[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2057-2058]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           NATIONAL SECURITY

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I wish to take a few minutes today to talk 
about my growing concern over President Obama's policies regarding 
several major national security issues.
  Of course, the President has just today sent over to Congress an 
authorization for use of military force against ISIL, the Islamic 
State, but over the past 6 years, as the quantity and frequency of 
international crises have grown, there have been some very clear trends 
that have emerged from this administration's foreign policy.
  First, we have seen what might be dubbed the red-line syndrome in 
which the President uses stern language and strong rhetoric toward a 
hostile foreign regime or terrorist group and then backs it up with 
either total inaction or ineffectual action, thus inviting not respect, 
not fear, but ridicule.
  The most infamous example, of course, is when the President remarked 
that the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al Assad of Syria would 
constitute a red line and then, after Assad had crossed that red line 
and used chemical weapons on his own people, the President did 
essentially nothing in response, thus damaging the United States' 
credibility on the world stage in the eyes of both our friends and our 
foes.
  And I don't have to remind the Senate what has happened since that 
time. More than 200,000 Syrians have lost their lives in this terrible 
civil war, and millions of Syrians have become displaced, either 
internally within the country or outside of the country in refugee 
camps, such as those I visited in Turkey and others in Lebanon and 
Jordan, just to name a few places.
  So there are consequences associated with tough talk and no action.
  The second pattern I have observed is what might be what my dad 
called, when I was growing up, paralysis by analysis. In other words, 
this is what some have called just plain dithering.
  I think what the President seems to regard as a deliberative process 
and as a virtue others call dithering or paralysis by analysis. We can 
think of numerous examples, starting with the snail-like pace of the 
President's decision process early in his administration with regard to 
whether to surge U.S. forces in Afghanistan and, if so, what long-term 
role we should play there.
  Again, in today's Washington Post, when I got up and was getting my 
first cup of coffee, I was reading that now apparently the 
administration is starting to reassess again their commitment to 
Afghanistan.
  But the list of the President's paralysis by analysis is lengthy. The 
situation in Ukraine is another painful example. In Ukraine, the 
President has stood idly by and watched Russian President Vladimir 
Putin carry out a de facto invasion of Ukraine, starting with Crimea, 
and continuing today in eastern Ukraine.
  From ``mysterious little green men'' to columns of full-up Russian 
tanks, the hand of Putin in the Ukraine has been unmistakable. It has 
been the most blatant land grab by a force that Europe has seen in 
quite some time. Yet the best President Obama has been able to do is 
more hollow rhetoric.
  Now there have been modest economic assistance and nonlethal military 
resources to Ukraine's Government, and there have been some sanctions, 
but they apparently have not worked to dissuade Putin.
  The Senate might recall what I recall when the President of Ukraine 
came to speak to a joint session of Congress just a few months ago when 
he asked for more aid, lethal aid to fight and defend his country. But 
he did say: Thank you for the blankets. Obviously you can't win a war 
with blankets.
  By the way, the President's policies toward Russia have been an 
unabated disaster, dating all the way back to his 2009 reset of 
relations with Russia, and Vladimir Putin has taken full advantage of 
the opening that he sees and the lack of resoluteness on the part of 
the U.S. Government.
  We have little to show for this so-called reset except realities such 
as this: the aforementioned Russian annexation of Ukraine, a Russian 
violation with impunity of President Reagan's landmark intermediate-
range nuclear arms treaty, which now poses a direct threat to the 
security of our NATO allies in Europe.
  We have also seen a steady flow of Russian weapons and other support 
to the blood-thirsty butcher of Syria, Bashar al Assad, who, as I 
mentioned earlier, has slaughtered more than 200,000 of his own country 
men and women.
  The President's paralysis by analysis has also infected his 
incoherent approach in dealing with the terrorist army of ISIL, the so-
called Islamic State. In 2011, after he pulled negotiations with the 
Iraqis on a status-of-forces agreement, the Obama administration 
proceeded with a misguided plan to pull the plug on the American 
presence in that country, thus squandering the blood and treasure that 
Americans invested in trying to liberate the Iraqis and provide them 
with a better future.

