[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 129 (Wednesday, September 10, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5466-S5468]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          MIDDLE EAST STRATEGY

  Mr. McCONNELL. Last month I got to spend a lot of time with the 
people of Kentucky, and since there has been no shortage of issues to 
keep people up at night over the past few months, I got a lot of 
straight talk on a lot of topics. I heard a lot about the crisis at the 
border, about lost health care plans, the chronic shortage of good 
jobs, stagnant wages, even Ebola, the spread of which is a threat that 
must be taken seriously.
  Yet one issue that kept coming up is America's role in the world and 
the growing sense that some in Washington are more or less content to 
let others shape our destiny for us. For many that concern was 
crystallized when they witnessed the barbaric execution of an American 
citizen by an ISIL terrorist and the halting reaction to it by a 
President who has yet to find his footing when it comes to dealing with 
this group that clearly has the will, the means, and the sanctuary it 
needs to do more.
  Last week the White House announced that the President plans to 
explain the nature of the threat ISIL poses in a speech to the American 
people tonight. Well, after spending a month talking with folks in 
Kentucky, it is pretty clear--to me, at least--that the American people 
fully appreciate the nature of this threat. After the beheadings of two 
American citizens, they don't want an explanation of what is happening, 
they want a plan. They want some Presidential leadership.
  I hope the President lays out a credible plan to defeat ISIL. I hope 
he outlines the steps he intends to take beyond simply the defense of 
Baghdad, Erbil, Sinjar, and Amerli, and what legal authorities and 
resources he thinks are required to execute a successful campaign 
against ISIL. But the fact is the rise of ISIL is not an isolated 
failure. The spread of ISIL occurred in a particular context, and if we 
hope to defeat this threat, we need to come to terms with that now.
  So before speaking with a little more specificity about ISIL and the 
ongoing threat of global terrorism, I would like to briefly restate my 
concerns about the consequences of the President's foreign policy, as I 
warned a few months ago, because ISIL's military advance across Syria 
and Iraq carries a much larger lesson--a lesson that should prompt the 
President to reconsider and revise his overall national security policy 
and better prepare the country and our military to confront the threats 
that will survive his time in office.
  First, it is important to note a few of the consistent objectives 
that have always characterized this President's national security 
policy: drawing down our conventional and nuclear forces, withdrawing 
from Iraq and Afghanistan, and placing a greater reliance upon 
international organizations and diplomacy.
  As I have noted on other occasions, I have serious differences with 
the President over this approach. In my view, we have a duty as a 
superpower without imperialistic aims to help maintain international 
order and balance of

[[Page S5467]]

