Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The subject of boots on the ground came up, and I think this is a really important point for why this debate has been so divisive. So many people are concerned about this action. I think what we all want to do is we want to confront the threat that is ISIS, which has been well described. The violence that this group has perpetrated on people in their region and foreigners is unimaginable. Make no mistake about it: if they are allowed to spread, that violence will spread as well. But there is concern about the U.S. getting again engaged in that part of the world because of Iraq and Afghanistan. A number of my colleagues have raised the issue of: Well, gosh, we put 150,000 U.S. troops into Iraq, we left, and 2 years later it had all fallen apart. We are in Afghanistan, there is still a raging violence of a war going on there. Here we go again, basically. Have we not learned our lessons? I believe the boots on the ground comment shows in an odd way that we have learned our lesson. We are not going to do a full-scale military commitment to Iraq. Now, I think a lot of people are against ISIS. I think a lot of people mistake that we are not going to do that, not so much because it wouldn't work, but because we just don't want to do that. We don't want to spend the money and risk the lives. That is not really the case. The reason we are not going to do a full-scale U.S.…”