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“THE SYRIAN CRISIS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H5470-H5474 on Sept. 10, 2013.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE SYRIAN CRISIS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Smith of Missouri). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) for 30 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives. And I appreciate the presentation that's come forward from my colleagues from Pennsylvania and Nebraska with regard to the Syrian situation and the international issue that's in front of all of us.
I don't always find myself in complete agreement with the wisdom that emerges here from this microphone; but, generally speaking, that's where I stand this evening on the Syrian issue.
And I think that it would be of interest to the gentleman from Pennsylvania that I and a couple of other Members, yesterday morning, perhaps the day before yesterday, in the morning--my days blend together--we sat down with Syrian Christians who were expatriates who had escaped from Syria and are very interested in the cause there. And I understand that the gentleman from Pennsylvania has a good number of constituents that would be representative of the same cause.
It was a very interesting conversation that we had at breakfast day before yesterday at Brussels. And the concern that they expressed essentially came back to it's hard to choose a good side in Syria, in that Assad, of course, he's an evil dictator. We've known that for a long time.
We have the Free Syrian Army that emerged as a force for good that seems to now be taken over by forces that are not so good. So it appears to them, and it appears to me, that whether it would be the Assad forces that prevail in the end, or whether it would be the forces that are taking over the Free Syrian Army, it's not going to be good for Christians in Syria.
And I'm concerned that, for us to find a way forward, the best hope for Christians in Syria is likely to be the moderate groups that began the Free Syrian Army in the first place, those groups that want to have a secular Syria that respects everyone's right to freedom of religion and freedom to associate, and respects the rights of humanity that we all defend here.
So I reiterate the statements that the gentleman from Pennsylvania has made. And we stand, certainly, with the Christians in Syria, but also the secular forces in Syria, however they've been marginalized by the forces of the Muslim Brotherhood, the forces that are Assad, and the anti-freedom forces that seem to want to take Syria over and use it for their own evil aims.
So having traveled, Mr. Speaker, over into that part of the world, not into Syria specifically, but into the Middle East--and we just came back last night from a trip that was to Tokyo. We spent several days there dealing with the top leadership in Japan, including Prime Minister Abe, and then from there to the United Arab Emirates, where we had a meeting set up with a number of officials.
The first meeting was at 11:00 in the morning. We were scheduled to meet with the Crown Prince about 1 or 1:30 in the afternoon. Instead, he gave us a very pleasant surprise and arrived at our 11:00 meeting. And we were able to have a long, engaging conversation, doors closed, which gave us a very good perspective on the Middle East and on Syria.
So I appreciate my colleagues' focus and interest on this, and mine is also focused the same.
Mr. DENT. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Mr. DENT. I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa for his kind comments about his experiences with various folks who are in Syria.
I just wanted to say one other thing too. This past Sunday I attended a church service at my own church that has a large Syrian community; and a woman made a presentation at the church who represents the Presbyterian Church of Lebanon and Syria, and spoke in my church in very moderate, secular tones about why she thought it was not in anyone's interest for the United States to intervene at this point in the Syrian civil war.
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It was a very compelling statement. Then, after that church service, I stopped by another at St. George Antioch Orthodox Church after their services had ended and met with some of the parishioners whose family members are over there, in many cases, and some told me their family members had been killed. And there was a lot of crying and wailing and deep sadness. It's quite emotional for them, as you can well imagine. They feel so strongly that this intervention is only going to make the plight of the Christians that much more dire and difficult in Syria and that it could lead to their ultimate extermination in many cases. This was their term, not mine.
That's how serious this is to them in a country, that I believe, the last I checked, is somewhere between 15 to 20 percent Christian, although the numbers are diminishing, given this turmoil. We've seen that in many Middle Eastern countries. The Christian communities are just not able to endure in this type of environment.
So I appreciate your interest in this issue, Mr. King, and thank you for allowing me to speak. Keep up the good work.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Dent).
I would add that there was some dialogue in that breakfast meeting with the Syrian Christians that took place the day before yesterday, in the morning, about how there was a concerted effort to push and eradicate Christians out of all the areas in the Middle East. That seems to be something that they have embarked upon. And I know that there's a long history of it of over a thousand years. But it's been accelerated here, I believe, Mr. Speaker, within the last few years. In fact, the date of this meeting goes back to 1982 when that began.
