[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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