, the 303rd Bomb Group stationed in Molesworth, England. On his 26th bombing mission over Nazi Germany, he was shot down and captured as a prisoner of war where he served for the remainder of the war. So I learned at a very young age that when we start talking about matters of war and peace, we must take these very seriously.

I appreciate the fact that President Obama came to Capitol Hill yesterday and spoke to both the Democratic conference and the Republican conference. I further appreciate very much the fact that President Obama spoke to the American people last night. I actually wish he had done it a little earlier since the chemical weapons attacks occurred on the 21st of August. It was roughly 3 weeks after that that he finally spoke to the American people. I think it would have been better for him and better for the country if he had done it sooner and demonstrated a greater urgency, but I am glad he did it.

When a President asks the American people to support our U.S. military and the use of military force, he has a solemn obligation to communicate to the American people how it will protect America's vital interests. He has an obligation to tell the American people why going to war is absolutely essential to U.S. national security. He has an obligation to lay out clear and realistic objectives; and finally, he has an obligation to explain how military intervention fits within America's broader foreign policy strategy.

I have used the word war advisedly because sometimes I think we get caught up in political correctness around here--talking about workplace violence at Fort Hood and overseas contingency operations.

As a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who served 40 years told me last week when I asked for his advice on what the President was asking us to do, he said: Anytime you kill people in the name of the U.S. Government, it is an act of war.

So like others in this Chamber over the last few weeks, I have attended meetings with the President where I had the honor of being in his presence and listening to him in person on two occasions. I listened to other administration officials. Like all of us, I sat through hours of classified briefings with the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, and the State Department.

I have listened intently as Senator Kerry described in what I thought at first was an inadvertent statement made as a result of fatigue. I can only imagine what he must have been going through. He has been shuttled back and forth around the world to try to resolve this issue. But he described this strike as unbelievably small. I was further surprised when I heard the White House press secretary say: No, it wasn't a gaffe; he didn't misspeak. I mean, we all misspeak from time to time, so I expected him to say: Well, he should have used other words or might have used other words. Then Senator Kerry himself--now Secretary Kerry--said: No, I didn't misspeak.

I was encouraged to hear the President address the Nation because I believe before we take our case overseas to American allies, we should first make the case here at home to the American people.

In making their case for a brief, limited attack against Syria, administration officials have repeatedly said U.S. military intervention would not seek to topple the Asad regime even though regime change has been the policy of the U.S. Government since at least August 2011. They said their military campaign would not seek to change the momentum in Syria's civil war, even though, as I mentioned a moment ago, our government's official policy is one of regime change, that Asad must go.

My view is a U.S. attack that allowed Asad to remain in power with one of the world's largest stockpiles of chemical weapons would not promote U.S. national security interests. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine how that kind of intervention could actually backfire and end up being a propaganda disaster.

Many of us are concerned about upholding America's credibility, particularly when it comes to matters such as this, and I share their concern. But it would help if before we launch a halfhearted, ineffectual attack which gives our enemies a major propaganda victory that we come up with a more coherent plan and strategy for accomplishing our public policy goals.

Murphy's law says what can go wrong will go wrong. Well, there is a Murphy's law of war too--perhaps many of them but one of them is no plan to go to war survives the first contact intact. In other words, we can plan to shoot the first bullet, but we can't control what happens after that.

In all likelihood, such an attack would hurt our credibility and reduce U.S. public support for future interventions. This is what I mean: If we were to undertake a limited military attack against Asad in order to punish him for using chemical weapons--which is a horrific act on his part, a barbaric act on his part--but it left Asad in power, what is he going to tell the rest of the world? He is going to say: The world's greatest military force took a shot at me and I am still here. I am still in power. I won and America lost. That is how I can see this backfiring in a very serious way, undermining America's credibility--credibility we must keep intact, particularly as we look at larger, looming threats such as the Iranian aspiration for nuclear weapons.

I wish to be clear, though: I would be willing to support a military operation in Syria but only if our intervention met certain criteria. No. 1: If it directly addressed the nightmare scenario of Asad's use of chemical weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. It is not just his use of chemical weapons on his own people; it is the potential that those chemical weapons could get into the hands of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations and harm either Americans or American interests around the world.

