On September 9, 2013 Congressman Bentivolio from Michigan was granted permission to address the United States House of Representatives regarding the situation in Syria. What he said on that day caught many on the floor of the House by surprise.
“The Secretary of State had some gall to tell both the Senate and the House Foreign Relations Committees that bombing Syria is ‘not a war in the classic sense.’ Let me tell you something else, Mr. Speaker: war has consequences.”
“The Secretary of State told the House Foreign Relations Committee that the goal of bombing Syria was to ‘degrade’ Assad’s chemical weapons and cause a stalemate in the fighting. In other words, Assad will still have the capability of using chemical weapons and could very well use them again to break the stalemate we create. Does anyone really think that we will just stop with a few rounds of bombings? That’s not how war works. Wars are a ‘yes or no’ question. You cannot, as Secretary Kerry and the White House suggest, only kind of fight a war. If we break it, we’re going to be forced to fix it”, he says.
“When I look at this mission plan, I don’t see anything that suggests we will simply be able to walk away after this bombing campaign. America’s role in the world is not to play parent to the rest of the nations, chastising bad actors and picking winners and losers in a battle that don’t directly threaten us. The point of our nation is to show the world the wisdom of a free and representative government.My fellow members of Congress, we can shown that wisdom here today with this vote. We can show the world that our nation will not plunge itself into a war because our President drew an artificial red line and feels embarrassed that a dictator crossed it”, he said.
“Our military does not belong to the White House”, he continued. “It belongs to then people. I ask you, show the power and wisdom of our founding fathers when they granted the representatives of then people with the decision to go to near. I strongly urge everyone in this room to vote ‘no’ on attacking Syria and involving ourselves in their civil war” (source: Congressional record, September 9, 2013).