[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11960-11965]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              WORLD EVENTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, so much is happening in the world today, so 
much that is really earthshaking in its potential effect.
  In the Middle East, I've spoken before about the potential rise of a 
new Ottoman Empire that, unfortunately, our own country, this Obama 
administration, has helped jump-start.
  In Egypt, we supposedly had a friend. There were comments to direct 
attention to. Back on June 2, the BBC reported an interview in 2009 
where during the interview the President was asked:

       Do you regard President Mubarak as an authoritarian ruler?

  President Obama said, in part:

       He has been a stalwart ally in many respects, to the United 
     States. He has sustained peace with Israel, which is a very 
     difficult thing to do in that region. But he has never 
     resorted to, you know, unnecessary demagoguing of the issue, 
     and has tried to maintain that relationship. So I think he 
     has been a force for stability and good in the region.

  He points out, obviously there have been criticisms, but he saw him 
as a force for good in the region.
  That's rather amazing when you look at what happened--we recall it 
was an Arab Spring, that we've later since realized was more of a 
nightmare winter. Certainly, the people of Egypt did not see it as a 
``spring'' after President Morsi got around 13 million votes from the 
potential, as I understand, 50 million or more that could have voted. 
And he took over; and he began creating problems; and he became 
dictatorial; and he started violating his own constitution and taking 
actions that only a monarch or a tyrant should be taking.
  But going back to the disposition and deposal of Mubarak in Egypt, it 
creates problems for a country when their leader on one occasion says, 
as the President did:

       He has been a stalwart ally in many respects, to the United 
     States. He has sustained peace with Israel, which is a very 
     difficult thing to do in the region. But he has never 
     resorted to, you know, unnecessary demagoguing of the issue, 
     and has tried to maintain the relationship. So I think he has 
     been a force for stability and good in the region.

  What kind of message does it send to the world from what has been 
referred to as the remaining superpower in the world when its leader 
says to the world, this man has been a force for stability and for 
good, and then, not so long later, the same U.S. leader says he's got 
to go? He's got to go. He just needs to be done.
  Well, if he was a force for stability and good, if you were accurate 
in those comments, then one would think to get rid of him would bring 
about instability and bad--to use the antonyms. But push, cajole, make 
efforts to force Mubarak to leave, we did. And as the President said, 
you know, he had been an ally.

                              {time}  1215

  That doesn't look very good when other nations start trying to 
determine how should we deal with the United States.
  In one of my trips overseas meeting with foreign diplomats, I was 
told that diplomats from China regularly stop by and ask, Have you 
learned that you cannot trust the United States yet? Because one of 
these days you are going to figure that out; you can't trust the United 
States. They'll say they're your friend one day and then turn around 
and be your enemy soon after. One of these days you're going to figure 
out the United States can't be trusted, they're not your friend, and 
we're ready to be your friend whenever that happens. Just let us know. 
We're always ready to be your friend. You can trust us.
  Well, I'm not so sure about that, but I am concerned about the U.S. 
lack of credibility. So Mubarak was ousted and the Muslim Brotherhood 
took over Egypt. The people of Egypt, on the whole, very good, decent 
people. The moderate Muslims that reside there didn't want Muslim 
Brotherhood, didn't want tyrants, but enough people didn't come out 
early on.
  The Muslim Brotherhood had the best organization, and anybody with 
any intelligence in the region or anybody that watched news other than 
CNN could figure that out, that the Muslim Brotherhood was going to 
take over, but they were not what the rank-and-file people really 
wanted. That became clear when the rank-and-file people saw Morsi, a 
Muslim Brotherhood member who actually technically said he was 
withdrawing since he was leader of Egypt. But his comments, so 
disparaging and slanderous of Israelis and Jews, and certainly 
uncomplimentary of Americans, did not make him someone that the United 
States should endorse so wholeheartedly.
  In Libya, though Secretary Gates, Secretary of Defense, said we have 
no national interest in Libya at all, we had a President that decided 
unilaterally--at least, unilaterally in this country. He did have the 
support of the 57 States that comprise the organization Islamic Council 
and he had support of some of the NATO countries that got a lot of oil 
from Libya. He went in unilaterally, when it certainly did not appear 
there was any will of a majority of Congress to use American assets, 
military assets, to take out Qadhafi.
  Make no mistake about it, Qadhafi was a man who had blood on his 
hands,

