Mr. President, I rise to address an issue of grave importance to the national security of the United States; that is, the threat from the radical Sunni terrorist organization known as the Islamic…
Mr. President, I rise to address an issue of grave importance to the national security of the United States; that is, the threat from the radical Sunni terrorist organization known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or simply as the Islamic State.
Now it claims to control territory in a grotesque parody of a nation state. ISIS is a study in oppression and brutality that is conducting ethnic cleansing against religious minorities in the region; that is, targeting and persecuting Christians and that is attempting to subject the local population to the strictest forms of Sharia law. ISIS has grotesquely murdered U.S. civilians and indeed journalists on the public stage. It should come as no surprise that the people of the United States are deeply concerned about this development. We are concerned about the inability of our government to anticipate this gathering threat. We are concerned about the brutal acts of oppression against the weak and the helpless.
We are concerned about ISIS's seizure of financial and military assets that have fueled their murderous rampage. Above all, we are concerned about the threat ISIS poses, not only to our close allies in the region but also to our citizens and even here in our homeland.
There has been a lot of talk in recent days about developing a strategy to combat ISIS. I would like to propose a couple of commonsense steps that we should take immediately to combat this scourge.
First, the time has come--it is beyond time--for us to secure our borders. Representing the State of Texas, which has a border nearly 2,000 miles long, I know firsthand how unsecure the border is right now. This week of all weeks, with the anniversary of the September 11 attacks upon us, we can have no illusions that terrorists will not try to make good on their specific threats to attack America. As long as our border is not secure, we are making it far too easy for the terrorists to carry through on those promises.
Rumored ISIS activities on the southern border should unite us all in the resolve to make border security a top priority rather than an afterthought or rather than something to be held hostage for political negotiations in the Congress. Second, we should take commonsense steps to make fighting for or supporting ISIS an affirmative renunciation of American citizenship. We know there are over 100 Americans who have joined ISIS who have taken up arms alongside the jihadists, along with thousands of others from the European Union.
We also know they are trying to return to their countries of origin to carry out terrorist attacks there. We know this because on May 24 an ISIS member returned to Belgium where he attacked innocent visitors at a Jewish museum, slaughtering four people. It was reported today he had been plotting an even larger attack on Paris on Bastille Day.
In addition, on August 11 of this year, an accused ISIS sympathizer, Donald Ray Morgan, was arrested at JFK Airport trying to reenter the United States. So we know this threat is real. That is why I have today filed legislation, the Expatriate Terrorist Act of 2014, which would amend the existing statutes governing renunciation of U.S. citizenship to designate fighting for a hostile foreign government or foreign terrorist organization as an affirmative renunciation of citizenship.
By fighting for ISIS, U.S. citizens have expressed their desire to become citizens of the Islamic state. That cannot and will not peacefully coexist with remaining American citizens, the desire to become a citizen of a terrorist organization that has expressed a desire to wage war on the American people, has demonstrated a brutal capacity to do so, murdering American civilians on the global stage and promising to bring that jihad home to America.
We should not be facilitating their efforts by allowing fighters fighting alongside ISIS to come back to America with American passports and walk freely in our cities to carry out unspeakable acts of terror. It is my hope the legislation I am introducing today will earn support on both sides of the aisle, that we will see this body come together and say: While there are many partisan issues that divide us, when it comes to protecting U.S. citizens from acts of terror, we are all as one. That is my fervent hope.
The third thing we should do is we should do everything possible to make ISIS understand there are serious ramifications for threatening to attack the United States, for murdering American citizens. While damaging ISIS's financial assets is certainly a part of this action, because of the very nature of ISIS, the response must be principally military.
All Americans are weary of the long and costly wars in the last decade. We
are tired of sending our sons and daughters potentially to die in distant lands. No one wants to see an extended engagement in Iraq, but at the same time I do not believe the American people are one bit reluctant to defend our national security, to defend the lives of fellow Americans. The American people can see the grim threat represented by ISIS and the need for decisive action.
We should concentrate on a coordinated and overwhelming air campaign that has the clear military objective of destroying the capability of ISIS to carry out terror attacks on the United States. We must remain focused on this clear military objective if we hope to be successful. We cannot engage in photo op foreign policy or press release foreign policy of dropping a bomb here, shooting a missile there, and not have a strategy that is dictated by clear and direct military objectives in furtherance of U.S. national security interests.
We should be perfectly clear as well that any action we take against ISIS is in no way contingent on resolving the civil war in Syria. That conflict is a humanitarian tragedy, pitting a brutal dictator against radical Islamic terrorists. The sad reality is there are no good options for the United States in this fight. We may have had less radical options 3 years ago, but those are not currently available.
The Obama administration had proposed arming rebel forces that contained terrorist factions associated with ISIS. Previously, we were told the rebels fighting alongside ISIS were our friends and Assad and Iran were our enemies. Now, in the face of ISIS, we are hearing Assad may be our friend, Iran may be our friend, and ISIS is now our enemy. This makes no sense. Indeed, it is a dangerous cycle reminiscent of George Orwell's ``1984.'' Orwell wrote:
At this moment, for example, in 1984. . . . Oceania was at
war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. . . .
Actually . . . it was only four years since Oceania had been
at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But . . .
