[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 12008-12009]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             FOREIGN POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Jones) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I am on the floor today because I believe 
that Congress must put an end to the waste of American lives and 
taxpayer dollars overseas.
  Recently, President Obama requested $500 million to train and arm 
Syrian rebels. In his editorial, ``Congress Can Stop Obama's Ramp Up to 
War,'' Pat Buchanan made an excellent point, saying:

       Before Congress takes up his proposal, both Houses should 
     demand that Obama explain exactly where he gets the 
     constitutional authority to plunge us into what the President 
     himself calls ``somebody else's civil war.''

  Buchanan goes on to comment:

       Syria has not attacked us. Syria does not threaten us. Why 
     are we joining a jihad to overthrow the Syrian Government?

  Mr. Speaker, Iraq is another country in which America has again 
become involved to the detriment of our best interests.
  A former commandant of the Marine Corps, who has been my adviser for 
the past 6 years, stated in a recent email to me, ``We should not put 
boots on the ground.'' He went on to say that the situation in Iraq is 
``a Middle East issue that needs a Middle East solution,'' not more 
American troops.
  Unfortunately, there are currently 750 American boots on the ground 
in Iraq, with authorization from the President for up to 770 in the 
future.
  As our involvement in Iraq escalates, I am reminded of another 
important point made by Pat Buchanan:

       It is astonishing that Republicans who threaten to impeach 
     Obama for usurping authority at home remain silent as he 
     prepares to usurp the war powers--to march us into Syria and 
     back into Iraq.

  Last August, Americans rose as one to tell Congress to deny Obama any 
authority to attack Syria. Are Republicans now prepared to sit mute as

[[Page 12009]]

Obama takes us into two new Middle East wars on his own authority?
  Mr. Speaker, Marine Lieutenant General Greg Newbold wrote an 
insightful editorial for Time in April 2006, titled, ``Why Iraq Was a 
Mistake.'' From 2000 until 2002, General Newbold was director of 
operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and describes himself as ``a 
witness and therefore a party to the actions that led us to the 
invasion of Iraq--an unnecessary war.''
  In closing, I would like to quote a paragraph from General Newbold's 
editorial regarding the distortion of intelligence that drew America 
into the Iraq war in the first place:

       In 1971, the rock group The Who released the antiwar war 
     anthem, titled, ``Won't Get Fooled Again.'' To us, its lyrics 
     evoked a feeling that we must never again stand by quietly 
     while those ignorant of and casual about war lead us into 
     another one and then mismanage the conduct of it.
       Never again, we thought, would our military's senior 
     leaders remain silent as American troops were marched off to 
     an ill-considered engagement. It's 35 years later, and the 
     judgment is in: The Who had it wrong. We have been fooled 
     again.

  Those are sad, sad words. We have been fooled again.
  Mr. Speaker, we in Congress have the responsibility, based on the 
Constitution, to never get fooled again, but too many times we do not 
uphold our constitutional rights. I believe the words of Pat Buchanan 
and Greg Newbold articulate the many reasons that no President should 
bypass Congress and the Constitution to send our military into combat.
  Mr. Speaker, before closing, I have a photograph from the Greensboro 
News-Record. Here we go again in setting up our men and women in 
uniform that possibly could get killed in a foreign country. Mr. 
Speaker, this is a group of Army soldiers bringing a flag-draped coffin 
off of a plane.
  Please, God, don't let us forget that those in uniform are our 
children, and we must protect them by meeting our constitutional 
responsibility.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I will ask God to please bless our men and 
women in uniform, please bless the families of our men and women in 
uniform, and please, God, continue to bless America.

                          ____________________