[[Page 11961]]

there's no question. Qadhafi was a man who had been engaged and 
supported terrorism. But interestingly, after 2003, when the United 
States, under President Bush, went into Iraq because both Democrats and 
Republicans, most of them, believed he was a threat, and according to 
the CIA notes, some guy named Joseph Wilson also believed that they 
were trying to get uranium, and even though there had been reports of 
yellowcake uranium having been taken out of Iraq, President Bush went 
into Iraq and in record time Saddam Hussein, his defense became the 
mother of all weak defenses and he was ousted.
  All of a sudden Qadhafi, in Libya, went from a man who had been 
supporting terrorism to a man who was afraid of the United States and 
all of a sudden wanted to be our dear friend. There was a document that 
was made public that says the United States rescinded Libya's 
designation as a state sponsor of terrorism in June of 2006. Libya 
renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction in 2003 and has 
continued to cooperate with the United States and the international 
community to combat terrorism and terrorist financing.
  On July 20, Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure confirmed to the 
Malian press that Libya, Algeria, and Mali planned to coordinate 
military and intelligence efforts to fight security threats linked to 
al Qaeda in the lands of the Islamic Maghreb in the Sahel-Saharan 
region.
  Interestingly, Qadhafi had a true conversion experience when he 
became afraid that the United States might invade him next because of 
his support for terrorism, and he actually and legitimately did became 
an ally in the war against terror. In fact, when we look at things that 
the U.S. did--this is from The Washington Post, certainly not one of my 
biggest fans. But July 9, 2009, they reported that:

       Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi, who former President Ronald 
     Reagan once denounced as a ``mad dog,'' supped on pasta just 
     two seats away from President Obama at the Group of Eight 
     summit today and even secured a handshake with the U.S. 
     President.

  It talked about Qadhafi attending the summit, and it said, as Obama 
was shaking hands with Qadhafi, there were families of Pan Am 103 
victims gathered at the British Embassy in Washington, it goes on, 
because they still were concerned about the blood he had on his hands.
  So that was rather interesting that all of a sudden this was a man we 
could shake hands with, be friends with, and work deals with. Of 
course, Senator McCain was one of those who had gone over and felt like 
there was an opportunity to be friends. In fact, with regard to 
Mubarak, Senator McCain, supportive of the Obama administration and 
Secretary Clinton, had said this: the case of Mubarak is a great 
example that Mubarak was a great friend of the United States. Mubarak's 
predecessor concluded Camp David agreements and he stuck to it. 
Basically, there was a stable relationship between Egypt and Israel.
  With regard to Qadhafi, this article from Reuters from August 14, 
2009:

       Senator McCain and the delegation with him expressed their 
     deep happiness to meet the leader--

  Talking about Qadhafi.

     and praised him for his wisdom and strategic vision to tackle 
     issues of concern to the world in his efforts to sustain 
     peace and stability in Africa.

