Pictured above a Catholic priest murdered by Obama’s Syrian rebels allies? Father Francois Murad has been named a Martyr after he was murdered by U.S.-backed Syrian rebels who invaded a church where he sought shelter after his parish was bombed.
On September 11, 2014 Rep. Sherman from California was granted permission to address the United States House of Representatives for 5 minutes regarding ISIS. There he critical of President Obama for funding the murderous Syrian rebels without Congressional approval. But whose fault is that really – the President or Congress for allowing him to get away with it?
What follows is a copy of Rep. Sherman’s entire speech:
“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address the events in the Middle East and with ISIS, and I want to address three separate areas. The first is what should be the role of Congress in deciding American policy on these horrific events.
Second is to respond to the unjustified attacks on the President of the United States by those who claim he doesn’t have a plan, doesn’t have a detailed enough plan, doesn’t have a perfect plan, or whatever.
And the third is to discuss what should be our policy in the Middle East and what dangers there are, no matter which policy we pursue.
As we try to protect our Nation, we should also protect our Constitution. Article I of the Constitution vests in Congress the exclusive duty to decide when we declare war, when we go to war.
Article II makes the President of the United States Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces.
These two provisions need to be reconciled so that both the Congress and the President can make the decisions that the Constitution charges to them in our foreign and military policy.
This is not a new issue. President Jefferson sent our Marines, in the words of the song, “to the shores of Tripoli” in 1801. This was our first foreign military deployment. This was our first fighting and involvement in the Middle East. And most relevant today, it was the first use of our military abroad in the absence of a formal declaration of war.
Well, what did Thomas Jefferson think was the appropriate congressional role?
Thomas Jefferson sought and obtained advance authorization to put our Marines ashore in North Africa.
We still face the same constitutional provisions, but several decades ago, we passed the War Powers Act, a reasonable statute that harmonizes the two provisions of the Constitution that I have discussed.
The War Powers Act makes it clear that the President can act for 60 or 90 days without the authorization of Congress, but that is it. Beyond those time limits, deployments require congressional authorization.
Now, we have heard from the President that he respects Congress, likes us, consults with us, and would welcome our support. But the President, I am sure, consults with many academics and think tanks and foreign officials, not as a constitutional duty, but just because it makes sense to consult with them. And the President would welcome the support of The Heritage Foundation or The New York Times editorial board for his policies.
Saying that you welcome the support of Congress, or that you consult with Congress, has nothing to do with the legal rights of Congress and the American people.
Now, the President has taken a very unusual legal stance. He asserted broadly last night that he has the authority to conduct the bombing campaign, but he needs Congress to approve training Syrians and providing arms. This stands the Constitution on its head.
The main decision to be made here is whether we put our pilots and/or soldiers in harm’s way, whether we wage war and cause casualties, and perhaps incur casualties. The far less important decision is whether we train a few hundred or a few thousand Syrians and provide them with weapons.
Keep in mind, this training and arming of Syrians has occurred for well over a year without congressional authorization.
What is happening here is the President wants us to vote in favor of his plan, or to take a vote of Congress and claim it is a vote in favor of his plan, when, in fact, we would only be voting on the smallest part of that plan, and that is, whether, without any risk of casualties to ourselves, without any risk that we would be directly causing casualties in the Middle East, to provide training to Syrian rebels. This is hardly what the Constitution requires. Today, in response to my questions, the President’s Deputy National Security Adviser explained, for the first time from this administration, why they think they have authorization to bomb Iraq and Syria without any further action from Congress. He cited the authorization to use military force passed in this House 13 years ago, in response to the tragic events which occurred 13 years ago to this day.
When Congress authorized going after al Qaeda, we never envisioned that that authority would be used in this manner.
Just as important, the President’s plan is to go after ISIS, which has been repudiated by al Qaeda, which broke from al Qaeda, and which wages war against the al-Nusra Front, which is part of al Qaeda.
It is difficult to say that an authorization to use force against al Qaeda is an authorization to use force against those who are fighting al Qaeda, but it is a technical argument.
On the President’s side, you can say that al Qaeda splintered, and that all the splinters constitute part of the organization that attacked us 13 years ago to this day.
