Protecting Americans in Middle East

Floor Speech

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Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. Mr. Speaker, we will obviously be talking about the Iran war this week, but something that is not getting enough attention right now is the 300,000 U.S. citizens in the region who are stranded because we sent all this firepower to the region.

If we are going to attack Iran, why didn't we have a plan to get American citizens out of the region? Someone just asked President Trump that question. Here is what he said: ``Well, because it happened all very quickly. We thought, and I thought maybe more so than most--I could ask Marco--but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel.''

Mr. Speaker, I don't even know what that means. What I think is that with all that military firepower in the region, we could have given them a little bit of warning or at least more than just what we gave them.

Instead, only now are they being told to evacuate the region--with one caveat, though. They are on their own because there are barely any commercial flights going in and out of the region.

While hotels are being attacked and everything appears to be a target, this administration is not doing enough to help.

We should have seen this coming. Why aren't we valuing American lives more in the region? The administration was just telling them tough luck.

Mr. Speaker, this should be a national priority. If we are going to spend billions on jets and bombs, we can afford to evacuate Americans. We need to get serious right now about protecting Americans in the Middle East.

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