  So there were bipartisan feelings when the Obama administration 
started that, gee, Mubarak was an ally, Qadhafi had become an ally as 
somebody who could be trusted, and all these things. They're easy to 
find on the Internet, just a Bing search away from finding these 
things.
  So the world watches this and they look for consistency. Because one 
of the things, for those who are fans of baseball, some umpires call 
balls and strikes with a different strike zone. But having been an 
umpire and having played baseball, you can live with somebody that 
calls a ball just off the outside corner as a strike as long as he's 
always consistent. So, you know, you can trust this umpire. He skewed a 
little bit, but he's consistent, so you can always trust him.
  Consistency is critically important in the area of foreign affairs, 
yet we don't seem to have been very consistent when we used our 
military resources to help oust Muammar Qadhafi after he had a 
conversion experience and was doing what he could to help us fight 
terrorism outside of Israel. Some referred to him as the best friend we 
had in getting inside information on terrorism to help us combat it.
  There was the sense here in Congress we had no business getting 
involved in Libya, especially as the reports emerged that al Qaeda was 
backing rebels and we didn't know how extensive that al Qaeda 
involvement was. But we knew it was there. We knew there were radical 
Islamists that were trying to drive Qadhafi out, and this 
administration did not pause long enough to get an answer to the 
question: If we drive Qadhafi out, will we be more safe in America or 
less safe?
  Because, despite this desire to please the organization of Islamist 
Council and others in NATO, the number one obligation of this Congress 
and this President is to provide for the common defense of the people 
in this country. We took an oath to support this country under this 
Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.
  The reasoned analysis of Libya during this so-called Arab Spring that 
was really a freezing winter was that we are going to be in more 
trouble if Qadhafi is thrown out than if he is kept there--at least, 
those of us who looked at it besides the OIC and some that were getting 
oil from Libya who felt otherwise. But most people could see you're 
helping create instability into the region. If you look at the map of 
the former Ottoman Empire, you can see it around north Africa coming 
around up through the Middle East and Turkey, and you can see this 
starting to take shape.
  We helped get rid of Mubarak and all of a sudden we get a radical 
Islamist in charge of Egypt. We helped not just merely with words and 
coercion but with bombs to get rid of Qadhafi. Many believe it is 
doubtful Qadhafi would have fallen, and certainly wouldn't have fallen 
when he did, if it weren't for all our bombing and air support to help 
the al Qaeda-backed rebels to throw him out and ultimately have him 
tortured and killed.
  So where was the reasoning about how much this would help America, to 
allow radical Islamists to take Egypt and Libya? And then coming on 
around, as things fomented in Syria, it looked like initially these 
were not al Qaeda-backed rebels in Syria, and perhaps, as some believe, 
if we had acted quickly enough, if we had someone that wouldn't vote 
``present,'' if we had acted quickly enough, maybe we could have 
supported rebels who were not al Qaeda rebels, not radical Islamist 
rebels. But as it has degenerated in Syria now, and even as recent as 
this week, people are admitting that it looks like Assad really is more 
in control now.
  It is degenerated to the point where our national security interest 
is not to get into the middle of that fight. You have a tyrant of a 
leader on one hand, and you have radical Islamists, most of whom would 
like to destroy the United States as well, who are challenging him. 
Where in the world is the interest in spilling American blood or 
treasure in getting into Syria?
  With regard to Syria, we can look at comments that this 
administration had about Assad. CNSNews.com reported, March 28, 2011:

       Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on Sunday, drew a 
     contrast between Syrian President Bashar Assad and his late 
     father and predecessor, and said U.S. lawmakers who recently 
     have visited Damascus regarded him as a ``reformer.''
       She made the startling comment while explaining why the 
     United States will not intervene on behalf of Syrian 
     civilians revolting against the regime as it has done in the 
     case of Libya.
       President Assad has been very generous with me in terms of 
     the discussions we have had.

  This is Secretary of State Kerry, continued.

                              {time}  1230

       ``And when I last went to--the last several trips to 
     Syria--I asked President Assad to do

[[Page 11962]]

     certain things to build a relationship with the United States 
     and sort of show the good faith that would help us to move 
     the process forward.''
       He mentioned some of the requests, including the purchase 
     of land for the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, the opening of an 
     American cultural center, noninterference in Lebanon's 
     election, and the improvement of ties with Iraq and Bahrain, 
     and said Assad had met each one.
       ``So my judgment is that Syria will move; Syria will change 
     as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United 
     States and the West and economic opportunity that comes with 
     it and the participation that comes with it.''

  Also in March of 2009 from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 
it says:

       In early February, in a reversal of a longstanding U.S. 
     policy, the U.S. Department of Commerce approved a license to 
     sell Boeing 747 parts to Syria . . . A few weeks later, the 
     U.S. Treasury Department authorized the transfer of $500,000 
     to the Children with Cancer Support Association, a Syrian 
     charity associated with President Bashar Assad's wife, Asma. 
     Both decisions were seen as a softening of U.S. sanctions and 
     an important U.S. diplomatic overture.

