[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 110 (Tuesday, July 21, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H8468-H8469]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          AFGHANISTAN BUILD-UP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, this past Sunday, I read a column in the 
Raleigh News and Observer, entitled ``From Vietnam 1959 to Afghanistan 
2009.'' The column was written by Joseph Galloway, a military 
journalist and co-author of a book on Vietnam called, ``We Were 
Soldiers Once and Young.''

               [From the News & Observer, July 19, 2009]

                 From Vietnam 1959 to Afghanistan 2009

     (By Joseph L. Galloway, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

       Bayside, Texas.--It was just about half a century ago, on 
     the night of July 8, 1959, that the first two American 
     soldiers to die in the Vietnam War were slain when guerrillas 
     surrounded and shot up a small mess hall where half a dozen 
     advisers were watching a movie after dinner.
       Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand of Copperas Cove, Texas, and 
     Maj. Dale Buis of Imperial Beach, Calif., would become the 
     first two names chiseled on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial--
     the first of 58,220 Americans who died in Vietnam during the 
     next 16 years.
       The deaths of Ovnand and Buis went largely unnoticed at the 
     time, simply a small beginning of what would become a huge 
     national tragedy.
       Presidents from Harry Truman to Dwight Eisenhower to John 
     F. Kennedy to Lyndon B. Johnson to Richard M. Nixon to Gerald 
     R. Ford made decisions--some small and incremental, some 
     large and disastrous--in building us so costly and tragic a 
     war.

[[Page H8469]]

       The national security handmaidens of those presidents, 
     especially those who served Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford, 
     were supposedly the best and brightest that Harvard and Yale 
     and Princeton could contribute.
       Presidents right up to today's like to surround themselves 
     with such self-assured and certain men, men whose eagerness 
     to find war the answer to most problems often grows in direct 
     proportion to their lack of experience in uniform or combat.
       This small history lesson can be read as a cautionary tale 
     to President Barack Obama's team as it oversees an 
     excruciating slow-motion end of one war, Iraq, and a pell-
     mell rush to wade ever deeper into another one in the 
     mountains and deserts of remote and tribal Afghanistan.
       The story grows out of a battle in the very beginning of 
     the American takeover of the war in South Vietnam in the fall 
     of 1965 when a defense secretary, Robert S. McNamara, counted 
     the bodies and the beans and offered his president two 
     directly opposing options.
       In the wake of the Ia Drang Valley battles of November 
     1965--the first major collision between an experimental 
     airmobile division of the U.S. Army and regular soldiers in 
     division strength from the People's Army of North Vietnam--
     President Johnson ordered McNamara to rush to Vietnam and 
     assess what had happened and what was going to happen.
       Up till then, just more than 1,000 Americans, mostly 
     advisers and pilots, had been killed in Vietnam since Ovnand 
     and Buis. Then, in just five days 234 more Americans had been 
     killed and hundreds wounded in the Ia Drang. McNamara took 
     briefings from Gen. William Westmoreland, the top U.S. 
     commander in Vietnam, and from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge 
     and assorted spy chiefs and diplomats. Then he flew to An Khe 
     in the Central Highlands and was briefed on the Ia Drang 
     battles by then Lt. Col. Hal Moore, who had commanded on the 
     ground in Landing Zone XRAY in the Ia Drang.
       On the plane home to Washington, McNamara dictated a Top 
     Secret/Eyes Only memo to Johnson dated Nov. 30, 1965. In that 
     report he stated that the enemy had not only met but had 
     exceeded our escalation of the war and we had reached a 
     decision point. In his view there were two options:
       Option One: We could arrange whatever diplomatic cover we 
     could arrange and pull out of South Vietnam.
       Option Two: We could give Gen. Westmoreland the 200,000 
     more U.S. troops he was asking for, in which case by early 
     1967 we would have more than 500,000 Americans on the ground, 
     and they would be dying at the rate of 1,000 a month. (He was 
     wrong; the death toll would reach over 3,000 a month at the 
     height of the war). ``All we can possibly achieve (by this) 
     is a military stalemate at a much higher level of violence,'' 
     McNamara wrote.
       On Dec. 15, 1965, the president assembled what he called 
     the ``wise men'' for a brainstorming session on Vietnam. He 
     entered the Cabinet room holding McNamara's memo. He shook it 
     at McNamara and asked: ``Bob, you mean to tell me no matter 
     what I do, I can't win in Vietnam?'' McNamara nodded yes; 
     that was precisely what he meant.
       The wise men sat in session for two days. Participants say 
     there was no real discussion of McNamara's Option One--it 
     would have sent the wrong message to our Cold War allies--and 
     at the end there was a unanimous vote in favor of Option 
     Two--escalating and continuing a war that our leaders knew we 
     could not win.
       Remember. This was 1965, 10 years before the last 
     helicopter lifted off that roof in Saigon. It's a hell of a 
     lot easier to get sucked into a war or jump feet first into a 
     war than it is to get out of a war.
       There's no question that Obama inherited these two wars, 
     Iraq and Afghanistan, from the Bush/Cheney administration. 
     But the buildup in Afghanistan and the change in strategy 
     belong to Obama and his version of the best and brightest.
       The new administration has dictated an escalation from 
     30,000 U.S. troops to more than 60,000, and even before most 
     of them have actually arrived commanders on the ground are 
     already back asking for more, and why not? When you are a 
     hammer everything around you looks like a nail.
       Some smart veterans of both Iraq and Afghanistan, on the 
     ground now or just back, say that at this rate we will 
     inevitably lose the war in Afghanistan; that the situation on 
     the ground now is far worse than Iraq was at its lowest point 
     in 2006 and early 2007. They talk of a costly effort both in 
     lives and national treasure that will stretch out past the 
     Obama administration and maybe the two administrations after 
     that.
       Obama needs to call in the ``wise men and women'' for a 
     fish-or-cut bait meeting on his two ongoing wars. Let's hope 
     that this time around, there's an absence of the arrogance 
     and certainty of previous generations of advisers. Let's hope 
     that they choose to speed up the withdrawal of combat troops 
     from Iraq and get out before the Iraqi people and leaders 
     order us to leave. Let's hope, too, that they weigh very 
     carefully all the costs of another decade or two of war in 
     Afghanistan.
       Failing that, they should at the very least begin an 
     immediate drive to increase the number of available beds in 
     military and Veterans Administration hospitals and to expand 
     Arlington National Cemetery and the national military 
     cemeteries nationwide.

