[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 14, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S183-S185]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE

  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, whether it is tomorrow, later today, or 
sometime next week, I know there will be an effort here to restrict the 
President's ability to engage the Armed Forces of the United States in 
a conflict with Iran.
  I think, any time you have something like that come up, there are two 
most important questions that need to be answered: No. 1, Why? Why do 
we need this law that you are pursuing? No. 2, What would that law do? 
Let me try to answer the ``why.'' I can deduce two separate arguments.
  The first is the argument that somehow the actions of the United 
States, for example, of pursuing a maximum pressure campaign against 
Iran and leaving the Iran deal--according to at least the language of 
the version I saw, which I know is going to be amended--have included 
economic, diplomatic, and military pressure and that this is raising 
the risk of retaliation against U.S. troops and personnel, which will 
lead to a cycle of escalating back-and-forth violence between Iran and 
its proxies and the United States, and that these warnings have been 
proven to be correct. I guess the first argument is that we left the 
Iran deal and that this is the reason we are now on the verge of what 
some view to be an all-out war against Iran.
  The second argument is rooted in the constitutional views that some 
of my colleagues hold that Congress has a role to play and that no 
extended military engagement should be allowed without there being 
congressional approval. These are two separate motivations, and I think 
it is possible to hold that second position and also be motivated by 
the first. I think, for many of my colleagues, it is solely a 
constitutional question, which I respect. So let's analyze the ``why'' 
for a second.
  First of all, I think it is just not true that the reason Iran and 
its proxies are trying to kill Americans is that we pulled out of the 
Obama deal with Iran. Iran has most certainly responded with violence 
to our decision, but that is not what motivated Iran. For example, 
before there was even an Iran deal from which to pull out, it was 
already equipping and supplying Shia militias in Iraq with weapons that 
killed and maimed Americans in the hundreds. In fact, Iran's antagonism 
toward us predates any discussion about an Iran deal. It predates our 
presence in the region and the numbers that we currently have there. I 
think it is also flawed because, during the Iran deal--even when the 
Iran deal was in place--Iran was still sponsoring all of the same proxy 
groups with all of the same weapons and was undertaking all of the same 
targeting.
  One of the flaws of the Iran deal and one of the reasons the Iran 
deal was not a good one was that it actually didn't deal with this 
activity. The only thing it dealt with was enrichment. It did nothing 
to limit Iran's missile program, and it did nothing to limit Iran's 
sponsorship of terrorism. In fact, the only impact it had on its 
missile program and on its sponsorship of terrorism was that it 
provided economic activity that generated revenue to fund those things.
  Despite the denial and the repeated and bold-faced lies of some who 
have gone on TV and have said: Oh, there was never any cash transfer, 
there absolutely was. There was over $1 billion delivered to the 
Iranians. They say these were funds that had been frozen. They say this 
was their money and that this is why it was released to them as part of 
this deal. The Iranians don't tell you that there is close to $50 
billion in unpaid claims that have been adjudicated in U.S. courts on 
behalf of Americans who have suffered at the hands of Iranian terror 
and who have not been paid.
  Suffice it to say that the Iran deal was flawed. One of the reasons 
it was flawed is that it did nothing to prohibit the sponsorship of 
terrorism, and it actually generated economic activity and the delivery 
of over $1 billion in cash. I assure you this was not used to build 
bridges, roads, and schools but was used to fund these nefarious 
activities that Iran undertook before the Iran deal, during the Iran 
deal, and after the Iran deal.
  So the fact that Iran is responding with violence to economic 
sanctions, which by itself is unacceptable, tells us the nature of this 
regime is to respond to economic sanctions--not to military action--
with violence and efforts to kill Americans. It doesn't mean this is 
the reason Iran was doing that. Iran was already doing that. It has 
just been part of its response.
  This leads me to the second point. Iran has already been doing it 
because Iran's goal is not simply to get us back into the Iran deal; 
its goal is to drive us from the region. Iran does not want an American 
presence there, and it does not want American influence in the region. 
Iran does not want it in Iraq, which it has been against from the very 
beginning, and it doesn't want it in Syria. Yet it is not just limited 
to Iraq and Syria. Iran doesn't want our presence in Jordan, in Kuwait, 
or in Bahrain. It doesn't want any American presence in Afghanistan. It 
doesn't want us anywhere in the region because Iran views it as an 
impediment to its desire to be a dominant regional power, and Iran 
views it as an impediment to its ultimate design of destroying the 
Jewish State.