That is why Congress needs to revise the authorization to use military force of 2001. We passed it for one purpose. Is it going to be there for 100 years?
Is it going to authorize things we never imagined?
Or shouldn’t Congress define what it is we are authorizing under today’s circumstance?
The other argument raised by the President’s Deputy National Security Adviser is that the authorization to go to war against Saddam Hussein somehow applies to this situation. A reading of that resolution clearly shows that it is confined to Iraq, and would not justify that portion of the President’s plan, a necessary portion, that involves bombing Syria.
So, again, Congress should vote on our authorization to use military force that is crafted to this situation
at this time. But it is unlikely that we will do so because there is almost a silent conspiracy here in Washington.
Presidents want more power to act as they decide in the national interest, without having to ask Congress for authority. Members of Congress sometimes just want to avoid a tough vote.
So, the desire of the President to have all power, and the desire of some Members of this House to avoid responsibility, coincide with the idea of the President just boldly saying he has the authority to enter a new conflict and to enter it for far more than 60 or 90 days, and Congress never has to vote on the matter.
The President, of course, would like to say that he has a vote of Congress in favor of his plan. So we are going to end up with the sneakiest of all maneuvers.
What is likely to occur, and I hope it doesn’t, is that we will vote next week on whether to continue government operations, whether to fund the government for the next several months, whether to prevent our national parks from closing, and buried in there will be a provision authorizing and funding the training of Syrian dissidents, and we will pass that package.
The President will claim that since we funded and authorized the training of Syrian dissidents, we voted for his entire plan, including the bombing. And Members of Congress can say they had no choice but to vote for the Syrian provision, but didn’t actually like it, never really voted for it. They just voted to keep the national parks open. A silent conspiracy of empowerment and shirking responsibility.
What we should do next week is have three separate votes: one vote on whether to fund and authorize the arming of Syrians, because the President has asked for that vote; second, a vote on whether to authorize military force limited exclusively to air forces and not authorizing ground operations; and the third would be a vote to go further and authorize ground operations.
The exact contours of these resolutions should be subject to amendment and open amendment in this House. We would have to deal with the duration and the exact limitations. But then we would be performing our constitutional duty. Then we would be protecting the American Constitution.
I fear that, instead, we will cleverly avoid responsibility and the President will be able to say, ah, but you voted for my plan.
Now, in defense of the President, I want to respond to the constant harping that the President doesn’t have a plan, doesn’t have a detailed enough plan, doesn’t have a strategy.
Well, first the President put forward a plan last evening. While Republicans have blasted it as insufficiently detailed, it is just as detailed as the plans put forward by the former President to invade Afghanistan and to invade Iraq.
Now, keep in mind, as we learned from those wars, whatever plan is put forward is going to be dramatically changed because once you engage in hostilities, things change.
Second, if the President were to provide as much detail as some hyperpartisan Republicans are demanding, he would then be attacked for revealing our strategy, our tactics, and classified information.
The only thing that holds together, creates consistency among certain extremist partisan Republicans, is that whatever the President does, it is wrong.
Then I have got to ask, where is the Republican plan?
Have Republicans coalesced around any plan?
Has any prominent Republican even put forward a plan?
Where is your plan?
Vice President Dick Cheney has not put forward a plan, just an expression of anger and partisanship. Speaker Boehner has not put forward a plan. The Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee majority has not put forward a plan.
There are a host of think tanks here in Washington that could aid Republicans in drafting a plan, yet, the Republicans have yet to even discuss their own plan, let alone coalesce around the Republican plan.
It seems like the Republicans do have a plan. Their plan is to reap political advantage from this crisis in the Middle East, while avoiding any responsibility for making decisions.
The Republicans are politically clever. And when I say Republicans in this speech, I am referring only to the hyperpartisan Republicans who have engaged in the activities that I described.
These Republicans understand that no one can draft the plan the American people really want. Americans want a plan that guarantees the immediate and total destruction of ISIS, without significant American casualties.
So hyperpartisan Republicans can constantly berate the President because he doesn’t have a guarantee. He isn’t offering immediate total destruction. He does have a plan designed to avoid American casualties.
Instead, we get a suggestion that somehow this guaranteed, no-cost, immediate total victory would be achieved if only we had a different President.
