[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 131 (Wednesday, September 16, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9417-S9421]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              AFGHANISTAN

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise--and soon will be joined by 
Senate colleagues, Senators McCain and Graham--to speak about the war 
in Afghanistan.
  For the first time since 9/11, a national debate is underway about 
the future of our fight in Afghanistan. This is appropriate. Whenever 
our Nation sends our brave men and women in uniform into harm's way, it 
is both natural and necessary that we should have a vigorous national 
conversation about why we are doing so, whether it is necessary for our 
national security, and what the right strategy is to achieve our 
objectives. The truth is, we have not had such a debate since the 
decision was made unanimously to go into Afghanistan after 9/11 to 
overthrow the Taliban, which had given safe haven to al-Qaida, which 
planned and trained for the attacks on us in Afghanistan.
  The most direct answer to the question of why we are fighting in 
Afghanistan and why we must succeed there is exactly that: Afghanistan 
is where the attacks of 9/11 originated, where al-Qaida made its 
sanctuary under the Taliban, and where the same Taliban is on the 
offensive today in Afghanistan and has seized the initiative with the 
clear aim of gaining control of all of Afghanistan, or major parts of 
it, and once again providing sanctuary for al-Qaida. It remains self-
evident to be a clear and vital national interest of the United States 
to prevent this from happening. It is also because, although 
Afghanistan may seem geographically remote, we found out on September 
11, 2001, in this modern technological world where great spaces are 
passed over quickly, that it is not remote when it comes to the safety 
and security of the American people, and Afghanistan is in the heart of 
a region in which we have critical national interests.
  The fact is, Afghanistan and Pakistan are today at the epicenter of 
global Islamist extremism and terrorism, with which we are at war. This 
is the test of our age so far as our security is concerned.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I will be glad to yield.
  Mr. McCAIN. Is it true that yesterday, when we had the hearing with 
Admiral Mullen for renomination as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff, and who I think we would all agree has done an outstanding job 
of serving our

[[Page S9418]]

country, it was pretty clear that Admiral Mullen felt a sense of 
urgency for us to act in Afghanistan because al-Qaida and the Taliban--
especially the Taliban--are making inroads and we, in his words, are 
not seeing the progress we want, that we are losing, basically, in 
Afghanistan?
  Didn't he say to you and to Senator Graham such that the important 
thing is that time is not on our side and we need to get troops over 
there as quickly as possible, in keeping with the strategy that was 
devised in March of this year and agreed to by the President? That was 
my understanding.
  And Senator Graham said: OK, now as to the civilians, I just got back 
from a visit. I appreciate all our civilians who are over there from 
different agencies. They are very brave, but, quite honestly, they 
can't go anywhere.
  Admiral Mullen said: Right.
  Senator Graham said: You could send 10,000 lawyers from the State 
Department to deal with rural law programs, but they are sitting on the 
base because if they leave the base, they are going to get shot.
  Admiral Mullen:
  Right.
  Then Graham said:

       The only way to get off the base is if they have a military 
     convoy, is that right?

  Mullen said:
  Right.
  Senator Graham said:

       So I just want our colleagues to know the security 
     environment in Afghanistan, from my point of view, will 
     prevent any civilian success until we change the security 
     environment. How long would it take to train enough Afghan 
     troops to change the momentum, in your view, if we did it 
     just with Afghan forces?

  And he said:

       Two or three years.

  Then Senator Graham said:

       What will happen in that two or three year period in terms 
     of the security environment while we are training.

  Mullen said:

       If it's just training?

  Graham said:

       Yes.

  Mullen said:

       I think the security environment will continue to 
     deteriorate.

  I ask my friend, doesn't that lend urgency, which is certainly not 
apparent in the President's statement today? After meeting with the 
Canadian Prime Minister, basically saying he is going to go through a 
long process of evaluation and another strategy, claiming he didn't 
have one before. That is what is disturbing, is the total lack of 
urgency in the President's statement today.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I say to my friend from Arizona, I was 
surprised and puzzled by that statement of the President today, 
particularly because the President, I think, has been very strong about 
Afghanistan. He has called Afghanistan a war of necessity--for the 
reason that I said, because we cannot allow al-Qaida and the Taliban to 
come back into control. Forgive the analogy, but anymore than after 
World War II if the Nazis had somehow reassembled and attempted to 
retake control of part or all of Germany, we would have sat back? We 
simply cannot let that happen.
  We also know if Afghanistan falls, if we accept defeat or for some 
reason retreat from Afghanistan, it will profoundly destabilize 
neighboring nuclear Pakistan and encourage the Islamist extremists 
throughout that region and the world.
  My friend from Arizona is right. There is a sense of urgency that he 
and our colleague and friend from South Carolina, Senator Graham, who 
is on the floor, saw when we visited with General McChrystal and 
Admiral Eikberry and the Afghan national security leadership a month 
ago. Admiral Mullen yesterday said we have lost the initiative in 
Afghanistan. It is why President Obama deployed the additional 21,000 
troops in March and announced this new strategy.
  Mr. McCAIN. Will the Senator yield for one more question quickly?
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I will be glad to.
  Mr. McCAIN. Isn't it true this is where the contradiction is? It is 
so paradoxical it is hard for me to comprehend. Admiral Mullen--in a 
question I said:

