Cloture Motion

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am reading a book called ``These Truths'' by Jill Lepore. It is a history of the United States. She is a really gifted historian and writes quite a few things. She has an article in the New Yorker magazine about Eugene V. Debs, an early Socialist in the 20th century who ran for President. She is a skillful historian, and she tells a story in ``These Truths'' about how this Nation came to be.

Of course, we emerged from a colony--a colony of England, Great Britain--and then fought for our independence. One of the reasons we fought for independence was to take the role of Kings out of the lives of the people who lived in what we call America and to say we aren't going to have Kings making decisions for us here. We will make our own decisions. Thank you. We will call it a democracy, and the people will rule.

At that point, we sat down and tried to put it in writing. The first time we put it in writing, it didn't work out too well. The Articles of Confederation really didn't unite our country and move it in the direction that most people wanted. So the constitutional convention followed. The constitutional convention in Philadelphia sat down and wrote this document, the Constitution of the United States, and here we are, over 200 years later, still living by those words that were written over 200 years ago.

There were efforts to change and amend it to reflect changes in America. The end of slavery, for example, was one of the most significant, but, by and large, the principles of this document have guided us for a long time.

Article I, section 8 gives the Congress--the Senate and the House-- the power to declare war. You think to yourself: Well, it is certainly better for the Congress to make that decision than for a President to do it alone. Letting a President do it without the people being involved, or Congress, really would be much like a King deciding whether we would go forward as a nation to be involved in a war.

This week, on the floor of the Senate, we will test that provision in the Constitution and see if the current Members of the Senate believe that the Constitution was right and that the Congress should be declaring war.

My colleagues, Bernie Sanders, well-known to most across America, Mike Lee, a conservative Republican from Utah, and Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, have decided that we should have a test vote as to the United States' involvement in Saudi Arabia's bloody war in Yemen. I am glad to be a cosponsor of that legislation.

Regardless of who has been in the White House during the time that I have served in the House and the Senate, I have tried to consistently argue that the American people, through their elected Congress, must play a constitutional role in declaring a war--whether it was President Bush on the Iraq war or President Obama on the U.S. military intervention in Syria or Libya.

I think the Constitution is very clear and very wise in saying that the American people, before we ask their sons and daughters to give up their lives in a war, should have a say in these decisions through their elected Members of Congress.

What we are doing today is deeply important. It occurs in the 18th year of a war in Afghanistan that hardly anyone could have imagined would be the case. Did anyone here who voted, as I did, 18 years ago-- 18 years ago, voting in this Chamber--for the authorization of the use of force in Afghanistan to go after the perpetrators of 9/11 believe that we were authorizing the longest war in the history of the United States, in Afghanistan--I am sure not a one--or that this authorization would be stretched by Presidents of both political parties to approve U.S. military action in other countries around the world? It became a blanket authorization that has been used time and again.

This brings me to the question before us in the Senate today--the disastrous, bloody war, led by the Saudi Arabians in Yemen, which the United States is supporting.

Has there been a vote in the Senate for that? No. In the House? No. Does anyone here remember authorizing any U.S. military involvement in the war in Yemen? Well, they certainly couldn't find a recorded vote to prove it.

Did anyone who voted in 2001, as I did, to go after the terrorists responsible for 9/11, believe that this would somehow include a Saudi- led quagmire in Yemen?

This war in Yemen is being led by a reckless young Saudi Crown Prince, whom I believe had direct involvement in the brutal murder of a journalist and resident of the United States, Jamal Khashoggi. It is highly unlikely that anybody would have argued that we gave permission for the U.S. Military and taxpayers' dollars to be spent in support of this Saudi Arabian cause.

Not only was this war never authorized by elected representatives or the American people, but it is a humanitarian disaster. An estimated 85,000 children have already died of malnutrition. We have created a famine with this war in Yemen. In a country of 28 million people, nearly half face death through famine.

I have a photo here, which I have displayed once on the floor, but I can't bring myself to do it again. It is a photo of a 7-year-old Yemeni girl, Amal Hussain. It is a heartbreaking photo. It appeared in the New York Times last November. This little girl died shortly thereafter. She starved to death. I just can't bring myself to display this photo again.

Do you know what her mother said after she died? It is what any mother would say: ``My heart is broken.''

This is a reality of the war that the United States supports in Yemen. We have not debated it. We have not approved it. Yet taxpayers' dollars make certain that it continues day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year.

Now, let's take a look at Saudi Arabia, which has asked us to join in this effort in Yemen that is causing such a humanitarian disaster. This is the same Saudi Arabia--the nation that conducted the cold-blooded murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a nation that is detaining and torturing women's rights activists, including Loujain al-Hathoul and Samar Badawi. This is a nation that is detaining and torturing U.S. citizen Dr. Walid Fitaihi. It is jailing Saudi blogger Raif Badawi and his lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair, on charges that are ridiculous on their face.

Saudi Arabia is accused of recruiting and using Sudanese children as soldiers in the war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia continues to turn a blind eye to the export of extremist teachings that have shown up and caused great harm around the world, most recently in Bosnia and Kosovo.

There may be some who think this war is justified. I am not one of them. There may be some who think that because Iran is the enemy, we should be engaged in this war. But, ultimately, this war, this debate, and this vote are not about the merits of any of the things that I have raised. It is not about a vindication of the Houthis, whom the Iranians have sided with, and their troubling role in this horrific civil war. It is about whether we in the Senate, who took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, believe it. If we don't believe it, we will just ignore it, let our military wage the war, let the President look the other way, and let this administration come up with another excuse for Saudi Arabia killing that journalist, and we will keep sending our tax dollars in, which prolong this terrible war.

I think the Constitution requires more of us. If you truly believe in what the President is asking us to do in Yemen, if you truly want to stand with Saudi Arabia at this moment in history, show the courage by voting that way. That is all I am asking for.

Our Founding Fathers showed great wisdom. They knew that the decision to send someone's son or daughter into a war was not to be made by a King or a supreme executive but by the people--the people of the United States. So our Constitution wisely rests that responsibility with us-- the Senators and Members of the House of Representatives.

Today, there will be a recorded vote--a historic vote--as to whether we go forward with this involvement in the war in Yemen. I will be voting against any more involvement by the United States in this war.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source