[[Page 2058]]

  While it is true the Iraqis had not agreed to the U.S. conditions to 
an enduring American presence, including legal immunity for our troops, 
the administration simply gave up and failed to expend the political 
capital necessary to secure a status-of-forces agreement and to 
preserve the security gains in Iraq that, as I have said, had been paid 
for by American blood and treasure.
  The resulting security vacuum, coupled with an incompetent and 
corrupt Prime Minister, set the conditions for ISIL to make alarming 
gains in territory and power in Iraq last year.
  As chaos took hold in Syria, ISIL and other terrorist groups were 
flourishing. We know that in 2012 many of the President's most senior 
National Security Advisers--including then-CIA Director David Petraeus, 
then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Chairman of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, and then-Secretary of Defense Leon 
Panetta--all of them recommended at that time that the President 
initiate a program to arm vetted moderate Syrian rebels.
  President Obama refused, publicly remarking just 1 year ago that 
ISIL, the Islamic State in the Levant, was the JV team of terrorist 
groups. Today, of course, the irony is the President has now sent us an 
authorization for the use of military force to fight this JV team, as 
he called it 1 year ago.
  Then last summer, when the challenge had grown many times more 
complex and more difficult, the President dusted off the idea and moved 
ahead with it.
  This is not exactly a picture of decisive leadership, nor is it 
designed to instill respect--indeed, fear--in our enemies nor 
confidence in our allies.
  Today, with ISIL growing in strength in our region, our Commander in 
Chief cannot even bring himself to call the evil they represent by 
their rightful name. He refuses to acknowledge ISIL is a radical 
Islamist group, even after these jihadists have beheaded numerous 
American citizens, other Western captives, and burned alive a pilot 
from one of our closest allies, Jordan.
  And then, of course, there is the most recent tragic news about Kayla 
Mueller, the young humanitarian aid worker who tragically lost her life 
in the hands of ISIL terrorists, after being held captive in Syria 
since 2013. Kayla, from Phoenix, AZ, had been assisting the group 
Doctors Without Borders.
  In 2011, in a video she posted on YouTube, remarking about the 
slaughter by Bashar al Assad of his own citizens in Syria, and the 
rampage of ISIL, she said that ``silence is participation in this 
crime.''
  Well, the President chose to use his recent speech at the National 
Prayer Breakfast that I attended, along with my wife and friends from 
Dallas, to paint a picture of moral equivalence between the barbaric 
entity known as ISIL and Christian crusaders from centuries ago. I have 
to say I am not the only one, apparently, who was confused by this 
equivalency or this comparison the President used during his remarks 
that morning.
  This week, as Congress has now received the President's draft 
authorization for use of military force against ISIL, most of us still 
lack a clear understanding of the strategy the President seeks to 
employ in order to degrade and destroy this threat.
  Even though the military campaign began last August, I know the 
Presiding Officer has served with distinction in the U.S. Marine 
Corps--and one of the things I hope the President will answer is how he 
hopes to defeat ISIL with just airstrikes. Indeed, as I understand from 
the military experts, you can't hope to win a conflict like this by 
blowing up things with airstrikes. You actually have to hold the 
territory so the enemy doesn't reoccupy it once you have moved on 
somewhere else.
  The strategy we have heard so much about clearing, holding, and 
building, which seems to be an essential strategy when it comes to 
winning a conflict such as this, is nowhere to be seen in the 
President's strategy to have airstrike after airstrike after airstrike.
  So I hope the President will enlighten us on what strategy he seeks 
to employ in order to degrade and destroy ISIL. If not, I trust that 
Members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle will offer their ideas 
about the kind of strategy that could have a reasonable chance of 
success.
  I personally am reserving judgment on this authorization for use of 
military force until I learn more about the President's strategy and 
hear more about what sort of consensus we can have in the Senate about 
a strategy that has a reasonable chance of success.
  I take very seriously--as I know every single Member of this Senate 
does--the granting of authority to use military force, putting our men 
and women in uniform in harm's way to protect not only us but our 
national security interests around the world. So this is one of the 
most serious and most important sorts of debates we can have as Members 
of the Senate. But I worry about the flawed policies I have identified 
and that these are really just the tip of the iceberg.
  In future remarks, I wish to come back and address a national 
security threat that I think is perhaps the most urgent, and that is of 
Iran's relentless quest for nuclear weapons, as well as the impact on 
our closest ally in the Middle East, the State of Israel.
  Recently one of America's finest generals and former Commander of the 
United States Central Command, Gen. James Mattis, testified before the 
Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States needs ``to come 
out now from its reactive crouch and to take a firm strategic stance in 
defense of our values.''
  I couldn't agree more. The world is safer and more stable when 
America leads, leads from the front, not from the rear, and when we say 
what we mean and we mean what we say, and we back it up with action.
  If the President can't do that, then over the last 2 years of his 
administration it will be incumbent upon Republicans and Democrats in 
Congress to lead the way in the absence of Presidential leadership and 
to do what we can do within our authority to prevent further erosion of 
American credibility on the world stage.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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