We're hearing similar narratives about Christians that are being persecuted by both sides in this. The population percentage in Syria of around 15 to 20 percent fits with what I'm told. I added up the data that they gave me from different sections of the Syrian Christians and my number came to about 2.6 million Syrian Christians.
There are also about 2 million Syrians that are refugees that have left Syria and that are now housed in refugee camps in the surrounding country. There's about 2 million refugees. There are about 2.6 million Christians in or around Syria altogether. I see that as almost the equivalent of the population of the State of Iowa.
So we've watched as Assad has persecuted his people--the people that were not his. Anybody but his political allies were persecuted by him over the years. I remember that he was identified by the Bush administration as, I believe, an evildoer. I remember some communications being opened up with Bashar al-Assad that took place sometime in 2007 or 2008. I remember some pictures that came back from there. This individual now has been identified as head of the regime that has launched chemical weapons against his own people.
The evidence that we see doesn't necessarily confirm that it would be Assad himself that gave the order, but it does appear that there were chemical attacks. It also appears that there were conventional artillery assaults into the same neighborhood that brought about many casualties. To sort out whether they were chemical casualties or whether they were kinetic action casualties is a question that's not been answered yet.
I'm hesitant to get very far into this from a factual standpoint because of what's classified and what isn't, Mr. Speaker. I want to make this point. It doesn't get brought out in this Congress enough, if at all. The forces are lined up on the side of either Sunni or Shia. Of course, the Alawite sect of the Shia is the sect that is Assad himself. And he's supported by them. When you look at his allies--Hezbollah and Iran--they are Shia. If you look at his enemies, generally speaking, his enemies are al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. There's a list of those Sunni interests that have poured into Syria.
At the beginning, this was a conflict that was formed by the Free Syrian Army that wanted to unseat Assad and establish a government that would be of, by, and for the people of Syria and consistent with American ideals and American principles of a government that's empowered by the will of the people instead of by the will of a dictator or a king.
So as the Free Syrian Army began, their forces were growing and they were strong and they were taking over territory. Since that period of time, we've watched as the sometimes-labeled ``rebel effect'' has diminished. And it's almost been in direct proportion to the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda, and other radical interests stepping in to take over and pick up some of the resources that are being used to support the opposition to Assad.
As I've watched this and from what I know and from the information that's come to me, continually the Free Syrian Army is more representative of the Muslim Brotherhood than it is of the free Syrian people. And not by a majority of the population of the army itself, but by the leadership, by who commands the resources, by who's being trained. This is now ever more clear that there's not a side that's easy to get on in this conflict and be confident that the forces are the forces of good. In other words, to identify the good guys has gotten ever more difficult month by month. It's more difficult today than it was a month ago or 2 or 3 or 4 or 6 months ago.
But it doesn't mean that there aren't good influences, that there aren't good cores of people that we should be identifying with and that we should be strengthening and empowering. But from my view, anybody that supports al Qaeda or is of al Qaeda is our enemy. Anybody that is Muslim Brotherhood or supports Muslim Brotherhood turns out to be our enemy. The difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda is they both have the same military wing. The Muslim Brotherhood has got a lot broader political approach to this. But in the end, they're looking to establish the Islamic caliphate everywhere in the world they can and establish sharia law everywhere in the world they can. And they don't view individual rights, human rights, or this God-given liberty and freedom here that our Founding Fathers claimed for us here over 200 years ago. They don't have respect for that. They reject it. And their approach is not compatible with human rights.
So we see the sectarian interests in Syria taking over the secular initiates in Syria. I believe that there's an ability--if we can identify the good guys--to empower them, to train them, to fund them, to supply them. But there's a way to bring this around and bring it to a good conclusion. But the people that need to be empowered in Syria are a long way from power. The people that don't need to be in power, whether it's the Muslim Brotherhood side of this and the Sunni radical Islamists or whether it be the Shia interests and Assad, they are competing with each other now for dominance. They fought each other for centuries as well.
There's no good result that can come easy in Syria. There is a good result that could come over a long period of time if our administration identified the people that we should be allying ourselves with and if they could emerge as the strong force. But while that's going on, we've been offered something from Putin and the Russians that I don't think anyone expected, a little more than 24 hours ago, and that is a way to avoid a military conflict in engaging U.S. forces in Syria.