  So it goes on, our cozying up with Assad. Perhaps that's why, when 
others around the world were saying that you have some moderates who 
were rebelling against Assad and that perhaps we can help them, this 
administration had already started having good feelings with the Assad 
administration, and perhaps that contributed to the slowness to want to 
move and act.
  One thing is very clear at this point--it should be to anybody who 
looks objectively--Syria is not a place the United States should be 
involved in right now because, when the winner between two forces 
fighting is not going to be helpful--no matter who it is--to our 
country and when our oath and obligation is to this country, we should 
not get involved in that.
  There are stories about gunrunning, running guns from Libya to Syria. 
Hopefully, at some point, we'll know exactly what the story was on that 
and is on that. Was it ongoing? Was it going on when Chris Stevens was 
involved? Hopefully, our leadership will allow us to pursue that 
properly and get the information so that we know exactly what happened, 
because we still have not gotten to the bottom of what happened in 
Benghazi, and there are families of dead patriots who died in Benghazi 
who deserve to know the answers.
  So we supported and were thrilled--I say ``we,'' meaning this 
administration, not the Congress, necessarily--and seemed to be pretty 
impressed with Morsi's taking over. Though reports came out of the 
slanderous things he said about Jews and Israelis and Americans, this 
administration seemed to be thrilled with his taking the position that 
he did, and seemed to be comforted by his saying--this is a Texas 
paraphrase--You know, I may have been part of the Muslim Brotherhood, 
but I'll kind of back off of that for a while.
  If you look at what he did, here are developments as reported by FOX 
News in Cairo in 2012:

       In June: Morsi was elected President with 51.7 percent of 
     the vote. He was sworn in. He became Egypt's first civilian 
     Islamist ruler;
       In August: A gunman kills 16 guards near the border with 
     Israel; Morsi scraps a constitutional document which handed 
     sweeping powers to the military, and he ousted Field Marshal 
     Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who was Head of State after Hosni 
     Mubarak's fall in February of 2011;
       In November: Morsi decreed that he would have sweeping new 
     powers for himself. Later that month, the Islamic-dominated 
     constituent assembly adopted a draft constitution after a 
     process boycotted by liberals and Christians;
       In December: Morsi annulled the decree of giving himself 
     increased powers after all of the rancor and the people began 
     to rise up in Egypt. Later in the month of December, 64 
     percent of the voters in a two-round referendum backed the 
     new constitution in a vote that was marred by low turnout. 
     The people of Egypt could see what was going on. Egypt 
     plunged into political crisis with demonstrations by Morsi 
     supporters and opponents, and they sometimes turned deadly;
       Coming through April 2013: Sectarian violence north of 
     Cairo kills four Christians and a Muslim;
       In May: Morsi carried out a cabinet reshuffle, which fell 
     short of opposition demands. Later in May, gunmen kidnapped 
     three policemen and four soldiers in the Sinai peninsula. 
     They were freed on May 22;
       In June: Egypt's highest court invalidated the Islamist-
     dominated Senate, which assumed a legislative role when 
     Parliament was dissolved and a panel that drafted the 
     constitution. The Presidency says the Senate will maintain 
     its powers until a new lower house is elected;
       Later in June: Egyptian and foreign nongovernment official 
     employees were given jail sentences, ranging from 1 to 5 
     years, from working illegally, causing international outrage. 
     We know there were some good people who were jailed for 
     nothing except trying to help people;
       On June 15: Morsi announced the ``definitive'' severing of 
     relations with war-torn Syria;
       On June 21: Tens of thousands of Islamists gather ahead of 
     a planned opposition protest;
       On June 23: Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi warns the 
     army will intervene if violence erupts;
       On June 28: The U.S. says nonessential Embassy staff can 
     leave after an American is killed during protests;
       On June 29: U.S. President Barack Obama urges Morsi to be 
     more ``constructive'' as the death toll rises. The Tamarod 
     ``rebellion'' campaign, which called rallies for June 30, 
     says more than 22 million have signed a petition demanding 
     Morsi's resignation and a snap election. The reports are that 
     the largest demonstration may reach 33 million.

