[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 21 (Wednesday, February 8, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H582-H584]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AFGHANISTAN
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from
California (Ms. Lee) for 5 minutes.
Ms. LEE of California. First, let me thank my colleagues Congressmen
McGovern and Jones, Congresswomen Woolsey and Waters, and Congressman
Honda for their efforts to bring the war in Afghanistan to a swift and
safe end.
Mr. Speaker, I am here this morning to remind my colleagues that
there is no military solution in Afghanistan. It is time to bring our
troops home and to make sure that we leave no permanent military bases.
While many, and a growing number, of my colleagues have come to this
conclusion, there are still those who claim that Afghanistan is going
well and that we should stay there indefinitely.
We are gathered here this morning to give some real and important
insight into the reality that nothing could be further from the truth.
We are here to discuss very important revelations brought to light by a
brave Army officer, Colonel Daniel Davis.
Colonel Davis has honorably served this country for over a quarter
century, and has received praise from his commanders for his maturity,
determination, and judgment. He recently made the brave decision to
release an unclassified account of the war in Afghanistan after
witnessing the huge gap between what the American public was being told
about the progress in Afghanistan and the dismal situation on the
ground. Declassifying the National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan
is a necessary step so that our policy is based on accurate
information.
In an article published this past Sunday in the Armed Forces Journal,
Colonel Davis asks:
``How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not
succeeding and behind an array of more than 7 years of optimistic
statements by United States senior leaders in Afghanistan? No one
expects our leaders to always have a successful plan, but we do
expect--and the men,'' and women, I must add, ``who do the living,
fighting and dying deserve--to have our leaders tell us the truth about
what's going on.''
Mr. Speaker, the American people deserve to know the truth after
spending the past decade on failed military strategies which have cost
us over $450 billion in direct funding. The costs, of course, have been
even greater in injuries, lives lost, and in the trillions of dollars
we will need to spend on long-term care for our veterans, including
hospitals, clinics, job training, post-traumatic stress disorder
treatment, housing assistance, and homeless services. But we must spend
these resources for our veterans.
The American people, though, are sick and tired of these endless
wars. Fully two-thirds of Americans support ending combat operations in
Afghanistan in 2013, and three out of four Americans favor a speedy
withdrawal of all United States troops out of Afghanistan. We are set
to spend an additional $88 billion, mind you, $88 billion in
Afghanistan over the next year while domestic cuts in education, health
care, roads, bridges, and other essential priorities are sacrificed.
We cannot afford an indefinite stay in Afghanistan. We need to ask
what we have to show for the past decade of war. Instead of a stable
democracy, we have a broken state which is completely dependent on
foreign countries for its budget, with rampant corruption and
widespread violence. For the fifth straight year, civilian casualties
rose in Afghanistan. In fact, 2011 was a record year for the number of
Afghan civilians killed. There were 3,021 Afghan children, women, and
men who were caught in the crossfire between an insurgency and the
heavy presence of NATO troops.
[[Page H583]]
{time} 1050
The reality on the ground in Afghanistan stands in stark contrast to
the steady reports of progress we have been hearing from those who seek
to maintain a military presence in Afghanistan in 2014 and beyond. It's
time to bring our troops home from Afghanistan--not in 2014, not next
year, but right now.
Congress authorized the use of force in 2001, which I voted against
because it gave the President--any President--a blank check to use
force anytime, anyplace, anywhere in the world for any period of time.
We should have had a debate 10 years ago when Congress failed to
consider the implications of giving the Pentagon a blank check in the
rush to war.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Colonel Davis for his courage and
risking his career to speak out to try to let the American people and
their elected representatives understand the true risks we are taking
in Afghanistan. To understand what is at stake in Afghanistan, I again
call on the Pentagon to declassify the National Intelligence Estimate
on Afghanistan so that we can have an informed discussion moving
forward.
It is time to bring our young men and women home. They have performed
valiantly, with incredible courage, and have done everything we have
asked them to do.
[From the Armed Forces Journal]
Truth, lies and Afghanistan
(By Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis)
I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with
U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the
Army's Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant
area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of
12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked,
traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar,
Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other
provinces.
What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements
by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.
Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn
that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan
were improving, that the local government and military were
progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to
witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely
hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or
battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.
Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually
every level.
My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my
fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A
Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch. I served in
Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq
in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years
in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs--
among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign
affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.
As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set
out to talk to our troops about their needs and their
circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and
dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional
and Special Forces troops. I interviewed or had conversations
with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest
ranking 19-year-old private to division commanders and staff
members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan
security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village
elders.
I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would
have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces;
I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually
every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International
Security Assistance Force (ISAP) base.
I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able
to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the
Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn't went to
be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.