  Iran decided not last week, not last year, and not at the beginning 
of the Trump Presidency but well over a decade and a half ago that the 
way it was going to get us to leave the region was by inflicting 
costs--i.e., with the deaths and the injuries of American service men 
and women--and that Iran would make it so painful for us to be there 
and so painful for these countries to host us that we would ultimately 
leave. That is the reason Iran is undertaking these attacks.
  Now, why are we there? It is a good question and a valid one to 
answer, and I will answer it in the cases of both Syria and Iraq.
  We are not there on an anti-Iran campaign the way in which some 
describe. There is an element of prohibiting Iran from capturing Iraq 
and turning it into a puppet state. By the way, many Shia politicians 
in Iraq share that view. They may not want us to be the protector, at 
least openly, but they are nationalists just like they are Shia.
  The fundamental and the principal reason we are in Iraq is as part of 
NATO's anti-ISIS mission and as a train-and-equip mission. We are there 
to train and equip Iraqis to fight against ISIS. It has been an effort 
that has been successful. It has worked. It is interesting that for a 
time, when Iran shared the same fears of ISIS, you saw Iran sort of 
stand down a little bit. Even after we pulled out of the Iran deal, 
Iran pulled back a little bit because it, too, wanted ISIS defeated. 
Now it argues that, in its mind, ISIS has been diminished and that it 
is time

[[Page S184]]

for the Americans to go. If you will not leave on your own, then we are 
going to start killing people until you decide the price of being here 
is too high.
  Here is the bottom line. The reason there are American troops in 
large parts of this region is for an anti-terror campaign. Iran has 
decided to use proxies and these deniable attacks--by ``deniable,'' I 
mean getting some other group to use the weapons you gave them to 
attack Americans--so Iran can say: It was not us, even though everyone 
knows it is Iran. That way, you can sort of try to avoid a direct war 
with the United States and international condemnation, but everyone 
knows it is you. That is why Iran is attacking us.
  Now, I ask you: What is supposed to be the U.S. response?
  First of all, it is in the law. It is a constitutional requirement, 
and the power resides in the Presidency--the right to defend U.S. 
service men and women when they come under attack. No. 1, there is a 
constitutional power and, in my mind, an obligation to defend, to 
prevent, to repel, and to respond to attacks against American troops 
who are deployed abroad.
  No. 2, it is embedded in congressional authorization for that anti-
terror mission to begin with. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, we are 
present at the authorization given by Congress over a decade and a half 
ago, and imbedded in that authorization is the right to self-defense.
  The third point I would make is that if you look at this argument 
about AUMF, you would think what we are seeing here looks something 
like the run-up to the Iraq war or the run-up to the Afghanistan war. 
This is complete fiction. The Afghanistan war was one in which the Bush 
White House came to the Congress back then and said: Look, the Taliban 
is allowing al-Qaida to act with impunity from its territory, and we 
are going to go take them out. It was an offensive operation--an 
invasion. With Iraq, we all know the justification, which turned out 
not to be the case, about weapons of mass destruction and the like--
again, an offensive military operation.
  No one in American politics whom I see--certainly no one in the Trump 
administration--has talked about ramping up and sending 150,000 or 
200,000 troops marching into Tehran. No one is contemplating that. The 
only thing the Trump administration has talked about is that if you 
attack our troops or if we think you are getting ready to attack our 
troops, we are going to prevent it if we can. We are going to repel 
that attack if it happens, and we are going to respond proportionately 
in return as a deterrent. You don't need congressional authorization to 
do that.
  Imagine the practical implications if that were the case. The 
President of the United States would have to come to Congress on 
December 30 because we are under attack and ask us to reconvene; 
everybody fly in, take a vote, debate for a week and a half, and then 
decide. By that time we would have 300 dead Americans. It is 
ridiculous. It is not a requirement. It is not even practical.
  So I don't understand the purpose of this AUMF. What war are you 
trying to prevent? Unless you believe that we brought this upon 
ourselves because we pulled out of the Iran deal--even if you believe 
that one of the reasons we stayed in the Iran deal was to prevent these 
sorts of attacks, which I don't think is justified--it is not a 
justified argument by the very fact that even during the Iran deal they 
were already doing some of these things and have a long history of 
doing that. If you argue it and believe it, you can't argue that 
attacking and killing Americans--violence--is an appropriate response 
to economic sanctions. You most certainly cannot argue that we cannot 
have a military response to protect our men and women and our interests 
in the region. Yet that seems to be the argument embedded in the AUMF.