  There had never been a demonstration in the entire world of as many 
as 20 million people, but the people of Egypt rose up. They recognized 
that radical Islamists in charge of their country were not a good thing 
even though the leaders of our country and the executive branch could 
not see the obvious.
  In having talked to Egyptians who were furious with CNN--because most 
of them don't get FOX News, and so they're relegated to CNN. They were 
furious at how CNN seemed to take the side of the Muslim Brotherhood 
over and over, and they related that CNN was basically a part of the 
Muslim Brotherhood, at least as conveyed to me. There were people very 
upset.
  Why are they not more objective?
  And I tried to explain to them, Look, you have to understand that CNN 
has gotten such low ratings at times in the last couple of years that 
sometimes we've got more people watching C-SPAN--they're that bored--
than watching CNN. Even though we're not part of the Nielsen ratings 
with the coverage here in the House, there are estimates. How sad is 
that for the once great Cable News Network?
  What's even sadder is that this administration, with all of its 
assets and intelligence ability at its fingertips and disposal and with 
supposedly all of the people it could ever want--the people they 
thought were the best in the world at analyzing foreign situations--
they thought Morsi was a good thing. Then, as you look at the map and 
as you see this jump-start of an Ottoman Empire having developed, wow, 
a problem occurred.
  As I've said on this floor, Egyptians have caught me and have said, 
Hey, you're in Congress. Quit helping the Muslim Brotherhood. They're 
not good for Egypt. We don't like their tyrannical nature. We want to 
have a government where we have some say. We don't want tyrannical 
people who are Muslim. We don't want that.
  Just as in Afghanistan, moderate Muslims say, We don't want radical 
Islamists, like the Taliban, controlling our country.
  I can't blame the administration for the constitution that was forced 
on Afghanistan--that forced shari'a law, that forced a centralized 
nation. Many of them I've met with over in Afghanistan. Together with 
the Northern Alliance leaders we've met with, they've said, Look, if 
you could just give us a more federalist government like you're 
supposed to have in America where States have more power; if you could 
let our regions elect our governors instead of the President appointing 
them and elect our mayors instead of the President appointing them; if 
you could let us have more control, we can keep the Taliban from taking 
over. We're Muslim, but we don't want the radical Islamists. Don't 
leave us in a situation where that's what we have.
  That's what we left them with and appeared to encourage in Egypt. 
It's certainly what we left Libya with, and four Americans were dead in 
Benghazi as a result. Bad decisions, unfortunately, at the level of the 
highest positions in the United States of America have terrible 
consequences all around the world.

[[Page 11963]]

  As I've mentioned, an elderly African from west Africa told me before 
I left a couple of years ago, We were so excited when you elected a 
Black President in America, but we've seen America. It appears to be 
growing weaker and weaker, and you're not taking the strong stance you 
used to. We're concerned because, if America does not stay strong, we 
will suffer around the world, those of us who count on you to stand for 
freedom and what's right. Please don't get any weaker.
  There are people around the world pleading that, and they don't even 
ask us to be the world's policeman. They just ask us to stand strong so 
that, if we were needed to stop an outright injustice that could 
threaten the world, including us, we could step in. But unfortunately, 
in the Middle East, nobody fears the United States and nobody is 
threatened by the United States. They see us as a paper tiger.
  It has been amazing, though. If you just watch certain cable news 
networks--and even FOX I don't think has done quite an adequate job of 
really capturing what has been going on in Egypt. This is for the whole 
history of mankind. We are talking about a major, incredible, 
earthshaking revolution that has gone on in Egypt. These are people--
moderate Muslims, combined with Coptic Christians, coupling themselves 
with liberal secularists--who don't want radical Islam running Egypt. 
So this grand scheme of building a great caliphate, a new Ottoman 
Empire--whatever you want to call it--ran into a huge problem when 
these incredible, freedom desiring Egyptians rose up in greater numbers 
than has ever arisen anywhere in the world in the whole history of 
mankind.
  This is incredible--incredible--and people need to recognize and need 
to be encouraged, not by the Arab winter that was originally called an 
Arab Spring, but by the true spring that is now happening in Egypt as 
moderate Muslims and Coptic Christians and caring secularists have 
arisen together and said ``no'' to radical Islam. We want freedom. We 
want a say in our government.
  In having visited with a friend who has been over there and has taken 
pictures and talked to people, she said it was amazing to see the 
Egyptian pope have people--Muslims--come up and say, We are so sorry 
for the way Christians are being treated in Egypt by the Morsi 
administration. We are so sorry. We hope we can change this to where we 
can live together in peace.
  That's what they want. Twenty, thirty million people coming out in 
protest? That would scare the little, puny Occupy Wall Street people to 
death. It's incredible.

