SYRIA; Congressional Record Vol. 158, No. 35

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SYRIA

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, after a year of bloodshed, the crisis in

Syria has reached a decisive moment. It is estimated that more than

7,500 lives have been lost. The United Nations has declared that Syrian

security forces are guilty of crimes against humanity, including the

indiscriminate shelling of civilians, the execution of defectors, and

the widespread torture of prisoners.

Bashar al-Asad is now doing to Homs what his father did to Hama.

Aerial photographs procured by Human Rights Watch show a city that has

been laid to waste by Asad's tanks and artillery. A British

photographer who was wounded and evacuated from the city described it

as \\\`\\\`a medieval siege and slaughter.'' The kinds of mass atrocities

that NATO intervened in Libya to prevent in Benghazi are now a reality

in Homs. Indeed, Syria today is the scene of some of the worst state-

sponsored violence since Milosevic's war crimes in the Balkans or

Russia's annihilation of the Chechen city of Grozny.

What is all the more astonishing is that Asad's killing spree has

continued despite severe and escalating international pressure against

him. His regime is almost completely isolated. It has been expelled

from the Arab League, rebuked by the United Nations General Assembly,

excoriated by the U.N. Human Rights Council, and abandoned by nearly

every country that once maintained diplomatic relations with it. At the

same time, Asad's regime is facing a punishing array of economic

sanctions by the United States, the European Union, the Arab League,

and others--measures that have targeted the assets of Asad and his

henchman, cut off the Central Bank and other financial institutions,

grounded Syria's cargo flights, and restricted the regime's ability to

sell oil.

This has been an impressive international effort, and the

administration deserves a lot of credit for helping to orchestrate it.

The problem is the bloodletting continues. Despite a year's worth of

diplomacy backed by sanctions, Asad and his top lieutenants show no

signs of giving up and taking the path into foreign exile. To the

contrary, they appear to be accelerating their fight to the finish and

they are doing so with the shameless support of foreign governments,

especially in Russia, China, and Iran. A steady supply of weapons,

ammunition, and other assistance is flowing to Asad from Moscow and

Tehran. As the Washington Post reported yesterday, Iranian military and

intelligence operatives are likely active in Syria, helping to direct

and sharpen the regime's brutality. The Security Council is totally

shut down as an avenue for increased pressure, and the recently

convened Friends of Syria contact group, while a good step in

principle, produced mostly rhetoric but precious little action when it

met last month in Tunisia. Unfortunately, with each passing day, the

international response to Asad's atrocities is being overtaken by

events on the ground in Syria.

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Some countries are finally beginning to acknowledge this reality as

well as its implications. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are calling for arming

opposition forces in Syria. The newly elected Kuwaiti Parliament has

called on their government to do the same. Last week, the Supreme

Allied Commander of NATO, ADM James Stavridis, testified to the Senate

Armed Services Committee that providing arms to opposition forces in

Syria could help them shift the balance of power against Asad. Most

importantly, Syrians themselves are increasingly calling for

international military involvement. The Opposition Syrian National

Council recently announced that it is establishing a military bureau to

channel weapons and other assistance to the Free Syrian Army and armed

groups inside the country. Other members of the Council are demanding a

more robust intervention.

To be sure, there are legitimate questions about the efficacy of

military operations in Syria and equally legitimate concerns about

their risks and uncertainties. It is understandable that the

administration is reluctant to move beyond diplomacy and sanctions.

Unfortunately, this policy is increasingly disconnected from the dire

conditions on the ground in Syria, which has become a full-blown state

of armed conflict. In the face of this new reality, the

administration's approach to Syria is starting to look more like a hope

than a strategy. So, too, does their continued insistence that Asad's

fall is \\\`\\\`inevitable.'' Tell that to the people of Homs. Tell that to

the people of Idlib or Hama or the other cities that Asad's forces are

now moving against. Nothing in this world is predetermined, and claims

about the inevitability of events can often be a convenient way to

abdicate responsibility.

But even if we do assume that Asad will ultimately fall, that may

still take a long time. In recent testimony in the Armed Services

Committee, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said if

the status quo persists, Asad could hang on for months, probably

longer. And that was before Homs fell. So to be clear, even under the

best-case scenario for the current policy, the cost of success will

likely be months of continued bloodshed and thousands of additional

lives lost. Is this morally acceptable to us? I believe it should not

be.

