[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 183 (Tuesday, December 8, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H13606]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              BITTER FRUIT

  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, I wish everyone would listen to these 
words from a column in the current issue of the American Conservative 
magazine. This column says: ``We ran Saddam out of Kuwait and put U.S. 
troops into Saudi Arabia, and we got Osama bin Laden's 9/11. We 
responded by taking down the Taliban and taking over Afghanistan, and 
we got an 8-year war with no victory and no end in sight. Now Pakistan 
is burning. We took down Saddam and got a 7-year war and an ungrateful 
Iraq.
  ``Meanwhile, the Turks who shared a border with Saddam, have done no 
fighting. Iran has watched as we destroyed its two greatest enemies, 
the Taliban and Saddam. China, which has a border with both Pakistan 
and Afghanistan, has sat back. India, which has a border with Pakistan 
and fought three wars with the country, has stayed aloof. The United 
States, on the other side of the world, plunged in. And now we face an 
elongated military presence in Iraq, an escalating war in Afghanistan, 
and potential disaster in Pakistan, and being pushed from behind into a 
war with Iran.''
  And then in the December 3 issue of The Washington Post, it says: 
``President Obama's new strategy for combating Islamist insurgents in 
Afghanistan fell on skeptical ears Wednesday in next-door Pakistan, a 
much larger, nuclear-armed state that Obama said was `at the core' of 
the plan and had even more at stake than Afghanistan. Analysts and 
residents on both sides of the 1,699-mile border expressed concerns 
about Obama's plan to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan.''
  And on that same day, The Washington Post had a headline that said: 
``A deadline written in quicksand not stone.''
  Now, I think most Americans feel that 8 years in Afghanistan is not 
only enough; it's far too long. After all, we finished World War II in 
just 4 years. Now under the President's most optimistic scenario, we 
are going to be there another year and a half, that's 9\1/2\ years, and 
we're going to be there, we have 68,000 troops there now. They want to 
add 34,000 more at a cost of $1 billion per thousand per year, which 
means over $100 billion a year.
  The Center for War Information says we've already spent almost a half 
trillion dollars in war and war-related costs in Afghanistan at this 
point.
  And then I would like to ask, Who is in charge? Because this weekend 
on the interview program, Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of 
Defense Gates said, Well, the year and a half withdrawal plan presented 
by the President at West Point really doesn't mean anything, that we're 
going to be there probably another 3 or 5 more years. That would bring 
our time there to 11 or 13 years. That is ridiculous in a country like 
Afghanistan, a very small country where we are fighting a very small 
force that has almost no money.
  And then I understand from one of the previous speakers that 
President Karzai said that he needs American troops to be there another 
15 or 20 more years. Well, he wants our money, that's for sure, like 
any gigantic bureaucracy. And what does any gigantic bureaucracy want? 
They want more money and more employees. So the Defense Department, 
being the most gigantic bureaucracy in the world, is going to continue 
to want more money and more personnel.
  But when we have a $12 trillion national debt and almost $60 trillion 
in unfunded future pension liabilities, Madam Speaker, we simply can't 
afford it. We have to start putting our own people first at some point. 
It's not going to be long before we're not going to be able to pay our 
Social Security and veterans' pensions and things we have promised our 
own people with money that will buy anything, if we keep spending 
hundreds of billions for very unnecessary wars.
  Now, I would like to mention just a couple of things about Pakistan. 
In the Los Angeles Times on November 1 in a story about Secretary 
Clinton's visit to Pakistan, it said: ``At a televised town hall 
meeting in Islamabad, the capital, on Friday, a woman in a mostly 
female audience characterized U.S. drone missile strikes on suspected 
terrorist targets in northwestern Pakistan as de facto acts of 
terrorism. A day earlier, in Lahore, a college student asked Clinton 
why every student who visits the U.S. is viewed as a terrorist. The 
opinions Clinton heard weren't described in voices of radical clerics 
or politicians with anti-U.S. agendas. Some of the most biting 
criticisms came from well-mannered university students and respected, 
seasoned journalists, a reflection of the breadth of dissatisfaction 
Pakistanis have with U.S. policies toward their country.''
  This is a country, Madam Speaker, that the Congress in a voice vote 
at a time when almost no one was on the floor, most Members didn't even 
know it was coming up, voted to send another $7.5 billion in foreign 
aid to Pakistan on top of $15.5 billion that we've spent since 2003 
there already.
  This is getting ridiculous. A country that we are sending billions 
and billions and billions in foreign aid to, and it's becoming so anti-
American, and they don't appreciate this aid at all. We simply can't 
afford to keep doing these ridiculous and very wasteful expenditures. 
And I will say again, we need to start putting our own people first 
once again.

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