[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 24 (Thursday, February 12, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S952-S954]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   PRESIDENT'S NATIONAL SECURITY PLAN

  Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, on the same week that the President 
released his national strategy, a pilot in the Royal Jordanian Air 
Force was burned alive by radical Islamists.
  While the administration was putting the finishing touches on this 
document, the propaganda wing of ISIS was busy too. The jihadist group 
was pumping out a video of this latest act of horrific brutality.
  ISIS represents one of the biggest threats to peace of an already 
unstable region. These terrorists are committed to establishing a new 
caliphate ruled by shari'a law where all would be forced to convert or 
die. They are committed to destroying all who stand in their way. If 
anyone embodies radical Islam, it is ISIS.
  Given the severity of the threat posed by ISIS, not to mention 
continuing efforts of Al Qaeda to strike again, you would think a plan 
to take on radical Islam would be a focal part of the President's 
national security plan. It is not. In fact, there is no mention of 
radical Islam in the document at all.
  What is mentioned instead is global warming. Yes, global warming is 
discussed in the President's national security strategy, but not 
radical Islamic extremism. Apparently that is not a threat to the 
United States. The President and his advisers have stood by this 
senseless narrative.
  In a lengthy interview with Vox, the President essentially blamed the 
media for overhyping the threat of terrorism. He went on to say that 
terrorism sells because it is ``all about the ratings,'' and climate 
change is ``a hard story for the media to tell on a day-to-day basis.''
  Yesterday the White House spokesman was pressed on this very issue 
and refused to accept the premise that terrorist groups such as ISIS 
pose a ``greater clear and present danger'' than global warming. So you 
can see the disconnect that exists within the administration. But it 
doesn't end with just this document.
  The President's budget proposal for the Department of Homeland 
Security would allocate tens of millions of dollars to protect against 
climate change. It does so by failing to dedicate funds for communities 
to identify and disrupt homegrown terror, despite the fact that ISIS is 
recruiting foreign fighters at a clip never seen before. While the 
majority of them are from the Middle East, the Wall Street Journal 
reports that upwards of 20,000 foreign fighters have joined ISIS in the 
past 2 years.
  The group's savvy use of social media and its highly orchestrated 
propaganda campaign has appealed to Westerners as well, bringing 
thousands of jihadists with passports that allow them to travel with 
ease to ISIS-controlled territory. Where they will ultimately take the 
deadly skills they learned in Iraq and Syria remains to be seen. These 
foreign fighters could return home or even come to the United States, 
giving ISIS the ability to strike on American soil. The recent attacks 
in Paris serve as a vivid reminder that the reach of radical Islam 
extends far beyond the jihadi fighters on the ground in Iraq and in 
Syria.

[[Page S953]]

  Meanwhile, the Democrats in this Chamber, at the behest of the 
President, are holding up the House-passed DHS appropriations bill. 
Senate Democrats voted three times to filibuster the House-passed 
Department of Homeland Security funding bill last week. Their objection 
is that it withholds funding from the President's unconstitutional 
Executive actions on immigration. They are holding up the entire bill 
and threatening to shut down DHS to protect the President's priority--
not because the funding is too low or because the programs need 
reforms. Their complaint is that the President is not getting what he 
wants.
  I encourage them to relent on their filibuster so we can debate the 
bill, make changes if the Chamber sees fit, and send it to the 
President. If the President truly wants immigration reform, then do it 
the right way and work with Congress to get it done. Don't go about it 
on your own unconstitutionally and then threaten to shut down a 
department charged with protecting Americans. It is out of touch, but 
it is not the first time this administration's priorities have been at 
odds with those of the American people.
  The President once characterized ISIS as the JV team. This is no JV 
team. As the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee noted, 
ISIS is the ``largest convergence of Islamist terrorists in history'' 
that has created a ``pseudo-state dead set on attacking America.''
  Preventing ISIS from achieving its goals takes a clear, forceful 
security strategy both abroad and at home. What the President has put 
forward is neither.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from 
Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to follow on the comments of my good 
friend and neighbor from Arkansas, Senator Boozman. He was talking 
about what the President is now asking the Congress to do. I think 
there are many questions that need to be asked about this authorization 
for activity against ISIS and what that might mean before the Congress 
can move forward.
  The principal question, however, will continue to be: Do we have a 
strategy? And if we have a strategy, which has not yet been explained, 
is there a commitment to that strategy to move forward? Is this just 
another redline that means nothing or is this a document that is 
designed to meet some objectives that really are not the objectives of 
fighting people who clearly perceive freedom and America and the values 
we stand for as anathema to what they would hope to see?
  There are so many questions. Is the 3-year timeframe enough? Why 
would you have a 3-year timeframe? That puts this authorization of 
force 1 year into the next Presidency. What kind of legacy is that to 
leave the next President? The minute that person becomes President, 
suddenly you have a clock that is ticking. If we take that approach, 
not only are we telling our adversaries when we plan to quit, we are 
telling the next President, no matter what the situation is, when we 
will quit. We have not been presented with a 3-year plan on how to 
degrade and destroy ISIS. We understand that is what the goal is, but 
nobody suggested a 3-year plan.
  In fact, if you look back over the last 6 months, you will find the 
President's ability to project his foreign policy seems to defy all 
projections. A few months ago, he talked about Yemen as an example of 
how well our policy is working. This week we abandoned the Embassy and 
abandoned our efforts in that country.
  The specific focus on ISIS and/or associated persons or forces--what 
does that mean? Does that mean another terrorist group that is 
struggling against ISIS is not covered by this? Does that mean Al Qaeda 
or al-Nusra or some other group that is equally focused on the United 
States and our friends is not covered by this?
  The President has the authority to go after terrorist organizations. 
As far as 2001, 2002--he says he wants at least one of those 
authorities left on the books. By the way, it is sufficient to do 
anything we want to do now, so why add this to it?
  This debate may take a while, but during the debate, I think we need 
to listen closely to our military leaders and question them again about 
how we can accomplish what we need to accomplish here, what we can do 
to help our friends as they work to accomplish what needs to be 
accomplished here, what we do to encourage people from the neighborhood 
to put their boots on the ground, and what do we need to do to be 
helpful.
  Last weekend I traveled with a few other members of the Senate Select 
Committee on Intelligence to Jordan and Turkey to discuss the ISIS 
threat and what was happening in Iraq and Syria. It was especially 
interesting to be in Jordan just after the brutal murder of the 
Jordanian pilot. I don't know that we know for sure exactly when that 
happened, but I think there are many reasons to believe this group was 
negotiating to save the life of the pilot long after the pilot's life 
had been taken in one of the most barbarous of possible ways. It got 
the attention of the neighborhood, and certainly Jordan and the UAE and 
others are beginning to line up with a new determination to go after 
ISIS, hitting targets on the ground, we are told, that we have known 
were targets for a long time but we didn't seem to be able to have the 
willingness to hit them. Certainly we had the capacity to hit them. 
Certainly we had the information to hit them. But why weren't we doing 
that? What is the commitment to do this?

