[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 7 (Wednesday, January 14, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H398-H403]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RADICAL ISLAM
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2015, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting short week. And
with all the drills in the world going on, it is important that we deal
with our Department of Homeland Security. And I am proud the House has
taken quick action to pass such a budget and passed it handily.
Homeland Security needs to be funded, and the President needs to sign
the bill. We have finished that today and are sending it to the Senate.
Hopefully they will work quickly and deal with this issue because, as
people in America know, we have crises all around us. We have threats
to our security all around us that require immediate attention.
The world is watching as we play golf while they come together,
millions at a time, to stand against radical Islam and Islamic
terrorism.
So it has been interesting to see the White House as the only
significant international capital where the ultimate leader of the
country cannot bring himself and, therefore, his spokespeople cannot
bring themselves, to say the words ``radical Islamic terrorism,''
because that is what we are talking about.
And for an administration to diminish the seriousness of radical
Islamic terrorists wanting to destroy Western civilization is worse
than having our leadership's head in the sand, or wherever their head
is. It is important to wake up and recognize what the world has
recognized, what our Muslim friends have recognized--that radical Islam
is a threat to our very existence and way of life.
The Weekly Standard has an article, January 13, by Daniel Halper,
which says: ``The White House won't be calling jihadists adherents to
`radical Islam.' At least, that's the reasonable takeaway from this
extraordinary exchange the White House press secretary had today with a
reporter.''
And I will jump down to a statement by President Obama's chief
spokesperson:
Mr. Earnest: I think the reason is twofold. One is I
certainly wouldn't want to be in a position where I'm
repeating the justification that they have cited that I think
is completely illegitimate, right? That they have invoked
Islam to try to justify their attacks.
And the reporter said:
But to call it radical Islam you feel would be playing into
their hands.
Mr. Earnest: Well, I think what I'm trying to do is I'm
trying to describe to you what happened and what they did.
These are individuals who are terrorists. And what they did
was they tried to invoke their own distorted deviant view of
Islam to try to justify them.
And I want to stop there. The President's mouthpiece says that he is
not going to call it ``radical Islam'' or ``Islamic terrorism'' because
that is a deviant view. Well, if you look at the definition of
``deviant,'' that is what deviates from what most people do or say or
think.
So it would appear, Mr. Speaker, that the deviant thought process is
not what the reporters had and not what the major countries in the
world have and not what our Muslim leader friends in the world have. It
is what this White House has. Theirs is the deviation from what is
truth, because the truth is--as much as this President doesn't want to
say it, and he doesn't allow his spokespeople to say it, I will say it,
Mr. Speaker: this is radical Islamic terrorism, and it is a threat to
Western civilization.
And the more our leaders refuse to recognize it for what it is, the
worse it gets because the radical Islamic terrorists realize they are
winning. And the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the OIC,
composed of the Islamic states in the world, all 57--I know it gets
confusing to some in this country's leadership whether we have 57
States and they have 50 or they have 57 and we have 50. But they have
57 because they include one that is not actually a state. But they are
the ones that started the campaign after 9/11 of calling anyone who
expresses concern about radical Islamic terrorism ``Islamophobes.''
I fear God. I don't fear any man. I am not a phobe of anything. But
it is time to recognize truth, and that is that radical Islamic
terrorists want to destroy our life and kill us. It is very simple.
And what is remarkable--and I think it is very important that both
Democrats and Republicans have the opportunity to travel around and
speak to world leaders in their own countries because when you are
there in their country talking to them, as some of us on both sides of
the aisle have done in those Middle Eastern countries, led by moderate
Muslims who don't believe they need to have an explosive jihad, they
recognize that the terrorism that is a threat to them, as moderate
Muslims, and the terrorism that is a threat to us and Western
civilization, is radical Islam. They recognize that it is a religion.
