[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 173 (Tuesday, December 1, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8204-S8206]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AMERICAN SECURITY AGAINST FOREIGN ENEMIES ACT
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the American
Security Against Foreign Enemies Act of 2015. This act was passed by
the House shortly before we recessed for Thanksgiving--an act dealing
with the refugee crisis from Syria and Iraq. It is an act that is sort
of pending before the body now as we try to decide whether to take up
the House bill or take up the topic of the House bill as part of the
deliberations in which we are engaged.
First, I think everyone in this body and everyone in the House
acknowledges the security needs of America in this challenging time as
we are engaged in a battle against ISIL. As we have seen in recent
weeks, the reach of ISIL--whether it is a passenger aircraft in Sinai,
a neighborhood in southern Beirut, or multiple neighborhoods in Paris,
ISIL's strength is expanding and mutating, and we have to take those
concerns seriously.
I applaud the work that has already been done to try to make sure the
vetting process for refugees who entered the United States is pretty
intense. Four million refugees left Syria during the course of the
Syrian civil war. Of those 4 million who have left and registered with
the U.N., after a fairly extensive review process, the U.N. has
referred 20,000 to the United States for possible consideration to be
refugees. Of those 20,000, after an 18-month vetting process, we have
allowed approximately 2,000 into the United States. So the vetting
process for refugees is pretty intense. If we can make it better, we
need to do that, but it is already fairly significant. I also applaud
efforts the administration announced yesterday and that other
colleagues, including the Presiding Officer, are working on to ensure
that the visa waiver program we currently have, which allows citizens
from 38 countries to come to the United States without visas, is tight.
We have to do our best in a careful and deliberate way to make sure our
security in the midst of this battle against ISIL is strong.
I rise today to speak particularly about this act because I think it
is problematic, and I think it is problematic from the very title of
the act. I think it raises some questions we have to be very careful
about.
Syrian and Iraqi refugees are not foreign enemies. Refugees are not
the enemies of the United States. We have an enemy. The enemy is ISIL.
We are coming up on the start of a 17-month war against ISIL that
Congress has been unwilling to debate, vote on, and declare. ISIL is an
enemy, and we would all acknowledge that, but the refugees who are
leaving Syria and Iraq are not our enemies. They are victims. They are
victims. I think before we go down the path of quickly--and this bill
was passed in the House in just a couple of days--painting with a broad
brush as our enemies these poor people who have suffered so much, we
really need to reflect on what they have been through.
This refugee crisis in Syria has been called by most NGOs and other
organizations like the U.N. the greatest humanitarian crisis since
World War II.
In a country of between 25 and 30 million people, 4 million have had
to flee because of the atrocities of the Assad regime and the
atrocities of the civil war carried out by ISIL and other terrorist
organizations.
Four million had to leave their homes and 8 million more had to leave
their homes and move to other places in their country where they would
prefer not to live because their homes are unsafe because of the civil
war.
Nearly 300,000 Syrians have been killed in this civil war, and the
atrocities are horrible. The Assad regime uses barrel bombs in civilian
neighborhoods to kill innocents without any rhyme or reason as to where
or when they are going to fall, creating psychological terror as well
as physical danger. ISIL in Syria is carrying out beheadings and the
forced subjugation of people and selling them into sexual slavery. It
is the oppression of religious minorities, virtually any religion other
than that of the Sunni extremists who would fit within ISIL's narrow
definition of who they think true believers are. This is what people
are fleeing from.
This Senator emphasizes this point: Refugees are not our enemies.
They are not foreign enemies. They are victims who deserve compassion.
This is a fairly famous photograph from a suburb of Damascus,
Yarmouk, that is filled with Palestinian refugees who have been waiting
for food. The Assad regime had cordoned them off and would not allow
humanitarian aid because they thought there were opponents to the
regime in this neighborhood.
[[Page S8205]]
This was a photo that was taken in January of 2014 when the U.N.
could finally come in to try to deliver humanitarian food aid to these
folks. You can see the tens of thousands of people who are waiting in
the midst of their bombed-out neighborhood for a delivery of basic food
aid, which has been very episodic during the course of this war. This
neighborhood has gone back under blockade, and it has been extremely
difficult to get them the food they need.
These are not enemies; these are people who are worthy of the
compassion of any person and especially of a nation as compassionate as
the United States.
More recently, we were all stunned to see this horrible photograph of
a 3-year-old Syrian boy who, with his family and a group of 12 Syrians,
tried to make it across water to Greece, fleeing atrocities in the
battle between Kurds and ISIL in northern Syria. Twelve members of this
family in a boat were killed and drowned, including this 3-year-old and
his 5-year-old brother. These are not enemies.
To have an act that purports to deal with this refugee crisis and to
call this an act that is an act about foreign enemies--they are not
enemies. There is no way we should allow the kind of tar brush approach
that would paint these poor unfortunates who are victims of the worst
humanitarian crisis since World War II as if they are somehow enemies.
We should have a compassionate response that protects American security
but is nevertheless compassionate.
These photographs really grab me, and the rhetoric surrounding these
refugees--that they are enemies--when this act passed really grabbed
me. I found myself thinking about it not so much even in just a policy
way--what is the right policy, what is the right mixture of things to
keep the country safe? That is very important, but these pictures make
one think about something more fundamental: Why does this happen?
Since the beginning of time, human beings have asked: Why is there
suffering of this kind? Why must hundreds of thousands be huddled into
a bombed-out neighborhood and be nearly starved to death to wait for a
delivery episodically from the United Nations? Why would a family have
to flee from their home, with their children killed, to try to get away
from atrocities? If you are a student from California State University,
on a semester-abroad program in Paris, sitting in a cafe, why are you
gunned down by ISIL terrorists? If you are a tourist coming back from a
vacation in the Sinai with your family, why is your plane suddenly
bombed out of the sky?