       Admiral Mullen, didn't you say ``time is not on your 
     side''?

  Admiral Mullen:

       No, sir, I have a sense of urgency about this. I worry a 
     great deal that the clock is moving very rapidly and there 
     are lots of clocks, as you know. But the sense of urgency--
     and I, believe me, share that with General McChrystal who, 
     while he is very focused on the change which includes 
     partner--focus on the Afghan people, he is alarmed by the 
     insurgency; he is in a position where he needs to retake the 
     initiative from the insurgents who have grabbed over the last 
     3 years.

  Then to contrast that with the President's statement today he said:

       I am absolutely clear, you have to get the strategy right 
     and then make determinations about resources. You don't make 
     determinations about resources--certainly you don't make 
     determinations about sending young men and women into battle 
     without having absolute clarity about what the strategy is 
     going to be.

  He said:

       My determination is to get this right and that means broad 
     consultation not only inside the U.S. government but also our 
     ISAP partners and our NATO allies, and I am going to take a 
     very deliberate process in making these decisions.

  I don't know what to make of that.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I think the statement by our top uniformed military 
officer, ADM Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 
reflects what General McChrystal and everybody on the ground in 
Afghanistan has said, this is an urgent matter. The President 
recognized that when he sent the 21,000 additional troops.
  Most everybody in this Chamber and in the House will accept the fact 
that it would have a devastating effect on America's national security 
and the security of the world if we lost Afghanistan. But then comes 
the question--incidentally, President Obama himself said this in a 
statement he made a while ago. He said we cannot muddle through in 
Afghanistan. It requires a decisive commitment to achieve victory.
  We learned that in Iraq. Counterinsurgency, such as we are involved 
in in Afghanistan, is manpower intensive.
  That is the question the administration and we here in Congress have. 
If you agree it is in the vital national security interests of the 
United States to succeed in Afghanistan, then you have to decide how we 
can best do that. To me the answer is clear. We need more troops there, 
American troops, while the Afghans are being trained to take over 
themselves. They cannot just be trainers. As Admiral Mullen made clear 
yesterday, they need to be combat troops. They need to be combat troops 
because, without the security that the American combat troops can 
singularly and uniquely provide in the short term, there cannot even be 
training of the Afghans. There certainly cannot be governance as we 
know it and there cannot be a prospect for economic development.
  We need to make this decision soon. Weather has an effect.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I will yield to my friend from South Carolina.
  Mr. GRAHAM. As I understood the situation, in the last couple of 
months casualties among American forces are at an all-time high since 
the invasion. Do you agree with that, I ask the Senator?
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. That unfortunately is true.
  Mr. GRAHAM. It is also my understanding that IED attacks by the enemy 
have gone up about 1,000 percent and in reaction to that, Secretary 
Gates has sent 3,000 people over to deal with the IED problem. From my 
understanding of the testimony yesterday, Admiral Mullen said the force 
structure we have in place, between the combination of coalition forces 
and Afghan forces, is not enough to reverse the trends and to regain 
lost momentum. I thought it was pretty clear that he was telling us 
something has to change beyond training the Afghan Army.
  Would you agree that the longer we leave people in that environment, 
where the momentum is on the enemy's side, we are doing a great 
disservice to the 68,000 people who are there? And if you are going to 
send troops, send them while it matters, send them in enough number to 
save lives and get the job over sooner rather than later? That is what 
I think all three of us are saying.
  Mr. President, we appreciate your commitment in Afghanistan. Sending 
troops to get the election conducted

[[Page S9419]]

was a wise move. Understanding that Afghanistan is the central battle 
in the overall war on terror now is a deep understanding on the 
President's part. The only thing we are saying, the three of us and I 
think others, is that our military commanders have told us we have lost 
momentum and the only way to get it back in the short term is more 
combat power, and every day that we wait makes it much harder for those 
who are in theatre, and they are dying at levels and being injured at 
levels we have not known before. That is what drives our thinking. 
Would you agree with that?