And they recognize that when people in the name of Allah and Islam
take territory and claim they are their own caliphate, their own
government, then you had better understand who they are and what they
are. And in this case, the Islamic State has enough
[[Page H399]]
strength and enough power to be taken seriously so that they are
totally defeated and wiped off the map, whether it is in Syria,
northern Iraq, wherever they find themselves, because they are at war
with us.
And I mentioned it before, Mr. Speaker, but as we have had this
administration do a cleansing--not necessarily a book-burning but a
burning, in essence, of parts of the training books that talk about
radical Islam, that tried to educate our FBI, our State Department, our
intelligence communities, all of our government workers on what radical
Islam is, what it believes, the intelligence officer said: We have
blinded ourselves of the ability to see our enemy. And that has never
been more apparent than it has been this week, with the radical Islamic
jihad terrorist attack in Paris and in Nigeria.
Even though there weren't reporters killed in Nigeria, those lives
were every bit as much precious--around 2,000 lives. Somehow, much of
the mainstream media had trouble reporting that. They were
concentrating on the horrors of the journalists killed in Paris, and
rightfully so. But they should not be neglecting the horrors for those
villagers, so many of them Christian, who have been killed because they
did not believe in radical Islam.
And one of the reasons, I would submit, that we should have had a
President there in Paris--and I know it would have been difficult for
this President, but he should have been there locked arm-in-arm with
Prime Minster Netanyahu. Words keep leaking out about things that are
said, about strained relations that this administration has with the
Netanyahu administration. There is a leader whose eyes are clear and
his vision is clear, and he can see exactly who is at war against him,
who is helping him and the nation of Israel and who is not helping him
and the nation of Israel.
And as we know from history, anytime a nation's enemies see that
nation's strongest ally pulling away, it is provocative. And the more
the United States distances itself from Israel, from those who
recognize that radical Islamic terrorism is a threat to Western
civilization, then the more radical Islamists win.
{time} 1300
I really, honest to goodness, didn't think we would be 6 years in to
President Obama's administration with him still not willing to
acknowledge that radical Islam is a threat, is at war with us.
It is a religion. This administration may not like it, but it is a
religion. It is a radical form of Islam. I hope one day that our top
leaders in this country will have the courage of President al-Sisi in
Egypt and that will reflect, as General al-Sisi has, the will of the
people of their country.
If the story is properly written about Egypt--and one day it will be.
It won't be by people at The New York Times. It will be by people who
are not trying to twist and turn and create history the way they want
it. It will be by historians that are really looking at what has
happened.
They will see that in the last 6 years that, besides Israel, the
country that has been most fearless--and by ``country,'' I mean the
people of the country--most fearless in standing up for freedom and
against radical Islamic terrorism, unfortunately, has not been the
United States because of our leadership. It has been the nation of
Egypt.
Certainly, Israel has stood strong and fearless. Their nation has
been under attack nonstop. God bless them and protect them. Egypt was
not under attack other than by the radical form of Islam, the religion
of radical Islam, and this administration helped oust one of this
country's allies.
Like him or not, there were plenty of agreements signed by this
country with President Mubarak, and this administration disregarded
them. That is a problem for other countries and other leaders who want
to sign agreements with this administration, but they don't know that
our country can be trusted anymore.
As people see the decline of respect for America around the world,
they should understand that it is being credited to the lack of
reliability of the United States to keep its word, to support its
friends, not to turn its back on its friends. This Nation's leaders
have begun repeatedly appearing more helpful to our enemies than to our
own friends. They don't know who to trust.
I mentioned to Secretary Kerry that I have talked to people in the
Middle East, Muslim leaders, who say: We talk among ourselves, we are
all worried we may be the next ally to be thrown under the bus.
He wanted to know who said that. Well, obviously, I couldn't tell him
because he would throw them under the bus.
For many of us that have traveled around the Middle East and talked
to leaders in the Middle East, we understand what they feel. Maybe they
are not able to be as open and candid with this administration for fear
of it turning on them the way it does anybody within the administration
here in America or outside the administration.
