Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I too rise in support of this amendment. As the chairman laid out, there is no question that ISIL is a clear threat to our interests, and they are a threat in two clear ways. Number one, a large number of foreign fighters are going over to Syria and Iraq to support them. Some of those foreign fighters--estimates are somewhere in the 100 range--have come from the U.S., and thousands have come from Western Europe. Many of those have returned to that home country, and they present a clear threat. As long as ISIS or ISIL is there to threaten us, the fighters that fight with them will become a threat to the rest of us.

But in a broader sense, if ISIL is able to control territory in Iraq and in Syria and have a safe and secure haven, they will, without question, plot and plan attacks against the West. They have already said that is their plan, and that is exactly what happened when al Qaeda had safe haven in Afghanistan. So denying ISIL safe haven is clearly in the United States' interests.

I think a humanitarian aspect of this is also worth stating. As was noted by some earlier speakers on the CR debate, you cannot imagine a more violent and dangerous and just hedonistic group of people. The number of folks that they have brutally murdered in Iraq and Syria solely because they refused to pledge allegiance to ISIS and their twisted view of their religion is staggering. This is a group that must be stopped.

Now, the sad fact is, the United States military cannot stop them on our own. This has to be primarily a local fight. The folks in the region have to take up this battle.

And I believe that they have started to in Iraq, but we need to open a front in Syria. Because the problem is, if ISIS can hold themselves out as an organization that is fighting against Western imperialism, that brings supporters to them. If, on the other hand, they are, as they clearly are, just a group of murderous thugs that are killing more Muslims than anybody has killed in a very long time, then we can build support from the local population, from the Sunni population, to oppose them.

Now, we have already seen some success on this in Iraq. And I think the President was absolutely right to take his time in Iraq and wait for a coalition to work with. If the U.S. had simply come in over the top right off the bat and had started bombing ISIS, we would have been perceived as choosing the Shia side in the Shia-Sunni civil war. And in so doing, we would have strengthened ISIS. By insisting that Prime Minister Maliki be replaced, by insisting that Iraq begin to at least start some sort of power sharing arrangement with the Sunnis, we were able to build a stronger coalition by also building support from the Kurds, a Sunni group. We could then be in support of them fighting ISIS and pushing them out.

Now, the great flaw in this theory is, the border between Iraq and Syria is nonexistent, as far as ISIS is concerned, and they can go back and forth across it.

If we don't have any way to get at them in Syria, it gives them an enormous advantage in continuing to press the fight in Iraq and potentially elsewhere, but the challenge is: How do we open that front? Because we face the same dilemma in Syria that we faced in Iraq.

The dominant issue that started everything in Syria was opposition to the Assad regime, a regime very much worth opposing. As the President and many on the floor here have said, Assad must go. He is an illegitimate leader.

If we were simply to come in and appear to be playing the role of Assad's air force in Syria, again, that would strengthen ISIS. That would drive Sunnis and the anti-regime elements in Syria into their arms.

Mr. Speaker, we need a partner in Syria that we can support that is an alternative to Assad and is an alternative to ISIS. The problem is that right now we don't really have one.

We have a small group of people that we have been supporting in a variety of different ways, but we need that group to grow. We need to have a partner to support if we are ever going to hope to contain ISIS in Syria in Iraq. The only way to do that is to start.

I have heard a number of complaints. People say, ``But, gosh, are there really any moderates out there? Are there enough to make a difference? What if they switch sides?''

There are all kinds of problems, but the bottom line is if you believe that we have to open a front in Syria to stop ISIS--and I don't see how you can believe otherwise--to give them Syria and say, ``We are not going to challenge you there,'' I think makes it impossible to even significantly degrade them and, certainly, to ever defeat them; so we need to open a front.

How do you do that, Mr. Speaker? Well, you can't open a front unless you start the process, and that is what Mr. McKeon's amendment does. It starts the process. It gives the ability to train and equip a force that will be opposed to Assad and opposed to ISIS.

Now, I don't think we should have any illusions, and I know Americans--I would prefer this as well--we would say, Look, we are going to win this war, and we are going to win it in 100 days, and here is what we--this is going to be a long process. This is not something that is going to happen quickly.

It is simply the nature of the conflict in that part of the world that it is going to take time to find the people, train them, and equip them, but, if we do not try, Mr. Speaker, then ISIS is going to sit in Syria unchallenged, continuing to brutally murder civilians of all stripes and continuing to spread their unique ideology of hatred and violence. We have to start somewhere, and I think this amendment gives us the opportunity to start somewhere.

I also want to note that I like the fact that the amendment is only effective until the end of the CR and says that this should be contained in the National Defense Authorization Act. This is an authorizing action, and it should be done in an authorizing bill.

Now, we have got to get started, and we don't have time. Regrettably, the Senate has not acted, so we don't have the NDAA yet, but we will in the next month or two. I think we can then put this language into the NDAA and make it more long term in terms of the authorization; so I appreciate that.

I also feel, as the chairman does, that Congress should do a broader AUMF on the fight against ISIS, on what we are doing in Iraq and Syria. We have launched, I think, well in the hundreds, now, of bombing missions against ISIS. This is something where Congress should act.

Mr. Speaker, the only area of disagreement I have is I keep hearing colleagues say, ``Well, the President ought to ask for it. We are the legislative branch.'' I hear all the time, ``Gosh, the President is overstepping our authorities, always telling us what to do, and he is ignoring the law.''