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I am totally in agreement with my friend from South 
Carolina. This in fact is the lesson we should have learned and I think 
did learn in Iraq. When did the number of American casualties in Iraq 
begin to go down? It was when we sent more American troops there. 
Because the addition of American troops, and a new strategy--not just 
the numbers but a new strategy, a strategy quite similar to the new 
strategy we have in Afghanistan--protects the civilian population, 
gives them the confidence that we are not leaving. When you do that, 
something significant happens. It happened in Iraq and it will happen 
in Afghanistan. When we commit more troops, the people in the country 
decide we are not going to cut and run.
  The Afghan people despise the Taliban. The progress the Taliban is 
making in controlling more land in Afghanistan is totally the result of 
violence and intimidation. The Afghan people, however, are watching us 
and wondering are we going to begin to pull back? Should they hedge 
their bets? Should they be careful not to join the fight against the 
Taliban?
  If we begin to sound an uncertain trumpet--you remember that phrase 
from Scriptures: ``If the sound of the trumpet is uncertain, who will 
follow into battle?'' I will tell you one group that will not follow 
into battle if America begins to sound an uncertain trumpet in 
Afghanistan is the people of Afghanistan. We have a desire now that 
most everybody here shares. Let's break some of the Taliban away, the 
ones who are not zealots, the ones who, in a sense are foot soldiers, 
followers. They are the comparable group to the Sons of Iraq in Anbar 
Province. But when did the Sons of Iraq decide they were going to turn 
against al-Qaida? When we convinced them we were going to stay in Anbar 
and protect them.
  In fact, how did we convince them? By sending more troops. It was 
after that the Iraqi security forces grew in capability, that the 
American casualties went down.
  I would say to my friend, he has touched a very important point here. 
The only way we will reduce American casualties, which are now going 
up, and create an environment in which more Afghans will join the war 
against the Taliban and al-Qaida is for us to give them the confidence 
we are not going to leave. The best way we can do that and provide the 
security to do that is by sending more troops.
  Incidentally, a final word and then I will yield to my friend from 
South Carolina. There are those, including my dear friend and respected 
chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Levin, who are 
focused on sending more Americans only for training purposes, not 
combat troops. But here is something else we learned in Iraq. The fact 
is you need more than trainers to train the indigenous forces. One of 
the great tactical breakthroughs in Iraq that General McChrystal wants 
to put into effect in fact has begun in Afghanistan: There is no better 
way to train the Afghan forces than to partner them with American and 
coalition forces in Afghanistan. It is not just sending somebody to a 
school run by Americans to train them; it is having the Afghan units 
out there in the field, side by side, working with, fighting with, 
living with American soldiers that is the best source of training.
  I couldn't agree with my friends from South Carolina and Arizona 
more. The situation in Afghanistan is a vital national interest. 
Everybody agrees with that. You can't listen to ADM Mike Mullen 
yesterday and decide the initiative is ours now. It is not. It is 
slipping away from us. The best way to regain the initiative is to send 
as many troops as we can. Listening to General McChrystal, a lot of 
them have to be combat troops, and to do so as quickly as possible.
  I said ``the weather'' a moment ago. The winters are harsh in 
Afghanistan. That is not to say all conflict stops, but there is a 
fighting season in Afghanistan. This year, we did not have adequate 
forces there until the new wave the President, President Obama, 
deployed got there. They didn't get there until June. We were together 
in Helmut Province with GEN Larry Nickelson, an extraordinary Marine 
general, a patriot, great soldier, great fighter, great leader. Those 
Marines are turning back the tide against the Taliban there because 
they have the numbers.
  And that is exactly what we have to do throughout the country. I 
thank my friend. I am glad to yield the floor to him at this time.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Cantwell). The Senator from South 
Carolina.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I would like to pick up where my colleague, Senator 
Lieberman, left off. The question to ask is, how did the Taliban regain 
momentum? How do a bunch of fighters, who do not have one airplane, no 
navy, no heavy weapons to speak of, how could they have regained 
momentum and begun to reoccupy parts of Afghanistan?
  The only answer I can come up with is a vacuum has been created. That 
vacuum has two components to it: the lack of governance and not enough 
troops to prevent the Taliban from coming back in some areas of 
Afghanistan.
  I would submit this: If we wait to train the Afghan Army as the only 
way to stabilize Afghanistan, we are going to waste 2 or 3 years. It is 
going to get so bad we cannot stand the casualties, and the American 
people will not tolerate a 2- or 3-year period of where we are just 
training the Afghan forces, sending them from the training cycle into 
combat. They are going to fold, just like they did in Iraq. We cannot 
train an army and have them fight at the same time. We need a little 
bit of breathing space.
  So this idea that we are going to train the Afghan Army, that is the 
way we will regain momentum against the Taliban, quite frankly will not 
work. I think Admiral Mullen understood that. What will work is to send 
more combat power to clear the Taliban from the areas that the Taliban 
have reoccupied. The Marines are telling us in no uncertain terms, with 
the right mix of troops they are delivering punishing blows to the 
Taliban. But we can send 1 million troops to Afghan and still not deal 
with the fundamental problems they face and the world faces, the 
legitimacy of the Afghan Government in the eyes of the Afghan people. 
That is why the Taliban have come back because the Afghan Government 
has failed. They have failed in almost every respect to give the Afghan 
people the governance and the hope they need to stand up to the 
Taliban.
  So this is one Senator who believes the way to regain lost momentum 
is to add more combat power and, yes, train the Afghan Army and police 
force with a new strategy which we now have in place.
  It is labor intensive. It is going to take a lot of time. We have to 
understand, if we get the Afghan Army up to 400,000, the whole budget 
of Afghanistan is $800 million a year. It will take $5 billion a year 
to maintain that army. We are going to end up paying. I hope the 
American taxpayer understands that. But it is cheaper for us to do that 
than it is for us to be the 400,000-person army.
  So when it comes to cost, it is better to train them and help them 
with their training and funding than it is for us to stay over there in 
large numbers forever. But we are going to have to plus up to regain 
lost momentum. Then we are going to have to focus on the real cause of 
the deterioration--governance.
  The Karzai government has failed in many ways. Corruption is rampant. 
If, in the next 6 months, some major figures in Afghanistan are not 
prosecuted for ripping off the Afghan people, then nothing will ever 
change over there.
  I have been a military lawyer serving as a reservist in Afghanistan. 
I can tell you that everyone who has looked at the Rule of Law Programs 
will tell you that corruption, narcotics corruption,

