[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 91 (Thursday, June 23, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H4465-H4466]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    CHANGE COURSE NOW IN AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, last night the President outlined his 
strategy for Afghanistan, which included a drawdown of 10,000 troops by 
the end of this year and an additional 23,000 by the end of next year. 
I believe this is insufficient and I fear that it means more of the 
same for the next 18 months. The same strategy means the same costs, 
and I am sad to say even more casualties, more American soldiers losing 
their lives in support of an Afghan government that is terribly corrupt 
and incompetent.
  We have been doing this for 10 years. It is the longest war in our 
history, Mr. Speaker. Enough. Our focus should be on encouraging a 
negotiated settlement, a political solution, and bringing our troops 
home where they belong. Our troops are incredible men and women. I am 
in awe of their dedication and their commitment. They don't belong in 
the middle of mountains and deserts fighting a cruel war.
  According to the Pentagon's own figures, U.S. and coalition 
casualties in Afghanistan are steadily rising. Last month was a record 
high for the number of coalition forces killed. March and April were 
also the worst respective months of the war in terms of casualties for 
U.S. forces, coalition forces, and Afghan civilians.
  A poll last month by the International Council on Security and 
Development found that Afghans are overwhelmingly opposed to the 
current U.S. strategy, with nearly eight in 10 believing that U.S. and 
coalition operations are ``bad for their country.'' These are serious 
matters, serious consequences of the strategy the U.S. will pursue at 
least through next year.
  We need a change in direction now, Mr. Speaker, not 18 months from 
now. We are borrowing nearly $10 billion a month to pay for military 
operations in Afghanistan. Borrowing. We are not paying for it. We are 
putting it on our national credit card. Our kids and our grandkids will 
pay the price. Each day we remain in Afghanistan increases that burden.
  We currently are having debates about how to reduce our deficit and 
debts. There are some who have advocated deep cuts in programs that 
help the poor, in Pell Grants, and in infrastructure. For those who 
support the status quo in Afghanistan, let me ask, where is the sense 
in borrowing money to build a bridge or a school in Afghanistan that 
later gets blown up, while telling our cities and towns that we have no 
money to help them with their needs? It is nuts. Some of our biggest 
problems, Mr. Speaker, are not halfway around the world. They are 
halfway down the block.
  Americans are willing to do whatever is necessary to ensure our 
national security, but let me remind my colleagues that national 
security includes economic security. It means jobs. It means rather 
than nation-building in a far-off land, we need to do some more nation-
building right here at home.
  Contrary to the tired and ugly rhetoric employed by Senator McCain 
yesterday towards thoughtful critics of our current strategy in 
Afghanistan and its consequences, I am not an isolationist. As my 
colleagues know, I firmly support human rights and the U.S. being 
engaged around the world. Those who advocate a political solution in 
Afghanistan are not isolationists.
  I don't believe we should walk away from the Afghan people, but tens 
of thousands of U.S. boots on the ground in Afghanistan does little in 
my view to advance the cause of peace, protect the rights of women and 
ethnic minorities or strengthen civil society. If you want to protect 
Afghan women, we must end the violence. You end the violence by ending 
the war. You end the war through a political solution.
  I have great respect for President Obama. I believe he has the 
potential to be a great President. I also realize, as Lyndon Johnson 
once said, ``It's easy to get into war--hard as hell to get out of 
one.'' It is not easy to end this war. It won't be neat or pretty, but 
I believe with all my heart it is in our national security interest to 
focus on al Qaeda and not waste our precious blood and treasure in a 
conflict that can only be ended through a political solution.
  Rather than crafting a compromise and trying to chart a middle 
course, I believe we need to change course. I urge the President of the 
United States to rethink our Afghan policy, rethink it in a way that 
brings our troops home sooner rather than later.

                [From the Washington Post, June 9, 2011]

           A Plan for Afghanistan: Declare Victory--and Leave

                          (By Eugene Robinson)

       Slender threads of hope are nice but do not constitute a 
     plan. Nor do they justify continuing to pour American lives 
     and resources into the bottomless pit of Afghanistan.