I think it is time for Congress to stop harping about whether the President has a plan. He has put forth a plan.
Now Congress must exercise its constitutional role in defining what authorizations the President is going to be granted and what portions of his plan are going to be authorized.
I look forward to–I hope, though doubt–a serious debate on the floor of this House, where we will discuss and vote on and amend and vote on the amendments of a resolution dealing with whether to arm Syrians and train them, with a resolution as to whether to have a long-term, multiyear, perhaps, bombing campaign against ISIS, and whether the President is authorized to use ground forces.
Finally, I want to focus on the Middle East, itself, and how complicated the situation is, and I want to praise the President not only for his decisive action but also for his wise caution, because the situation we face in the Middle East is far more complicated than the President’s detractors would let on.
The natural reaction upon seeing those horrific videos is to say ISIS is the embodiment of all evil, and its total and immediate destruction is all that we need to do, that it should be our entire focus, but let’s look at the situation. We look not only on the entity we want to destroy but also at who will be empowered by its destruction. Who is on the ground in Syria and in the Sunni areas of Iraq that is fighting ISIS and stands to gain if ISIS is destroyed? If we make the list, we see entities that are nearly as evil as ISIS and are, if anything, more capable of hitting our homeland, of hitting Europe, of hitting targets outside the Middle East, than is ISIS itself.
First, we see that ISIS is engaged in war with the al-Nusra Front. Al-Nusra is a dedicated branch of al Qaeda, one of its more capable branches. So the destruction of ISIS will, to some degree, empower al Qaeda and al-Nusra, since they are both rivals in fighting for support among extremist Sunnis.
Second, on the list of ISIS’ foes is the Assad regime. Now, the very people who are attacking the President for not acting precipitously today were attacking the President last year for not bombing the Assad regime. So they attacked him last year for not bombing Assad and this year for not bombing Assad’s number one enemy. The only consistency here is you are attacking the President for not bombing somebody. The fact is that Assad has the blood of many tens of thousands of people on his hands, and his empowerment, his success in removing the ISIS problem that he has, will be one of the disadvantages of destroying ISIS.
Third is Iran and Hezbollah. Iran and Hezbollah are waging war against ISIS today, and embody a greater long-term threat to the United States than ISIS. Keep in mind that Hezbollah killed hundreds of marines during the Reagan administration in Lebanon. Hezbollah and Iran, in working together, have conducted operations on a variety of different continents. There is all this talk about how there are numbers of people fighting with ISIS who have American passports, and they might come back and conduct an operation. There are those who are fighting with ISIS who have European passports who could go to Europe and conduct an operation. That is “might.” Iran and Hezbollah have been conducting operations in South America, Europe, Asia for decades, and Iran came close to effectuating an assassination right here in Washington, D.C., just within the last decade.
So, yes, it would be good to destroy ISIS, but let’s not kid ourselves. Those who would be empowered by that destruction include entities nearly as evil and probably more dangerous than ISIS itself.
I bring up this complexity to argue against those who wonder why we didn’t just lash out immediately. Why do we need caution? We need caution because the situation is not as simple as an old Western movie where you have the good guy in a white hat and the bad guy in a black hat, and if the bad guy gets killed, there is peace and unity, and life is wonderful and restored, and the good cowboy in the white hat rides off into the sunset with the schoolmarm. Al-Nusra is not a schoolmarm. Hezbollah is not a schoolmarm. Iran is developing nuclear weapons. The Middle East is not nearly as simple as the President’s detractors pretend.
I look forward to doing something that Members of Congress don’t necessarily look forward to doing, and that is taking responsibility and casting tough votes, but if we are going to be true to the Constitution, we will not allow to stay on the books in its present form a 2001 resolution that was adopted in the immediate aftermath of the terrible events that occurred 13 years ago today. We will not allow that statement to be twisted and stretched and applied to situations well beyond its description. We will, instead, do what the Constitution requires of us, and that is to define:
What is the President authorized to do, under these circumstances, for the goals that we have this decade and at this time?
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.”
Source: Congressional Record
Note:
Congressman Brad Sherman holds the following committee assignments:
Committee on Foreign Affairs
- Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade, Ranking Member
- Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific