[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 35 (Monday, March 5, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1377-S1380]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SYRIA
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, after a year of bloodshed, the crisis in
Syria has reached a decisive moment. It is estimated that more than
7,500 lives have been lost. The United Nations has declared that Syrian
security forces are guilty of crimes against humanity, including the
indiscriminate shelling of civilians, the execution of defectors, and
the widespread torture of prisoners.
Bashar al-Asad is now doing to Homs what his father did to Hama.
Aerial photographs procured by Human Rights Watch show a city that has
been laid to waste by Asad's tanks and artillery. A British
photographer who was wounded and evacuated from the city described it
as ``a medieval siege and slaughter.'' The kinds of mass atrocities
that NATO intervened in Libya to prevent in Benghazi are now a reality
in Homs. Indeed, Syria today is the scene of some of the worst state-
sponsored violence since Milosevic's war crimes in the Balkans or
Russia's annihilation of the Chechen city of Grozny.
What is all the more astonishing is that Asad's killing spree has
continued despite severe and escalating international pressure against
him. His regime is almost completely isolated. It has been expelled
from the Arab League, rebuked by the United Nations General Assembly,
excoriated by the U.N. Human Rights Council, and abandoned by nearly
every country that once maintained diplomatic relations with it. At the
same time, Asad's regime is facing a punishing array of economic
sanctions by the United States, the European Union, the Arab League,
and others--measures that have targeted the assets of Asad and his
henchman, cut off the Central Bank and other financial institutions,
grounded Syria's cargo flights, and restricted the regime's ability to
sell oil.
This has been an impressive international effort, and the
administration deserves a lot of credit for helping to orchestrate it.
The problem is the bloodletting continues. Despite a year's worth of
diplomacy backed by sanctions, Asad and his top lieutenants show no
signs of giving up and taking the path into foreign exile. To the
contrary, they appear to be accelerating their fight to the finish and
they are doing so with the shameless support of foreign governments,
especially in Russia, China, and Iran. A steady supply of weapons,
ammunition, and other assistance is flowing to Asad from Moscow and
Tehran. As the Washington Post reported yesterday, Iranian military and
intelligence operatives are likely active in Syria, helping to direct
and sharpen the regime's brutality. The Security Council is totally
shut down as an avenue for increased pressure, and the recently
convened Friends of Syria contact group, while a good step in
principle, produced mostly rhetoric but precious little action when it
met last month in Tunisia. Unfortunately, with each passing day, the
international response to Asad's atrocities is being overtaken by
events on the ground in Syria.
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Some countries are finally beginning to acknowledge this reality as
well as its implications. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are calling for arming
opposition forces in Syria. The newly elected Kuwaiti Parliament has
called on their government to do the same. Last week, the Supreme
Allied Commander of NATO, ADM James Stavridis, testified to the Senate
Armed Services Committee that providing arms to opposition forces in
Syria could help them shift the balance of power against Asad. Most
importantly, Syrians themselves are increasingly calling for
international military involvement. The Opposition Syrian National
Council recently announced that it is establishing a military bureau to
channel weapons and other assistance to the Free Syrian Army and armed
groups inside the country. Other members of the Council are demanding a
more robust intervention.
To be sure, there are legitimate questions about the efficacy of
military operations in Syria and equally legitimate concerns about
their risks and uncertainties. It is understandable that the
administration is reluctant to move beyond diplomacy and sanctions.
Unfortunately, this policy is increasingly disconnected from the dire
conditions on the ground in Syria, which has become a full-blown state
of armed conflict. In the face of this new reality, the
administration's approach to Syria is starting to look more like a hope
than a strategy. So, too, does their continued insistence that Asad's
fall is ``inevitable.'' Tell that to the people of Homs. Tell that to
the people of Idlib or Hama or the other cities that Asad's forces are
now moving against. Nothing in this world is predetermined, and claims
about the inevitability of events can often be a convenient way to
abdicate responsibility.
But even if we do assume that Asad will ultimately fall, that may
still take a long time. In recent testimony in the Armed Services
Committee, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said if
the status quo persists, Asad could hang on for months, probably
longer. And that was before Homs fell. So to be clear, even under the
best-case scenario for the current policy, the cost of success will
likely be months of continued bloodshed and thousands of additional
lives lost. Is this morally acceptable to us? I believe it should not
be.
