[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14935-14936]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         TRIBUTE TO THE U.S. AIR FORCE AND MAJOR K.C. COURTLAND

  Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, it is a good day for Major Courtland to 
be here because another thing I want to talk about today is the Air 
Force itself and to pay tribute to those in the Air Force. This is the 
anniversary of the 67 years of service and sacrifice for our Nation--
clearly the greatest air power in the history of the world, the first 
place we turn when we want to make an immediate difference in a chaotic 
situation in the world.
  We are talking this week, again, about how the Air Force can make a 
difference, whether it is those based at Whiteman Air Force Base in 
Missouri or those based all over the world. The Air Force continues, in 
so many ways, to project our strength and our commitment to a more 
peaceful world by using the power that we do have in a way that ensures 
that in some cases the playing field is more fair because we keep 
people on the ground rather than let despotic governments get their 
weapons in the air. In some places we are able to intervene, as we did 
recently in conjunction with the Peshmerga, to allow the recapture of 
the dam in Iraq that is essential, and even beyond that, could have 
itself been used as a great weapon if that dam would have been allowed 
to be breached and then the flood that would have occurred because of 
that.
  The Air Force was created in 1947 under President Harry Truman's 
leadership. Prior to that it was called the U.S. Army Air Corps. I am 
proud to stand today at one of the desks that Senator Truman used on 
the Senate floor--a desk later used by other Missourians, by Senator 
Eagleton, by Senator Danforth, by Senator Bond--but a desk used by 
President Truman as he served in what he said were the best years of 
his working life--his time as a Senator.
  But he faced lots of hard challenges as President. One was how we 
moved forward in a new and different world after World War II and how 
we used our technology in different ways. One of those was to recognize 
that the U.S. Army Air Corps had risen to a place that it really 
deserved to be recognized for what it was--the Air Force. The first 
Secretary of the Air Force, another Missourian, was Senator Stuart 
Symington, who then would later serve in this body as a Senator.
  Certainly, we have benefited in our office from having Kelly 
Courtland, Maj. K.C. Courtland, who has been helping us this year in my 
responsibilities on both the Armed Services Committee and the Defense 
Appropriations Subcommittee. This is actually her anniversary as well 
as a member of the Air Force. She now completes 24 years of Air Force 
service on exactly the same day that the Air Force was established 67 
years ago. Twenty-four years ago Major Courtland enlisted in the Air 
Force. For the last year she has helped us fulfill the responsibilities 
in our office that we have and the No. 1 responsibility of the Federal 
Government--the one thing almost no one would argue we could do for 
ourselves; that is the responsibility of defending the country.
  We are hoping we see Major Courtland stationed in Missouri one of 
these days. She is from Ludington, MI. She will be running her 85th 
marathon this weekend--the Air Force Marathon. She values her military 
training. She served from enlisted to now her role as a major and has 
been unbelievably helpful to us at this time.
  As we think about Major Courtland and all of the others who serve, we 
want to be very mindful of their service, their willingness to step 
forward to defend our freedom, to be willing to defend our freedom at a 
time when, once again, we are talking about this week those who would 
threaten our freedom and what we will do about that and how we are 
looking to be sure that the strategy we have and the resolve we have is 
a resolve that allows us to convince our enemies that a peaceful 
world--a world where people can pursue their own values, where they are 
able to pursue their own right of conscience, where they are able to 
look within themselves and determine their own religious convictions 
rather than have someone tell them what those convictions are and 
demand that everybody follow exactly the same path in the way they view 
religion and the way they consequently would be required, because of 
that one view, to view society and how people should live together--
hopefully those who defend us will get the kind of support and the kind 
of thoughtful consideration and determination they need from the people 
in the Senate and the House, from people in the Defense Department and 
the administration, from people in the White House, from the Office of 
the President himself on down who are going to be making decisions that 
will put others in harm's way as we try to prevent greater numbers of 
Americans, frankly, from being in harm's way.

[[Page 14936]]

  I clearly count myself among those who believe this is a real danger 
to us--the location of this ISIS threat, the understanding from the 
Secretary of Defense that somewhere between 1 and 200 Americans are 
there fighting alongside this genocidal group, and many times that from 
Europe fighting alongside this group--people with passports that allow 
them to come to the United States, to not worry about coming over the 
border and just worrying about buying a plane ticket and coming in that 
way.
  Of course there are those who say--and I agree: If we know who they 
are, we should take their passports away. That is easy if you know who 
they are to invalidate the passport. It is pretty hard if you do not 
know who they are to invalidate that passport. In fact, it just cannot 
be done. There are not only Americans coming back, but others from visa 
waiver countries who just simply have a passport from their country and 
they buy a plane ticket. Suddenly those who have become steeped in this 
wrong-headed view of the world--who have become conditioned to the idea 
that a life, if it does not agree with you, does not matter--they would 
be able to come into this country and into European countries in ways 
that we have not seen before and still have access--as terrorist groups 
have had before to many other countries--to poison the minds of people 
who are looking for an answer. I can assure you that this is not the 
right answer.
  So I wish my colleagues well as we make these important decisions. We 
are going to be looking at whatever we decide to do in the next couple 
of days and over the next 75 days or so. We will have a chance to 
revisit that decision as we look at how force is being applied and how 
our hopes are being met. We will see if what the President thinks will 
happen as a response to what we are doing here is actually what appears 
to be happening later this year.

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