[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 96 (Tuesday, July 16, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1265-E1266]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  THE BOSTON GLOBE'S TELLING CRITIQUE OF ADMINISTRATION AFGHAN POLICY

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                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 16, 2002

  Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, Americans overwhelmingly supported President 
Bush's response to the terrorism of September 11, and his attack on the 
Taliban for providing a haven to these murderers was an entirely 
legitimate one. The successes American military forces achieved were 
impressive, and have contributed to a situation in which we have both 
diminished the possibility of terrorist attacks, and paved the way for 
a significant improvement in the lives of the people of Afghanistan.
  But that latter accomplishment is being put somewhat in jeopardy by a 
pattern of inappropriate action and undue inaction on the part of the 
administration. The recent killing of dozens of people at a wedding 
party is of course tragic. But it is more than that. No one believes 
that any American military were consciously indifferent to the lives of 
innocent people. But it does appear that the strategy being dictated 
from Washington at this point fails to take into account sufficiently 
the need to prevent this sort of killing of innocent people. No one 
wants American troops put unnecessarily at risk, but we must achieve a 
better balance of serving our legitimate military ends while being 
fully respectful of the lives of innocent Afghans. Our current policy 
fails to give appropriate weight to that latter concern.
  In addition, the stubborn refusal of the administration to support 
extending international peacekeeping beyond Kabul is a grave error. We 
had every moral right in my judgment to go into Afghanistan to go after 
the murderers who have attacked not just Americans but many others over 
the past few years. But having successfully and legitimately destroyed 
the Taliban regime, we have an equal moral obligation now to help the 
people of Afghanistan live in peace and security. And our current 
policy fails to live up to that.
  Mr. Speaker, an editorial in the Boston Globe for July 10 makes these 
points extremely well. Because nothing is more important to our 
national security and our moral purpose than acting appropriately in 
Afghanistan

[[Page E1266]]

right now, I ask that this very thoughtful editorial from the Boston 
Globe documenting the shortcomings in the current administration policy 
in Afghanistan be printed here.

                 [From The Boston Globe, July 10, 2002]

                             Afghan Targets

       The assassination Saturday in Kabul of a minister in 
     President Hamid Karzai's government, no less than the lethal 
     strafing of Afghan villagers by US aircraft, illuminates 
     America's need to help Afghans rebuild their nation.
       It was a calamitous error for the US military to use an AC-
     130 aerial gunship to attack four villages in Oruzgan 
     province last week, killing dozens of women and children and 
     wounding more than a hundred. Unless President Bush prohibits 
     similar attacks in the future, his phoned apologies to 
     President Hamid Karzai will be remembered as little more than 
     a futile expression of regret from a leader who did not know 
     how to preserve his battlefield victories.
       There may be a bit of a mystery about how many villagers 
     were killed in the attack and some unanswered questions about 
     antiaircraft guns that disappeared from sites where pilots 
     had seen them firing. But US soldiers entered the village of 
     Kakrak after the attack and saw the blood and gore. Something 
     atrocious happened to a wedding party in Kakrak.
       There is no excuse for loosing such firepower on an Afghan 
     village without US spotters on the ground who can be trusted 
     when they call in strikes on armed enemy forces.
       Strategically, US decision makers are acting like rote 
     managers who cannot see the forest for the trees. They are 
     deploying high-powered US war machines to hunt tiny clusters 
     of Taliban. In reality, the Taliban are finished. They 
     present no immediate threat to the Karzai government. The 
     members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist cult are in a 
     different category, but because those foreigners are 
     generally despised by Afghans, they are at the mercy of local 
     Afghan informers.
       The United States has much more to lose by killing innocent 
     villagers than it has to gain by trapping a few Taliban 
     diehards or even by catching their leader, Mullah Omar. The 
     US strafing of wedding guests risks making the Americans, who 
     liberated Afghans from the Taliban, look like just another 
     band of foreign invaders.
       Since nobody has claimed credit for the daytime 
     assassination of Karzai's public works minister, Haji Abdul 
     Qadir, the murder is unlikely to be part of a blood feud. It 
     is more likely the work of forces intent on destabilizing 
     Karzai's government.
       To help that government survive and prosper, Bush should 
     drop his administration's foolish opposition to expansion of 
     the international security force--now composed of Turkish 
     troops--this is currently confined to Kabul. If Bush wants to 
     keep Afghanistan out of the hands of international 
     terrorists, he must commit US power and prestige to nation-
     building in that country. Aid money must be funneled directly 
     to the central government for the rebuilding of roads, 
     bridges, canals, and irrigation systems. It will be much 
     easier and less expensive to help rebuild Afghanistan than to 
     go on chasing Taliban bandits through the mountains for years 
     to come.

     

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