Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Mr. COTTON. Madam President, Colin Kahl is President Biden's nominee to be the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. This is the top strategic planning position at the Department of Defense--the No. 3 position at our Department of Defense. The role is critically important to the national security of our country and the safety of our allies around the world.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kahl is temperamentally and professionally unfit to hold this--or, for that matter, virtually any other--job at the Pentagon. He is impulsive, intemperate, offensive, and has consistently demonstrated terrible judgment.

For the past several years, Mr. Kahl has endeavored, for some inexplicable reason, to be something of a Twitter celebrity--not exactly aiming his sights high. In pursuit of this goal, he has personally attacked the character and reputation of virtually every Republican Senator, as well, I would say, with lots of Democratic Senators.

He has tweeted that Members of both parties who supported the withdrawal from the terrible Iran nuclear deal ``won't be satisfied until they get the war they pushed for decades.''

He wrote that 45 Senators who supported weapon sales to Saudi Arabia share ``ownership of the world's worst humanitarian crisis.'' This claim, in which he referred to the war in Yemen, of course, ignores the role of Iran's murderous, terrorist proxies, something, of course, that Colin Kahl repeatedly turns a blind eye to everywhere in the world-- Iran's evil malignancy.

On a separate occasion, Mr. Kahl said that every Republican who supported an end to combat operations in Syria ``debased themselves at the altar of Trump.'' He then added that the party of Lincoln is ``the party of ethnic cleansing.'' Let's let that sink in for a moment.

Joe Biden has nominated a man to be the No. 3 official at our Department of Defense who has accused one of the two main political parties in our country as being ``the party of ethnic cleansing.'' It is hard to imagine an uglier or more vicious accusation than that.

Perhaps Mr. Kahl could ask Bill Clinton and Susan Rice, on whose watch the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda happened.

When John Bolton was about to become the National Security Advisor, Mr. Kahl, quite reasonably, stated on social media: ``We are going to die.''

To my knowledge, we are not dead, and Mr. Kahl is very much alive, despite John Bolton being appointed as a staffer in the U.S. Government. He also claimed that the Republican Party had a ``death cult fealty'' to former President Trump. These statements and many more make it difficult to conceive of a circumstance in which this nominee could successfully forge a productive relationship with Members of the Republican Party in the Senate or the House or anywhere else, for that matter.

Mr. Kahl's ranting and raving on social media in 2017 may have even gone from offensive to criminal on several occasions. It appears that several of Mr. Kahl's tweets divulge or confirm classified and sensitive information. I recently joined 17 of my fellow Senators in requesting a full FBI investigation into this very serious and troubling matter. No vote should occur until that important inquiry takes place.

Now, the nominee's transgressions on social media are somewhat reminiscent of Neera Tanden's foolish statements on that social media platform. I think this Chamber set a reasonable standard when it rightfully rejected her nomination, and we ought to maintain that standard with this nominee.

In many ways, though, Mr. Kahl's behavior is worse than Ms. Tanden's because his poisonous partisanship, his narrow-sightedness, and his short temper will directly affect his job. He is up for a post that is less partisan and more cooperative in nature than was Ms. Tanden's. His position will require him to be under extreme stress, where he will need to listen to a full range of options, engage in careful deliberation, and regularly make life-and-death decisions. I have to say, his auditions as a social media celebrity over the last 5 years don't inspire confidence in his ability to do so.

When I asked him about this at his hearing, he said he may have gotten caught up in the passions of the moment or that these were stressful, trying times. Some of these social media statements, I would point out, came in the middle of the night when Mr. Kahl was presumably sitting on his couch at home watching his news feed. If he thinks that is a stressful or trying moment, what is he going to do when he is sitting in the Pentagon and Vladimir Putin is invading southern Ukraine?

Talking about foreign policy decisions, I would point out that Mr. Kahl has been like Joe Biden--wrong about nearly every important foreign policy decision over the last decade. In 2010, Mr. Kahl said that concerns about a rapid withdrawal from Iraq were ``exaggerated'' and it was ``very unlikely to trigger a dramatic uptick in violence.'' He missed that one by just a little bit because soon thereafter, 30,000 radical Islamic extremists conquered a quarter of Iraq, and ISIS carried out horrific terrorist attacks on multiple continents.

In 2012, he ridiculed then-Candidate Mitt Romney's, now-Senator Mitt Romney's assertion that Russia was a major geopolitical threat. Of course, 2 years later, Russia invaded Ukraine and conquered Crimea. It has since been an obsession of the Democratic Party, even though Joe Biden has once again reverted to the Democrats' traditional dovishness on Russia, something presumably Mr. Kahl would support.

In 2017, he predicted that recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, where the seat of Israel's Government is located, would result in a ``third Intifada.'' Instead, Israel has signed multiple historic peace deals.

In 2018, when President Trump warned Iran against pursuing nuclear weapons, Mr. Kahl wrote the ``war drums are already sounding.'' But no war happened.

That same year, when President Trump withdrew from the terrible Iran nuclear deal, Mr. Kahl said: ``War will be all that is left.'' No war happened.

In 2020, when the United States finally delivered justice by killing Iran's terrorist mastermind Qasam Soleimani, Mr. Kahl said Mr. Trump had ``started a war with Iran in Iraq.'' Yet again, no war happened.

Mr. Kahl's inability to accurately assess these events almost defies probability. After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

On issues of war and peace, Mr. Kahl is reliably unreliable and consistently wrong. This is not a fault that one of the chief strategic planners, the No. 3 official at the Pentagon, and one of the most powerful policy advisers in the government ought to have. No Pentagon nominee should be this partisan, this divisive, and this controversial.

Republicans have given every Defense Department and intelligence nominee a fair hearing, and most have passed this Chamber with healthy bipartisan majorities and in some cases unanimously. Mr. Kahl is different. Mr. Kahl is different because his toxic statements and reputation would inhibit the workings of the Department of Defense.

Every time, as Secretary Austin and senior Pentagon personnel testify before the Senate, Members of this body will wonder if the policies they are presented with are the product of hard-headed serious planning or the workings of a political hack.

A man of Mr. Kahl's judgment and temperament and his record of disastrous policy judgments is unfit to be the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and I will oppose his nomination, as every Senator should.

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