Teague Sauter

3/16/14
Dear Constituents,
This week we made several decisions regarding issues throughout the
Middle East and the World. We began with Afghanistan and Pakistan where we
discussed whether or not we should finance the Pakistan government in order to
promote peace keeping and nation building in Afghanistan. In the end the
resolution passed by a single vote with 20 yays, 13 nays and 2 abstentions. I voted
against this amendment due to the fact that it continued to fund a corrupt Pakistani
government. I could not vote for a resolution that financed a government that
supports terrorism, but even though I kept your interests at heart the resolution still
passed. I proposed an amendment which would have left behind a small special
operations task force in order to combat terrorism but my fellow senate members
were less than happy with the inclusion of the use of drone strikes in the
amendment and it was killed.
However, I continued my fight for you, the constituents on the issue of Syria.
We were debating on whether or not the United States should seek and lead a NATO
mission into Syria to disable the Syrian military. Of course I could not agree with a
resolution that sent the United States into another war in the Middle East and the
resolution was killed with 23 nays, 4 yays and 7 abstentions. I proposed an
amendment to the resolution that proposed an attempt on Assads life in order to
set up a democratic system. However, this amendment did not receive much
support either and was killed in a landslide.
Egypt was one of the more difficult issues we discussed and we couldnt even
reach a vote on it and it was tabled. The resolution we were discussing said that the
United States aid to Egypt would be contingent on whether or not the Egyptian
government continued commitment to a democracy and the Camp David Accords. It
was difficult deciding on whether or not they already were committed to democracy
and the details of offering aid.
An easier debate was the issue of Iran, which passed with 33 yays and only 2
nays. The proposed resolutions said that the US would resume normal relations
with Iran if they agreed to abandon their pursuit of nuclear weapons and submit to
UN inspections. The Arbacher amendment stated that the US would gradually
resume relations with Iran and it passed as well. There was nothing that I could
disagree with in this resolution the fact of the matter is we must do whatever it
takes to keep nuclear weapons out of Irans hands.
The resolution on Ukraine was killed by only two votes. It stated that unless
Russia withdraws all troops from Ukraine (including Crimea), the US would enact
diplomatic sanctions on Russia. Today the Crimean people voted to secede from
Ukraine so it appears that we made the correct decision. I could not vote to enact
sanctions on Russia especially because the resolution involved inviting Ukraine, a
corrupt government, to become members of NATO.
The last issue we discussed was perhaps the most difficult of all,
Israel/Palestine. We just could not agree on anything and the vote ended up as 15
yays, 15 nays and 5 abstentions. I admit I did vote in favor of this resolution despite
its unrealistic requirement that Jerusalem would become its own city-state.
However, I did like the Bulls amendment, which would have sent the 95-96 Chicago
Bulls basketball team to Israel as diplomats.