In addition to the moral and humanitarian interests at stake in
Syria, what is just as compelling, if not more so, are the strategic
and geopolitical interests. Put simply, the United States has a clear
national security interest in stopping the violence in Syria and
forcing Asad to leave power. In this way, Syria is very different than
Libya. The stakes are far higher, both for America and some of our
closest allies.
This regime in Syria serves as a main forward operating base of the
Iranian regime in the heart of the Arab world. It has supported
Palestinian terrorist groups and funneled arms of all kinds, including
tens of thousands of rockets, to Hezbollah in Lebanon. It remains a
committed enemy of Israel. It has large stockpiles of chemical weapons
and materials and has sought to develop a nuclear weapons capability.
It was the primary gateway for the countless foreign fighters who
infiltrated Iraq and killed American troops. Asad and his lieutenants
have the blood of hundreds of Americans on their hands. Many in
Washington fear that what comes after Asad might be worse. How could it
be any worse than this?
The end of the Asad regime would sever Hezbollah's lifeline to Iran,
eliminate a longstanding threat to Israel, bolster Lebanon's
sovereignty and independence, and inflict a strategic defeat on the
Iranian regime. It would be a geopolitical success of the first order.
More than all of the compelling moral and humanitarian reasons, this is
why Asad cannot be allowed to succeed and remain in power. We have a
clear national security interest in his defeat, and that alone should
incline us to tolerate a large degree of risk in order to see that this
goal is achieved.
Increasingly, the question for U.S. policy is not whether foreign
forces will intervene militarily in Syria. We can be confident that
Syria's neighbors will do so eventually if they have not already. Some
kind of intervention will happen with or without us. So the real
question for U.S. policy is whether we will participate in this next
phase of the conflict in Syria and thereby increase our ability to
shape an outcome that is beneficial to the Syrian people and to us. I
believe we must.
The President has characterized the prevention of mass atrocities as
``a core national security interest.'' He has made it the objective of
the United States that the killing in Syria must stop, that Asad must
go. He has committed the prestige and credibility of our Nation to that
goal, and it is the right goal. However, it is not clear that the
present policy can succeed. If Asad manages to cling to power--or even
if he manages to sustain the slaughter for months to come--with all the
human and geopolitical costs that entails, it would be a strategic and
moral defeat for the United States. We cannot--we must not--allow this
to happen.
For this reason, the time has come for a new policy. As we continue
to isolate Asad diplomatically and economically, we should work with
our closest friends and allies to support opposition groups inside
Syria, both political and military, to help them organize themselves
into a more cohesive and effective force that can put an end to the
bloodshed and force Asad and his loyalists to leave power. Rather than
closing off the prospects for some kind of negotiated transition that
is acceptable to the Syrian opposition, foreign military intervention
is now the necessary factor to reinforce this option. Asad needs to
know that he will not win.
What opposition groups in Syria need most urgently is relief from
Asad's tank and artillery sieges in the many cities that are still
contested. Homs is lost for now, but Idlib and Hama and Qusayr and
Deraa and other cities in Syria could still be saved. But time is
running out. Asad's forces are on the march. Providing military
assistance to the Free Syrian Army and other opposition groups is
necessary, but at this late hour that alone will not be sufficient to
stop the slaughter and save innocent lives. The only realistic way to
do so is with foreign air power.
Therefore, at the request of the Syrian National Council, the Free
Syrian Army, and local coordinating committees inside the country, the
United States should lead an international effort to protect key
population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through air
strikes on Asad's forces. To be clear, this will require the United
States to suppress enemy air defenses in at least part of the country.
The ultimate goal of air strikes should be to establish and defend safe
havens in Syria, especially in the north, in which opposition forces
can organize and plan their political and military activities against
Asad. These safe havens could serve as platforms for the delivery of
humanitarian and military assistance, including weapons and ammunition,
body armor, and other personal protective equipment, tactical
intelligence, secure communications equipment, food and water, and
medical supplies. These safe havens could also help the Free Syrian
Army and other armed groups in Syria train and organize themselves into
more cohesive and effective military forces, likely with the assistance
of foreign partners.
The benefit for the United States in helping to lead this effort
directly is that it would allow us to better empower those Syrian
groups that share our interests--those groups that reject al-Qaida and
the Iranian regime and commit to the goal of an inclusive democratic
transition as called for by the Syrian National Council. If we stand on
the sidelines, others will pick winners, and this will not always to be
to our liking or in our interest. This does not mean the United States
should go it alone. I repeat: This does not mean that the United States
should go it alone. We should not. We should seek the active
involvement of key Arab partners such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab
Emirates, Jordan, and Qatar, and willing allies in the EU and NATO, the
most important of which in this case is Turkey.
