June 8, 2017
Resolved, That the Senate— (1) condemns ISIS’ horrific terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom, Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt, Iraq, Australia, and Iran; (2) expresses its deepest condolences to the victims of these attacks and their families; (3) expresses solidarity with the people of the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt, Iraq, Australia, and Iran; (4) recognizes the threat posed by ISIS and recommits to U.S. leadership in the Global Coalition working to defeat ISIS.
My father served in World War II. He was a chief petty officer. Most of my uncles served in World War II and/or Korea. One of my uncles I never met. My mom’s youngest brother served in the U.S. Navy. He was stationed on a ship called the USS Suwannee. It was an aircraft carrier. They were on duty in the Western Pacific in 1944, and their group of ships came under attack by Japanese kamikaze pilots, dive-bombing and crashing their aircraft into several ships, including the USS Suwannee, the ship on which my uncle Bob was stationed. He was 19 years old. I think he was on the ship and they were trying to launch aircraft to take on the kamikaze pilots before they could do much damage and several of the aircraft apparently crashed into the aircraft carrier on which my Uncle Bob was doing duty up on the deck of the aircraft carrier. His body, along with the bodies of a number of people who were on the deck, were never recovered. They were killed, missing in action for an extended period of time, and their bodies were never recovered. I told folks back in Delaware about my grandmother during one of the Memorial Day observances. I don’t know if the Presiding Officer has this in Missouri, but in Delaware, during some of our observances, we have a place of honor where some of our Gold Star families sit. I told the Gold Star families at a bridge ceremony in Wilmington near the Delaware Memorial Bridge—I pointed out where the Gold Star families were sitting, and I said: My grandmother, if she were still alive, would be 110 today, and she would be sitting right over there with all the Gold Star families and mothers. She never saw her son again after he went off to serve in the war. There was a lot of sorrow in that family for years and years and years. They had pictures for as long as I can remember. There was a picture of my Uncle Bob, age 19, posing, at the time, in his dress blue uniform. I was a dead ringer for him. My sister and I, after we were born in West Virginia, grew up in Danville, VA. I went off to high school and then became a Navy midshipman and then went off to Southeast Asia. I would go home to visit my relatives in West Virginia, including my grandparents. I would go back to that house. I would go back to the picture and look at him because as I grew older, the resemblance was pretty remarkable. My grandmother, from the time I was a little boy until I grew up, would always call me Bobby. That
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was his name, not mine. I was Tommy, but she would call me Bobby. It was kind of eerie. She would never try to correct it. She would just call me Bobby. Sometimes people would have nicknames for us as kids, and my grandfather always called me Joe. So we would go spend time, a week or two, with them in the summer, and my grandmother called me Bobby and my grandfather called me Joe. I wasn’t sure who I was when I would go back to their home in Danville or Roanoke, VA, but I know my grandmother loved her son Bobby, and the folks who took his life were Japanese. They were Japanese. In the Navy, I flew missions with Japanese forces during the Vietnam war and the Cold War when I was a naval flight officer. Japan is among our best friends today, one of our closest allies, despite the hundreds of thousands of lives which were lost in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the war that ensued. Germany, at the other side of the world, was a bitter enemy during World War II and is among our closest allies and has been for years the bulwark in that part of the world. I just mention them to say that the folks that might be our adversaries today—Vietnam, where I served, was a great adversary for a number of years, and today, as I said earlier, is one of our closest trading partners, and they are one of our partners. We had, I thought, a wonderful trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership should have been approved by us and never was. It was negotiated in the last administration. I think in history they will say that it was a huge mistake we made not to approve it after negotiating it over a period of several years with 11 other countries, including the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese are amazingly close. They love Americans. God, they love Americans. They love us more than we love us, and you can feel it. Every time I go over there, I am reminded of that. Things have a way of changing. Leadership changes, people change, the attitudes of people toward the rest of the world, including us, will change. The results of the Iranian election give me some encouragement. I hope they give the rest of us encouragement. I hope someday some of those young Iranian people who admire this country and love this country will have a chance to come here and visit. Ironically, today is the last day we have a lot of young people here in this Chamber who are leaving us. We call them pages. Some are sitting down here. I walked up to them earlier today. We have doors—seven doors— and when we are having votes, people and Senators come in and out, and we have two pages stationed at every door. We have pages down here at the foot of the Presiding Officer on either side. What I tried to do was just go around to the pages and shake their hands, say
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goodbye, and thank them for their service during what has been really, as the Presiding Officer knows, a challenging time for all of us. I would say I had to have a chance to address these pages as well as the rest of our colleagues here, but I want to say to the pages, thanks a lot for your service, and we hope you have been inspired not by our shortcoming but by the potential you see here for us continuing to send this ship of state into the future. A lot of people are concerned about the direction our country has taken. I would like to remind them, especially these pages, that 150 years ago we fought a civil war in this country. I grew up in Danville, VA, the last capital of the Confederacy. I think some people were still fighting the Civil War when I got there. I was 9 years old and my sister was 10. So 150 years ago, the Civil War was fought, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed, many more were crippled, wounded, and maimed. After that, we saw our President assassinated. President Lincoln was assassinated. After that, our President who succeeded him, Andrew Johnson, was impeached, and somehow we got through all of that in the 19th century. When we finally made it to the 20th century, what happened? World War I— we fought it, won it, and led our allies to victory. Then World War II, we fought it, won it, and led the allies to victory in World War II. The Cold War—won it, led our allies to victory in the Cold War. The Great Depression—we fought our way out of it and led the world to a much stronger economy. When the 21st century dawned on January 1, 2001, here is where we were as a nation: the strongest economy on Earth, the most productive workforce on Earth, a nation of peace, four balanced budgets in a row. We hadn’t balanced our budget since 1968, but the last 4 years of the Clinton administration we were 4 and 0 in terms of a balanced budget. Since the century began, we were the world’s mightiest Nation—the mightiest force for justice—and we were the most admired Nation on the planet. I would just keep in mind the words of Harry Truman: The only thing new in the world is the history we have forgotten and never learned. He was a guy from Missouri, as I recall, like our Presiding Officer. We are going through a tough time now, and we will get through it. My hope is that our pages, who have provided a great service here in the recent months of their service, will someday come back as interns, maybe someday as staff members, maybe someday as Senators and Representatives and chiefs of staff, and will play other roles in guiding our country. We thank all of you. My hope is that, as time goes by, the tensions around the world, the hatred, the vitriol, and the murder and the mayhem will have dissipated. Countries just like Japan in World War II,
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