God help the whistleblowers. If you want to stand up for truth,
justice, and the American way in this administration and point out
massive problems that could subject our country to attacks, to
terrorism, God help you because this administration is coming after
you. They will use the Justice Department, they will use the EPA, they
will use the IRS.
This administration has been weaponized to go after anybody that
dares to stand up, especially within the administration. People that
want to stand up and tell the truth, they are attacked, they are
threatened with prosecution.
If someone like General Petraeus, who has defended the
administration--but this administration knows that General Petraeus has
information that would virtually destroy any credibility that the
administration might still have nationally and internationally--so what
else would this administration do but leave over his head, for over a
year-and-a-half, the threat: We are going to prosecute you, so you
better keep your mouth shut.
They actually know just the threat of prosecution helps diminish
potential credibility. So if you wonder why General Petraeus has not
come out in the last year and a half and said, ``No, those weren't our
talking points, somebody that created them needs to be prosecuted, it
was a fraud on the American people,'' he is not going to say that.
He has got this administration hanging a prosecution over his head.
What do you expect? I doubt he will ever be able to say it without
worrying about something over his shoulder coming after him.
Here he is. He has been defensive of the administration. He has been
a good soldier. He has said what they wanted him to say. He hasn't told
all he could say, and they are going to make sure he doesn't--or if he
does, he pays a heavy criminal price. That is where we are now in
America.
It may have been the kind of administration Richard Nixon dreamed of,
but he knew he could never get there. He couldn't weaponize the IRS. He
apparently dreamed of it. This administration has done it.
For the President, for his spokespeople not to be able to call the
terrorism a result of radical Islamic terrorism, it weakens our
country, it emboldens our enemies, and as we have seen, you may take
out Osama bin Laden, but when you withdraw our troops prematurely
before Iraq soldiers are ready to stand on their own and you have
blinded ourselves of the ability to recognize that any believers like
Khamenei or Ahmadinejad, the former President of Iran, if you have
blinded yourself of the ability to learn and educate our administration
on what they believe, then you are going to fall prey to everything
they decide to do toward you and about you because you don't understand
where they are coming from.
I repeatedly reflect on that scene in the movie ``Patton,'' and
although he didn't know Rommel was not there with his tank division, he
yells out in the movie after his tanks have defeated Rommel's: Rommel,
you magnificent fatherless--I am paraphrasing--fatherless man, I read
your book.
If you read and learn and educate yourself about your enemies, you
have got a better chance of defeating them, but this administration
continues to make it more and more difficult to understand who our
enemies are. All of this backing up and crawfishing, well, you know,
this isn't all Islam.
[[Page H400]]
Of course, it is not all Islam. That is how I can go to Afghanistan
and hug dear Muslim friends, we have the same enemies--and a big old
bear of a man who led the Northern Alliance to defeat the Taliban by
February of 2002 in the initial defeat is now the Vice President, and
thank God he is.
Some of us that just met with the new leadership recently--and I have
known General Dostum for a while and met with my good friend the
Honorable Massoud.
President Ghani basically has gathered around him people a bit like
what Lincoln did. He took people who opposed him, ran against him, but
because he clearly cares deeply about Afghanistan, he gathered around
him a team of rivals, and the good thing is, unlike the current
administration here, he is not afraid of having people with opposing
viewpoints around him.
He is just like Lincoln. Lincoln had rivals all around him, and he
listened to their input. He got their opinions, and it helped him make
better decisions. This administration here needs to do what President
Ghani in Afghanistan is trying to do, and it is not easy because our
U.S. administration here has been reaching out for the Taliban.
Initially, the Taliban are defeated, and then this administration
comes in--and I know the prior administration started the massive
occupation of Afghanistan with tens of thousands of troops.
This President comes in, and in his campaign, he said that was the
real war. Well, yeah, but once you defeat your enemy in that part of
the world, you don't help yourself by becoming an occupier--you add
over 100,000 troops to the country that is so thrilled that you
relieved them of radical Islamic leadership, then you become an enemy
because, now, you are an occupier. We didn't do ourselves any favors.
