National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am coming to the floor to speak on
behalf of an amendment I am offering, along with Senators Schatz,
Udall, Blumenthal, Heinrich, Tester, Merkley, and Baldwin.

Today, it was announced that President Obama is going to be sending
another 450 troops to Iraq to help assist in the fight against ISIL.
That will mean we now have 3,500 troops in position throughout Iraq
assisting in the battle against ISIL within those borders. This marks
also nearly a year since we have reengaged in military activities in
Iraq and in Syria, both with support forces for the Iraqis, with
training for those who are fighting in Syria, and major air operations
targeting ISIL.

I think there is broad bipartisan consensus here that the United
States needs to take the fight to this enemy--an enemy that is seeking
to occupy an enormous amount of territory in a very dangerous region
from which it can plot attacks against the United States. But I also
think there is bipartisan agreement that we should do our
constitutional duty; that we should authorize this war against ISIL. My
hope is the Foreign Relations Committee--of which I am a member, of
which the Presiding Officer is a member--will have that debate in the
upcoming months.

But given that we are authorizing hundreds of millions of dollars in
this bill in order to take the fight to ISIL, I think it makes sense to
have some commonsense limitations on the use of that money that are in
keeping with the very public promises the President has made.

President Obama has stated very clearly that he does not think it is
a wise strategy to reinsert major combat troop operations into the
Middle East. I agree with him. I think many of us agree with him. There
is nothing about the last 10 years of American occupation in Iraq that
tells us that U.S. troops inside Iraq can have the effect of killing
more terrorists than are created, in part, through the recruitment
benefit of major U.S. combat operations.

So the amendment we are offering today is a fairly simple one. It
would prohibit the use of major combat--of large numbers of combat
troops in the fight against ISIL, with certain commonsense exceptions:
an exception for rescue operations, an exception for intelligence-
gathering exercises, and an exception for special operations in and
throughout the region; special operations like the one we used to kill
a high-ranking ISIS commander just within the last several weeks.

We think it is important that Congress weigh in and state what we
believe to be the desire and imperative of our constituents; that we
learn from the mistakes of the Iraq war; that we don't repeat them by
inserting thousands of American ground troops back into Iraq or perhaps
Syria.

ISIS was created, first and foremost, primarily by a political vacuum
inside Iraq, not a military vacuum. We need to acknowledge that any
strategy to ultimately defeat ISIL, as we are all committed to, has to
first and foremost have a realistic political strategy on the ground to
divorce Sunni populations from this death cult that is ISIL.

Sunni grievances grew throughout Nouri al-Maliki's reign. They were
denied an equitable share of oil revenues. They were excluded from
government jobs. There were real atrocities committed against Sunni
communities--mass incarcerations, torture, extrajudicial killings. If
we don't have an Iraq Government that is committed to being inclusive
of Sunni populations, there is no amount of American troops on the
ground that can heal those divisions. In fact, what we know about the
Iraq war is that major American combat operations on the ground in Iraq
have an effect of exacerbating those divisions rather than healing
them. They give space for people like Maliki to try to marginalize
these populations. They increase suffering on the ground, especially
for these populations that aren't represented effectively within the
reigning Shiite government in Baghdad.

So if we really want to learn lessons from the past, then let's take
President Obama at his word. Let's include in the NDAA a commonsense
limitation, with exceptions, with respect to the deployment of major
ground operations inside Iraq.

Now, there are some people who will say this isn't the role of
Congress. I would just state for the record that there are a litany of
examples in the past in which Congress has placed commonsense
limitations on our authorizations for military force. In fact, the
President, in submitting a proposed AUMF to the Foreign Relations
Committee several months ago, in fact, included in that authorization
of military force a limitation on ground forces. So this would be
entirely consistent with the history of this body but also with the
proposal the President has made.

I know, from having visited our troops in Iraq and in Afghanistan,
that it is easy for us to believe there is no mission that U.S.
soldiers can't take on; that their capability, that their bravery, that
their courage, that their adaptability knows no bounds. They have done
admirable work inside Iraq over the course of the last 10 years, but
what we know is that those troops inside Iraq also made Iraq what our
own intelligence community called the cause celebre for the
international terrorist movement, drawing in thousands of would-be
terrorists to fight the Americans.

What we know is that the ISIS we are fighting today is a follow-on
organization from Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was created because of the
American invasion and occupation--maybe not in whole but certainly as
the primary influence.

So we hope to be able to have a full debate on an authorization of
military force. But with the inability to move that piece of
legislation through the Foreign Relations Committee, we think it is
proper on the NDAA to hold the President at his word, place a
commonsense limitation on the use of ground troops and learn from the
mistakes of the last 10 years inside Iraq.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source