No. 2: I could support a resolution if it involved the use of decisive and overwhelming force, without self-imposed limitations, and without leaking to our enemies what our tactics are and what it is we would not do, and ruining one of the greatest tools in war, which is the element of surprise. Why in the world would we tell Asad what we are going to do--and Secretary Kerry said it would be a small attack--and why would we tell Asad what we won't do, thereby eliminating both the ambiguity of our position and the potential threat of even more serious and overwhelming military force?

No. 3: I would be willing to support an authorization if it were an integral part of a larger coherent Syria policy that clearly defined the political end state. I still remember General Petraeus, the head of Central Command covering Iraq and Afghanistan, talking about our policy in those countries. He said, The most important question, perhaps, when we go to war is how does this end. We need a clearly defined political end state that we are trying to achieve by what the President requested and we need an outline of a realistic path to get there.

No. 4: I believe it is important that we have a sizable international coalition of nations, each of which is contributing to the war effort.

This is an amazing reversal for the President since the time he was a Senator and a Presidential candidate. To say we are not going to the United Nations--and I understand why; because of China and Russia, their veto of any resolution out of the Security Council, we are not going to go to NATO. Indeed, the President seemed content, or at least resigned, to going it alone. And if it is true this redline is the international community's redline, then the international community needs to contribute to the effort to hold Asad accountable.

The problem is President Obama's requested authorization for the use of military force under these circumstances fails to meet each of those criteria. He has failed to make the case that a short, limited military campaign would promote our vital interests and our national security. He has failed to lay out clear and realistic objectives that could be obtained through the use of military force. And he has failed to offer a compelling description of how his proposed intervention would advance America's broader foreign policy strategy; indeed, how it would advance his own policy of regime change. Therefore, if we were asked to vote on an authorization under these circumstances, I would vote no.

I am under no illusion--none of us are--about the utter depravity of Bashar al-Asad. Over the last 2 1/2 years his regime has committed unspeakable acts of rape, torture, and murder. The chemical weapons attacks, by the way, as described by Secretary Kerry's own testimony in the House of Representatives, included 11 earlier uses of chemical weapons, but they were smaller. Can we imagine the difficulty of trying to impose a redline when that redline is crossed 11 times before the President finally decides to try to enforce it? But there is no question that the use of chemical weapons shows an appalling disregard for human life and a cruel desire to terrorize the Syrian population. I, as others, have consistently demanded that Russia stop arming Asad and stop defending him and blocking U.N. Security Council resolutions, and aiding and abetting his barbaric atrocities against his own people. I want to see a free democratic Syria as much as anyone else. But that does not mean I will vote to support a reckless, ill-advised military intervention that could jeopardize our most important national security interests.

There have been a lot of people who have opined on the President's request, some better informed than others. One opinion I found particularly convincing was that of retired Army MG Robert Scales who has written that the path to war chosen by the Obama administration ``violates every principle of war, including the element of surprise, achieving mass and having a clearly defined and obtainable objective.''

As I said, we know the latest chemical weapons attack occurred on August 21. Yet President Obama didn't address the Nation until 3 weeks later. The Syrians, of course, have now had weeks to prepare for any pending military intervention and no doubt have moved the chemical weapons to other locations and their military equipment to civilian population centers in order to protect them from any attack.

With no element of surprise, it makes the potential for success of any military intervention much less and reveals there is no real coherent policy in this regard.

Consider what happened last Monday. Secretary of State Kerry made what he calls an off-the-cuff remark about the possibility of canceling a missile strike if Asad turned over all of his chemical weapons. In the same statement he said he wasn't sure that would work or that he would ever be serious about it, but he did say it. Russia, of course, immediately responded by offering to broker a transfer of Syria's WMD to international monitors.

After spending weeks trying to make the case for war, President Obama has asked that the vote in this Chamber be canceled and is apparently treating the Russian-Syrian proposal as a serious diplomatic breakthrough. I would caution all of us--the American people and all of our colleagues--to be skeptical, for good reason, at this lifeline Vladimir Putin has now thrown the administration. I would remind the President and our colleagues that Russia itself is not in full compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention, nor is it even in compliance with nuclear arms control obligations that are subject to an international treaty. The litany of Russian offenses is long, but I would remind President Obama that since he launched the so-called Russian reset, Moscow has vetoed U.N. resolutions on Syria, sent advanced weaponry to the Asad regime, stolen elections, stoked anti-Americanism, made threats over our possible deployment of missile defense systems; it has expelled USAID from Russia, pulled out of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program; it has banned U.S. citizens from adopting Russian children, and offered asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden. In short, we have very little reason to believe Moscow is a reliable diplomatic partner. The Russians are part of the problem in Syria, not part of the solution. Let me say that clearly. The Russians are part of the problem in Syria; they are not credibly part of the solution.