[[Page H4466]]

       Ryan Crocker, the veteran diplomat nominated by President 
     Obama to be the next U.S. ambassador in Kabul, gave a 
     realistic assessment of the war in testimony Wednesday before 
     the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Here I'm using 
     ``realistic'' as a synonym for ``bleak.''
       Making progress is hard, Crocker said, but ``not 
     impossible.''
       Not impossible.
       What on earth are we doing? We have more than 100,000 
     troops in Afghanistan risking life and limb, at a cost of $10 
     billion a month, to pursue ill-defined goals whose 
     achievement can be imagined, but just barely?
       The hawks tell us that now, more than ever, we must stay 
     the course--that finally, after Obama nearly tripled U.S. 
     troop levels, we are winning. I want to be fair to this 
     argument, so let me quote Crocker's explanation at length:
       ``What we've seen with the additional forces and the effort 
     to carry the fight into enemy strongholds is, I think, 
     tangible progress in security on the ground in the south and 
     the west. This has to transition--and again, we're seeing a 
     transition of seven provinces and districts to Afghan 
     control--to sustainable Afghan control. So I think you can 
     already see what we're trying to do--in province by province, 
     district by district, establish the conditions where the 
     Afghan government can take over and hold ground.''
       Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), a Vietnam veteran and former 
     secretary of the Navy, pointed out the obvious flaw in this 
     province-by-province strategy. ``International terrorism--and 
     guerrilla warfare in general--is intrinsically mobile,'' he 
     said. ``So securing one particular area . . . doesn't 
     necessarily guarantee that you have reduced the capability of 
     those kinds of forces. They are mobile; they move.''
       It would require far more than 100,000 U.S. troops to 
     securely occupy the entire country. As Webb pointed out, this 
     means we can end up ``playing whack-a-mole'' as the enemy 
     pops back up in areas that have already been pacified.
       If our intention, as Crocker said, is to leave behind 
     ``governance that is good enough to ensure that the country 
     doesn't degenerate back into a safe haven for al-Qaeda,'' 
     then there are two possibilities: Either we'll never cross 
     the goal line, or we already have.
       According to NATO's timetable, Afghan forces are supposed 
     to be in charge of the whole country by the end of 2014. Will 
     the deeply corrupt, frustratingly erratic Afghan government 
     be ``good enough'' three years from now? Will Afghan society 
     have banished the poverty, illiteracy and distrust of central 
     authority that inevitably sap legitimacy from any regime in 
     Kabul? Will the Afghan military, whatever its capabilities, 
     blindly pursue U.S. objectives? Or will the country's 
     civilian and military leaders determine their self-interest 
     and act accordingly?
       Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued 
     a report this week warning that the nearly $19 billion in 
     foreign aid given to Afghanistan during the past decade may, 
     in the end, have little impact. ``The unintended consequences 
     of pumping large amounts of money into a war zone cannot be 
     underestimated,'' the report states.
       The fact is that in 2014 there will be no guarantees. 
     Perhaps we will believe it incrementally less likely that the 
     Taliban could regain power and invite al-Qaeda back. But that 
     small increment of security does not justify the blood and 
     treasure that we will expend between now and then.
       I take a different view. We should declare victory and 
     leave.
       We wanted to depose the Taliban regime, and we did. We 
     wanted to install a new government that answers to its 
     constituents at the polls, and we did. We wanted to smash al-
     Qaeda's infrastructure of training camps and havens, and we 
     did. We wanted to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, and we 
     did.
       Even so, say the hawks, we have to stay in Afghanistan 
     because of the dangerous instability across the border in 
     nuclear-armed Pakistan. But does anyone believe the war in 
     Afghanistan has made Pakistan more stable? Perhaps it is 
     useful to have a U.S. military presence in the region. This 
     could be accomplished, however, with a lot fewer than 100,000 
     troops--and they wouldn't be scattered across the Afghan 
     countryside, engaged in a dubious attempt at nation-building.
       The threat from Afghanistan is gone. Bring the troops home.
                                  ____