There will be no U.N. Security Council mandate for such an operation.
Russia and China took that option off the table long ago. But let's not
forget: NATO took military action to save Kosovo in 1999 without formal
U.N. authorization. There is no reason why the
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Arab League or NATO or a leading coalition within the Friends of Syria
contact group, or all of them speaking in unison, could not provide a
similar international mandate for military measures to save Syria
today.
Could such a mandate be gotten? I believe it could. Foreign capitals
across the world are looking to the United States to lead, especially
now that the situation in Syria has become an armed conflict. But what
they see is an administration still hedging its bets--on the one hand
insisting that Asad's fall is inevitable but, on the other, unwilling
even to threaten more assertive actions that could make it so.
The rhetoric out of NATO has been much more self-defeating. Far from
making it clear to Asad that all options are on the table, key alliance
leaders are going out of their way to publicly take options off the
table. Last week, NATO Secretary General Rasmussen said that the
alliance has not even discussed the possibility of NATO action in
Syria, saying: ``I don't envision such a role for the alliance.'' The
following day, the Supreme Allied Commander, ADM James Stavridis,
testified in the Senate Armed Services Committee that NATO has done no
contingency planning--none--for potential military operations in Syria.
That is not how NATO approached Bosnia or Kosovo or Libya. Is it now
the policy of NATO--or the United States, for that matter--to tell the
perpetrators of mass atrocities in Syria or elsewhere that they can go
on killing innocent civilians by the hundreds of thousands and the
greatest alliance in history will not even bother to conduct any
planning about how we might stop them? Is that NATO's policy now? Is
that our policy? Because that is the practical effect of this kind of
rhetoric. It gives Asad and his foreign allies a green light for
greater brutality.
Not surprisingly, many countries, especially Syria's neighbors, are
also hedging their bets on the outcome in Syria. They think Asad will
go, but they are not yet prepared to put all their chips on that bet--
even less so now that Asad's forces have broken Homs and seem to be
gaining momentum.
There is only one nation--there is only one nation--that can alter
this dynamic, and that is the United States of America. The President
must state unequivocally that under no circumstances will Asad be
allowed to finish what he has started; that there is no future in which
Asad and his lieutenants will remain in control of Syria; and that the
United States is prepared to use the full weight of our air power to
make it so. It is only when we have clearly and completely committed
ourselves that we can expect other nations to do the same. Only then
would we see what is really possible in winning international support
to stop the killing in Syria.
Are there dangers and risks and uncertainties in this approach?
Absolutely. There are no ideal options in Syria. All of them contain
significant risk. Many people will be quick to raise concerns about the
course of action I am proposing. Many of these concerns have merit but
none so much that they should keep us from acting.
For example, we continue to hear it said that we should not assist
the opposition in Syria militarily because we do not know who these
people are. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated this argument
just last week, adding that we could end up helping al-Qaida or Hamas.
It is possible that the administration does not know much about the
armed opposition in Syria, but how much effort have they really made to
find out, to meet and engage these people directly? Not much, it
appears. Instead, much of the best information we have about the armed
resistance in Syria is thanks to courageous journalists, some of whom
have given their lives to tell the story of the Syrian people.
One of those journalists is a reporter working for Al-Jazeera named
Nir Rosen, who spent months in the country, including much time with
the armed opposition. Here is how he described them recently:
The regime and its supporters describe the opposition,
especially the armed opposition, as Salafis, Jihadists,
Muslim Brotherhood supporters, al-Qaeda and terrorists. This
is not true, but it's worth noting that all the fighters I
met . . . were Sunni Muslims, and most were pious. They fight
for a multitude of reasons: for their friends, for their
neighborhoods, for their villages, for their province, for
revenge, for self-defense, for dignity, for their brethren in
other parts of the country who are also fighting. They do not
read religious literature or listen to sermons. Their views
on Islam are consistent with the general attitudes of Syrian
Sunni society, which is conservative and religious.
Because there are many small groups in the armed
opposition, it is difficult to describe their ideology in
general terms. The Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood ideologies
are not important in Syria and do not play a significant role
in the revolution. But most Syrian Sunnis taking part in the
uprising are themselves devout.
