Kaine: The twofold mission for Congress

Over the July 4 recess, I led a bicameral congressional delegation to Kuwait, Iraq and Turkey to visit American troops and diplomatic personnel and assess the war against ISIL and the dire humanitarian situation in the region. I believe Congress has two primary jobs regarding the battle against ISIL — to authorize the war and provide appropriate budgetary support to succeed. We have yet to do either.

For nearly a year, I have been pushing Congress to do its constitutional job and authorize U.S. military force in Iraq and Syria. As we approach the one-year anniversary of the president taking unilateral action to protect U.S. personnel and the Yazidis from potential genocide, I knew it was important for me to go back to Iraq — my first trip since I visited Virginia National Guard troops there in 2006.

We have an obligation to debate, define and authorize the ongoing mission so that our troops, our allies and ISIL itself know that Congress takes this mission seriously. And as we approach the next fiscal cliff — the expiration of the current two-year federal budget on Sept. 30 — we have to find a budget deal that funds this mission and our broader defense and domestic priorities.

So the timing of our trip was important on many levels, though it started on an especially somber note.

We landed in Kuwait City within a day of the ISIL terrorist attack on a Shiite mosque, an act of horror during Ramadan that claimed 27 lives and injured hundreds. We went to a service, symbolically held at the Sunni Grand Mosque, to pay our respects to the affected families and national officials, sharing that America had also been rocked recently by an act of violence in a Charleston house of worship and that we stood together with our Kuwaiti friends to reject bigotry and terror.

The next two days were in Iraq, beginning in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish Regional Government. President Masoud Barzani, whose Kurdish peshmerga fighters have battled valiantly against ISIL and achieved significant success, thanked us for strong American support, saying, “If your president had not started a bombing campaign against ISIL last August in our region, we might not be here today.”

Local forces are the best “boots on the ground” we have against ISIL and the close coordination of our airstrikes with Kurdish ground activity has dramatically reversed ISIL’s gains.

But the progress in Kurdistan is not seen everywhere in Iraq. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is still struggling to build confidence among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds after former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s disastrous course that marginalized Sunnis and Kurds. The divisions were so sharp that when ISIL began gaining traction in 2014, Sunni areas in western Iraq would not join the government to battle the threat because of past mistreatment.

Abadi has gotten high marks in his first year, but his good intent remains to be translated into real unification of the country, which is ultimately critical to military success against ISIL. Thus in Iraq, the progress against ISIL is mixed — with notable successes in the northern Kurdish areas and eastern communities such as Diyala and Tikrit, but much less success in Sunni regions. This includes on the governance front, where greater reconciliation with Sunnis is necessary.

We next spent two days in Turkey — in Gaziantep, near the Syrian border, and in Ankara — to look at how the battle against ISIL in Syria overlays the massive humanitarian crisis caused by the civil war against the brutal dictatorship of Bashar Assad. We visited with Syrian refugees, armed groups battling Assad and ISIL, non-government organizations, youth activists and local council members, many of whom braved a conflict zone just to meet with us. And we met with U.S. military and humanitarian workers to discuss what we are doing to defeat ISIL in Syria and how we can better address the largest refugee crisis since World War II.

Turkey is hosting almost 2 million Syrian refugees, with the situation becoming even more complicated as ISIL turns its fight against those in the anti-Assad camp in an effort to establish its caliphate with the city of Raqqa as its base.

So the U.S. continues to pursue a double mission — supporting and training those inside Syria who are fighting ISIL, while also pushing for a negotiated political end to the civil war with a new government that will represent all Syrians.

Just as in Iraq, the desired end state is unification and communities where Sunni, Shiite, Kurd, Christian and other ethnic groups can live in peace. Division weakens government institutions and creates hostilities and vacuums that allow extremists to flourish. It also robs victories of their impact — for example, the success of the Kurds against ISIL raises some concerns among Sunnis and the Turkish government about their ultimate intentions.

Bottom line — the desire for continued U.S. help is overwhelming. When the chips are down, people want our help. The quality of our troops — from enlisted to officer ranks — always inspires pride. Our diplomats, aid workers and NGOs do heroic work in difficult places, often without any recognition or thanks. And so many of these valiant public servants call Virginia home. All the more reason why it is so critical for Congress to do its job by authorizing the ongoing mission against ISIL and continuing to support those affected by war.