[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9425]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      ADMINISTRATION'S FOREIGN POLICY IS A SERIOUS MISCALCULATION

  (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I have generally admired President 
Obama's bold foreign policy decisions. However, the administration's 
latest announcement to send an additional 450 U.S. military advisers to 
Iraq and to arm the Sunni tribes, the Shia forces, and the Kurdish 
Peshmerga, alike, is a grave misjudgment.
  Arming the Sunni tribes could undermine Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi 
and the central government the U.S. is trying desperately to prop up. 
Sunni assistance may, in turn, push Iran to more aggressively arm their 
Shia militias in Iraq.
  Worse still, arming the Shia fighters will further inflame Iraq's 
deep sectarian divide, which ISIS has exploited so skillfully. The 
Kurdish Peshmerga is perhaps the only reliable and ready force 
deserving of U.S. military assistance, but no amount of heavy weaponry 
will defeat ISIS without a concerted political settlement both in 
Baghdad and Damascus.
  All of this comes just days after President Obama has said, yet 
again, we do not have a complete strategy to defeat ISIS in Iraq or 
Syria.
  The U.S. has few palpable options when it comes to untangling the 
region's current chaos. However, the administration's current strategy 
``to arm everyone and let God sort them out'' is a serious 
miscalculation.

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