He could just as well have been describing average citizens in Egypt
or Libya or Tunisia or other nations in the region. So we should be a
little more careful before we embrace the Asad regime's propaganda
about the opposition in Syria. We certainly should not let these
misconceptions cause us to keep the armed resistance in Syria at arm's
length because that is just self-defeating. And I can assure you that
al-Qaida is not pursuing the same policy. They are eager to try to
hijack the Syrian revolution, just as they have tried to hijack the
Arab spring movements in Egypt and Tunisia and Libya and elsewhere.
They are trying, but so far they are failing. The people of these
countries are broadly rejecting everything al-Qaida stands for. They
are not eager to trade secular tyranny for theocratic tyranny.
The other reason al-Qaida is failing in Tunisia and Egypt and Libya
is because the community of nations--especially the United States--has
supported them. We are giving them a better alternative. The surest way
for al-Qaida to gain a foothold in Syria is for us to turn our backs on
these brave Syrians who are fighting to defend themselves. After all,
Sunni Iraqis were willing to ally with al-Qaida when they felt
desperate enough, but when America gave them a better alternative, they
turned their guns on al-Qaida. Why should it be different in Syria?
Another objection to providing military assistance to the Syrian
opposition is that the conflict has become a sectarian civil war and
our intervention would enable the Sunni majority to take a bloody and
indiscriminate revenge against the Alawite minority. This is a serious
and legitimate concern, and it is only growing worse the longer the
conflict goes on. As we saw in Iraq or Lebanon before it, time favors
the hard-liners in a conflict such as this. The suffering of Sunnis at
the hands of Asad only stokes the temptation for revenge, which in turn
only deepens fears among the Alawites and strengthens their incentive
to keep fighting. For this reason alone, it is all the more compelling
to find a way to end the bloodshed as soon as possible.
Furthermore, the risks of sectarian conflict will exist in Syria
whether or not we get more involved. And we will at least have some
ability to try to mitigate these risks if we work to assist the armed
opposition now. That will at least help us to know them better and to
establish some trust and exercise some influence with them, because we
took their side when they needed it most. We should not overstate the
potential influence we could gain with opposition groups inside Syria,
but it will only diminish the longer we wait to offer them meaningful
support. And what we can say for certain is we will have no influence
whatsoever with these people if they feel we abandoned them. This is a
real moral dilemma, but we cannot allow the opposition in Syria to be
crushed at present while we worry about the future.
We also hear it said, including by the administration, that we should
not contribute to the militarization of the conflict. If only Russia
and Iran shared that sentiment. Instead, they are shamelessly fueling
Asad's killing machine. We need to deal with reality as it is, not as
we wish it to be. And the reality in Syria today is largely a one-sided
fight where the aggressors are not lacking for military means and zeal.
Indeed, Asad appears to be fully committed to crushing the opposition
at all costs. Iran and Russia appear to be fully committed to helping
him do it.
The many Syrians who have taken up arms to defend themselves and
their communities appear to be fully committed to acquiring the
necessary weapons to resist Asad, and leading
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Arab States appear increasingly committed to providing those weapons.
The only ones who seem overly concerned about a militarization of the
conflict is the United States and some of its allies. The time has come
to ask a different question: Whom do we want to win in Syria--our
friends or our enemies?
There are always plenty of reasons not to do something, and we can
list them clearly in the case of Syria. We know the opposition is
divided. We know the armed resistance inside the country lacks cohesion
or command and control. We know some elements of the opposition may
sympathize with violent extremist ideologies or harbor dark thoughts of
sectarian revenge. We know many of Syria's immediate neighbors remain
cautious about taking overly provocative actions that could undermine
Asad. And we know the American people are weary of conflict--
justifiably so--and we would rather focus on domestic problems.
These are realities. But while we are compelled to acknowledge them,
we are not condemned to accept them forever. With resolve, principled
leadership, and wise policy, we can shape better realities. That is
what the Syrian people have done.
By no rational calculation should this uprising against Asad still be
going on. The Syrian people are outmatched. They are outgunned. They
are lacking for food and water and other basic needs. They are
confronting a regime with limitless disregard for human dignity and
capacity for sheer savagery. For an entire year, the Syrian people have
faced death and those unspeakable things worse than death, and they
still have not given up. Still they take to the streets to protest
peacefully for justice, still they carry on their fight, and they do so
on behalf of many of the same universal values we share and many of the
same interests as well. These people are our allies. They want many of
the same things we do. They have expanded the boundaries of what
everyone thought was possible in Syria. They have earned our respect,
and now they need our support to finish what they started. The Syrian
people deserve to succeed, and shame on us if we fail to help them.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). The Senator from Illinois.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask to speak in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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