  The President asked the Congress of the United States to make this 
commitment of use of force, but there is absolutely no reason for us to 
make that commitment unless he intends to use the force and unless we 
understand how he intends to use the force. Not only can we not define 
our policy here; those people around the world who would like to know 
what our policy is don't hear it defined either.
  Then we have events happen such as the botched interview of last 
weekend the Senator from Arkansas was speaking about where the 
President was asked if ``the media sometimes overstates the level of 
alarm people should have about terrorism and this kind of chaos, as 
opposed to a longer-term problem of climate change and epidemic 
disease.'' The President's response was ``Absolutely.'' Absolutely, a 
long-term problem of climate change and epidemic disease somehow 
calculates into the discussion of whether we are in imminent danger of 
these terrorist groups and whether that is real?
  He went on to say in that interview: ``If it bleeds, it leads, 
right?'' This is the President talking. He went on to say, ``You show 
crime stories and you show fires, because that's what folks watch, and 
it's all about ratings.'' I don't know what that means. I wouldn't want 
to suppose the President is saying that coverage of terrorism is about 
ratings. I, frankly, don't know what it means, but I do know that if I 
don't know what it means, a lot of people all over the world don't know 
what it means.
  This is not climate change. It is not what we need to be doing at the 
CDC. The President is not asking for authorized use of force to do 
something about the CDC. When that was happening, the Congress stepped 
up and said: OK, here is money that will help meet that immediate need. 
That is not the same kind of discussion at all.
  The President also raised eyebrows by suggesting that the shooting at 
a kosher deli, kosher market in Paris was ``random.'' I think his exact 
quote was, ``It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be 
deeply concerned when you've got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots 
who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in 
Paris.'' I could speak quite a bit about the President's unwillingness 
to call this bunch of violent, vicious zealots what they are. They are 
Islamic extremists. The Prime Minister of Great Britain can say that. 
Other leaders all over the world can say that. We can't say that.
  The other comment I thought was particularly interesting was 
``randomly'' shoot people in a deli in Paris. It was a kosher deli in 
Paris. There was no ``random'' about that. Most of the customers would 
be and the victims were Jews. There was no ``random'' about that. Let's 
accept this for what it is.
  Let's not go back, as the President did at the National Prayer 
Breakfast a few days ago, and decide to equate something--crusades, 
almost 800 years

[[Page S954]]

ago, 600 years ago, various crusades--equate the crusades with what is 
happening now and somehow suggest that these people are just 
temporarily misguided. These people are not temporarily misguided; 
these people are about an evil purpose. They killed fellow members of 
their religion because they believed those people didn't perfectly 
reflect their own religion.
  This is an issue we need to be concerned about. We have to have a 
strategy. We need clarity. We need commitment. If we are going to 
destroy this threat, we really have to be committed to destroy this 
terrorist threat.
  I plan to press the administration, as many others will, on that 
question of, What is your plan? The President's nominee for Secretary 
of Defense couldn't explain the plan. That is a vote we are going to 
have later today. I don't intend to vote for that nominee today. We 
have already had three Secretaries of Defense in this Presidency who 
have been incredibly frustrated, obviously and visibly frustrated and 
willing to talk about their frustrations--at least the two Secretaries 
who have already left--of not knowing how to deal with a White House 
that wants to run the military in the most specific ways rather than 
saying: Here is our goal. What is the best way to meet that goal?
  We have had that already. We don't need another Secretary of Defense 
who doesn't understand what the plan is and can't communicate that plan 
to either the Congress or the country or our friends around the world.
  The Congress doesn't understand what the President is trying to do. 
The administration can't explain what the President is trying to do. 
Our enemies are emboldened by the fact that we can't explain what we 
are trying to do, and our friends wonder what we are trying to do.
  In so many cases--I remember the great speech by the President of 
Ukraine at a joint session of Congress last year where basically he 
said: Thank you for the food. Thank you for the blankets. But we can't 
fight the Russians with blankets. We can't fight the terrorists without 
a strategy. We can't fight the terrorists without a commitment to the 
goal.
  The document the President sent to us this week was carefully worded 
to meet all kinds of political constituencies. It is not carefully 
worded in a way that meets the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. The 
Jordanians understand this. People in the neighborhood understand this. 
People in Europe seem to have a better understanding of it than we do. 
They all want to see some level of commitment by the United States of 
America, and I would like to hear what that commitment is.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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