I will say, Mr. Speaker, that the mail that I'm getting and the phone calls that I'm getting are almost universally in opposition to going into any kind of military action whatsoever in Syria. Almost universal. All of my calls today were against going into Syria. Almost every call the last week were against going into Syria.
It's not that I make decisions exclusively off of constituent input or American communications input. I have an obligation and I owe my constituents and I owe Iowans and the people in this country my best effort and my best judgment. And that includes the input that comes from them, weighed more heavily than if it were not directly from my constituents. And I owe them my best effort and best judgment--and that is to go out and gather information. I have probably the best access to the broadest amount of information, including myself, among my constituents.
So I owe them my best effort. Part of that is to go and see with my own eyes and get into those parts of the world so that I can be fully informed, because this Congress is being called upon to make decisions that redirect the destiny of the United States of America. We should not do that in an uninformed way. We should not do it in a willfully ignorant way.
There are many things going on in the world that you cannot learn by listening to just briefings here or reading the paper. We should know from long history that you've got to drill into these things. You've got to look the right people in the eye and you've got to verify the information that they give you. I've done that. I've done that over the last week. I kept my powder dry on Syria throughout that period of time because I wanted to gather all the information that I could.
I didn't want to take a public position until I had seen as much as I can with my own eyes and hear as much as I can with my own ears. And even though we've done a trip into Cairo and the United Arab Emirates and the Middle East and we had briefings in countries beyond that and briefings from our State Department, we met with, as I said, Syrian Christians and we also met with refugees from Libya. We met with Special Forces interests and different perspectives on the Middle East entirely and different perspectives on the Syrian operation.
You put that altogether, from the State Department's position on, I came back with stacks of notes on it, Mr. Speaker. But I didn't want to speak on my Syrian position until such time as I had sat through the classified briefing that I knew over a week ago was scheduled for five o'clock yesterday. And that went on from five o'clock until about a quarter to seven last night.
That briefing was useful. The people that were there to brief us were Susan Rice and Director Clapper and Secretary Kerry. We also had Secretary of Defense Hagel and General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Five people of the highest level you could ask for assured the President of the United States. He gave us a briefing with the data that they have and what they know. And they told us what was classified and what wasn't. They told us the conclusions they had drawn and some method about how they arrived at those conclusions.
But my independent assessment doesn't agree with the course of action that seems to be the direction from the President of the United States. It doesn't mean that I disagree with the data that they have, but the conclusion and how to move forward, I do disagree with. And I have taken a position today that if there were a vote on the floor today to authorize military force in Syria, I would not support that. Mr. Speaker, I would vote ``no.''
I want to make it clear that I believe the President has constitutional authority to order action in Syria or anywhere else. The President of the United States has to have that authority to order our military into action in an instant. Our Continental Congress was not very functional when it came to fighting a war by consensus. When they finally got through the Revolutionary War and put a country together and built a Constitution that could be ratified by the majority of the States--the 13 original colonies--they concluded that we needed to have a President of the United States who was also the Commander in Chief of the United States military who was in full control of the military. And subsequent to that, there was a piece of legislation passed within the 20th century that was the War Powers Act that was designed to restrain the activities of the Commander in Chief, the President of the United States.
Those two conditions were, one, the constitutional authority of the Commander in Chief to order our military into battle in an instant without consulting Congress. And the other, the War Powers Act, requires the President to come back after a period of time and consult with Congress. Those two, the Constitution and the War Powers Act, are compatible as long as they are respected by the Congress and by the President of the United States.
Anytime we're engaged in a long military engagement, I think the President should come consult with Congress. If it's a short operation and it's over before it can be consulted, that's consistent with the Constitution.
I would point out when President Reagan ordered our military into Grenada, that was an operation that took place quickly. He came before the American people and let us know after it was launched that he had ordered military action in Grenada. It was a successful operation, and we pulled out of there when the objective was achieved. That was Ronald Reagan.
When George Herbert Walker Bush--Bush 41--ordered our military into action in Panama to put an end to dictator and drug smuggler Noriega, that order was issued and our military took to the field. And as that operation was unfolding, then we found out about the order of our Commander in Chief.
This operation that's proposed in Syria is an operation that the President of the United States has the authority to order. He has the constitutional authority to do so. And if he had identified targets in Syria, and was determined that was the right course for America, the President should have then issued the order to engage our military in the fashion that his best judgment said he should.
