During consideration of the National Defense Authorization bill (H.R. 1735), Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) introduced an amendment to authorize the president to “provide for a temporary, emergency authorization of defense articles, defense services, and related training directly to the Kurdistan Regional Government,” according to the text of the amendment. On June 15, 2015,speaking in support of her amendment on the Senate floor, Senator Ernst said, “This bipartisan amendment … provides temporary authority for the president … to provide weapons directly to Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the fight against ISIS should the administration choose to do so.”
The Senate rejected Senator Ernst’s amendment on June 16, 2015 by a vote of 54 to 45 (Roll Call 210; a 60-vote threshold was required for passage pursuant to a unanimous consent agreement). We have assigned pluses to the nays because arming foreign fighters would be an act of war, and under the U.S. Constitution, only Congress may declare war. Moreover, our interventionist policy in the Middle East has exacerbated terrorism. In Syria, for example, arming the so-called moderate rebels helped create the ISIS threat. And regarding Iraq, arms sent to the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) could also fall into the hands of the rival Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a communist terrorist group dedicated to the creation of a Marxist-Leninist state of Kurdistan. The KRG is divided between the more conservative Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK) of Iraq and the left-wing Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which is affiliated with the Socialist International.