In addition to the moral and humanitarian interests at stake in

Syria, what is just as compelling, if not more so, are the strategic

and geopolitical interests. Put simply, the United States has a clear

national security interest in stopping the violence in Syria and

forcing Asad to leave power. In this way, Syria is very different than

Libya. The stakes are far higher, both for America and some of our

closest allies.

This regime in Syria serves as a main forward operating base of the

Iranian regime in the heart of the Arab world. It has supported

Palestinian terrorist groups and funneled arms of all kinds, including

tens of thousands of rockets, to Hezbollah in Lebanon. It remains a

committed enemy of Israel. It has large stockpiles of chemical weapons

and materials and has sought to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

It was the primary gateway for the countless foreign fighters who

infiltrated Iraq and killed American troops. Asad and his lieutenants

have the blood of hundreds of Americans on their hands. Many in

Washington fear that what comes after Asad might be worse. How could it

be any worse than this?

The end of the Asad regime would sever Hezbollah's lifeline to Iran,

eliminate a longstanding threat to Israel, bolster Lebanon's

sovereignty and independence, and inflict a strategic defeat on the

Iranian regime. It would be a geopolitical success of the first order.

More than all of the compelling moral and humanitarian reasons, this is

why Asad cannot be allowed to succeed and remain in power. We have a

clear national security interest in his defeat, and that alone should

incline us to tolerate a large degree of risk in order to see that this

goal is achieved.

Increasingly, the question for U.S. policy is not whether foreign

forces will intervene militarily in Syria. We can be confident that

Syria's neighbors will do so eventually if they have not already. Some

kind of intervention will happen with or without us. So the real

question for U.S. policy is whether we will participate in this next

phase of the conflict in Syria and thereby increase our ability to

shape an outcome that is beneficial to the Syrian people and to us. I

believe we must.

The President has characterized the prevention of mass atrocities as

\\\`\\\`a core national security interest.'' He has made it the objective of

the United States that the killing in Syria must stop, that Asad must

go. He has committed the prestige and credibility of our Nation to that

goal, and it is the right goal. However, it is not clear that the

present policy can succeed. If Asad manages to cling to power--or even

if he manages to sustain the slaughter for months to come--with all the

human and geopolitical costs that entails, it would be a strategic and

moral defeat for the United States. We cannot--we must not--allow this

to happen.

For this reason, the time has come for a new policy. As we continue

to isolate Asad diplomatically and economically, we should work with

our closest friends and allies to support opposition groups inside

Syria, both political and military, to help them organize themselves

into a more cohesive and effective force that can put an end to the

bloodshed and force Asad and his loyalists to leave power. Rather than

closing off the prospects for some kind of negotiated transition that

is acceptable to the Syrian opposition, foreign military intervention

is now the necessary factor to reinforce this option. Asad needs to

know that he will not win.

What opposition groups in Syria need most urgently is relief from

Asad's tank and artillery sieges in the many cities that are still

contested. Homs is lost for now, but Idlib and Hama and Qusayr and

Deraa and other cities in Syria could still be saved. But time is

running out. Asad's forces are on the march. Providing military

assistance to the Free Syrian Army and other opposition groups is

necessary, but at this late hour that alone will not be sufficient to

stop the slaughter and save innocent lives. The only realistic way to

do so is with foreign air power.

Therefore, at the request of the Syrian National Council, the Free

Syrian Army, and local coordinating committees inside the country, the

United States should lead an international effort to protect key

population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through air

strikes on Asad's forces. To be clear, this will require the United

States to suppress enemy air defenses in at least part of the country.

The ultimate goal of air strikes should be to establish and defend safe

havens in Syria, especially in the north, in which opposition forces

can organize and plan their political and military activities against

Asad. These safe havens could serve as platforms for the delivery of

humanitarian and military assistance, including weapons and ammunition,

body armor, and other personal protective equipment, tactical

intelligence, secure communications equipment, food and water, and

medical supplies. These safe havens could also help the Free Syrian

Army and other armed groups in Syria train and organize themselves into

more cohesive and effective military forces, likely with the assistance

of foreign partners.

The benefit for the United States in helping to lead this effort

directly is that it would allow us to better empower those Syrian

groups that share our interests--those groups that reject al-Qaida and

the Iranian regime and commit to the goal of an inclusive democratic

transition as called for by the Syrian National Council. If we stand on

the sidelines, others will pick winners, and this will not always to be

to our liking or in our interest. This does not mean the United States

should go it alone. I repeat: This does not mean that the United States

should go it alone. We should not. We should seek the active

involvement of key Arab partners such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab

Emirates, Jordan, and Qatar, and willing allies in the EU and NATO, the

most important of which in this case is Turkey.