                              {time}  1245

  The people of the United States, Mr. Speaker, need to understand we 
are living in a time that we are witnessing extraordinary international 
events, even when people at the highest levels of this country do not 
recognize how extraordinary it is. Perhaps they do, but perhaps they're 
embarrassed because radical Islam, through the Muslim Brotherhood, is 
now taking over Egypt and Libya and trying to take over Syria and 
putting our allied King Abdullah in Jordan in the hot seat, trying to 
force agreements out of him over the threat of deposing him.
  People over in the Middle East get it. The people in Russia and 
China, leaders there, they get it. This is a big deal. But perhaps our 
administration has been embarrassed by not recognizing the real truth 
of what was going on.
  I thought it would be helpful to just look at some of the photographs 
just recently taken during these demonstrations to get more of a 
feeling of where the Egyptian people are as this most extraordinary of 
revolutions is taking place. And it's important to note that you can 
talk to people in Egypt that say, Look, we want to be friends with the 
United States. We like the United States, but we cannot stand the fact 
that your government, we believe, really helped force us into having a 
Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist in charge of our country. We 
didn't want it. You forced the elections on us before we were ready. 
Some would say, Well, they chose their own elections. We were helping. 
We could've delayed them until more people had time to participate. But 
all the information that I was hearing here on the Hill, that was 
nonclassified, indicated that if elections occurred when they did, the 
Muslim Brotherhood would win. They were the most organized. And if they 
could be delayed to a time where the people themselves had a chance to 
organize and be heard, that there really would be a good turn in Egypt.
  But this administration did not help, did not delay the elections 
long enough to allow the true Egyptian people to be heard, and as a 
result, no matter how unfair it may be or how fair it may be, the 
Egyptian people, millions and millions of them, have a terrible 
perception of the leadership of the United States. They make clear they 
like America, they like the United States, but the leadership currently 
did them great harm.
  We know that when the President was elected, as he went around and 
spoke in the Middle East, some said that this was going to really 
increase the love and affection between the United States and majority-
Muslim countries. The polling data seems to say just the opposite: that 
our country, because of the leadership of this administration, is 
respected and admired far less than it ever was even under the Bush 
administration, because at least under the Bush administration they 
knew that Bush would be consistent, whether they liked him or not.
  So I think it would be helpful to look at some of these pictures, one 
of the big posters that was being used during the revolution. Make no 
mistake. When the Egyptians put messages in their big banners and signs 
in English, they want the message coming to America. The message these 
Egyptians had:

       Egyptians spoke. Al-Sisi listened. We the people have 
     spoken.

  So they're appreciating the military leader that--after 20 million, 
30-plus million Egyptians arose that dwarfed the small number of votes 
that Morsi got in the early election, the people of Egypt spoke. This 
was a revolution, an uprising by the people. And the military heard and 
witnessed the people rising up, and it answered and said, Okay, Morsi 
goes, because they recognized, as did the vast people across Egypt, 
that he had violated the Constitution. He had become a tyrant. He had 
become a dictator, and he had to go. Our administration here was slow 
to recognize. It's very sad because we do have a very intelligent 
President in the United States. Yet, the image they have in Egypt is 
that he sided with the wrong people, that the masses in Egypt did not 
want.
  So on this same poster where they're praising the leader of the 
military in Egypt for listening to the majority of adults in Egypt and 
doing the right thing for democracy, they have a red ``X'' through our 
great President's face. It's terribly unfortunate. It does not actually 
do what this President and most of us in this country hoped--well, at 
least majority-Muslim nations will look on us more favorably, and this 
is what we're seeing.
  I have another poster here during the massive protests. From what I 
was told by people that were there, they got really upset as CNN kept 
saying this is a coup, this is a coup, trying to diminish the 
importance of what was happening with 20 million, 30 million Egyptians 
rising up. So obviously they mean this for United States consumption. 
But these are things that massive numbers of people in Egypt were 
supportive of. It's a revolution, not a military coup, 33 million 
Egyptians protesting peacefully against Morsi, the tyrant and 
terrorist, who was supported by the USA. They want to make sure that we 
understand this is the real people of Egypt rising up. We need to be 
supportive of that.
  Another sign:

       New supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood. Anne 
     Patterson, hands off Egypt.

