[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 127 (Monday, September 8, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5376-S5378]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
By Mr. CRUZ (for himself and Mr. Grassley):
S. 2779. A bill to amend section 349 of the Immigration and
Nationality Act to deem specified activities in support of terrorism as
renunciation of United States nationality; read the first time.
Mr. CRUZ. 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
[[Page S5377]]
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.
[[Page S5378]]
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.
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