[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 132 (Tuesday, September 16, 2014)]
[House]
[Page H7536]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1045
WE CANNOT PERMANENTLY BE AT WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND TAKE CARE OF OUR 
                               OWN PEOPLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Madam Speaker, many years ago, I voted for 
the first gulf war after attending classified briefings about the great 
threats we faced from Saddam Hussein's elite troops; then I watched 
them surrender to CNN camera crews and empty tanks. I realized then 
that the threat had been greatly exaggerated.
  A few years later, we rushed to war in Iraq against weapons of mass 
destruction that were not there. The threat at the time of the second 
gulf war was greatly exaggerated, and I am glad that I voted against 
going to war that time.
  After the horrible beheadings of two American citizens, I felt we 
should respond, and I have publicly supported limited air strikes. I 
hope we can at some point, if we are not doing so already, send in a 
special operations team, or teams, to get those who have committed 
these beheadings just as we got Osama bin Laden; however, I do not 
support sending thousands of young Americans as combat troops on the 
ground into Middle Eastern civil and religious wars.
  The primary responsibility for fighting over there should be up to 
the countries in that region, and I do not believe we should have some 
fake coalition where most of the fighting and most of the funding comes 
from the U.S. military as in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
  While ISIS--or ISIL, as it has also been referred to--is a threat, we 
have faced far greater threats at other times in our history.
  Some of our leaders clamor for war to prove how tough they are. Some 
want to be little Churchills. Many may believe, if they don't support 
the strongest possible action, they are afraid they will be blamed if 
something bad happens; however, both our President and the Secretary of 
Homeland Security have said our intelligence and military officials 
have no evidence of any credible threat against the U.S. at this point.
  In addition, we have spent $716 billion on homeland security since 9/
11, just at the Federal level, not counting the billions spent by State 
and local governments and private companies. Just one company, FedEx, 
told me a couple of years after 9/11 that they had spent $200 million 
on security that they would not have spent had 9/11 not happened.
  On top of that, we spend much more on defense than the next top 10 
nations combined and almost more than all nations combined since the 
poor nations spend very little on defense. If we devoted our entire 
Federal budget to the Middle East, we could not stop all the fighting 
or solve all the problems of that region. If we spent our entire 
Federal budget on homeland security, we could not make our country 100 
percent perfectly safe.
  Some radical Islamic fanatic may do something bad in the U.S. but we 
are already spending all we can and doing all we can if we are going to 
meet the needs of our own people. The first obligation of the U.S. 
Congress should be to the American people, and the people of the Middle 
East are going to have to solve most of their own problems on their 
own.
  We do not have the money or the authority to try to run the whole 
world, and we certainly shouldn't panic or overreact to this threat 
from ISIS. Just a few weeks ago, their numbers were supposedly between 
5,000 and 10,000. Now, we suddenly have them up to 20,000 to 31,000, 
but we have over 1 million in our military, and, supposedly, other 
nations are going to help against ISIS.
  The leaders of ISIS have proven themselves to be cowards by beheading 
unarmed, defenseless men in front of cameras in undisclosed locations. 
We fought against al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan and then with al 
Qaeda in Libya. A year ago, our hawks wanted to take out Assad in 
Syria. Now, we want to have him with us against ISIS.
  I agree with what Judge Andrew Napolitano wrote a few days ago:

       What should Congress do? It should declare once and for all 
     that we will stay out of this ancient Muslim civil war of 
     Shia versus Sunni. We have been on both sides of it. Each 
     side is barbarous. In the 1980s, we helped the Sunnis. Now, 
     we are helping the Shias.
       Last year, Mr. Obama offered to help the Islamic state by 
     degrading its adversaries; now, he wants to degrade the 
     Islamic state. We have slaughtered innocents and squandered 
     fortunes in an effort to achieve temporary military victories 
     that neither enhance our freedom nor fortify our safety.
       We will only have peace when we come home, when we cease 
     military intervention in an area of the world not suited for 
     democracy and in which we are essentially despised.

  I agree with Judge Napolitano.
  Finally, Madam Speaker, I say again that we cannot take care of our 
own people and our country if we are permanently at war in the Middle 
East.

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