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But what has happened instead is there has been a vacillation that has taken place. He has sought to sell this to the American people while the message and the warning is going out to Assad. The red line that was drawn in the sand back during the Presidential campaign, it appears that the administration thinks that line has been crossed multiple times. And if you cross a red line in the sand enough times, it gets pretty blurry after awhile. Now they've decided that August 21 was the bright red line that was crossed by Assad. And here we are on the eve of the anniversary of the Benghazi attack--tomorrow is September 11--and on the anniversary of course of the September 11, 2001, attack; now we're negotiating with Congress to get support to go into military action in Syria.
My position, Mr. Speaker, is if the President thought it was a good idea, in a very limited way, as Secretary of State Kerry said, he should have done that. He should have issued the order, gotten it over with. If they're right and it's a very narrow operation, he could have pulled back and we would be done by now. But he watched as David Cameron and the United Kingdom took the issue before the British Parliament. The British Parliament voted down the initiative to strike Syria over the chemical weapons, and that put the brakes on the United Kingdom supporting us or any other entity in an operation in Syria. I think when the President saw that, maybe he concluded, Well, I'll ask Congress. If Congress says no, then I'll have this responsibility, this cup taken from him, so to speak--the one that he asked for when he put out the red line statement during the campaign in a debate with Mitt Romney.
So we're now in this situation where we've had a protracted national and global debate. And each stop around the world where we have gone into--
into Tokyo, into the UAE, into Cairo, into Brussels--and met with multiple entities along the way, Syria is the discussion matter. But they look to the United States to lead.
Some of the countries don't think it's a very good idea to go in there, but they say they will support us anyway because they want America to succeed. They understand that if we're not strong in the world, if we don't lead in the world, then this becomes a very precarious place.
I had it expressed to me a number of times: We don't think it's a very good idea, but if you do this, we'll support you; or, We think it's a bad idea; we have to support you anyway. But I didn't find anybody that said that they were really happy about the idea that America might strike someplace inside Syria to send a message to Assad. Some said don't pave the road to Damascus for the Muslim Brotherhood, that the devil we know may not be as bad as the devil we don't know. And we're starting to learn that.
So as this has unfolded--and I heard the gentleman from Pennsylvania, I believe it was, mention NATO and a NATO operation. We aren't going to have the support of NATO in an operation in Syria. NATO operates off of a consensus. The 28 nations or so that are NATO now have a lot of trouble getting to a consensus. If some of those countries decide they don't want to participate, they will just simply not commit their forces. In the end, it comes down to what will the U.S. do, what won't the U.S. do.
We're not going to have the support of the United Nations. There has already been that effort to bring it before the United Nations, and we've got opposition from Russia and opposition from China. Now, maybe they would reconsider. Maybe China would reconsider; maybe Russia would reconsider. But the United Nations is not going to be there behind us, Mr. Speaker. NATO is not going to be there behind us. We will have perhaps a coalition--not of the willing, but a coalition of the unwilling, those unwilling to allow the United States to, let's say, be embarrassed by this policy.
So the best course forward appears to be the lifeline that was tossed to us within the last 24 hours by Putin from Russia. He said, Let's take you up on your offer, Secretary Kerry, and see if we can gather up these chemical weapons and eradicate them from Syria. If doing so will prevent a military strike, then let's give it a go. That's a British expression, by the way, Mr. Speaker, ``give it a go.''
Well, I'm for giving it a go. I think that is the best alternative we have. I think the military strike is a mistake because it runs the risk of paving the road to Damascus for Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamist entities that are part of that constellation that have been systematically marginalizing the true free Syrian Army and empowering themselves, and some of them with resources that we would see as sourced back to the U.S. taxpayers.
Well, the best course forward now is to work with the Russians and see if we can get the chemical weapons gathered together. I would want Americans involved in any kind of a mission to gather those chemical weapons. I think the United Nations showed an ability to go into Iraq before 2003 and do the nuclear inspection that was there. I was uneasy with their conclusions--in fact, I didn't agree with their conclusions, but they're the force on the planet that has an opportunity to have the global credibility. If they get to that point where they say we've got all these weapons picked up, or they will qualify their answer, that's the kind of thing that should be going on, Mr. Speaker. But in any case, any kind of inspection team, any kind of chemical weapon collection team, under the auspices perhaps of the United Nations so that it isn't directly under, say, Russia or the United States, but with Americans there on the ground to verify the actions that are taking place and give us a sense of credibility and confidence.
