[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 38 (Wednesday, March 4, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H2955-H2956]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            DEFENSE SPENDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Madam Speaker, the President has announced we will soon 
be sending an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, bringing our 
total there to approximately 55,000.
  A few days ago, I read a one-line mention in a story that the Defense 
Department, which is now the Department of Foreign Aid, was going to 
spend $100 million to build a new road in Afghanistan. I think our 
Founding Fathers would think we had flipped out or lost our minds to 
spend $100 million to build a road in Afghanistan, especially since we 
are over $11 trillion in debt and thus are spending money that we do 
not have. Of course, $100 million is just a tiny drop in the bucket of 
the billions and billions that we have spent over there since 2001, in 
an impoverished country that is no realistic threat to us whatsoever.
  Of course, every giant bureaucracy is doing everything it can to 
expand its mission and exaggerating its threats so it can get more 
money. That is what the war in Afghanistan is really all about--money 
and power instead of any real threat.
  According to the Congressional Research Service, we have spent $173 
billion in Afghanistan since 2001, and as far as I'm concerned, it's 
pouring money down a rat hole. It is a complete waste. I think if there 
are any fiscal conservatives left in Congress, they should be horrified 
by the waste that is going on over there.
  General Petraeus said in an article in the Washington Post a few days 
ago that the situation in Afghanistan, despite all of this money, has 
deteriorated markedly in the past 2 years. Those were his words. He 
said Afghanistan has been known over the years as the graveyard of 
empires, and if we're not careful, it's going to help be the graveyard 
of our empire as well.
  Professor Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania wrote 
recently about the money feeding frenzy of the war on terror and he 
wrote this: ``Nearly 7 years after September 11, 2001, what accounts 
for the vast discrepancy between the terrorist threat facing America 
and the scale of our response? Why, absent any evidence of a serious 
terror threat, is a war on terror so enormous, so all-encompassing, and 
still expanding?
  ``The fundamental answer is that Al Qaeda's most important 
accomplishment was not to hijack our planes but to hijack our political 
system.
  ``For a multitude of politicians, interest groups and professional 
associations, corporations, media organizations, universities, local 
and State governments, and Federal agency officials, the war on terror 
is now a major profit center, a funding bonanza, and a set of slogans 
and soundbites to be inserted into budget, project, grant, and contract 
proposals.''

[[Page H2956]]

  And finally, Professor Lustick wrote, ``For the country as a whole, 
however, it has become a maelstrom of waste.''
  Now we have a national debt of $11.315 trillion, an incomprehensible 
figure--and the GAO tells us in addition that we have over $55 trillion 
in unfunded future pension liabilities.
  It's just not going to be long at all before we're not going to be 
able to pay all of our Social Security and Medicare, veterans pensions, 
and all the things we have promised our own people if we don't stop 
spending money in ridiculously wasteful ways.
  And, of course, what does the Defense Department tell us? Just as 
they always do: What they want is more money to spend in Afghanistan 
and more troops in every place else.
  Bruce Fein, who was a high-ranking official in the Reagan 
administration, wrote just a few days ago in the Washington Times that 
it is ridiculous that we now have troops in 135 countries and 
approximately 1,400 military installations around the world. And he 
said we should redeploy our troops to the United States.
  He said, ``No country would dare attack our defenses and our 
retaliatory capability would be invincible. Esprit de corps would be at 
its zenith because soldiers would be fighting to protect American lives 
on American soil, not Afghan peasants.''
  And he wrote this: ``The redeployment would end the United States 
casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, it would end the 
foreign resentments or enemies created by unintended killing of 
civilians and the insult to pride excited by foreign occupation.''
  At the end of this column, he wrote: ``The American empire should be 
abandoned and the republic restored. The United States would be safer, 
freer, and wealthier.'' And, Madam Speaker, I can tell you, I agree 
with him.

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