[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 153 (Wednesday, October 21, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H11558]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                   FEED THE HUNGRY, STARVE TERRORISM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Madam Speaker, last week, the Hill newspaper here in 
Washington asked CRS, the Congressional Research Service, to provide 
information on the cost of the war in Afghanistan.
  The CRS reported that it now costs the United States about $3.6 
billion per month, on average, or more than $43 billion a year. The CRS 
also reported that it costs about $1 million to send a U.S. soldier to 
Afghanistan for 1 year. So, if President Obama listens to the advice he 
is getting from some of those around him and if he sends 40,000 more 
troops to Afghanistan, the war will cost another $40 billion a year, or 
nearly double.
  Yet what have we been getting, I ask you, Madam Speaker, for all of 
that money? The answer is: Higher casualty rates, a growing insurgency 
and an Afghan public that increasingly sees America as an occupier, not 
as a liberator.
  This is the result of a fatal flaw in our Afghan policy since the war 
began. We have relied far too much on the military option alone while, 
at the same time, putting very few dollars into what would really work 
in Afghanistan. Instead, what would work is better intelligence and 
better policing to disrupt terrorist networks; better governance, 
justice systems, economic development, and humanitarian aid. The Afghan 
people desperately need all of these to have hope for a better future 
and to have reasons to reject violent extremism.
  The supplemental funding request for Afghanistan, which I opposed in 
May, was a lost opportunity to take a more successful approach to our 
relationships in Afghanistan as 90 percent of the funding went to 
purely military activities while only 10 percent of the supplemental 
funds was devoted to development activities and to the civilian surge, 
which are so badly needed. To correct this disastrous imbalance, Madam 
Speaker, America must have a foreign policy based on SMART security 
instead of military power alone.
  One of the advantages of SMART security is that it works to eliminate 
the root causes of violent extremism by emphasizing economic 
development and debt relief to the world's poorest countries. The SMART 
Security Platform for the 21st century, which I have proposed in House 
Resolution 363, calls for these policies.
  The need to increase aid to the Third World was underscored last 
week, Madam Speaker, when the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization 
reported that a record 1 billion people worldwide are now going hungry. 
The world's poorest and hungriest nations are potential safe havens for 
violent extremists. The governments are too weak or are too corrupt to 
keep them out, so the extremists are likely to find new recruits among 
the discontented populations, and those recruits become terrorists by 
training, and they are trained to attack the United States and other 
countries.
  Even if the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan were to disappear into 
thin air today, a new terror threat is likely to pop up somewhere else 
in the world where people are hungry, where people are desperate. If we 
do a better job of feeding the hungry, we will do a better job of 
starving terrorism, and we will take an important step toward restoring 
our moral leadership in the world.
  I know that President Obama understands this. I urge him to 
incorporate that understanding into his policies and to use the 
effective tools of SMART security to make our Nation and the world 
safer.

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