REP. ELIOT ENGEL (D-NY): I understand that my colleagues are war weary. I'm war weary. I understand the American people are war weary. But I think doing nothing would invite something very similar that happened to my city, New York City, on that fateful day of Sept. 11, 2001



You know we kicked the Russians, when the world kicked the Russians out of Afghanistan when that happened and so what happened was we took our eye off the of the prize. And so we allowed Afghanistan to become a safe haven, we allowed the Taliban to welcome in al Qaeda and al Qaeda had a safe haven to plot and plan attacks against the US homeland.



That is replicating itself right now in Syria and in Iraq and if we do nothing ISIS will plot and plan and will have many more September 11th in the United States, in Europe, in the Middle East. That's why this is in the national interest, the US national interest, and it's something that we really need to do.