THE SYRIAN CRISIS; Congressional Record Vol. 159, No. 118

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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,

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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.

{time} 1900

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

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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.

{time} 1915

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

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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-

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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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