On Monday, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., took to the Senate floor and spoke on Islamic State terrorism, including the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. His speech was as follows:
Americans are understandably frightened by the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. And as we mourn the loss of the victims, our hearts go out to their friends and families.
We were shocked 14 years ago on September the 11th when foreign terrorists struck our homeland. For the first time, two big oceans did not protect us from foreign terrorists.
Now we know that we have to be prepared to meet the threat, not only abroad but here at home.
And first it means that we have to see the threat clearly. It doesn’t just come from shadowy foreign terrorist groups like ISIS or al Qaeda.
But now we see that it comes from a lone wolf or wolves who are individuals that get radicalized. We’ve seen that in the case at Fort Hood, we’ve seen it in other cases, we saw it in the case that was averted in Times Square from someone who had come all the way across the country from Denver.
They’re extremely hard to detect and, of course, ISIS uses the internet to spread its propaganda, its influence, and to try to inspire disaffected young people with its propaganda far beyond where ISIS is located over in the Middle East.
And that means that we’ve got to use all the tools at our disposal to collect actionable intelligence, harden our defenses, counter radicalization, counter propaganda, and stiffen our resolve.
Now, we ought to ensure that terrorists can’t exploit the visa waiver program with 38 countries that we share this visa waiver. We ought to ensure that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the access that they need to the terrorists telephone and electronic communications to disrupt the attacks.
And that’s a big order, all the while protecting Americans’ privacy and constitutional rights.
That’s why this senator thinks it was a mistake to change the previous law as we did earlier this year, to change that law which allowed telecom business bulk records to be readily accessed to traced terrorist communications.
We’ve done this. We do not have the ready access of those bulk business records, and again I remind our listeners we’re not talking about the contents of communications, telephone calls or content of internet messages.
We’re talking about the bulk records which are business records that such and such a number or such and such an IP address on such and such a date transmitted a message to another number or another IP address.
In the past through a court order, those bulk records would be held by the NSA granting ready access so that if we were trying to stop a terrorist by getting intel ahead of time, we could go back and see where those communications were and with whom and how many hops it had gone in order to try to break up the terrorist activity.
The problem with the lone wolf is that if they are really disguising their operations, they’re not communicating with anybody. That’s why it makes it so much more difficult to intercept the lone wolf who has been inspired by ISIS.
Just recently, we saw that ISIS has claimed the responsibility for the bombing of a Russian airliner over Egypt. And it reminds us that our planes and airports remain a target for terror attack. And that’s why I am introducing and will explain tomorrow legislation to tighten internal security at airports across the country.
We’ve had some good examples of that a year ago in Atlanta. Unbelievably for several months, guns were brought into the Atlanta airport by airport workers, were transferred to a passenger that had already gone through security, TSA security, and they were actually transported over a number of months from Atlanta to New York.
It was the lack of security on the perimeter of allowing workers into the airport proper that needs to be tightened up at all of our 300 airports.
Two have already done that over the last several years, and I am very proud of the Miami airport and the Orlando airport that they have done it and done it very successfully.
Because ISIS exploits war in Syria and the instability and sectarian conflict in Iraq meeting the terrorist threat means the use of military force as well, and our forces are with the help of our coalition partners as we speak striking ISIS from the air and training local forces to fight ISIS on the ground.
We’re intensifying air strikes against ISIS leadership, against heavy weapons, against oil tankers and oil wells, and have recently deployed US special operations forces to help local forces build the necessary battlefield momentum to take back territory.
Special operations forces will be central to the fight in order to avoid the large-scale deployment of US ground forces. These forces are trained to conduct surgical strikes against terrorist leaders.
There are press reports that General Joe Votel, the current commander of the US Special Operations Command in the next year will become the next commander of Central Command, responsible for operations against ISIS.
He already worked side by side with General Austin, the commander of the US Central Command in Tampa at MacDill Air Force base, and he would bring tremendous experience to the job.
The congress is not doing our job. We should authorize the use of military force. It’s our responsibility. I believe that the president has the authority to fight ISIS in Iraq or Syria or wherever, but the unity of the congress backing the president in law is constitutionally required.
We ought to debate these proposals and vote. The authorization would show the world that the United States is united in defeating ISIS.
The military fight is one piece of a broader effort to destroy ISIS and bring about a political transition in Syria to a government, a government that finally Bashar Assad will have to have finally left. That is critical to ending the war and ending the resulting humanitarian crisis and of course stemming the flow of the refugees.
Our efforts will take time and commitment, but they are clearly necessary to protect our national security.
Now, Mr. President, this is going to be a long, hard war. We can’t do it overnight.
There has been success in the war effort. We brought together 65 nations, 12,000 terrorist fighters have been killed, and we have shrunk the territory that ISIS occupies and has sanctuary in.
And I want to show the senate this map. It has been shown before, it is not classified, but all the area in green is what ISIS used to occupy, along with the area in orange. They are along the Euphrates River. All of that area in green, ISIS occupied but no longer because of the coalition efforts.
There has been success. Someone needs to talk about that success. Going forward, we’re going to have to use more special operations troops. We’re going to have to insist on our Arab neighbors picking up the fight and doing the fighting on the ground, and we do not need to make the mistake of tens of thousands of Americans on the ground because that plays right into ISIS’ hands. Because it looks like and ISIS would portray it as that it is the US versus Muslims.
And, Mr. President, we should treat Muslims with respect here at home in America, treat them with the respect they deserve. Don’t overreact.
Otherwise, that plays to ISIS’ advantage of the image of Americans. In other words, it’s us versus them.
We are accelerating the fight. We have more and more intense coalition partners. We have extensive intel sharing. We have an outreach to Muslims about the truth of ISIS. And we insist our partners sharing their intel with us, and that includes on the visa waiver of those 38 nations.
Mr. President, fear at this time like San Bernardino, fear is a natural response. It happens in times like this.
But we cannot let fear get the best of us. We must overcome the fear and not let it compromise who we are as Americans by us overreacting.
We need to nail down a truth that our government has no greater obligation than to keep us safe, and, Mr. President, I want to share with the senate where is the unity that we used to have?
I know it’s not in vogue to say the good old days, but I can tell you that when this senator was a young congressman, when it came to national security, partisanship stopped at the water’s edge.
So isn’t it time to unify? Isn’t it the time to disagree without being disagreeable? Isn’t it time to think of ourselves as Americans instead of partisans? Isn’t it time to remember that Latin phrase that is up there above the president’s desk – E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one. It’s time to come together.
God bless America.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., was first elected to the Senate in 2000.
