Iran
Floor Speech
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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I want to speak on the topic of the war in Iran.
As I am standing here, 3,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne are on their way to Iran. These are elite paratroopers who are trained to jump into enemy-held territory. They will join 5,000 marines who are being sent from Japan and California.
How did we get here?
On February 28, President Trump launched this war--something he is now calling an ``excursion''--with a massive display of U.S. military power and dominance. It was stunning. In the opening days, more than 8,000 targets were struck in Iran. More than 120 Iranian vessels were damaged or destroyed, nearly eliminating Iran's ability to launch drones and missiles. Iran's military and civilian leadership was decapitated, and that includes the then-Ayatollah, who was the leader, now replaced by his son. It was an incredible demonstration of military power and execution of military might, just like Midnight Hammer was in June.
Things are different today. We face something completely unpredictable, and we have had no discussion or debate about it. We face what has happened in Iraq and what has happened in Afghanistan, and that is that a country with limited power has asymmetric power. It is confronting us with the limits of what can be accomplished with military power.
Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, and to the shock of most Americans, there appears to have been very little, if any, planning on the part of the folks who pushed us into the war about what would happen when the strait was closed. The Iranians really don't need massive military power to keep the strait closed. A drone strike or a mine that hits a vessel that is going through, whether escorted or not, means that Iran has a vote: They can attack.
It also means international shippers have a vote: Do they want to risk their cargo and their crew when that is an active military combat zone?
They have answered that: No. There are hundreds of oil-carrying cargo vessels on both sides of the strait that won't proceed through.
The President has to make a major decision. We have to make a major decision. His decision appears to be that he will escalate this war. He will put his faith that there is a military solution to resolving an outcome. That is despite the experience we have had in which we have consistently been shown the limitations of what can be accomplished with our extraordinary military.
By all indications, the President has chosen a path of escalation: the marines I mentioned, the paratroopers I mentioned, the massing of our military assets in the region, the attacks I outlined, and the $200 billion request that is coming our way. That is an extraordinary request of the American taxpayer. It is $60 billion more than President Bush requested in his supplemental to fund the opening months of the Iraq invasion in 2003.
Escalation at this point--and that is the decision that is upon us-- is going to be irresistible. That is in the context of the President's getting intelligence assessments from our intelligence community, as well as from the Israeli intelligence community, that the hope for the collapse of the Iranian regime will not occur. It is intact. They have lost many of their leaders, and they have replaced all of those leaders whom they have lost.
So do we expect that this paratrooper expedition and this marine expedition can change that? That is a question that this body must debate.
One of the weaknesses of our position right now is that the President did bypass Congress in making his decision to go on this ``expedition.'' The President also bypassed the American people by not addressing them and outlining with clarity the goals that he seeks to accomplish, the means by which he hopes to accomplish them, and the expectation of the sacrifices that American citizens will have to make in order to achieve his goals.
In a democracy, this is not just something that is done because it is nice to do. In a democracy, having public backing for a war is not optional; it is a strategic necessity for success. There has been no effort to engage the public, and, indeed, public opinion of the wisdom of this shows that barely 40 percent of Americans support this war and that more than 60 percent think our military action in Iran has been excessive.
This reservation that we are seeing on the part of the American people about this war is understandable. There has been no explanation of the goals and the expectation about an outcome. There has been no candor about what this war will cost. And $200 billion as a supplemental is a downpayment on more to come; $200 billion is literally a $1,400 tax on every single American household.
The average American family is also going to pay an extra $2,000 at the pump with the increase in gas prices. Families in Vermont are going to pay $1,000 more to heat their homes.
Our small farmers in Vermont and in the Presiding Officer's State are going to pay about 35 percent more for fertilizer just as planting season begins.
We owe candor to the American people when it comes to what is going to be required for this war.
The other essential obligation we have in making a decision about going to war is to the men and women we will ask to go to war because of our decision or because of our indecision.
When I was first in Congress, I attended the funeral of a young Vermont marine. He died at the age of 21 in the siege of Fallujah. He died on Thanksgiving day. We all honor him as a hero, just like the other Vermonters who fell in post-9/11 wars.
In Vermont, at that point, we had the highest casualty rate on a per- capita population basis of any State in the Nation.
We are so proud of the commitment of service that our young Vermonters give to our country.
They step up because they believe in us. They believe that, in a democracy, they serve us by volunteering, and they subjected themselves to the authority of the Commander in Chief, a civilian. And they will show up, and they will serve at the call of the Commander in Chief.
We, in Congress, have a role to play, and it is to weigh in on the decisions of where and when we will send young men and women into harm's way. They do their job; we are not doing our job.
We have had no hearings. We have had no debate. We have had no discussion. It is just happening. We are sleepwalking passively into a war that could be yet another war in the Middle East.
Yes, it is true: The Iranian regime is dangerous. Saddam's regime was dangerous. The Taliban was dangerous. In the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan, we did escalate, and we stayed. You couldn't get out because we didn't make a decision. We were there and justified staying because we were there in the first place.
We are at that moment with what is occurring in Iran. And, yes, it is an evil regime. Yes, we want them not to have a nuclear weapon. But is diplomacy to be abandoned? Is unilateral action to be chosen? Is that to be done where we have literally no debate and no discussion?
It is the wrong decision, and we face very soon a question of whether we will support a $200 billion expenditure for that war. The President calls it an excursion, but we all know better. We must make a decision, and I have made a decision. I will not support $200 billion for a military ``excursion'' in Iran.
The burden of war is borne by those who fight it, the young men and the young women who put themselves in harm's way because we sent them there. They are the ones who suffer the loss of life, devastation in their families, lifelong injuries, PTSD. But the true burden of war is borne by those who fight, not by those who decide. Is it not our responsibility--our minimal responsibility--to decide? We are not doing that. We are passively backing into a war with no debate, no discussion, no profound appreciation of what we are asking the young men and women of this country to subject themselves to. We owe them more than that.
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