[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 190 (Tuesday, December 15, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H14950]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, President Obama is certainly to be 
commended for the thoughtful and thorough consideration that he has 
given to our alternatives in Afghanistan. In essence, given the mess 
that he was bequeathed there, he was asked to choose the least bad 
alternative.
  My personal belief is that a good man made the wrong choice. But I 
think it is incumbent on this Congress to do as our President did and 
give thoughtful and thorough consideration of what our alternatives are 
there and whether there is a better way than dispatching another 30,000 
American troops to Afghanistan to assure the security of our families.
  We have had now almost a decade without a debate of Afghanistan 
policy in this Congress. I believe we must take a hard look at how 
hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and thousands of the lives of 
young Americans are being put on the line in Afghanistan and ask if 
this is the most effective way to defeat terrorism.
  Some were, of course, pleased that the President indicated in his 
speech that July 2011, a period of a little more than a year and a 
half, would mark a point in this long war at which we would see the 
beginning of the end of the war and some of the troops that were being 
dispatched there would begin to return home.
  Almost as soon as the speech ended, administration officials began to 
explain that deadline away. First we learned that not all the troops 
would get there until the fall of next year. They're not going for the 
weekend or a 2-week stay or a stay of less than a year. And then 
Secretary Gates made clear in interviews the nature of this July 2011 
deadline. He said that at the time of July 2011, some ``handful,'' in 
his words, or some small number or whatever the conditions permit might 
be departing Afghanistan at that time but that we would, in his words, 
``have a significant number of forces there for some considerable 
period of time.'' It was only a few days after that that Afghan 
President Hamid Karzai indicated just how long that commitment might 
have to be when he announced that ``for another 15 to 20 years 
Afghanistan will not be able to sustain a force of that nature and 
capability with its own resources.''
  We are talking about a very extended commitment of more and more 
American troops and more and more American dollars, ironically, at a 
time that some of our allies who've been in Afghanistan, like the 
Canadians, like the Dutch, are making plans to withdraw their troops as 
our troops enter the country.
  I have heard from not a few constituents expressing their concern 
about this decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Whether we 
agree or disagree on whether this is the best approach, we all agree 
that our objective is to work together to keep our families safer. One 
person to whom I presented the Veteran of the Year award just last 
month in Bastrop, Texas, Retired Colonel Bill Stanberry, twice awarded 
the Legion of Merit and inducted into the Infantry Officers Hall of 
Fame, offered this observation:
  ``There is no sign or promise of a viable leadership in the 
government in Afghanistan, an ingredient that is absolutely essential 
to the success of the program. We are allowing our adversaries to 
determine the kind of wars we fight and how we fight them. We need to 
find ways to exploit our strengths and not be lured into battles of war 
where our substantially weaker adversaries have the advantage by 
dictating how we fight.''
  Our strategic choices in Afghanistan, I believe, are not narrowly 
limited to either escalating rapidly, as the President has proposed, or 
departing immediately, but they include more effective ways of using 
the resources that we have already committed to accomplish our original 
objectives. And apparently, our Ambassador in Afghanistan, former 
Lieutenant-General Karl Eikenberry, had some of the same concerns that 
I do. It is widely reported that he sent at least two classified cables 
to Washington before the announcement expressing deep concerns about 
sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan without a meaningful 
demonstration by President Karzai, who just had stolen a million votes 
to stay in power, that his government would be able to tackle 
corruption and mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban's rise in 
strength.
  We went to take out al Qaeda, not to change it into Switzerland. 
Let's keep that commitment and do it in the most cost-effective way.

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