On the recordSeptember 17, 2014
I thank the gentleman from Washington for his leadership and the chairman for his on this very difficult issue. I want to make one point clear to my colleagues. We are essentially declaring war through an amendment to a budget resolution. Let's make no mistake. We are not simply training rebels in another country, Saudi Arabia, which, by the way, has been the most successful exporter of extremism and extremists in the world. We will reinsert those trained and equipped rebels back into Syria, and we will then be their air force. We will, through all intents and purposes, be a co- belligerent in a civil war. So, if we are declaring war right now, I think we should do it with our eyes wide open, as my colleague just said, with a full debate, and only through the power vested in Congress through the U.S. Constitution. The logical conclusion of our participation in this war, if successful, is to depose the Assad regime and replace it with one of our own making in concert with these rebels. That will be the third country in 13 years whose regime we have deposed and whose government we have replaced with one of our own choosing. It is the fourth that we have been involved in, if you include Libya, in whose government we have successfully deposed. In not one of those instances can I say that this has been a success. We also have no Muslim-majority countries contributing ground troops to this operation.…