There will be no U.N. Security Council mandate for such an operation.

Russia and China took that option off the table long ago. But let's not

forget: NATO took military action to save Kosovo in 1999 without formal

U.N. authorization. There is no reason why the

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Arab League or NATO or a leading coalition within the Friends of Syria

contact group, or all of them speaking in unison, could not provide a

similar international mandate for military measures to save Syria

today.

Could such a mandate be gotten? I believe it could. Foreign capitals

across the world are looking to the United States to lead, especially

now that the situation in Syria has become an armed conflict. But what

they see is an administration still hedging its bets--on the one hand

insisting that Asad's fall is inevitable but, on the other, unwilling

even to threaten more assertive actions that could make it so.

The rhetoric out of NATO has been much more self-defeating. Far from

making it clear to Asad that all options are on the table, key alliance

leaders are going out of their way to publicly take options off the

table. Last week, NATO Secretary General Rasmussen said that the

alliance has not even discussed the possibility of NATO action in

Syria, saying: \\\`\\\`I don't envision such a role for the alliance.'' The

following day, the Supreme Allied Commander, ADM James Stavridis,

testified in the Senate Armed Services Committee that NATO has done no

contingency planning--none--for potential military operations in Syria.

That is not how NATO approached Bosnia or Kosovo or Libya. Is it now

the policy of NATO--or the United States, for that matter--to tell the

perpetrators of mass atrocities in Syria or elsewhere that they can go

on killing innocent civilians by the hundreds of thousands and the

greatest alliance in history will not even bother to conduct any

planning about how we might stop them? Is that NATO's policy now? Is

that our policy? Because that is the practical effect of this kind of

rhetoric. It gives Asad and his foreign allies a green light for

greater brutality.

Not surprisingly, many countries, especially Syria's neighbors, are

also hedging their bets on the outcome in Syria. They think Asad will

go, but they are not yet prepared to put all their chips on that bet--

even less so now that Asad's forces have broken Homs and seem to be

gaining momentum.

There is only one nation--there is only one nation--that can alter

this dynamic, and that is the United States of America. The President

must state unequivocally that under no circumstances will Asad be

allowed to finish what he has started; that there is no future in which

Asad and his lieutenants will remain in control of Syria; and that the

United States is prepared to use the full weight of our air power to

make it so. It is only when we have clearly and completely committed

ourselves that we can expect other nations to do the same. Only then

would we see what is really possible in winning international support

to stop the killing in Syria.

Are there dangers and risks and uncertainties in this approach?

Absolutely. There are no ideal options in Syria. All of them contain

significant risk. Many people will be quick to raise concerns about the

course of action I am proposing. Many of these concerns have merit but

none so much that they should keep us from acting.

For example, we continue to hear it said that we should not assist

the opposition in Syria militarily because we do not know who these

people are. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated this argument

just last week, adding that we could end up helping al-Qaida or Hamas.

It is possible that the administration does not know much about the

armed opposition in Syria, but how much effort have they really made to

find out, to meet and engage these people directly? Not much, it

appears. Instead, much of the best information we have about the armed

resistance in Syria is thanks to courageous journalists, some of whom

have given their lives to tell the story of the Syrian people.

One of those journalists is a reporter working for Al-Jazeera named

Nir Rosen, who spent months in the country, including much time with

the armed opposition. Here is how he described them recently:

The regime and its supporters describe the opposition,

especially the armed opposition, as Salafis, Jihadists,

Muslim Brotherhood supporters, al-Qaeda and terrorists. This

is not true, but it's worth noting that all the fighters I

met . . . were Sunni Muslims, and most were pious. They fight

for a multitude of reasons: for their friends, for their

neighborhoods, for their villages, for their province, for

revenge, for self-defense, for dignity, for their brethren in

other parts of the country who are also fighting. They do not

read religious literature or listen to sermons. Their views

on Islam are consistent with the general attitudes of Syrian

Sunni society, which is conservative and religious.

Because there are many small groups in the armed

opposition, it is difficult to describe their ideology in

general terms. The Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood ideologies

are not important in Syria and do not play a significant role

in the revolution. But most Syrian Sunnis taking part in the

uprising are themselves devout.

He could just as well have been describing average citizens in Egypt

or Libya or Tunisia or other nations in the region. So we should be a

little more careful before we embrace the Asad regime's propaganda

about the opposition in Syria. We certainly should not let these

misconceptions cause us to keep the armed resistance in Syria at arm's

length because that is just self-defeating. And I can assure you that

al-Qaida is not pursuing the same policy. They are eager to try to

hijack the Syrian revolution, just as they have tried to hijack the

Arab spring movements in Egypt and Tunisia and Libya and elsewhere.

They are trying, but so far they are failing. The people of these

countries are broadly rejecting everything al-Qaida stands for. They

are not eager to trade secular tyranny for theocratic tyranny.

The other reason al-Qaida is failing in Tunisia and Egypt and Libya

is because the community of nations--especially the United States--has

supported them. We are giving them a better alternative. The surest way

for al-Qaida to gain a foothold in Syria is for us to turn our backs on

these brave Syrians who are fighting to defend themselves. After all,

Sunni Iraqis were willing to ally with al-Qaida when they felt

desperate enough, but when America gave them a better alternative, they

turned their guns on al-Qaida. Why should it be different in Syria?

Another objection to providing military assistance to the Syrian

opposition is that the conflict has become a sectarian civil war and

our intervention would enable the Sunni majority to take a bloody and

indiscriminate revenge against the Alawite minority. This is a serious

and legitimate concern, and it is only growing worse the longer the

conflict goes on. As we saw in Iraq or Lebanon before it, time favors

the hard-liners in a conflict such as this. The suffering of Sunnis at

the hands of Asad only stokes the temptation for revenge, which in turn

only deepens fears among the Alawites and strengthens their incentive

to keep fighting. For this reason alone, it is all the more compelling

to find a way to end the bloodshed as soon as possible.

Furthermore, the risks of sectarian conflict will exist in Syria

whether or not we get more involved. And we will at least have some

ability to try to mitigate these risks if we work to assist the armed

opposition now. That will at least help us to know them better and to

establish some trust and exercise some influence with them, because we

took their side when they needed it most. We should not overstate the

potential influence we could gain with opposition groups inside Syria,

but it will only diminish the longer we wait to offer them meaningful

support. And what we can say for certain is we will have no influence

whatsoever with these people if they feel we abandoned them. This is a

real moral dilemma, but we cannot allow the opposition in Syria to be

crushed at present while we worry about the future.

We also hear it said, including by the administration, that we should

not contribute to the militarization of the conflict. If only Russia

and Iran shared that sentiment. Instead, they are shamelessly fueling

Asad's killing machine. We need to deal with reality as it is, not as

we wish it to be. And the reality in Syria today is largely a one-sided

fight where the aggressors are not lacking for military means and zeal.

Indeed, Asad appears to be fully committed to crushing the opposition

at all costs. Iran and Russia appear to be fully committed to helping

him do it.

The many Syrians who have taken up arms to defend themselves and

their communities appear to be fully committed to acquiring the

necessary weapons to resist Asad, and leading

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Arab States appear increasingly committed to providing those weapons.

The only ones who seem overly concerned about a militarization of the

conflict is the United States and some of its allies. The time has come

to ask a different question: Whom do we want to win in Syria\\--our

friends or our enemies?

There are always plenty of reasons not to do something, and we can

list them clearly in the case of Syria. We know the opposition is

divided. We know the armed resistance inside the country lacks cohesion

or command and control. We know some elements of the opposition may

sympathize with violent extremist ideologies or harbor dark thoughts of

sectarian revenge. We know many of Syria's immediate neighbors remain

cautious about taking overly provocative actions that could undermine

Asad. And we know the American people are weary of conflict--

justifiably so--and we would rather focus on domestic problems.

These are realities. But while we are compelled to acknowledge them,

we are not condemned to accept them forever. With resolve, principled

leadership, and wise policy, we can shape better realities. That is

what the Syrian people have done.

By no rational calculation should this uprising against Asad still be

going on. The Syrian people are outmatched. They are outgunned. They

are lacking for food and water and other basic needs. They are

confronting a regime with limitless disregard for human dignity and

capacity for sheer savagery. For an entire year, the Syrian people have

faced death and those unspeakable things worse than death, and they

still have not given up. Still they take to the streets to protest

peacefully for justice, still they carry on their fight, and they do so

on behalf of many of the same universal values we share and many of the

same interests as well. These people are our allies. They want many of

the same things we do. They have expanded the boundaries of what

everyone thought was possible in Syria. They have earned our respect,

and now they need our support to finish what they started. The Syrian

people deserve to succeed, and shame on us if we fail to help them.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.

The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). The Senator from Illinois.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for

the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask to speak in morning business.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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