There are people, unlike the Iraqis who threw down weapons and ran,
turned them over to the Islamic State, in Afghanistan, the Northern
Alliance was willing to fight the Taliban initially, and they are still
willing to fight.
In fact, before President Ghani was elected--that was so much
uncertainty: Is President Karzai going to try to have another term,
even though it is against the constitution? Are they in for a civil
war?
There was a great deal of trepidation on the part of the Northern
Alliance that fought against the Taliban on our behalf with less than
500 American special ops and intelligence people embedded.
They knew we withdrew, and the Taliban were able to take over the
national government. Then they were in for a war, and one of them told
me: Look, since you have taken back the weapons, you don't support us
anymore, and you are doing everything you can to help the Taliban--that
is this administration--we realize the odds are that we will lose our
lives, but we are not going down without a fight.
Well, fortunately, they have got a team of rivals leading the
country. Prayers are with them. They are moderate Muslims that I trust,
and they want the best for Afghanistan.
According to the military leaders I have talked to repeatedly in
Afghanistan and others, the country of Pakistan has been the biggest
supplier and supporter of the Taliban. The Taliban didn't do themselves
any favors when they just, in such evil fashion, attacked a school and
killed 140 or so precious people, including children.
There are many more in Pakistan that are saying: You know what, it is
time to stop supporting the Taliban, it is time to worry about
Pakistan.
Some have even started saying it is time to quit persecuting the
Baloch people.
{time} 1315
The arbitrary lines that were drawn many decades ago put probably the
bulk of the Baloch people in southern Pakistan where most of their
minerals are. It put the Baloch people within the arbitrary lines drawn
for a country called Iran. In fact, the Baloch area actually is where
the Straits of Hormuz are. It is where much of the oil and gas is.
I have grown to admire and love many of the Baloch people. I wouldn't
mind seeing them having an independent Balochistan. I wouldn't mind
seeing an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq, because unlike what
is portrayed in much of the mainstream media, the Kurds never threw
down their weapons and ran away or turned them over to the Islamic
State. They are people we can trust.
Mr. Speaker, a solution to our problem there would be to announce
that we are going to provide weapons directly to the Kurds. We don't
have to go through Baghdad, because Baghdad doesn't want them to have
the equipment they need. They are afraid of them. Let them have the
equipment they need to defeat the Islamic State. Yes, I know, that
would not make Turkey happy, but Turkey has said: Not only are we not
fighting the Islamic State--even though we have pledged in our NATO
alliance that we will help fight any enemy of our fellow NATO
signatories--we are not going to help, and we are not going to let you
use any of the NATO bases or U.S. bases here in Turkey. You are on your
own.
Well, Mr. Speaker, if Turkey is not going to fight them and they are
a threat to all Western civilization, then we are just going to have to
supply the Kurds and let them take them out.
It has been an honor to be over there numerous times and spend time
there even when the State Department said it was too dangerous to go.
Dana Rohrabacher and I went and spent 3 days when the State Department
was telling us it was too dangerous to be there. But I knew that there
was no way their leaders were going to let anything happen to us. And
they didn't. They were trustworthy.
Mr. Speaker, one of the problems this administration has is figuring
out whom we can trust and whom we can't. I know that this
administration continues to talk about these moderate, vetted Syrian
Army soldiers that we can really help. Well, if they were there 3 or 4
years ago, most of them are ready to throw in with the Islamic State or
with al Qaeda subsidiaries. In fact, they have done that very thing.
They have fought together.
I don't know if ``naivete'' is the proper word, but when this
administration started supplying their so-called free, vetted moderate
Syrian Army personnel and the equipment, they kept ending up in the
Islamic State's possession. They even suspended sending them more
weapons and equipment for a while, but then some months later they
picked it back up. I don't know why, what made them feel they were more
believable than they were before, but amazingly, they started sending
it, and it started ending up in Islamic State hands.