Mr. Speaker, I point out that it won't work to go there and just get the job done to eradicate the chemical weapons. We must do so in a way that has credibility so that especially the American people will accept a conclusion and we can perhaps move on. But picking up chemical weapons and gathering up that entire inventory, which is tons and tons of that inventory, if it's done so in a precision way, perhaps doesn't change the balance of the regime versus the forces for good and those evil forces that align themselves with the forces for good, perhaps doesn't change that balance, or changes it in a more minimal way than a military strike would, and it would send the message that we will put an end to the abuse of chemical weapons.
It is also curious to me, Mr. Speaker, that this level of concern and outrage didn't seem to exist when chemical weapons were being used between Iraq and Iran during the Iraq and Iran war in the eighties. It doesn't mean it's all right. I think it's a good position to take against the abuse and the use of chemical weapons, but the red line itself, as far as a reason for America to put ourselves into a military conflict in a nation that we don't have much strategic interest in is, I think, a mistake and I would oppose that. We should remember, again, who are the forces there, the messages they send to the world.
What have we seen happen in the Arab Spring? An Arab Spring that has emerged now--we are a couple years into that. It looks to me like the forces that have emerged on top have invariably been the Muslim Brotherhood. So it isn't always good to see a change within a regime or administration.
We saw President Carter support the return of the Shah in Iran and support ousting the current power, the power that was in Iran and put the Shah in, thinking that there would be a representation that was a religious movement--excuse me, the opposition to the Shah in Iran. In any case, the Ayatollah was viewed by President Carter as being a religious movement that was a voice for the people. What we ended up with the Ayatollah instead of the Shah was the beginnings of radical Islam within Iran, and the flow that came from 1979 until today might have been different had we taken a different position in Iran. Where we had friends in Iran, now we have enemies in Iran. As we have developed friends in Iraq, we are watching that friendship diminish. As we developed the foundational support in Afghanistan, we are watching that diminish.
As we see, we have strong friends and a military alliance with Egypt. We supported Mubarak and he was our friend. We built military operations going on in the Sinai Desert. That took place with--a good number of Iowans served there and people from probably every State served in the Sinai in operations with the Egyptians. Then Mubarak was essentially pushed out. And the message that came from our administration was he needs to leave yesterday. Well, the Morsi forces were able to push Mubarak out. They held one election. 5.8 million of the 83 million Egyptians voted for Morsi. Morsi came in as an incompetent Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim Brotherhood came out of that on top again like every other situation in the Arab Spring that has unfolded in the last couple of years, Mr. Speaker.
Now the best break we've seen in Egypt is that 30 to 33 million Egyptians took to the streets. Their peak day was the 3rd of July. They took their country back; and, yes, they had the support of the military. And some call it a coup, but there is no constitutional provision for them to impeach the incompetent Morsi. The Egyptian people had had enough. You can't mobilize that kind of support unless there are many good reasons--the economic shambles that they allowed to take place and the injustices that were taking place under the Morsi regime.
So now we have a new leadership that has taken hold in Egypt. I have met with the interim President of Egypt, President Mansour. He makes it clear he is the interim President, that they are going to hand the country of Egypt over to an elective representative government. They're going to pass a constitution that they're busy writing now. And the military will let go of their control over the country and submit to the civilian leadership that emerges in a constitutional fashion. They have laid out a timetable and a roadmap, Mr. Speaker. So this is the best future that Egypt can hope for.
Morsi was a mistake. He is Muslim Brotherhood. These forces are anti- Muslim Brotherhood. They are pro-Egyptian people. I'm supporting the forces that are in place in Egypt now, and I would, face to face, encourage them, move forward with the timetable that you have. It appears to be aggressive and it has some risk. But writing a constitution, ratifying a constitution, having elections and establishing a civilian government in Egypt and then handing the control of the military over to that civilian government is the right thing to do. It sets the right destiny for Egypt. And I think that the United States needs to do a 180 on the support of the people that are now in charge in Egypt.
I appreciate, Mr. Speaker, your attention and an opportunity to address you here this evening, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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