[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 21 (Tuesday, February 4, 2014)]
[House]
[Page H1549]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       THE PRIMACY OF STRONG AMERICAN LEADERSHIP AROUND THE GLOBE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Kinzinger) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KINZINGER of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, we deal with a lot of very 
important issues in this body. In fact, everybody that is going to 
speak this morning is going to speak about some very important issues. 
But I would argue that there is no issue more important that we deal 
with in this body than the issue of American global leadership and the 
issue of national defense.
  I just got back from a security summit in Munich, and I want to share 
some of my thoughts in talking to our allies and talking to strategic 
partners around the globe.
  Ladies and gentlemen, there is a decline of American leadership 
around the globe. There is a perception that America is on the retreat 
from the rest of the world and is an America tired of a decade of war, 
which I fully understand, and is an America that decides the fight is 
just not worth it anymore. The decline of American leadership around 
the world is not just something that we can't do because it is not 
good, but it is dangerous--not just to us, but to the rest of the 
globe.
  Think about how we got in this position in the first place. It was 
the failure of American leadership through the nineties to pursue a 
terrorist jihadist by the name of Osama bin Laden. Instead, this Nation 
and the President treated him as a common criminal and not as a 
declared opponent and a war opponent of the United States of America. 
What we saw was an attack on the World Trade Center, an attack to the 
USS Cole, an attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and then, 
finally, it culminated in an attack that took 3,000 American lives and 
woke America up to the reality of global jihadism and terrorism, and 
the fact that we have people that live solely for the purpose of 
killing and destroying people that don't see eye to eye with their 
specific religious ideology.
  Failure to confront those terrorists in the 1990s led to that big 
problem we have today. And what we have seen lately is the same kind of 
retrenchment by the United States of America--undoubtedly, still the 
most powerful country in the world. Our enemies no longer fear us, and 
our allies no longer trust us.
  Let me label a few of these areas that have concerned me.
  In Iraq--I am a veteran of Iraq--the U.S. Marines actually fought to 
take the city of Fallujah and took the most casualties that they have 
taken probably since Khe Sanh in Vietnam. Today, the black flag of al 
Qaeda flies over Fallujah. The sacrifice of thousands of Americans is 
now being confronted by the black flag of al Qaeda because this 
President, eager to achieve a campaign promise, pulled all the troops 
out at the end of 2011 and didn't leave a residual force. As unpopular 
as it may be, if we had left a counterterrorism force in Iraq, we would 
not be facing this problem today.
  I look at a terrible deal that was just struck with Iran, a deal that 
basically says Iran is allowed to be a threshold nuclear state. Sure, 
the Secretary and the President will say that we are going from 20 
percent enrichment to 5. He doesn't mention that bringing 5 percent 
enrichment to weapons-grade enrichment actually doesn't take that long. 
And, oh, by the way, all the surrounding states to Iran think that they 
are totally entitled to say that they have a right to enrich uranium up 
to 5 percent, in essence, creating a whole host of Middle East 
threshold nuclear states. And yet we call this a victory?
  I look at Syria--11,000 opponents to Assad, tortured and murdered and 
labeled with numbers--11,000 people--which made Srebrenica, the thing 
that launched America to intervene in Bosnia, look small. Eleven 
thousand opponents to Assad tortured and killed. And you look at Assad, 
who is purposely targeting the Free Syrian Army and not al Qaeda 
opposition so that al Qaeda opposition grows to him and he can stand in 
front of the West and say, ``I am the protector.'' If we get to the 
point where we look to Assad, a brutal dictator in Syria, as the 
protector of freedom, God help us.
  I look at instability in Lebanon, and I look at one of our greatest 
allies, Jordan, hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees. I look at 
Israel, surrounded by instability in the Middle East, and I look at a 
resurgent China that challenges America all over the globe now, and I 
look at a Russia that continues to occupy one-third of its neighbor to 
the south, Georgia. I look at Ukraine's people standing up for freedom. 
I haven't heard much from this administration.
  I am burdened by this lack of American global leadership. I don't 
care about the politics of it. I don't care about any of this. I care 
about the future of this country. And what I see is the decline of 
American leadership in what is still the greatest country around the 
globe.

                          ____________________