  Mr. Speaker, perhaps the column's most salient point is its 
description of a time in 1965 when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara 
presented President Lyndon Baines Johnson with a top secret memo. It 
indicated that the United States had reached a decision point with two 
available options. The first option was to arrange diplomatic cover and 
to pull out of South Vietnam. The second option was to increase the 
number of American troops by 200,000, bringing the total to more than 
500,000 Americans on the ground.
  Regarding this second option, Mr. McNamara stated, ``All we can 
possibly achieve is a military stalemate at a much higher level of 
violence.'' I want to repeat that.
  Regarding the second option, Mr. McNamara stated, ``All we can 
possibly achieve is a military stalemate at a much higher level of 
violence.''
  From that time when President Johnson chose to escalate and to 
continue the war until its conclusion, America suffered 56,000 more 
casualties.
  Mr. Speaker, President Obama's administration has reached a similar 
decision point with regard to Afghanistan. Last month, on June 25 of 
2009, I joined Congressman Jim McGovern in offering an amendment to the 
National Defense Authorization Act that would have required the 
Secretary of Defense to submit a report to Congress which outlines an 
exit strategy for our Armed Forces in Afghanistan.
  While I regret that this amendment was not approved, I still believe 
it's critical for the current administration to clearly articulate 
benchmarks for success and an end point to its war strategy in 
Afghanistan. The men and women of our military who have served in Iraq 
and Afghanistan have done a magnificent job. Many have been deployed 
four or five times.
  Let's not forget, as General Petraeus has said, ``Afghanistan has 
been known over the years as the graveyard of empires. We cannot take 
that history lightly.''
  That is why it is so important for this current administration to 
have an end point to its strategy in Afghanistan. This strategy must be 
articulated sooner rather than later so we can avoid going down the 
path of other failed empires, and so we can avoid the tragedy and the 
mistake of Vietnam, when elected officials in Washington never 
articulated an end point or an understanding of what was to be 
achieved.
  Mr. Speaker, I have Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point Marine Air Station, 
Camp Lejeune being a Marine base, and I have Seymour Johnson Air Force 
Base. I've talked to many of all ranks in the Marine Corps. They're 
willing to go back and to go back again and again and again, but we're 
getting to the point where we're about to break our military. It is 
time that the new administration has an end point to whatever we're 
trying to achieve in Afghanistan.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, before I close, as I do frequently on the 
floor, I tell you without pride that I've signed over 8,000 letters in 
the last 6 years because of my mistake in giving President Bush the 
authority to go into Iraq. So I close tonight by asking God to please 
bless our men and women in uniform. I ask God to please bless the 
families of our men and women in uniform, and I ask God, in his loving 
arms, to hold the families who have given a child dying for freedom in 
Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Speaker, I close by asking three times: God, 
please, God, please, God, please continue to bless America.

                          ____________________