National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018

Floor Speech

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Madam President, Senator Paul has been relentless in doing something that has to be done, which is the revision of the AUMFs from 2001 and 2002. Yet there is sort of a simple notion that you cannot replace something with nothing, and we have nothing. This is 6 months of more time when, in the last 16 years, even at the request of a President, we have not been able to come together as a Senate. I don't know where the House is on this, but I think that it is equally befuddled in providing the kind of specific language we need for an AUMF.

This would be a different debate and a different vote if we were to have before us an actual AUMF that would immediately supersede the existing authorities. Without such an AUMF, we are going to cause confusion, and we are going to cause disruption among our forces and our allies. In my having spent a little bit of time in the Service, when there is a possibility that in 6 months you will have to cease operations, you begin planning almost immediately for those operations.

By the time we get around to actually even considering this--since I do not think there are any plans to do it immediately--we could see 3 or 4 of those months evaporate. With each passing day, the concerns about redeployment and repositioning and authorities become more pressing to the military. Not only that, but even if they are sophisticated in understanding that it is not yet the law of the United States, our allies will read this--will see it--as a signal that we are weakening in our cooperation.

What we have seen over the last several months, in Iraq particularly, has been effective Iraqi indigenous forces in close cooperation with U.S. special operations and other forces, and they have made progress. They will have political blowback in Baghdad and Kabul, especially if this provision passes. Then I think, very adroitly, our adversaries will take advantage of this. The newspapers and the social media that they control--and, unfortunately, they control a great deal in all parts of the world--will make this very simple: the United States to leave, the United States restricting authority. Those are the practical consequences.

Again, this would be an entirely different debate and an entirely different vote, I think, if we were looking at a real replacement for the AUMFs of 2001 and 2002. So I would urge my colleagues to think not just about the constitutional imperatives--the congressional authorities to declare war, the Presidential authorities under article II--but to think about the practical and almost immediate consequences to those in the field, to our allies, and also of the possible ways in which this act could be used by our adversaries.

I yield the floor.

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