[[Page S9420]]

is rampant in that country. They need a legal system in Afghanistan 
that can stand up to the corruption. That means we have to protect the 
judges from being assassinated; we have to build capacity.
  There are less than 500 lawyers in all of Afghanistan. There are 
16,000 people in jail. Most of them went to jail without ever seeing a 
lawyer. We have our work cut out for us. We need benchmarks and 
measurements so I can go back to South Carolina and every Senator can 
go back to their constituents and say: We are not throwing good money 
after bad. We are going to push the Afghan Government to prosecute 
corruption, to provide security for judges, to find a way to empower 
the economy beyond the drug trade, and start making hard decisions 
about how tribal justice systems can be incorporated into the formal 
justice system.
  There are so many decisions that politicians in Afghanistan have 
failed to make that have allowed the Taliban to come back. We need to 
put them on notice that with new resources and new troops, a new 
dynamic will be in place, and they will be making the decisions 
necessary to provide governance to their people. If they fail to do 
that, then they will not have our support because, at the end of the 
day, they have to want it more than we do.
  Senator Lieberman is right about this. The good news amidst all of 
this bad news is the Taliban is very much reviled and hated in the 
country. But put yourselves in one of these villages out in the middle 
of Afghanistan. What would you do, knowing that by night the Taliban 
comes in and rains terror? We have to replace that dynamic and give the 
people assurance that we are not only going to provide them security 
but the Afghan Government is going to provide them schooling and 
education, health care, and some hope.
  Finally, I cannot tell you that we will succeed with more troops. I 
can tell you, we will fail if we do not send more troops. It is so much 
harder in Afghanistan than in many ways it is in Iraq. We are not the 
Russians. We are not the British. This is not Vietnam. This is not 
Iraq.
  This is Afghanistan where 9/11 was planned and executed. We can get 
this right.
  Mr. McCAIN. Would the Senator yield so I can ask a question? I see we 
have one of our colleagues waiting to speak.
  I wonder what the Senator thinks. We held a hearing yesterday with 
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is highly regarded. He 
conveys to every questioner, no matter which Member it is, a sense of 
urgency because of his belief and that of our military commanders on 
the ground that we are not winning.
  In fact, in the words of Admiral Mullen: Time is not on our side.
  Yet today, the President of the United States came out, after meeting 
with the Canadian Prime Minister, and basically said he is--after his 
spokesperson said he is going to take weeks and weeks to make a 
decision, he came out and basically said there is not a sense of 
urgency; that the strategy that was developed in March was not the 
operative strategy, even though Admiral Mullen said the March strategy 
was the operative strategy, and all we need to do is fill in the 
resources and the strategy.
  My question to my friend from South Carolina is, how do you account 
for this apparent contradiction or difference in view about the sense 
of urgency that exists in the conflict in Afghanistan?
  Mr. GRAHAM. Well, the one thing I can tell you is Admiral Mullen is 
going to be reappointed with probably every person in this body voting 
for him because he has gained our trust, and it speaks well of the 
President that he would renominate him. So he has obviously gained the 
President's trust.
  I am not a military commander. But I do not have to be much of a 
military expert to understand his testimony. His testimony was pretty 
clear: We have lost momentum. The Taliban is reemerging, stronger than 
ever, and the capability of the coalition forces and the Afghan Army 
and security forces combined cannot reverse the momentum. Something new 
has to happen.
  When we put on the table training the Afghan Army without additional 
combat power, how long would it take before they could have enough 
numbers to change things? Two or three years.
  What would happen during that training period? It would deteriorate 
further.
  What did he tell us? The pathway forward is that we have a new 
strategy, it needs to be properly resourced. I think what he was 
telling us more than anything else is that time is not on our side. 
Casualties in July and August were at an all-time high. We have 68,000 
people wearing our uniform in Afghanistan who are getting killed in 
larger numbers than ever, and the dynamic on the ground will not change 
the momentum. To do nothing puts them in an environment where they are 
going to get killed in higher numbers, and what Admiral Mullen is 
telling us, and I hope the President will listen, is that time is not 
on our side, but, more importantly, it is not on their side.

