Removal of United States Armed Forces from Iraq and Syria
Floor Speech
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Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution, and I commend the sponsors, Mr. McGovern and Ms. Lee, for introducing it. And I do so not because I necessarily think we ought to withdraw all our troops in 6 months. Maybe we should. I am not sure of that yet. But I do know that we are waging a war that is probably unconstitutional, as we did in Libya.
Since World War II, we have time after time gotten away from the constitutional command that Congress shall declare war. The Framers said war is too important to allow one person--the President--to decide on it. But we have gotten away from that. We got away from it because we didn't have time. That was the excuse. With the missiles flying over the poles, you couldn't call Congress into session.
But then came Iraq. We had a resolution for the use of military force. Then came Libya. No excuse. Plenty of time to consult with NATO. Plenty of time to consult with Arab countries. No time to consult with Congress. I believe that was an unconstitutional--and a foolish, as it turns out--but an unconstitutional use of force.
Mr. Speaker, now we have this force in the Middle East, in Iraq and in Syria. We are getting more and more into a war. I am not commenting on the intelligence of that right now. It may be that we have no choice but to fight ISIS. Maybe, as the Republicans seem to want without saying so, we should have a lot of boots on the ground, because that is what they are really saying when they say the President is doing it halfway. Or maybe the bigger threat is Iran, and we should turn our attentions to Iran instead of tacitly allying with Iran against ISIS. Or maybe we should say it is up to the Middle Eastern people--they can handle it--and pull our troops out altogether. That is the debate we ought to have. And what are the limits of our commitment, if any? That ought to be debated in Congress. Congress ought to make these decisions in the name of the American people, not the President.
Now, because we haven't had an AUMF on the floor, we must have this resolution.
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Mr. NADLER. This resolution is not intended to force a pullout in 6 months. It is intended to force a debate in Congress in 6 months. Let us get back to our constitutional tradition. Let Congress do its job, and if the President submitted an AUMF that is too strong or too weak, let's bring up a different one. But it is our job to make those decisions. It is our job to stand before our constituents to say we believe this is important enough to go to war with ISIS or with Iran, to send more troops there or not, and here is why and here are the limitations, we shouldn't have boots on the ground or we should.
Mr. Speaker, these are our decisions to make, and our decisions we shouldn't be able to avoid. That is what this is about. We have had 10 years of war, 13 years of war. The 2001 AUMF cannot possibly be relevant now. We thought we were voting for 3 weeks of strikes against bases in Afghanistan. The 2002 AUMF was to topple Saddam Hussein. He is gone. I didn't think that was a good idea, but it is over. The consequences are not over.
We ought to debate this. We ought to debate an AUMF. We ought to pass one or not. That is our decision, but let's pass this resolution that supports that decision on us.
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