[o]fficially the change of partners had never happened.
Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always
been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always
represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or
future agreement with him was impossible. . . .
This administration seems to have no sense of past or future. All of those familiar with the terribly human carnage inflicted by the civil war in Syria pray for its end. But the goal of our action against ISIS should not be to end it by supporting Assad. The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. Sometimes the goal is the destruction of the enemy who poses an imminent threat to our national security, not the enabler of yet another enemy of America.
It should also be clear that any action we take against ISIS should in no way be contingent on political reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad. This administration has often become distracted by the hope to achieve this reconciliation, but the sad truth is the Sunnis and Shiites have been engaged in a sectarian civil war since 632 A.D. It is the height of hubris, it is the height of ignorance to suggest the American President can come and resolve a 1,500-year-old religious civil war and have both sides throw down their arms and embrace each other as brothers. That should not be our objective, although we of course always hope for reconciliation and peace. We should not be so naive as to make defending our national security contingent on resolving millennia-old sectarian religious civil wars. Doing so, seeking to promote a utopia, seeking to transform Iraq into Switzerland is nothing less than a fool's errand.
Likewise, it should be perfectly clear that any action we take to stop ISIS from attacking and murdering Americans is in no way contingent on consensus from the so-called international community. America is blessed to have many good friends and allies in the region and beyond who understand the threat of ISIS and are eager to do what they can to combat it. We welcome their support. But in order that this action be done right, it must be led by the United States, unfettered by other nations' rules of engagement that might impede our effective action.
Achieving some preordained number of countries in a coalition is not a strategy. For as has often been remarked: In the most effective efforts, the mission determines the coalition, not the other way around. It is heartening to hear the voices from my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, raising the alarm of the threat posed by ISIS. President Obama has signaled his intention of addressing the issue later this week.
It is well past time for him to do so. His recent statements from his admission on August 28 that ``we don't have a strategy yet'' to his suggestion on September 3 that ``our best bet is to try to `shrink' ISIS's sphere of influence until they are a manageable problem,'' those comments are not encouraging. The objective is not to make ISIS manageable. The objective is to protect the national security interests of the United States and to destroy terrorists who have declared jihad on our Nation.
Neither are the two things we already know that the President will propose in his new ``game plan''--namely, that he will not be requesting authorization from Congress for military action against ISIS and that his model is the counterterrorism policies pursued by his administration the past 5 years. Neither of these is encouraging. I ask the President to reconsider both of these points.
While ISIS is obviously part of the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism that has bedeviled the West for decades, it equally obviously represents a new and particularly virulent strain. The President is reportedly considering an action that could last as long as 3 years and may require a range of actions. If this is indeed the case, then it is incumbent on him to come to Congress and lay out his strategy so that we and the American people are clear on it.
I would note that the Presiding Officer has been particularly vocal and clear defending the constitutional authority of Congress to declare war. I would note as well that it is beneficial for the effort for the President to come to Congress, because in doing so it will force the President to do what has been lacking for so long, which is lay out a specific and clear military objective: What is it we are trying to accomplish that is tethered directly to the U.S. national security interests of America?
The Constitution is clear. It is Congress and Congress only that has the constitutional authority to declare war. Any President, as Commander in Chief, has constitutional authority to respond to an imminent crisis, to respond to a clear and present danger. But in this instance, the President is not suggesting it. He is suggesting engaged military action, and it is, therefore, inconsistent with the Constitution for him to attempt to pursue that action without recognizing the constitutional authority of this body.
It is my hope that he will do so, and it is my hope we will have a substantive and meaningful debate about the military objective we should be united in achieving, which is, namely, destroying ISIS and preventing them from committing acts of terror and murdering innocent Americans.
Given the need to consider such action against a new actor such as ISIS, it also must be admitted that the Obama administration's counterterrorism policy has not been a success. They have labeled the 2009 attack on Fort Hood in my home State of Texas as an act of ``workplace violence'' even though the terrorist attacker Nidal Hasan recently asked to become a citizen of the Islamic State.
They also missed connecting the dots that would have uncovered the radicalization of the Tsarnaev brothers that resulted in the attack on the Boston Marathon. It should be noted that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder brother, worshipped at the same Cambridge, MA, mosque where the ISIS head of propaganda worshipped. This jihad can reach back and directly take the lives of Americans citizens at home.
The administration has failed to respond effectively to the attack on our facilities in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, in which four Americans were murdered, including the first ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979, an event that inaugurated Libya's spiral into terrorist anarchy that continues unchecked to this day. They completely missed the gathering threat of ISIS to the point that the President himself was under the misapprehension that the group was the terrorist equivalent of the junior varsity only a few months ago.
We cannot afford to return to these destructive policies, given the acute threat posed by ISIS. It is my hope that this body will stand together as one in bipartisan unity to secure the borders and to change our laws to pass the legislation I am introducing today to make clear that any American who takes up arms with ISIS has, in doing so, constructively renounced his or her American citizenship so that the Congress, with one voice, can protect Americans at home. This requires clear, decisive, unified action, and it is my hope that all of us will come together supporting such action and that the President will submit to the authority of Congress seeking authorization to protect America against ISIS and to engage in a concentrated, directed military campaign to take them out.