  This decision about troops, to me, is pretty easy. We need more, but 
troops alone will not fix Afghanistan. But without more troops in a 
hurry and with a sense of urgency, we are going to let the Taliban get 
stronger, the Afghan people are going to get weaker in their resolve, 
and more Americans are going to die than if we had more troops.
  That is what I got out of the hearing. I hope the President is 
listening.
  Mr. McCAIN. Again, I also would ask my colleague, have we forgotten 
the lessons of history? We were there and we assisted the Afghans in 
driving out the Russians. Our assistance was critical. The Russians 
left and we left.
  When we left, it left a vacuum that ended up with the fighting 
between warlords, and the Taliban filled the vacuum, the Taliban had an 
arrangement with al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, and the terrorists who 
attacked us on 9/11--which we just commemorated--were able to be 
trained in Afghanistan.
  I hope our memories are not so short that we are willing to risk a 
repetition of that kind of threat, which the President, during the 
campaign, seemed to recognize very accurately; called it the ``good 
war.'' He said it ``was a war we had to win,'' ``do what is necessary 
to win.''
  Now I worry--I wonder if my colleague does--that every day we delay 
doing what we all know is necessary puts the lives of young Americans 
who are already there at risk and makes it a longer period of time 
before we can prevail.
  Mr. GRAHAM. The last thought about that: I think our memory, the 
event that we need to remember is even later than 9/11. It is actually 
in Iraq. I remember very well this whole debate, and I would urge this 
administration not to do what the last administration did. That is 
exactly what is going on in Afghanistan right now. It is as if we have 
learned nothing.
  It is clear, just as it was in Iraq, that we did not have enough 
combat power to secure the country, not enough mentoring programs to 
actually train the Iraqi Army, and only when we changed the strategy of 
adding more troops and gave the Iraqi people and the army some 
breathing space, the politicians, from the violence did things change. 
It is exactly the same thing here.
  But right now we have a dynamic on the ground that is not much 
different from Iraq the first 3 years after the fall of Saddam Hussein. 
It is clear that Admiral Mullen recognizes that. The new strategy in 
March is a counterinsurgency strategy, and Senator McCain, the one 
thing I remember is numbers matter. We need enough troops per 
population center to effect change, and we do not have the ratios to 
enact an effective counterinsurgency strategy unless we add more 
troops, and that means more than just trainers.
  So my frustration is, as you said yesterday: We have seen this movie 
before. We are putting 68,000 troops in harm's way, and unless we 
properly resource them, give them more assistance, more people to help 
them fight, they are not going to change the battle momentum, and they 
are going to get killed in the process.
  There is not enough people to effect the counterinsurgency strategy, 
just like there was not enough in Iraq. Have we learned nothing? So 
let's act.
  Mr. President, we will support you to the nth degree to get the 
combat power and the trainers and the civilians into Afghanistan to 
turn this place around. But the sooner you act, the quicker we

[[Page S9421]]

can do it, and the sooner we will come home and the less lives we will 
lose in the long run. That is our message.
  We respect you. You are the Commander in Chief. You won the election. 
But you have an opportunity, and it is clear to me that we are losing 
momentum. This is not a time to deliberate. This is a time to act.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.

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