It is heartbreaking to be, as a few of us have, in northern Iraq in
the Kurdistan area with real, patriotic Kurds who love their people and
who have fought not just for themselves, but they have fought for other
groups, Shi'a and Sunni, without throwing down their weapons. They have
fought and died. But to look in their eyes and see the hurt as they
say: Couldn't you give us some Humvees, some up-armored vehicles?
Because we are fighting against the Islamic State, and they are using
American Humvees. They are using American armored personnel carriers.
They are using American tanks. We don't have anything that can
penetrate your American tanks or your personnel carriers. Those are
invulnerable almost completely to IEDs because you up-armored them and
gave them to the Syrian Army that gave them to ISIS, or you gave them
to the Iraqi soldiers that left them for ISIS.
The commander who had lost soldiers said: You don't know what it is
like to see a big, armored vehicle that is going to be used for a
suicide bombing coming at your soldiers who have weapons that can't
possibly penetrate those vehicles. And they are shooting. They are
doing everything they can to try to stop them, but because they are the
best America has in the way of fighting vehicles, we can't stop them,
and we know my guys are going to get blown up as this American vehicle
gets close, and it has been set up to be a suicide bomb.
Mr. Speaker, since this administration has not been effective in
fighting IS for so long, for too long they looked at them as the junior
varsity, the JVs, shouldn't we at least help those who are fighting to
help us, along with themselves, by giving them vehicles that could
match up against the vehicles we provided to the Islamic State? It
seems like the least we can do. It really does.
This administration was going to be the most transparent in history.
There
[[Page H401]]
is a story out this week from PJ Media. Josh Earnest doesn't think
President Obama is upset about missing the solidarity gathering of
world leaders. The world leaders see that our way of life is at risk,
and our leadership doesn't see it. He thinks if we give a good enough
speech, we coddle, we offer to buy offices in Qatar, or we release more
of their murderers, that surely they will recognize how truly
wonderful, kind, and generous we are and they will stop their evil ways
of killing innocent people. It is not going to happen.
I have Christian friends that say: Yes, but as Christians, we are
supposed to turn the other cheek. That is as individuals. Individual
Christians should live out the beatitudes as Christ gave them. But the
government has a different role. If you do evil, you should be afraid
because the government, within the bounds of Christianity--Romans
13:4--is supposed to punish the evil, eliminate the evils, and protect
your people. I don't try to convert anybody using my position in
government, but for those who misunderstand Christian teaching, you
need to read Romans 13.
We have an Attorney General still holding on, Holder the Holdover. He
said he is concerned about the so-called lone wolf attacks in the
United States--one of the things, Mr. Speaker, I don't think, again,
that this administration understands. They talk about these lone wolf
attacks, and yet when you get down to the bottom of it, you find out,
gee, they had talked to al-Awlaki, the man born in the United States so
he gets an American birth certificate, an American passport, and
American citizenship because his parents came over and had him while
they were here, so he is an American citizen. He is radicalizing
people.
These weren't lone wolfs. They got information, they got advice, and
they got radicalization from somebody else. It is tough to find anybody
self-radicalized because apparently there are plenty of imams in this
country that are not the general rank-and-file imams. They are imams
that are ready to radicalize those--and twist and convert into evil--
that would kill innocent children, women, and men.
Mr. Speaker, we need to recognize the threat that is upon us, and you
can't do that when an administration will not even call the evil for
what it is. I know indications are, gee, the economy is getting so much
better. We still have over 90 million people that are not counted as
unemployed because they just finally gave up looking for a job. To me,
that is unemployed. But we don't count them in our statistics. And this
staggering story came out today, written by Wyton Hall:
In a stunning Tuesday report, Gallup CEO and Chairman Jim
Clifton revealed that ``for the first time in 35 years,
American business deaths now outnumber business births.''
