[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15704-15705]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        AMERICA MUST STAND FIRM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from

[[Page 15705]]

Louisiana (Mr. Abraham) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, I just wrote on the board that it has been 
1,510 days since the President said that Syria's Bashar Assad must go. 
He is still in office.
  It is 767 days since the President drew the red line in the sand that 
said, if Bashar Assad used chemical weapons on his own people, he must 
go. He is still in office.
  What we are seeing in Syria--the refugees' humanitarian crisis, a 
bloody civil war, the rise of ISIS--is a direct response to this 
administration's ineptness to handle these problems.
  Now we have Russia's Putin on the floor of the U.N.--on U.S. soil--
saying America is weak. But we didn't need Putin to tell us that by his 
words. He has done it by his actions. He invaded Crimea in Ukraine 
because he knew that this administration would draw another red line, 
but do nothing about it.
  America is losing her standing in the world because we would rather 
appease our enemies than show strength. This administration still has 
no strategy handling ISIS, no tangible plan to handle the Syrian 
problem or defeating Assad, and certainly no plan to deal with Russia's 
new very powerful aggression in many areas of the world.
  Assad must go. ISIS must be defeated. America must stand firm and 
show the world that we are a force to be reckoned with, not to be 
trampled on.

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