[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9585]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        U.S. ARMS SYRIAN REBELS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, there is a war going on in Syria. Some 
call it a civil war. It may have started out as a civil war, but it has 
escalated. The Government of Syria, is ruled by the dictator Assad. 
He's a bad guy; no question about it. Several rebel groups, and we're 
still not sure who all these people are, are trying to remove him from 
power. World powers seem to be taking sides in this battle.
  You have the Syrian Government supported by Iran and Russia. There's 
also this little terrorist group called Hezbollah supporting the 
regime. But on the other side, you've got the rebels, numerous groups, 
including al Qaeda, a terrorist group. You've got Saudi Arabia; Qatar; 
you've got the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt supporting the rebels. 
Turkey is concerned, and even Great Britain has weighed in on this, a 
former colonial power in the region. And so more and more groups and 
nations are lining up in this war in Syria that's been going on for 2 
years; 100,000 people have been killed by both sides. Refugees are 
leaving the country and going to other countries.
  I recently was in Turkey on the border of Turkey and Syria, and I saw 
a refugee camp that had 150,000 Syrians that had escaped the war in 
Syria. No question the U.S. should help with humanitary aid.
  And finally now the United States, after 2 years, we've decided we're 
going to take sides. The President has said we're going to give arms to 
the Syrian rebels and that they're going to be vetted so we make sure 
that we're not giving those to other terrorist groups. I don't know if 
we're going to do a universal background check on the rebels, or what; 
but small arms for the rebels?
  Here's what the President said:

       We're not taking sides in this religious war between Shia 
     and Sunni. Really, what we are trying to do is take sides 
     against extremists of all sorts.

  Well, it seems to me what we are really doing is taking both sides 
and we're arming extremists at least on one side. And I ask the 
question: What is the national security interest of the United States 
to be involved in somebody else's war? There isn't one. We don't have a 
national security interest to be involved in this war. The United 
States seems to have a habit of getting involved in other people's 
business; and once again, we have made the problem in Syria our problem 
by being involved and supporting the rebel groups.
  What is the goal of the United States's involvement? This war is not 
going to be easily won by the rebels. Are we going to then add more 
military power to the rebels? What's the end game? What is the goal 
here, to put another rebel group in power in another country?
  You know, we've kind of forgotten what we did in Libya. There's 
Muammar Qadhafi, the bad guy of Libya. No question about it, a horrible 
person. So what does the United States do? We support the rebels who 
overthrow the Libyan President, the Libyan dictator. We sent small 
arms. And you know, Mr. Speaker, those small arms are still in North 
Africa, and they've spread all over North Africa. We don't know what 
has happened to those weapons that the United States gave to those 
rebels. Only time will tell.
  So this is not our war; yet we seem to be very interested in 
supporting this, as the President correctly said, a religious war. 
You've got the Shia's and you've got the Sunnis. They've been at each 
other since the year 630, and they haven't resolved their conflicts and 
yet here a century and a half later, another conflict is involved. It's 
a religious war between two groups in the Middle East. It is 
escalating. The United States' national interest is not at stake. What 
the United States should do and work toward is a political solution to 
this problem, not a military solution to this problem, and do what we 
can to resolve it politically and help really both sides resolve it.
  This is not our war, Mr. Speaker. We have no national security 
interest. There's no American goal. We don't know the goal. We don't 
know the end result, and we don't even know who we are arming as those 
rebels. They could be made up of criminals, patriots, al Qaeda. We 
ought not be involved in this war that has no national security 
interest for the United States.
  And that's just the way it is.

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