  There were multiple of those signs around as people were gathering.
  They've seen what this administration did, and they didn't like it. 
These were the masses. The symbol of the Muslim Brotherhood was in the 
same circle with CNN because they began to feel in Egypt that CNN was 
not reporting accurately, that the people did

[[Page 11964]]

want to live in peace with Christians and did want to live in peace 
with secularists, and not at the hands of a Muslim Brotherhood tyrant.
  This sign, in both English and their language, says, ``Obama supports 
terrorism.'' Well, of course President Obama doesn't support terrorism. 
Of course he does not. But the way it looked to Egyptians when we were 
supporting a terrorist, they presume we must and our President must 
support terrorism. We know he doesn't, but they don't know that because 
this Nation, this administration has supported terrorists in Libya and 
Egypt, and is now trying to get support for terrorists in Syria.
  Another sign during the demonstrations obviously for U.S. 
consumption:

       My dear American friend, when you get killed by terrorists, 
     do not blame anyone but your President Obama and his 
     administration.

  Well, that's ridiculous. When we're killed by terrorists in America, 
we should not blame the President. There may be negligence in America 
by many people when it occurs, as I believe happened with the Boston 
bombing. We were given information that was not properly utilized 
because of the handcuffing that has gone on within our FBI, within our 
intelligence community, within our State Department, and the purging of 
training material to keep us, as one intelligence officer said, from 
being able to see who our enemy is. We have hurt ourselves in a 
terrible fashion in our ability to understand who wants to kill us.
  I don't support any of these signs. I don't think they're proper. But 
I think it's important to understand what the people in Egypt are 
seeing and thinking so that we can give them the proper perspective on 
American people.
  You can't really read the whole thing on this one, but it is 
basically making it clear this is not a coup, it's the people:

       Thanks to our great Army that supports our great 
     revolution.

  In the October Revolution in the Soviet Union, Lenin appeared there 
in St. Petersburg and persuaded some people to support his revolution, 
but that revolution, that little gathering would not have done any 
good, as historians know. It was not until Trotsky went across to the 
military, across the river--I've been there--and he got up on something 
and he starts speaking eloquently to the military. Once he convinced 
the military to side with Lenin, then there was a true revolution that 
occurred. Nobody called that a coup. It was a small handful of people 
around Lenin rising up, but they convinced the military to support the 
October Revolution. As a result, there was a revolution and not just a 
tiny little uprising, which it would have otherwise been without 
Trotsky's eloquence.
  That's why it's important to understand that when 33 million in Egypt 
rise up, this is not an in-house coup. This is the masses of a great 
country rising up to say, We yearn to be free, and we don't want a 
radical Islamist controlling our country. And it's important for people 
of the United States to understand this is where we are. And 33 million 
people, the vast majority of the adult voters in that country, want to 
make clear they want to live in peace with Christians, secularists. 
Those are the people we can hold accountable and trust more that they 
will do the right thing because the support for the persecution of 
Christians around the world, the persecution and the killing of 
Christians, the torturing of Christians around the world, is growing 
like never before, and this great nation that arose based on Judeo-
Christian ethics stands idly by as the last public Christian church in 
Afghanistan closed, as the last Jew, publicly admitting Jew, leaves.
  That's when Afghanistan still had vast American presence. Even today, 
we could still turn the tide if we choose to, but we are not. And there 
may be an accountability issue some day with the judge of all judges. 
Because as John Quincy Adams argued, right down here below us in the 
old Supreme Court chamber downstairs, in the Amistad case, as he stood 
there representing Africans who were free Africans, but then they were 
wearing chains, and they were said to be slaves because they had been 
captured by other Africans and sold and brought to the Caribbean and 
then put on the Spanish ship the Amistad, and then they landed in 
America by mistake, and the Africans wanted to be free and the Spanish 
said, No, they're our property. Ultimately, the Supreme Court 
downstairs--you can find online, Mr. Speaker, the last part of John 
Quincy Adams' oral argument as he was literally frightened because he 
knew if he had not done an adequate job to argue his case, that those 
Africans would wear chains for the rest of their lives, and their 
children would and possibly their children, if he did not do an 
adequate job in representing them.
  He didn't feel good about the first 2 days of his argument. So he 
finishes by asking, Where is Chief Justice Marshall? And he ran through 
the names of every justice that had been on the court and was dead.