Moreover, I am curious to learn how international monitors would adequately confirm the disposal of chemical weapons by a terrorist-sponsoring dictatorship among a ferocious civil war. While this strike the President talked about might have been limited in his imagination, if you are Bashar al-Asad, this is total war, because he realizes the only way he will leave power is in a pine box. He knows that. This is total war. I asked the President yesterday: What happens if, in order to punish Asad, we intervene militarily and it doesn't work? In his fight for his survival and the survival of his regime, he uses them again in an act of desperation? The President said, We will hit him again. Well, clearly, what had become a limited strike could quickly spiral out of control into a full-blown engagement in Syria. I think the President's own words suggest that.

But, of course, the Asad regime is the same one that refuses to acknowledge the full extent of its chemical arsenal--and this is something we will be hearing more about. It has bioweapons capability. Bioweapons capability is actually a much greater threat to American interests than chemical weapons, which are more difficult to transport and much harder to handle. And this is the same dictatorship that was secretly working on a nuclear weapons program before the Israelis took care of it in 2007.

We have been told that however unfortunate President Obama's ``redline'' comment might have been, upholding his threat is about maintaining American credibility. And I admit, American credibility in matters of war and peace and national security are very, very important. But America's credibility on the world stage is about more than just Presidential rhetoric. It is about defining clear objectives and establishing a coherent strategy for achieving them. In the case of Syria, President Obama has not offered a clear strategy or clearly laid out his objectives.

Given all that, I am not surprised that the American people do not support the President's call for the use of limited military force in Syria. Those are the calls I got in my office. As I went back to Texas, I kept hearing people--who I would think under almost any other circumstances would say: If America's national security interests are at stake, then we are behind the President, we are behind military intervention, but they simply saw an incoherent policy and objectives that were not clearly laid out to obtain the result the President himself said is our policy.

Well, the most recent experience we have had as a country with limited war has been Libya, and I have heard the President tout that as perhaps an example about how we can get in and get out. The 2011 military operation that deposed Muammar Qadhafi was supposed to be a showcase example of a limited operation in which America led from behind and still obtained its objectives without putting U.S. boots on the ground. Unfortunately, the administration had no real plan for what happened after Qadhafi fell.

We all know it was 1 year ago today in Benghazi when terrorists linked to Al Qaeda massacred four brave Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Today Libya is spiraling into chaos and rapidly becoming a failed state. Earlier this month a leading British newspaper reported that ``Libya has almost entirely stopped producing oil as the government loses control of much of the country to militia fighters.'' All sorts of bad actors, including terrorist groups, are flooding into the security vacuum, and ``Libyans are increasingly at the mercy of militias which act outside the law.''

Before I conclude, I want to say a few words about America's Armed Forces and America's role in the world.

We all know and are extraordinarily proud of our men and women who wear the uniform of the U.S. military. No military in history has been more powerful. No military has ever been more courageous. No military has been more selfless and fought and bled and died to protect innocent people in far-flung places across the planet. No military has ever done more to promote peace and prosperity around the world. I have every confidence that if called upon to act our men and women in uniform will do just that. They will perform their duties with the utmost skill, bravery, and professionalism. But we should never send them to war tying one hand behind their back and ask them to wage limited war against a dictator for whom, as I said earlier, this is total war. This is win or die. Military force is like a hammer, and you cannot thread the needle President Obama wants to thread with a hammer.

I would like to conclude by saying that this debate--which is important and serious and one the American people expect us to have--is not about isolationism versus internationalism. Believe me, I am no isolationist, and I fully support the global security role America has played since World War II, since my dad was a POW. A world without American military dominance would be, as Ronald Reagan noted, a much more dangerous place. I believe peace comes with American strength. However, it will be harder to maintain our global military dominance if we waste precious resources, our credibility, and political capital on hasty, misguided, unbelievably small interventions.

Once again, I would be willing to support an authorization for a military strike against Syria if it met certain basic criteria I have laid out. But I cannot support an operation that is so poorly conceived, so foolishly telegraphed, and virtually guaranteed to fail.

I yield the floor.

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