I can't help but think that has something to do with the massive
overregulation by this administration continuing to set records in the
number of regulations it sets. How in the world can businesses keep up
with over 70,000 new pages of regulations year after year? They did it
again in 2014, over 70,000 pages of new regulations, and they are
expected to follow them and manage to keep a business. You don't have
to look very far to find CEO after CEO or a person that started a
business, no matter how massive, who said: In looking at all the
regulations now, it is a good thing I started my business when I did,
because if I were trying to start it now, I never could. I couldn't
overcome all of the massive government overregulation.
Now, Mr. Speaker, we see ObamaCare continuing to fail and continuing
to provide less care for more money. But not to worry. A lot of your
good health care dollars are going to fund navigators who will never
put a Band-Aid on anybody or never even blow on a cut to make it feel
better. No. They will never even pat somebody on the back. They are
bureaucrats. They are not in the health care business, nor are the
thousands and thousands and thousands of new IRS agents who are not
looking out for your health. They will probably give you ulcers. But
they are part of the health care dollars now.
So people keep asking me: Louie, I don't understand. My deductible is
higher. I am paying more money than ever. I am getting less care. I am
getting turned down for things. I don't get to choose my doctor. I sure
don't have the insurance policy I wanted. I don't understand.
I have to explain: Well, that is because you are paying for a lot of
government workers that don't really help in anybody's health problems
at all. They create health problems, more likely.
With all of this as a background, all of the failures of the Federal
Government, the Federal Government, in fact, is intruding in people's
private lives. As they access email and gather phone logs of every call
to and from American individuals, we were assured that would not happen
when the PATRIOT Act was extended. I was not here when it was passed.
We were told it was only if you were a foreign terrorist, a known
foreign terrorist, or you had ties to foreign terrorists would you be
even eligible to have your phone logs gathered, emails checked.
``Only'' we were told. Well, that turned out not to be true. That was
just an outright lie. It is time to stop the government intrusion into
people's private lives unless the government has a warrant.
As a judge, I had no problem signing a warrant if there was probable
cause spelled out in the affidavit. There were times I would turn away
law officers and say: You have plenty of speculation there that sounds
good, but you don't have facts that get you to probable cause.
That should be in there, under the Constitution, before the
government can start invading your privacy.
Then when the House and Senate were controlled by the Democrats,
President Obama is in the Oval Office, they passed a bill creating this
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that apparently is out there
thinking they need to be able to monitor everybody's debit and credit
card records so that they can see if anybody is being taken advantage
of.
{time} 1330
Well, how about following the Constitution and not getting anybody's
bank records or credit card or debit card records unless you have
probable cause or unless the person gives permission.
I am hoping that is going to be a bill that we pass because I have
talked to enough Republicans and know how we feel, and there are
Democrats who feel the same way. Of course, they are the ones that
created this monster, but that needs to be reined in. And now with that
as a backdrop, we have the story: ``Obama backs government-run
Internet.''
And I know there was somebody who wrote into the Longview paper that
they want net neutrality. They love the idea of the government playing
more of a role in the Internet. Well guess what? When the government
takes control of the Internet in the name of neutrality, it will
probably not be neutral, according to most Americans' opinions.
So I hope Americans are not fooled. I hope Americans don't buy into
this because when the United States Government takes control of the
Internet, then we are going to start having the same problems they have
in China, in Russia, and other parts of the world where their
government does control their Internet, and they control your freedom
to search for what you want or to say what you want.
I know of numerous occasions where people said they were in China
typing, and they mention anything about the government, even if it is
not terrible what they said about the government, they start typing
again, and they have lost their Internet connection. They have learned
not to say anything about the government, let it go, and they keep
their Internet connection better.
Mr. Speaker, I just want to also touch on this because we passed the
funding for the Department of Homeland Security. I hope the President
doesn't veto the bill. I hope the Senate will pass what we passed.
There are some things in there I would have liked to have been
different, but I read the bill totally. There are some parts that
aren't great, and there are some parts that are great. I am very
proud--my friend John Carter has some great language in there. I know
he has worked very hard on language that is very good.
As I was reading the bill this weekend, I said, that was John
Carter's specific language from an earlier bill. Overall, it was a good
bill. The amendments helped it. I voted for the bill.