                              {time}  1300

  One of the Justices of that nine-Justice Court had died during oral 
arguments one night. It was not during the arguments themselves, but 
during the course of the arguments. So they were down. He asked where 
he was. He asked where the solicitor general was that had last argued a 
case against him in the early 1820s. And he ends up pointing out, in 
essence, they've all gone to meet their Judge, and the biggest question 
about their lives is did they hear, Well done, good and faithful 
servant?
  John Quincy Adams won the case, and those Africans left as free as 
they should have been.
  But some of us have a fear that if we do not do more to support truth 
and justice and the American ideals that this country was founded on, 
there will come a day of judgment; and but for grace, it would be a 
horrible thing. But we still have an obligation to do the best we can, 
to meet our sworn obligations, and to let people like this in Egypt 
know that we want to stand with free nations and be friends of free 
nations.
  Here's another big banner that was there during the Egyptian protest:

       Egypt will remain a civil state. Live, freedom, social 
     justice.

  And then with an American in the picture, the caption says:

       We know what you did last summer.

  They've gotten the wrong impression of the people of America, and 
it's up to the Americans to demand our leadership give the people of 
Egypt the proper impression that we do care about freedom-loving 
people.
  Here's another one. It's hard to read, but:

       Obama and Patterson support terrorism in Egypt.

  Well, we know that's not true, but there are masses over there that 
believe that. We've got to correct that, and the way you do that is by 
supporting people who really do want to be free.
  And another picture that just came from Egypt, I was told the 
Egyptians love America, but they don't trust our leadership.
  We have an obligation. Our obligation is to the United States of 
America. And in this Congress, our obligation is to our oath, to 
fulfill our oath. And those of us who are Christians, to whom oaths 
mean so much more, we owe everything we have, owe everything we can do 
to support our Constitution and to protect people in this country from 
all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to protect our Constitution from 
all enemies, foreign and domestic.
  And there are some who would say, you know, the Muslim Brotherhood, 
they got pretty violent over to Egypt and Libya and other places, and 
there are Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States. As one 
Egyptian article pointed out with pride, gee, they can be proud, they 
have six Muslim Brotherhood members who are high level confidants in 
this administration, in important positions of really advice in this 
administration.
  The Muslim Brotherhood members here in America, as I understand it, 
did not support the Boston bombing because their position is we are 
doing

[[Page 11965]]

such a great job of infiltrating and getting key positions of advice 
where we can monitor and watch and talk people into doing what we 
believe should be done, we don't want to stir up violence in the United 
States now; but maybe at some point it'll be necessary, but right now 
we're doing so well helping infiltrate the government and take over 
that we don't want violence right now. It may wake up the American 
people.
  But the truth is anyone in this country or around the world that 
wants to subvert our Constitution to sharia law is an enemy of the 
United States. Whether they live here domestically or they live abroad, 
if their allegiance is to subvert the U.S. Constitution to sharia law, 
they are our enemy. And they are people from whom we took an oath to 
protect our Constitution and this country. The people of Egypt, God 
bless them, they have arisen and made clear, we don't want radical 
Islamists running our country. We don't want to see Christians 
persecuted and killed and tortured, as has been going on. Those are the 
kind of people this Nation should befriend and not try to rush in and 
shore up those who would persecute, torture, and kill Christians and 
Jews and secularists that just want to be free.
  Mr. Speaker, we have an awesome obligation. We have an obligation to 
the people of the United States of America to get things right around 
the world so we do not put Americans at risk. And for those who would 
try to put a racial label on anything, there's nothing racial about 
wanting right and truth and justice. And I wonder where they were when 
I was supporting Alan Keyes. It's not about race; it's about truth, 
justice. It's about the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness with 
which we were endowed by our Creator. But just like any inheritance, 
any endowment, if we're not willing to protect it, if we're not willing 
to fight for it, we will lose it.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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