Official Congressional Record
Mr. President, Donald Trump is dragging us back into war again, and no one is exactly sure why. He achieved almost none of his objectives that he set out at the beginning of war, while spending tens--if not hundreds--of billions of dollars and forcing Americans to pay more for everything, especially gas and groceries. It has been only a few days since the fighting resumed, and gas is already up to $4.89 nationally and $5.44 in Hawaii. And the President can't be bothered to explain why we are at war again and what we are supposed to be getting out of it. So let's just go through his own stated objectives at the start of the war and see where we stand today. No. 1, regime change: ``There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER''--all caps--Donald Trump said in the first week of war. He told the Iranians: How did that work out? The regime is intact. The regime is led by a younger ayatollah with the same last name, emboldened by the knowledge that they survived months of war against the world's greatest superpower. The Iranian opposition is weaker than it was before the war, and the Iranian people are no freer today. Look, regime change wars rarely ever end well. And the idea that Trump was going to be able to go in and quickly topple the regime, much like he did in Venezuela a month earlier, was always absurd. But he did it anyway. OK. Goal No. 2, no nuclear weapons: ``We will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. . . . They will never have a nuclear weapon,'' Trump said on the day he launched the war. Now, it is true that heavy strikes last summer and the first phase of the war this spring have set back Iran's nuclear program. It is also true that in the memorandum of understanding--that has since fallen apart--Iran agreed to the same thing it agreed to under the JCPOA. Under the Obama nuclear agreement, we got all of this without having to go to war. And the criticism of the Obama agreement--and I was on the floor defending it--was that it didn't last long enough--not that it wasn't any good, but that it didn't last in perpetuity; that it was only good for 10 years. Now we have got nothing. Now we have got nothing. To that point, having repeatedly ruled out allowing any uranium enrichment and demanding that Iran turn over its uranium stockpile, Trump has changed his tune on both: ``It is a little hard''--``it is a little hard''--``when other people have it, other adjoining states have it, and you're not letting them have it for purposes of electricity and things like that.'' This is Trump on uranium enrichment. On acquiring stockpiles, he said: Why even bother? And that is the story of this war in a nutshell. Trump sets before us an impossible goal. And when it fails, he then moves the goalposts or backs down completely. The next goal, obliterating Iran's missiles: He said that on February 28. But according to press reports, U.S. intelligence Agencies estimated that roughly 70 percent of Iran's pre- war missile stockpile was still intact as of May. And just this week, Iran started firing missiles again at tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and at military bases across the Middle East, demonstrating both its leverage and its ability to continue fighting. OK. Well, what about the goal of cutting off Iran's funding for proxy groups? The administration has mostly stopped talking about it, and there was no mention of Iran's support for Hezbollah or other groups in the MOU. In fact, the MOU allowed Iran to sell its oil freely, even though Trump's own State Department told Congress that oil exports are a primary revenue source for Iran's financing of proxies. So all of the stated objectives of this war have not been met. Finally, how are they doing on keeping the Strait of Hormuz open and free? Well, it is closed again, and Trump and Iran are back and forth going at it over who gets control and who gets to charge tolls. To be clear, this was never a problem prewar. And so now the objective in ending this war is just to get to the status quo before the war. We went to war to eliminate their ballistic missile capability--not on the nuclear side. Not a success. We went to war to change the regime. Not only not a success, but a terrible failure. We have got a younger and more radical and entrenched Ayatollah in the regime of Iran. And now they know they can withstand our best hit. We went to war to eliminate their nuclear program; and not only did we not do that, but Donald Trump himself is kind of characterizing it like it is no big deal. And so now we are negotiating not for any of the reasons that were stated to put our servicemembers in harm's way and to spend tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer funding for this war and to raise the price of gasoline by a buck, buck fifty a gallon, to raise the price of fertilizer and plastics and natural gas and electronics--to raise the price of almost everything. We met none of our objectives, and now our objective is just to keep sea lanes open. Sea lanes were open. Sea lanes are always open. That is not a foreign policy objective of the United States of America in the sense that we have to work really hard to do it. Freedom of navigation is a basic principle that we enforce around the world, but we don't have to bomb anybody to get it. And so now the endgame is: Let's try to get the strait open and pretend that the reasons that we went to war were not the reasons that we went to war. And I think what is the most disgusting about all of this--you know, someone used to say: Armies don't go to war. Countries go to war. Now, why does that matter? You cannot go to war without the support of the American public. You cannot go to war without explaining to the American public what you are up to. And what happened many months ago was Donald Trump woke up one morning and said: I guess we are taking kinetic action against Iran. And people are finding: OK, sorry, what? What exactly are we doing and why? There was no buildup; there was no explaining; and most importantly for us as U.S. Senators, there was no vote on the authorization of the use of military force. Now, they are going to say that under the War Powers Resolution, they have this ability to basically take military action if there is an imminent threat to the safety of the United States of America. And then they would have 60 days, and it is kind of complicated exactly how it works. But what they have said now is that ``No, this isn't a war.'' That is No. 1. ``Oh, yeah. Sorry. It is a war, but we have 60 days.'' ``Oh, the war is off because the MOU for the cease-fire is now being implemented.'' And now the war is back on, and they are acting as if, as a legal matter, this new kinetic engagement is a second and separate war and the clock starts again and you have got 60 days again to delay Congress from weighing in. And this is not some procedural nicety. This isn't me as a politician, like, protecting my prerogatives. The reason this matters is the people's representatives in the Congress have to vote before we go to war. And there are some narrow exceptions. If we are in danger, you don't want to have to, like, assemble Congress if we are in immediate danger. Fine. We are not in immediate danger. We were never in immediate danger. If you want to claim that the ICBM array that the IRGC had was a danger to the United States, come down, at least testify before the Foreign Relations Committee and the Armed Services Committee, and then at least have a debate on the damn floor of the U.S. Senate. And it is worse than that because to the extent that we have had any votes at all, we actually have prevailed. A majority of Members of this body have said that this war should come to a conclusion. And so my Republican colleagues are saying: Hey, why don't we pass the Defense authorization? After all, it is a big bipartisan bill, and we always do it. That is true. We always do it. And I think 13 out of 14 years or 12 out of 13 years, I voted for the National Defense Authorization Act. And the reason I voted no yesterday is because I am not voting for a defense bill until this war is over, and I am not voting for a defense bill until we get to debate the most important thing happening in terms of our national defense. We are at war, and we are being prevented from even overseeing it. We are just asked to fork over tens and tens of billions of dollars without so much as weighing in on this is an authorization of the use of military force. The President, as the Commander in Chief of our military, may engage kinetically with another country. We have decided that. We have been elected. We have decided that. None of that happened. Why? Because they don't have the votes for that. Why do they not have the votes for that? Because this war is stupid, and the public knows it. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schmitt). The clerk will call the roll. The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
View on ourcommons.ca ↗
