[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 5 (Thursday, January 9, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S106-S108]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  Iran

  Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, a President of the United States is 
summoned by his or her national security team and informed that he or 
she has a limited window of opportunity in which to potentially prevent 
an attack that could cost the lives of dozens, if not hundreds, of 
Americans or U.S. troops. They are advised this by their national 
security team--the entire team--in unanimity. What would you do?
  That is the most fundamental and difficult question that should be 
asked of anyone who seeks the Office of the Presidency. It is one of 
the most important things we need to know about those who seek the 
office and those who occupy it. It is the proverbial ``3 a.m. call.''

[[Page S107]]

  It also happens to describe the choice before President Trump a few 
days ago. You wouldn't know that from listening to some of the rhetoric 
I see on television. The Speaker of the House just held a press 
conference in which the messaging implies that the strike on the 
terrorist, Soleimani, was the act of a reckless madman--a reckless and 
irresponsible escalation. The alternative argument is that, by the way, 
he should have consulted with us before doing it.
  I reiterate: The entire national security team of the President, 
including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Milley, has been 
unequivocal, both privately and publicly, that he agreed with the 
assessment and he believed that this strike was necessary in order to 
protect the lives of Americans from a near-term attack.
  I want to be frank. Anyone who left a briefing or goes around saying: 
Well, I don't think that that was true, frankly, is not questioning the 
President. They are questioning the 40 years of military service that 
General Milley has rendered this Nation and, frankly, questioning the 
judgment of the entire national security apparatus--all of the 
leadership of the national apparatus--of the United States of America. 
That question has been clearly answered by them.
  It is interesting, too, that had the President not acted and, God 
forbid, American lives had been lost, we could very easily have been 
here this week talking about how the President should be removed. There 
would be a third article of impeachment for refusing to listen to the 
experts, for refusing to listen to his military advisers.
  Ironically enough, just yesterday, before this entire Senate had the 
opportunity to be briefed by the national security team, I had a 
colleague of mine from across the aisle say: Everything is going to be 
fine if the President will just listen to General Milley and the 
military experts. But he did. Isn't that, ironically, at the crux of a 
lot of these arguments about Ukraine, that all of the experts--the 
career experts, the uniformed experts--disagreed with what the 
President was doing? Yet when he listens to what they say, somehow it 
is the act of a reckless madman. I think that speaks more to the 
hysteria that has overcome our politics and has now reached into the 
realm of national security.
  It is also important to note when people say these things, that those 
who walk around talking about intelligence sometimes are not consumers 
of it on a regular basis or don't understand how it works. It is never 
about one piece. It is about patterns and trends and known capabilities 
and known intentions and about windows of opportunity. That is an 
important point to make.
  As far as consulting with congressional leadership before taking this 
action, that is not how things like this develop. Very rarely do you 
have the luxury of time.
  No. 1, I would start out by saying that there is no legal 
requirement. The President of the United States has no legal 
requirement, and, in fact, I believe has an imperative, inherent in the 
Office, to act swiftly and appropriately to the threat against the 
lives of Americans, especially American troops that he or she has sent 