power, and that international order is maintained by American military 
might. Indeed, American military might is its backbone. But that is not 
a view this President seems to share.
  The defining bookends to the President's approach were the Executive 
orders signed his first week in office which included the declaration 
that Guantanamo would be closed within a year without any plan on what 
to do with its detainees and the Executive orders that ended the CIA's 
detention and interrogation programs at the same time. In May of this 
year the President also announced that all of our combat forces would 
be withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of this term whether or not 
the Taliban is successful in capturing parts of Afghanistan, whether or 
not Al Qaeda's senior leadership has found a more permissive 
environment in the tribal areas of Pakistan, and whether or not Al 
Qaeda has been driven from Afghanistan.
  All of this underscores something I have been suggesting for some 
time--that the President is a rather reluctant Commander in Chief--
because between those two bookends much has occurred to undermine our 
Nation's national security. Yet, tragically, the President has not 
adapted accordingly.
  We have seen the failure to negotiate a status of forces agreement 
with Iraq that would have allowed for a residual military force and 
likely prevented the assault by the Islamic State of Syria and the 
Levant.
  We have seen how the President's inability to see Russia and China as 
the dissatisfied regional powers they are, intent on increasing their 
spheres of influence, has exposed our own allies to new risk. The 
failed reset with Russia and the President's commitment to a world 
without nuclear weapons led him to hastily sign an arms treaty with 
Russia that did nothing to substantially reduce its nuclear stockpile 
or its tactical nuclear weapons. And, of course, Russia was undeterred 
in its assault upon Ukraine.
  The President announced a strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific without 
any real plan to fund it. This failure to invest in the kinds of naval, 
air, and Marine Corps forces we will need to maintain our dominance in 
this region in the years to come could have tragic consequences down 
the road.
  Of course, we have all seen how eager the President was to declare an 
end to the war on terror, but as the President was focused on unwinding 
or reversing past policies through Executive order, the threat from Al 
Qaeda and affiliated groups only metastasized. Uprisings in north 
Africa and the broader Middle East resulted in additional ungoverned 
space in Syria, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen. There were prison breaks in 
Iraq, Pakistan, and Libya, and the release of hundreds of prisoners in 
Egypt. Terrorists also escaped from prisons in Yemen--a country that is 
no more ready to detain the terrorists at Guantanamo today than they 
were back in 2009.
  The President's response to all of this has been to draw down our 
conventional forces and capabilities and to deploy special operations 
forces in economy-of-force train-and-assist missions across the globe. 
Speaking at West Point in May, he pointed to a network of partnerships 
from South Asia to the Sahel to be funded by a $5 billion counterterror 
partnership fund for which Congress has yet to receive a viable plan. 
In those cases where indigenous forces prove insufficient and a need 
for direct action actually arises, the President announced his intent 
to resort to the use of armed, unmanned aerial vehicles for strikes, as 
has been done in Yemen and Somalia. By deploying special operations 
forces, the President hoped to manage the diffuse threat posed by Al 
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Boko Haram, terrorist networks inside 
of Libya that now threaten Egypt, the al-Nusrah front, the Taliban, 
ISIL, and other terrorist groups.
  But as the nature of terrorist insurgencies has evolved, the 
President sees no need to reverse the harmful damage of the defense 
cuts he insisted upon, to rebuild our conventional and nuclear forces 
or to accept that leaving behind residual forces in Iraq and 
Afghanistan is an effective means by which to preserve the strategic 
gains we have made over the years through tremendous sacrifice.
  The truth is that the threat of some of these al Qaeda affiliates, 
associated groups, or independent terrorist organizations has simply 
outpaced the President's economy-of-force concept. In some cases the 
host nation's military, which we have trained and equipped, has proven 
to be inadequate to defeat the insurgency in question, as is the case 
with AQAP, the Taliban, or ISIL. In some cases the insurgency does not 
affiliate itself with al Qaeda or builds upon territorial gains before 
aspiring to attack the U.S. homeland.
  The growth, advance, and evolution of ISIL presents a turning point 
for the President. Will the fall of Anbar Province and the threat posed 
by ISIL to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey lead to a reconsideration 
of his entire national security policy, the kind I have alluded to here 
and elsewhere, or will the President confine himself within the 
bookends of shortsighted national security policies that were 
originally conceived on the campaign trail back in 2008?
  If prior events or arguments left the President unpersuaded, the 
emergence and recent actions of ISIL should convince him that the time 
has come to revisit his prior assumptions and rethink his approach. 
ISIL is large and lethal, and its rapid growth has outpaced the 
capacity of either the Peshmerga, the Iraqi security forces, or the 
moderate Syrian opposition to contain it. Ominously, ISIL has developed 
expertise in small-unit infantry tactics, the use of insurgent tactics, 
and as a terrorist organization. As a result of oil sales, ransoms, 
bank robberies, and donations, it is also well funded.
  We need a plan, and we need it now. The President has now declared 
that defeating ISIL is his objective, and that is a very good start. 
But Americans don't want a lecture, they want a plan--a credible, 
comprehensive plan to deal with this menace that clearly wants to harm 
us here at home and is only becoming stronger by the day.
  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dempsey has said 
that defeating ISIL will require military action within Syria, and the 
President has now declared that defeating ISIL is his objective. 
Tonight the President needs to set forth the military strategy and the 
means required to defeat ISIL and to link those actions to any 
additional authorization and appropriations he would like to see from 
Congress. If the President develops a regional strategy, builds a 
combat-effective military coalition, and explains how his strategy will 
lead to the defeat of ISIL, I believe he will have significant 
congressional support. This is no small matter. If Congress is asked to 
support a strategy, it needs to be a strategy that is designed to 
succeed and not a mere restatement of current policy which we know is 
insufficient to the task.
  The President must seize this opportunity to lead. This is not the 
time to shirk or put off his solemn responsibilities as Commander in 
Chief because passing off this threat to his successor would not only 
be irresponsible, it would increase the threat ISIL poses to Americans 
by enabling it to secure its gains within Iraq and Syria. In my view, 
ISIL's campaign across Syria and Iraq presents the President with an 
opportunity. It is an opportunity to reconsider his failed national 
security policy.
  The President and his advisers may have convinced themselves of their 
standard straw man argument that anyone who disagrees with this failed 
approach is bent on serial occupations or bent on invasions, but that 
is really a false choice, and it is certainly not a plan.
  It is time to put the straw man aside and to realize the fight is not 
with his critics here at home, it is with ISIL. That is why this 
morning I am calling on the President to present us with a credible 
plan the American people have been waiting for, explain our military 
objectives, and rally public support for accomplishing them. That is 
what the Commander in Chief should be doing at a moment such as this.
  If the threat from ISIL demands the commitment of American resources 
and the risk of American life, the President has a duty to explain that 
to the Nation and Congress this evening even if it doesn't conform with 
the tidy vision of world affairs he outlined as a candidate 6 years 
ago. If his strategy is little more than a restatement of the current 
policies, if all he plans to do is

[[Page S5468]]

manage this threat and pass it off to his successor, well, we need to 
know that too because Americans are worried and they are anxious. They 
want and deserve the truth. Most of all, they want a plan, and that is 
what I am hoping for tonight.

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