[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 154 (Thursday, November 8, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H7952-H7953]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       HUMANITARIAN AND FOOD ASSISTANCE IN RESPONSE TO TERRORISM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Otter). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. CLAYTON. Mr. Speaker, the events of September 11 have been 
devastating to the country. The horrific attacks upon the World Trade 
Center, the Pentagon, and the subsequent anthrax attacks have shaken 
all of us deeply.
  It is both appropriate and imperative that we respond swiftly and 
surely to those who have perpetrated these horrific deeds. We must not 
allow actions of terror against American citizens to be carried out 
without a response.
  However, alongside our military response, we must implement our 
humanitarian and diplomatic response where it shows our compassion and 
care for those citizens of developing worlds who have suffered greatly 
at the hands of autocrats and dictators who would keep them in fear. We 
must exert the same kind of energy and resources against poverty, 
hunger, and autocracy that we are appropriately exerting against 
terrorism. This allows us to eradicate the scourge of terror of the 
threat to American citizens and our interests nationally and 
internationally.
  Fighting terror is not just a matter of eliminating military threats, 
as the President has appropriately said, but is also for eliminating 
the root of the desperation as well as the root of the fears and the 
misconceptions that are born out of a life without hope and a childhood 
without thoughts of a better tomorrow.
  In short, as we fight this campaign against this awful terror that 
has been brought against us, we must strive to ensure that our 
humanitarian response is not seen as an afterthought or as secondary to 
our military and democratic success, but as an intricate part of our 
foreign policy.
  I urge my colleagues who will soon be considering the conference bill 
of Foreign Operations to bear in mind the importance of strengthening 
our foreign assistance humanitarian response to terror alongside our 
military campaign, and to act to increase our commitment to fighting 
the scourge of terror, hunger, and poverty through foreign assistance 
which supports economic and political opportunities and encourages 
political stability, thereby strengthening American interests 
internationally.
  This Foreign Operations budget contains many tools in the fight 
against terror. We must focus our assistance upon the most vulnerable 
populations of the world who bear the burden of terror and of 
dictatorship all over their countries.
  Among other things, the foreign operations budget contains money for 
combating the infectious disease that has indeed engulfed and has 
ravaged developing countries across the world, that of AIDS and 
tuberculosis. It provides money for the United Nation's High Commission 
on Refugees, again an appropriate appropriation. It also funds our 
commitment for the World Food Program, which, in recent weeks, has been 
working against terrible odds, with millions of people starving in 
Afghanistan who, too, hate the Taliban just as much as we do. They do 
not have an opportunity for an average life or making decisions. These 
resources, indeed, would help us help them to have a better life.
  I urge my colleagues today to consider the value of these important 
investments as they consider the resources of the Foreign Operations 
budget and to ratchet up, not reduce down, the fight against terrorism 
by increasing our financial commitment

[[Page H7953]]

to a worthy cause that indeed allows us to show our humanitarian side 
as well as our diplomatic side, which are important complementary tools 
in our fight against terrorism.

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