abroad to defend this country's interests.
  No. 2, it is unrealistic and not possible. Oftentimes, these windows 
of opportunity do not allow you the luxury of reaching some 
congressional leader in the middle of their ski trip or Christmas 
break, and even if you could, there is always the risk that the 
information would be disseminated and the window would close. So I am 
not sure if what they are asking for is even possible.
  The other thing that is troubling is, if you listen to some of the 
rhetoric out there, you would think that the only two options with Iran 
are a full-scale diplomacy and capitulation to what they are doing or 
an all-out war. That is absurd, a false choice. It is a false choice.
  The President has argued--he said it again clearly yesterday--that he 
is ready for serious--serious--and real talks toward how Iran becomes a 
normal nation and its clerical nation behaves in a normal and civilized 
way. In the meantime, he has an obligation--this President, a future 
President, and past Presidents--to protect America's interests and, 
more importantly, American lives and to do so through a concept of 
active deterrence.
  What does that mean? Active deterrence means that the people who want 
to harm you decide not to because the cost of harming you is higher 
than the benefit of harming you. That is an important point here. The 
strike on Soleimani was not just about preventing an imminent attack. 
That, in and of itself, alone was reason to act, but the second thing 
that was important was reestablishing active deterrence.
  For whatever reason, the Iranians have concluded that they could go 
further than they have ever gone before in directly attacking Americans 
or using their proxies to attack Americans. So much so that they 
tried--they failed, but they tried--and could have breached our Embassy 
compound in Baghdad and killed Americans, civilians, and diplomats, and 
our military personnel stationed there. They tried to. And they could 
have and want to launch lethal attacks to kill as many Americans as 
they possibly can because, for whatever reason, they concluded they 
could get away with it, that we would tolerate it. It was critical to 
the defense of this country, to our national interests, and to the 
lives of our men and women in uniform deployed abroad that we restore 
active deterrence.
  Now, time will tell how much was restored, but, clearly, I believe 
some of it was restored. Even the comments today of an Iranian 
commander--``Well, we shot missiles, but we didn't try to kill 
anybody''--are indicative of a desire to deescalate, at least for the 
time being.
  The other thing I hear is this: Well, the President has no strategy. 
That is the problem. There is no strategy.
  I think you could argue that they haven't done a good-enough job of 
outlining a strategy, but I don't think it is fair to say they have no 
strategy.
  The strategy begins with a goal. The goal is pretty straightforward: 
a prosperous Iran that lives in harmony with its neighbors and does not 
have nuclear weapons or continues to support terrorism and terrorist 
groups. That is the goal.
  How do you achieve it? By Iran's abandoning its desire for nuclear 
weapons and by no longer standing up these terrorist groups that, for 
over a decade or longer, have been killing Americans and trying to harm 
Americans, Israelis, and other allies.
  How else do you achieve it? By imposing crushing economic sanctions, 
while leaving open the door for real--not fake, not talk for the sake 
of talk--diplomacy, but, at the same time, making it abundantly clear 
that you will deter, repel, and act against any effort to harm 
Americans.
  All this talk about military conflict and U.S. actions overlooks the 
fundamental fact that what is happening here is that Iran has decided 
to respond to economic sanctions with violence. Their response to 
economic sanctions has been this: Can we get one of these terrorist 
groups using weapons that we give them to kill Americans? Can we put 
limpet mines on merchant ships? Can we attack the Saudis? That has been 
their response to economic sanctions: violence.