Humans have asked this question since the beginning of time. Why do
these things happen? There are two conventional answers to the question
of why these things occur, and there is a nonconventional answer that
is a challenging one that we as a body and as a country really have to
grapple with. The two conventional answers as to why there is horrible
suffering such as this is obviously there is evil in the world and
there is evil within. There is evil out in the world and there is evil
within and we make mistakes. Clearly there is evil in the world. ISIL
is evil. Refugees are not evil.
I think it is interesting that one of the bodies here could come up
with a piece of legislation, draft it, debate it, and vote on it in a
couple of days to label refugees as ``foreign enemies'' when we have
been at war for 17 months against ISIL and we haven't been able to have
a debate in this body to authorize military force and declare that they
are an enemy. There is evil in the world, and part of what we must do
is call it out and be willing to stand against it.
The great Irish poet Yeats talked about a situation where the best
lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity.
I worry that this legislative body has not shown the conviction to call
out evil in the way that we should call it out, and mistakenly we are
calling people evil who aren't evil but who are deserving of
compassionate help from us and from other nations. That is the first
explanation of why evil occurs. There is evil out in the world, and
ISIL is evil, the atrocities of Assad are evil, and we ought to call it
out.
The second explanation is our own weakness. When bad things happen,
whether to yourself or to your country, you have to look in the mirror
and ask: Did we do anything wrong? And I have a concern that when the
chapter on the Syrian refugee crisis is written, neither the United
States nor other nations are going to look that good. It is going to be
like looking into the 1990s and looking at why the United States was
able to intervene and stop atrocities in the Balkans and chose not to
in Rwanda. The answer to why we did in one instance and not the other--
I don't think that looks good in retrospect. I worry with respect to
this refugee crisis, the 4 to 8 million killed, these children and
their families--we have to look in the mirror and ask ourselves whether
we have done enough or whether we can do more.
Last, there is a nonconventional explanation of why suffering like
this occurs that is a challenging one. It is in the Book of Job. There
is a Bible on the Presiding Officer's desk. It is there because it is a
book of wisdom. I know you know the story. It is an interesting story,
as we grapple with suffering like this and we have to ask why it
occurs. Job was an upright and righteous man. He was a blameless
person, a person of integrity.
The story was written in about 500 BC and posits this debate between
God and Satan. God is talking about how great Job is. Satan says that
he is great because he is wealthy and has a great family, and if he
lost that, he would cease being so faithful.
God says: I think he would be faithful anyway.
Satan says: Let's have a wager and see what happens.
That is how the Book of Job begins. This upright and blameless man
who has everything proceeds to very quickly lose everything. He loses
his wealth, he loses his family, he loses his health--not because of
his own sin, his own weakness, or his own error, his own mistakes, and
not because of evil in the world; he suffers because he is being
tested. That is the reason he suffers.
As the story goes on, he is tested. He is tested. He argues with God,
he fights with God, he fights with the faith, but he doesn't let go of
his faith. At the end of the story, this Book of Job--and this is a
book which is not only in the Old Testament and studied by Jews and
Christians alike, this is in the Koran. This is a story which all the
Abrahamic faith traditions have grabbed on to because it has a
fundamental piece of wisdom to it.
Sometimes when suffering such as this occurs, it is not just because
there is evil in the world or because of our own sin, it is because bad
things happen to test us as individuals. Bad things happen and
sometimes test us as a country.
I look at this refugee crisis as a test. It is a test on whether we,
like Job, will be true to our principles or whether we will abandon
them. Job was true to his principles, and things came back to him
multiplied. Are we going to be true to our principles?
My State of Virginia began when the English who were starving were
helped out by Indians down near Jamestown Island. There was the
extension of a hand to strangers in a strange land that enabled them to
survive, unlike earlier parties who had been wiped out by starvation or
battles with Indians.
My people came from Ireland in the 1840s. They were chased out by
oppression. They were chased out by hunger. My people have the same
story that virtually everybody who came to the United States has. Some
came under much worse conditions, brought over in slavery and
servitude.
The nation of France recognized the United States for what it was--a
beacon of liberty for people from around the world--when France gave to
the United States the Statue of Liberty, which we planted in New York
Harbor right next to Ellis Island, where so many people came into this
country. Nobody who came here had it easy. People faced signs that said
``No Irish need apply'' or they faced discrimination or oppression, but
they didn't face a door being shut in their face and being told they
were foreign enemies when they were really refugees looking for a
better situation in life.
As I think about what we are grappling with and what we may be called
to vote on in the next 10 days in this body, I think about this massive
scale of human suffering that is going on
[[Page S8206]]
with respect to Syria, and I think about that wisdom from the Book of
Job, which is that sometimes suffering and adversity is to test us. Are
we going to abandon our principles? Are we not going to be the Statue
of Liberty nation? Are we not going to be the nation that will extend a
hand of welcome or friendship for those who suffer? Are we going to be
true to our principles?
Again and again in our Nation's history and in the history of
nations, it has been shown that if you are true to your principles--
especially true to them during times of adversity--then you are worthy
of respect. You teach important lessons to your kids and to the
generations that follow, and usually things work out. I think our
Nation's principles are solid. They are rock solid. In the heat of the
moment, we shouldn't abandon them, and we shouldn't abandon people who
have suffered and are suffering with the kind of hot legislative
language that would label them as ``foreign enemies'' when they are
just refugees in the same way that people throughout history have been
refugees needing a compassionate response from others.
Thank you, Mr. President.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted
to complete my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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