                       [From the Washington Post]

                     Time to Get Out of Afghanistan

                          (By George F. Will)

       ``Yesterday,'' reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in 
     Afghanistan, ``I gave blood because a Marine, while out on 
     patrol, stepped on a [mine's] pressure plate and lost both 
     legs.'' Then ``another Marine with a bullet wound to the head 
     was brought in. Both Marines died this morning.''
       ``I'm sorry about the drama,'' writes Allen, an 
     enthusiastic infantryman willing to die ``so that each of you 
     may grow old.'' He says: ``I put everything in God's hands.'' 
     And: ``Semper Fi!''
       Allen and others of America's finest are also in 
     Washington's hands. This city should keep faith with them by 
     rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in 
     Afghanistan, where, says the Dutch commander of coalition 
     forces in a southern province, walking through the region is 
     ``like walking through the Old Testament.''
       U.S. strategy--protecting the population--is increasingly 
     troop-intensive while Americans are increasingly impatient 
     about ``deteriorating'' (says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of 
     the Joint Chiefs of Staff) conditions. The war already is 
     nearly 50 percent longer than the combined U.S. involvements 
     in two world wars, and NATO assistance is reluctant and often 
     risible.
       The U.S. strategy is ``clear, hold and build.'' Clear? 
     Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that 
     U.S. forces will forever be too few to hold gains. Hence 
     nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and 
     even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: 
     The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation 
     with a weaker state.
       Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only 
     about a third of the country--``control'' is an elastic 
     concept--and `` `our' Afghans may prove no more viable than 
     were `our' Vietnamese, the Saigon regime.'' Just 4,000 
     Marines are contesting control of Helmand province, which is 
     the size of West Virginia. The New York Times reports a 
     Helmand official saying he has only ``police officers who 
     steal and a small group of Afghan soldiers who say they are 
     here for `vacation.' '' Afghanistan's $23 billion gross 
     domestic product is the size of Boise's. Counterinsurgency 
     doctrine teaches, not very helpfully, that development 
     depends on security, and that security depends on 
     development. Three-quarters of Afghanistan's poppy production 
     for opium comes from Helmand. In what should be called 
     Operation Sisyphus, U.S. officials are urging farmers to grow 
     other crops. Endive, perhaps?
       Even though violence exploded across Iraq after, and partly 
     because of, three elections, Afghanistan's recent elections 
     were called ``crucial.'' To what? They came, they went, they 
     altered no fundamentals, all of which militate against 
     American ``success,'' whatever that might mean. Creation of 
     an effective central government? Afghanistan has never had 
     one. U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry hopes for a ``renewal of 
     trust'' of the Afghan people in the government, but the 
     Economist describes President Hamid Karzai's government--his 
     vice presidential running mate is a drug trafficker--as so 
     ``inept, corrupt and predatory'' that people sometimes yearn 
     for restoration of the warlords, ``who were less venal and 
     less brutal than Mr. Karzai's lot.''
       Mullen speaks of combating Afghanistan's ``culture of 
     poverty.'' But that took decades in just a few square miles 
     of the South Bronx. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. 
     commander in Afghanistan, thinks jobs programs and local 
     government services might entice many ``accidental 
     guerrillas'' to leave the Taliban. But before launching New 
     Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask 
     itself: If U.S. forces are there to prevent reestablishment 
     of al-Qaeda bases--evidently there are none now--must there 
     be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other 
     sovereignty vacuums?
       U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, 
     bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from 
     Britain, where support for the war is waning. 
     Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of 
     forces required to protect the population indicates that, 
     nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of 
     coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is 
     inconceivable.
       So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to 
     serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do 
     only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, 
     drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special 
     Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border 
     with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.
       Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck's decision to 
     halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists 
     of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize 
     that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American 
     valor, such as Allen's, is squandered.

                          ____________________