  Some will state that all it does is restate law, and it doesn't have 
any practical impact in the end. If the House doesn't pass the same 
thing, what is this really going to mean? That is true in a legal 
perspective. Let me state what the headlines already say and are going 
to say. Here is what they are going to say: ``Congress votes to limit 
President's military options'' or ``Congress votes to limit Trump's 
ability to respond militarily to Iran.''
  I want to be clear because I have heard this from others--the fact 
that they were being told not to debate this issue. Debate all you 
want, but those headlines and how they are read in places like Iran are 
very different than the debate we are having here. How they would read 
it is that the President has political domestic constraints about how 
much he can respond to what they do.
  We already have a fundamental problem with Iran, and that is, unlike 
many countries in the world, they don't view or respond to things in 
the same way. For example, it is pretty clear that their view of what 
they can get away with is much higher than the reality of what they can 
get away with, as evidenced by the increasing scale and increasing 
magnitude of the attacks that their proxies were taking against the 
United States and the region. So the threat of miscalculation on their 
part is very, very high. Let's not forget that just a week ago they 
launched over a dozen rockets at a U.S. military installation where, by 
the grace of God, no one was killed. But they could have been. You 
don't launch that many rockets at a U.S. military installation and not 
expect that some Americans are going to die. So their internal calculus 
about what they can get away with is already twisted.
  Imagine adding to that the perception that somehow the President's 
hands are tied: No matter what we do, we can kill 100 Americans because 
he is really not going to be able to do very much because the Congress 
took away his power.
  You can take the chance that these guys are somehow legal scholars in 
schools in the American legal system. You can take the chance that they 
read Congressional Quarterly or whatever publication or that they have 
read the latest issue of whatever the congressional research office has 
produced for the practical implications or you can worry that they will 
misinterpret this vote and its impact for what it means to what they 
can get away with.
  If you want to have a debate, have it. I don't know what you are 
going to have a debate about. There is no one planning an all-out war 
against Iran. The administration's strategy is pretty straightforward: 
If they attack us or are getting ready to attack us, we will respond. 
If they don't, we won't.
  The question of whether there is going to be armed conflict between 
the United States and Iran is not in the hands of the White House; it 
is in the hands of the Ayatollah. I assure you, no matter what we vote 
on here, it is not going to impact their decision over there.
  No one--no one I know of--wants a war with Iran. That is not the 
goal. The goal, hopefully, is to have an Iran that doesn't sponsor 
terrorism, that doesn't want nuclear weapons, and that acts like a 
normal country. I bet that is the goal of millions of Iranians 
themselves.
  In the interim, until that day comes, we have an obligation to 
protect our interests. We have an obligation to protect our men and 
women whom we have sent into harm's way. For the life of me, I just 
don't understand what this AUMF seeks to prevent--a war that no one is 
calling for.
  I don't want to imply that we can't have these debates in America, 
because we can and we should. We are a free society. But I want 
everybody to be clear about how these debates can be misinterpreted and 
how these headlines can be misinterpreted by the people who actually 
have these rockets and control these proxy groups.

  The bottom line is that Iran's goal is not just to get us back into 
the nuclear deal; their goal is to drive us from the region. They want 
us out, and they have concluded that the way to do that is to use other 
groups whom they are arming and equipping with increasingly more and 
more capabilities, meaning bigger and deadlier ammunitions and rockets 
and the like to kill Americans, and the more Americans who die--even if 
they are there on an anti-terror mission--the likelier it is that we 
are going to have to pull them out of there. That is what they want. 
They want us to leave Iraq so that they can turn it into a puppet 
State.
  They want all NATO and allied presence out of Syria so that they can 
control Syria entirely. They want to fracture our relationship with 
Lebanon so

[[Page S185]]

that Hezbollah can control that country. They want to destroy our 
presence in Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet is located. You can go on 
and on.
  In the end, I think the question becomes, Are we prepared to retreat 
from that region entirely? You cannot come here and criticize the 
President for removing troops from the Syrian-Turkish border and 
abandoning the Kurds and at the same time argue: But you don't have the 
power unless we authorize you to defend those very troops if they come 
under attack by some Iranian proxy group. Yet that seems to be the 
argument.
  You cannot argue: We cannot just pick up and leave the Iraqis at the 
mercy of the Iranian regime. I assure you that if the President 
announced tomorrow ``I am pulling out of Iraq'' or if he said before 
the Soleimani strike ``I am pulling out of Iraq,'' the floor would be 
filled with people saying that we have abandoned our allies; we have 
abandoned the Kurds in Northern Iraq; we have abandoned the Sunnis, who 
are scared of the Iranians.