  Presidents don't have the luxury of bluffing. You can't go around 
saying ``If you kill Americans, there will be consequences,'' and then 
they try to kill Americans--or, in the case of Iran, did--and do 
nothing about it because now what you have done is you have invited a 
committed adversary to do more of it--not just to tragically kill one 
brave American contractor but to kill dozens or hundreds of Americans 
in various spots throughout the world.
  The last point I want to make is all this talk about an authorization 
for use of force. I want to begin by sharing my personal view. I 
believe the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional. I think the 
power of Congress resides in the opportunity to declare war and to fund 
it. Every Presidential administration, Republican and Democrat alike, 
has taken the same position.
  That doesn't mean we should never have an AUMF. I think our actions 
are stronger when it is clear that they have strong bipartisan support 
from both Houses of Congress. I also think all this talk about AUMFs is 
completely and utterly irrelevant to the case in point.
  No. 1, under the Constitution of the United States--and the War 
Powers

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Resolution, by the way--the President of the United States not only has 
the authority to act in self-defense but an obligation to do so. An 
obligation to do so. That is No. 1.
  No. 2, it is especially true in this case, where the lives and the 
troops he sought to protect were deployed to Iraq on an anti-ISIS, 
anti-terrorism mission approved by Congress through an AUMF, an AUMF 
that states very clearly that one of the reasons we are allowed to use 
military force, as authorized by Congress, is to defend against 
attacks.
  I don't believe there is a single Member of Congress who has the 
willingness to stand before the American people and say: I think, when 
we deploy troops abroad, they should not be allowed to defend 
themselves.
  Not only do you not need an AUMF or congressional authority to act in 
self-defense, but the troops who were defending themselves here--and 
the troops we were defending in the Soleimani strike and preventing an 
attack against--are deployed pursuant to a congressional authorization.
  Honestly, what I see here, in addition to the arguments I have 
already discussed about how ridiculous it is to portray this as the 
actions of a reckless madman who is escalating things, is an argument 
about when might you need an AUMF. Give us some theoretical, 
hypothetical scenario in which you might need an AUMF. The 
hypotheticals they are posturing are ones that this administration has 
never, never proposed and, frankly, haven't even contemplated.
  No one is talking about an all-out invasion of Iran. If you were 
telling me the President is putting together plans to invade Iran, to 
go in and capture territory, to remove the Ayatollah and install a new 
government, I would say: All right, that is something that there should 
be a debate about.
  Who is talking about that? I haven't heard anybody propose that. Yet, 
somehow, the House today is going to spend time on this. People have 
filed bills on this. Look, we can debate anything we want. People can 
file any bill they want. That is a privileged motion. It comes to the 
floor. Great.
  By the way, no one said: Don't go around talking about this; just be 
quiet.
  Perhaps it should have been stated more artfully, but the point that 
was being made, which is a valid point, is that, when the Iranians 
analyze responses to the United States, one of the things they look at 
is this: Do domestic politics and differences of opinion and divisions 
among American officials restrain what the President can do against us? 
You may not like it, but I want to be frank with you. They believe that 
our political differences in this country and that our disagreements 
constrain the President's ability to respond to attacks. They believe 
it limits his ability to deter. Now, hopefully the strike on Soleimani 
may have reset that a little bit. That doesn't mean we shouldn't debate 
it, and I don't think you should ever tell Congress not to discuss 
these things. We have a right to. Frankly, everybody here has been 
elected by a constituency, so people can choose to raise whichever 
issue they want.
  I also don't think it is invalid to point out that these internal 
debates we have in this country do have an impact on what our 
adversaries think they can get away with. It doesn't make anyone an 
appeaser or a traitor, but it is a factor I think people should 
recognize. That is all.
  In closing, I would say, look, there was a time--I am not one of 
these people who pine for the golden era. It is funny. I hear people 
talking about the Clinton impeachment trial. Oftentimes people come to 
me and say: In the good old days, back in the nineties, when everybody 
got together and Congressmen were all friends--and I don't know what it 
was like then because I wasn't here, but I remind them that, in the 
golden days about which they often talk, we were impeaching Bill 
Clinton around here. They didn't do it on social media and Twitter and 
24-hour cable news at the time, but there has always been friction in 
American politics.
  One thing I can say that is evident is that there was a time in 
American politics that I hope we can return to, and that is a time 
which, when it came to issues of national security, there was some 
level of restraint because we understood, when it came to that, the 
people who would ultimately pay the price for overpoliticizing any 
issue, for reckless talk, and for unnecessary accusations were not the 
political figures. Presidents and Ayatollahs don't die in conflicts 
like these. Do you know who dies? The young men and women we send 
abroad, the innocent civilians caught in the middle, and the refugees 
who are forced to leave their homes as a result.
  There are real-world, life-and-death implications. That is why it has 
long been American tradition that, when it comes to issues of foreign 
policy and national security, they were always treated just a little 
bit differently, with some deference. Even if you disagreed, you sort 
of tailored it in a way that you thought would not harm those 
interests.
  I think that has been lost, probably, on both sides. I still make it 
a habit when I travel abroad not to discuss or criticize U.S. leaders 
at home, but I understand times have changed.
  I would just say, in this particular case, I know that this Nation 
remains conflicted about the conflicts that led us into Iran and 
Afghanistan and that keep us in the region to this day. That is a 
valid, valid debate. I just don't think this looks anything like it. 
This is about a strike that every single member of the President's 
national security team, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, 
believes was necessary in order to prevent a near-term attack against 
Americans that could be lethal and catastrophic.
  This is about restoring active deterrents, effective deterrents, 
against future strikes, and I hope that we can bring that debate back 
to where it belongs so that, on matters of such importance, we can 
figure out solutions and not simple rhetoric.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.