Why does he have to ask? If this is what we want to do--we are the United States Congress. The legislative branch ought to act.

I think the President is right in saying he is going to do what he believes he has the right to do under article II to protect this country, but Congress should act; so we should act. We shouldn't wait for him to ask. We should put together an AUMF to more broadly authorize this, and that is something that should be appropriately done as well.

In the short term, we need to start a front against ISIS in Syria, and the only way to do that is to build a legitimate local force that can begin that fight. Train and equip is the first step, I believe, and then this process that regrettably will not be quick.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I agree very strongly with Chairman McKeon on one point. You can raise all manner of different questions, but there are no guarantees. If you are trying to figure out how to vote on this and you won't vote in favor until we are guaranteed nothing can go wrong, then save yourself the argument and just vote ``no.'' This is a very dangerous part of the world, and, in any part of the world, something can always go wrong. We cannot guarantee that there will be no bad outcomes.

I think one of the things that has been lost in all this is that train and equip has been equated simply with Iraq and Afghanistan and has been deemed a failure. I really want to point out to people that the U.S. military--and the U.S. Government more broadly--has engaged in many very successful train-and-equip missions.

In fact, this is the way out of Iraq and Afghanistan, the way out of committing over 100,000 U.S. troops to a battle to try to fundamentally change a country. You build partnerships, and those partners in those local areas are the ones that do the fighting and pursue the interests.

In Somalia, we have a very significant problem with al-Shabaab. We have not, I believe, lost a U.S. life in that region. We have trained and equipped Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda. They have helped take the fight to al-Shabaab in Somalia in a very successful manner.

We are working with the Yemeni Government right now to help defeat al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula within Yemen. And believe me, the country of Yemen is not a model of anything. It has all manner of different challenges in terms of its governance. And you certainly could have looked at that and said, Wow, we are going to work with those guys?

But we did not want al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to continue to grow and continue to threaten us, where at least two terror attacks against the U.S. were launched, so we trained and have worked with the Yemen Government in a way that has helped contain AQAP. Train and equip absolutely is a policy that can work, and that is what we are going to try and do in Syria.

So backing up to the policy there, there are several steps to this.

First of all, should we confront ISIS? I mean, that is an initial decision. And I suppose you can decide that it is way across the world. You have got Sunnis fighting Shi'as. You have got Syria. You have got Iran. You have got all manner of different people all mixed up in this. Let's just wash our hands of it and hope it works out.

The problem with that is ISIS has made it clear that they will kill Americans and that they will threaten us. And if they continue to grow and continue to hold territory, they will absolutely plan and plot attacks against the United States. So simply allowing ISIS to go forward doesn't strike me as a good option, which brings us to the second question.

Okay, if you want to try to contain them, how do you do it? And I completely agree with the cautionary notes that have been cited about just sending in the U.S. military to do it. I think the risks there are enormous, and it would not be successful because it would unite all--not all, but would unite a fair number of Sunnis and radicals against us.

So the option on the table is to train and equip local partners to do the fighting. We have done it successfully with the Kurds. We are making progress now with Iraq now that we have got Maliki out as Prime Minister and we have a new government that at least gives the Sunnis some hope that they will be included in the Iraqi Government.

In Syria, we will have to work with the Free Syria movement. Now, we have already been working with a lot of these folks. We have already been providing humanitarian assistance and some other assistance as well, so it is not like we don't have anybody over there. We do know some folks and we should work with them, because the alternative is allowing Syria to be divided up between Assad and ISIS, and that alternative is unacceptable.

Lastly, I want to say that I fully understand the concerns about mission creep. I fully understand the concerns about open-ended warfare, but this is not what we are talking about.

As the chairman and many others have said, we should have a debate about an AUMF on this floor. This is not an AUMF. This in no way authorizes any U.S. military action against anybody. All it does is it authorizes the Department of Defense to train and equip other forces. Our forces will be hundreds of miles from the battlefield, training and equipping other forces.

So I agree, there is a much larger debate to have if an AUMF is put out on the floor, and we have to think about will this be taken and interpreted way too broadly. We have seen that happen with the 2001 AUMF, for instance. So that will be a worthy debate.

That is not what we are doing here. In fact, this is something that 3 years ago many people suggested that the U.S. Government should do. But we cannot do it unless Congress authorizes the Department of Defense to do it.

So I think this is much more narrow in scope than the broader debate, and the broader debate is one we should have. But here we are talking about a very narrow approach of train and equip that, frankly, can help limit U.S. action.

I have heard some of my colleagues say, well, you know, we understand the bombing. We need to do the bombing because ISIS is a threat and all that. But we don't want to do the train and equip which, to me, is just completely backwards.

If you are concerned about mission creep, if you are concerned about the U.S. getting too involved, then direct military action is certainly a heck of a lot more involvement than training and equipping others in the region to lead the fight.

I think that is an appropriate policy. I applaud the chairman for his work in putting this together.

We do have more work to do. This only authorizes this until the CR runs out, December 11, I believe, so we will have to do this in the National Defense Authorization Act. But I think it is a modest and appropriate step, and whatever criticism you have of all manner

of different mistakes, perceived and actual, that the President may have made before, please don't let that color what is an incredibly important policy decision as we try to decide how to confront a very real threat in ISIS.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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