  You cannot argue that and argue at the same time that you think we 
need to be present and continue to work toward the functionality of 
that State and at the same time say: But you need congressional 
approval to act in defense of the people we send there who wear the 
uniform--or our diplomats, for that matter. Yet that seems to be the 
argument behind this AUMF.
  The vote is going to be what it is. We are going to have this debate. 
I remember about a year and a half ago, when tensions were high with 
North Korea, they wanted an AUMF for that.
  You can disagree with this White House all you want. I don't think we 
have had a more anti-war President in my lifetime than the one we have 
right now. If you think about it for a moment, almost any other 
predecessor may have responded with a lot less restraint to some of the 
provocations and attacks we have seen from Iran and its proxies. He 
acted in a way that I think history will fully justify and in defense 
of American lives in taking out Soleimani and disrupting a near-term 
plot that could have very easily have killed dozens, if not hundreds, 
of Americans in the near term.
  I chuckle when I hear people saying: Well, how do we know what 
Soleimani was doing? Well, that was his full-time job. He wasn't a 
stockbroker or realtor or diplomat. His full-time job was to travel the 
world to set up groups and equip groups so that when he told them to 
go, they could go kill Americans. That was his full-time job. That is 
what he was doing there.
  I believe when all is said and done, history will fully vindicate the 
decision that was made.
  We will have this debate at some point. I imagine that at some point 
it will move to the floor. It is a privileged resolution. I just think 
it is shortsighted, and I hope that some of my colleagues who have 
signed on to it thinking that somehow we were exerting Congress's 
constitutional authority--I have no problem with asserting Congress's 
constitutional authority when it is actually being challenged, but 
there is no congressional constitutional authority that can prevent a 
President or should prevent a President from acting in defense of our 
men and women in uniform when we deploy them abroad. In my view, that 
is what this bill, which will shortly be before us, does. That is the 
practical implication of it, so I hope those who chose to be for it 
will reconsider.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CRAMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CRAMER. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to express my 
opposition to the War Powers Act resolution that is making its way 
through Congress. I believe it is designed to hurt our President 
politically, while inflicting long-term damage to our national security 
and military readiness.
  Iranian provocation is nothing new. In the last several months, they 
have drastically and intentionally escalated tensions in the region. 
After several measured responses, President Trump made the appropriate 
decision to eliminate General Soleimani, a terrorist mastermind who 
ordered and helped carry out many attacks on American personnel and our 
allies.
  I want to emphasize an overlooked point here. General Soleimani was 
killed in Iraq, not Iran. He was in Iraq, in a car with another known 
terrorist, driving to meet militia members who recently fired rockets 
at Americans, killing an American contractor with rocket fire, and 
tried to storm our Embassy. I am going to remind everybody that our 
Embassy in Baghdad is sovereign U.S. territory.
  Whether through an existing authorization to use military force or 
the War Powers Act, President Trump was well within his legal bounds to 
take action against a known terrorist sitting in Iraq plotting attacks 
against U.S. citizens. It would have been culpable negligence to not 
act on the intelligence informing us of General Soleimani's position, 
location, and his imminent plans to attack again soon. I thank God the 
days of appeasement are behind us and we learned from history. 
President Trump averted another Benghazi-like tragedy.
  The President made Iranian leadership pay a price for its aggression. 
His decisive action made Iran realize that the cost of escalation was 
more than they can afford, and it worked. Without the loss of American 
life, while following our Constitution and laws, President Trump 
deescalated tensions with Iran and, through a clear message of 
strength, made war less likely.
  My colleagues on the other side of this issue know all of this well. 
They watched it play out in real time, just like the rest of us. Yet, 
whether it is their deeply rooted disdain for this President or a 
misunderstanding of the threats that the United States faces every day, 
they want to limit the President's ability to protect Americans abroad.
  The legislation they are promoting requires termination or in some 
cases complete withdrawal of our forces without any strategic or 
tactical considerations. Such actions are not based on military 
doctrine, the recommendations of senior military leaders, or even 
foreign policy experts; they would be based solely on politics and 
would constitute a strategic long-term loss in exchange for what they 
think would be a short-term political win.
  Ultimately, my colleagues who support this resolution refuse to 
accept the undeniable reality that the concept of peace through 
strength works. Removing the powers and capabilities of our military 
leaders that keep our country safe will not make us safer.
  Whether through personal animosity toward our President or a 
misunderstanding of the importance of deterring our enemies, some in 
this Chamber are advocating for changes that would make our country 
less safe. I will not support their efforts, and I urge the rest of my 
colleagues to do the same.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN. 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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