[[Page H402]]
And now hopefully the Senate will do the right thing and pass it, and
we will send it to the President and we will fund the Department of
Homeland Security without all of the amnesties he has
unconstitutionally created.
But if the President wants another way of doing things, I haven't
heard anyone else suggest this, but I brought it up with some friends
this morning. Perhaps we go ahead, if he doesn't think that he likes
that and we are not able to override a veto, maybe it is time to start
setting goals for the administration, and when they don't meet them, we
just take that money from them and block grant it out to State and
local law enforcement.
There are some jail cells open. We don't have to provide the hundreds
of millions of dollars to hold people being detained. The local law
enforcement is tired of holding people on behalf of the Federal
Government and not being reimbursed. Let them do the job they are
supposed to do of enforcing the law.
I know the Arizona case said, the Supreme Court said Arizona could
not be enforcing immigration law, that was a Federal job, but we
certainly have the authority to say, you know what? Let's block grant
that money out and let State and local government do that, enforce our
laws for us. I think we will get a whole lot better job done. So that
may be something else to consider. If the President is not going to
sign a bill that funds homeland security, maybe we need to fund it, and
if they can't meet their goals, block grant it out to local
authorities.
In the time I have left, I wanted to touch on a significant article
by Patrick Poole of PJ Media, because, as he says, it is a look back on
this year's parade of failure, and expect more in 2015.
His article is titled, ``The National Security `Not Top 10' of
2014.'' So my paraphrase is the top 10 failures in national security by
this administration.
Number one: befriending ``moderate al Qaeda'' in Syria. Patrick Poole
said:
``There are some ideas so at war with reason and reality they can
only exist in the fetid Potomac fever swamps of D.C. think tank and
foreign policy community. Such was the case in January when three of
the best and brightest from those ranks published an article in Foreign
Affairs (the same publication that in 2007 brought us the `moderate
Muslim Brotherhood') contending that the U.S. needed to befriend the
Syrian jihadist group Ahrar al-Sham as some kind of counter to more
extreme jihadist groups, like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. The precedent
they cited was the U.S. failure to designate the Taliban after 9/11.
Mind you, at the time they wrote this, one of Ahrar al-Sham's top
leaders was a lieutenant for al Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri, who
openly declared himself a member of al Qaeda. After most of their
leadership was wiped out in a bombing in September, they have
gravitated closer to the jihadist groups they were supposed to counter
and their positions have been bombed by the U.S., much to the
consternation of other vetted moderate rebel groups. So ridiculous was
their proposition that the original subtitle of their article, `An al
Qaeda Affiliate Worth Befriending,' was changed online to `An al Qaeda-
Linked Group Worth Befriending' in hopes of minimizing the absurdity of
their case.''
But this administration bought into it.
And I understand there may be a Republican Senator or two that buys
into it. It doesn't make it any less preposterous.
Number two of the top 10 national security failures:
Obama administration deploys three hashtag divisions in response to
Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Some folks may remember that the response of this administration to
help the Ukrainian people that I hold so dear, having lived with them
for a summer back as a college student, the response of this
administration was to launch a Twitter war that Russia wasn't terribly
concerned about.
The number three failure of national security was Obama calling ISIS
the ``JV team.''
I am sure Americans remember, and Patrick Poole discusses it, but to
call the Islamic state a JV team betrayed his failure to get his
security briefings as he should have to really understand what is
happening in the world, because I don't believe for a minute, having
talked to different intelligence people, I don't believe for a minute
that our intelligence people did not know how dangerous the Islamic
state was.
The number four failure of national security was the State Department
official denying that Boko Haram targeted Christians.
Having been over there and having hugged and wept with those parents
of daughters who were kidnapped and terrorized and made sex slaves,
unlike the State Department official who says it wasn't about them
being Christians--if you go hug them and weep with them and talk to
them and their pastors, as I have, you find out it was precisely
because they were Christians. Please, somebody in this administration,
wake up. Radical Islam is at war with the United States and any Western
civilization, and specifically with Christians.
When I asked these mothers whose daughters are still held kidnapped,
probably sold into sex slavery by now--and this administration has not
done enough because they don't see it as a war against Christianity--I
asked, just to be sure, I said: Did they attack--Boko Haram, these
radical Islamist terrorists--did they attack your daughter's school
because they were girls, because they don't believe girls should be
educated?
They said: Oh, no, they don't believe girls should be educated, but
they attacked it because it is a Christian school.
That is precisely why they attacked it.
Number five: Homeland Security adviser's pro-caliphate tweet used by
ISIS recruiters. I had been warning about this pro-caliphate Homeland
Security top adviser in Janet Napolitano's regime in Homeland Security,
a guy that has spoken, was a listed speaker to pay tribute to the
Ayatollah Khomeini as a man of vision of the 20th century, who blasted
the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation, the largest terrorist
support prosecution in American history, and he defended the convicted
defendants, and he tweets out. Finally, it was enough to show the
administration what most of us who had eyes and ears understood. He
tweeted out, after ISIS killed more innocent people, that the caliphate
was inevitable so just, you know, get ready. And then ISIS used that to
help recruit.
Number six failure of 2014 of national security in this
administration: Obama and the State Department give shout-outs to
Islamic cleric who okayed the fatwa authorizing the killing of
Americans in Iraq. And Patrick Poole lays out exactly what it involved.
Not once but twice, as I understand it, he gave a shout-out to this
Islamic cleric who authorized the killing of Americans in Iraq.
Number seven: Obama administration gives heavy weapons to ``vetted
moderate'' Syrian rebel groups; they promptly turn up in hands of ISIS
and al Qaeda.
Number eight: The White House defends the Muslim Brotherhood's
``commitment to nonviolence. And that is what some of the moderate
Muslim leaders in the Middle East have said, different countries
saying, Why are you helping the Muslim Brotherhood? Do you not
understand they are at war with you?
Number nine: The Obama administration defends U.S. Islamic groups
branded as terrorist groups by the UAE.
The UAE is run by moderate Muslims. Perhaps this administration could
learn something by listening to them and who they recognize to be
terrorist groups.
And number 10: Having banned discussions of ideology driving Islamic
terrorism, the Pentagon says it can't understand the ideology of ISIS.
Well, duh. It is no wonder they can't understand it when you are not
allowed to be educated about what these people believe. But there are
people around this town that have been banned from teaching about
radical Islam who perhaps should be unbanned.
In conclusion, I just want to reference the vote this week for
Speaker. The vote is behind us. It is done. The Speaker was reelected.
But one of the big concerns I had has not gone away, and it still needs
to be addressed.
Those 4 years that Democrats controlled the House and the Senate,
they set a record for the most bills brought to the floor where no
amendments by
[[Page H403]]
anybody were allowed. They wouldn't let us participate in the
legislative process. And we railed against that. We said, You put us in
the majority, we won't do that. And it breaks my heart that under the
current Speaker, a new record broke Nancy Pelosi's record of more bills
brought to the floor with no amendments allowed, a closed rule. That
has got to change.
Some have said our effort had no chance. If all those who said they
would have voted with us but it had no chance had voted with us, then
it would have been overwhelming.
{time} 1345
One of the Speaker's supporters came up to me yesterday on the floor
and handed me this and said, ``This is from an old novel.'' I think it
is called ``The Lion's Den.'' He said, ``This applies to you,'' and I
appreciate it more than he would know.
The quote is this:
No matter how the espousal of a lost cause might hurt his
prestige in the House, Zimmer had never hesitated to identify
himself with it if it seemed to him to be right. He knew only
two ways; the right one and the wrong, and if he sometimes
made a mistake, it was never one of honor: he voted as he
believed he should, and although sometimes his voice was
raised alone on one side of a question, it was never stilled.
There were 24 such people that spoke this week, and I hope they will
be honored and not belittled.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________