From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces
collude with the insurgency.
from bad to abysmal
Much of what I saw during my deployment, let alone read or
wrote in official reports. I can't talk about; the
information remains classified. But I can say that such
reports--mine and others'--serve to illuminate the gulf
between conditions on the ground and official statements of
progress.
And I can relate a few representative experiences, of the
kind that I observed all over the country.
In January 2011, I made my first trip into the mountains of
Kunar province near the Pakistan border to visit the troops
of 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry. On a patrol to the
northernmost U.S. position in eastern Afghanistan, we arrived
at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported
being attacked by the Taliban 2\1/2\ hours earlier.
Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where
the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a
nearby mountain.
``What are your normal procedures in situations like
these?'' I asked. ``Do you form up a squad and go after them?
Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you
do?''
As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain's
head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and
turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he
laughed.
``No! We don't go after them,'' he said. ``That would be
dangerous!''
According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen
rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints. In that part of
the province, the Taliban literally run free.
In June, I was in the Zharay district of Kandahar province,
returning to a base from a dismounted patrol. Gunshots were
audible as the Taliban attacked a U.S. checkpoint about one
mile away.
As I entered the unit's command post, the commander and his
staff were watching a live video feed of the battle. Two ANP
vehicles were blocking the main road leading to the site of
the attack. The fire was coming from behind a haystack. We
watched as two Afghan men emerged, mounted a motorcycle and
began moving toward the Afghan policemen in their vehicles.
The U.S. commander turned around and told the Afghan radio
operator to make sure the policemen halted the men. The radio
operator shouted into the radio repeatedly, but got no
answer.
On the screen, we watched as the two men slowly motored
past the ANP vehicles. The policemen neither got out to stop
the two men nor answered the radio--until the motorcycle was
out of sight.
To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had
nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area--and
that was before the above incident occurred.
In August I went on a dismounted patrol with troops in the
Panjwai district of Kandahar province. Several troops from
the unit had recently been killed in action, one of whom was
a very popular and experienced soldier. One of the unit's
senior officers rhetorically asked me, ``How do I look these
men in the eye and ask them to go out day after day on these
missions? What's harder: How do I look [my soldier's] wife in
the eye when I get back and tell her that her husband died
for something meaningful? How do I do that?'
One of the senior enlisted leaders added, ``Guys are
saying, `I hope I live so I can at least get home to R&R
leave before I get it,' or `I hope I only lose a foot.'
Sometimes they even say which limb it might be: `Maybe it'll
only be my left foot.' They don't have a lot of confidence
that the leadership two levels up really understands what
they're living here, what the situation really is.''
On Sept. 11, the 10th anniversary of the infamous attack on
the U.S., I visited another unit in Kunar province, this one
near the town of Asmar. I talked with the local official who
served as the cultural adviser to the U.S. commander. Here's
how the conversation went:
Davis: ``Here you have many units of the Afghan National
Security Forces [ANSF]. Will they be able to hold out against
the Taliban when U.S. troops leave this area?''
Adviser: ``No. They are definitely not capable. Already all
across this region [many elements of] the security forces
have made deals with the Taliban. [The ANSF] won't shoot at
the Taliban, and the Taliban won't shoot them.
``Also, when a Taliban member is arrested, he is soon
released with no action taken against him. So when the
Taliban returns [when the Americans leave after 2014], so too
go the jobs, especially for everyone like me who has worked
with the coalition.
``Recently, I got a cellphone call from a Talib who had
captured a friend of mine. While I could hear, he began to
beat him, telling me I'd better quit working for the
Americans. I could hear my friend crying out in pain. [The
Talib] said the next time they would kidnap my sons and do
the same to them. Because of the direct threats, I've had to
take my children out of school just to keep them safe.
``And last night right on that mountain there [he pointed
to a ridge overlooking the U.S. base, about 700 meters
distant], a member of the ANP was murdered. The Taliban came
and called him out, kidnapped him in front of his parents,
and took him away and murdered him. He was a member of the
ANP from another province and had come back to visit his
parents. He was only 27 years old. The people are not safe
anywhere.''
That murder took place within view of the U.S. base, a post
nominally responsible for the security of an area of hundreds
of square kilometers. Imagine how insecure the population is
beyond visual range. And yet that conversation was
representative of what I saw in many regions of Afghanistan.
In all of the places I visited, the tactical situation was
bad to abysmal. If the events I have described--and many,
many more I could mention--had been in the first year of war,
or even the third or fourth, one might be wiling to believe
that Afghanistan was just a hard fight, and we should stick
it out. Yet these incidents all happened in the 10th year of
war.
As the numbers depicting casualties and enemy violence
indicate the absence of progress, so too did my observations
of the tactical situation all over Afghanistan.
[[Page H584]]
CREDIBILITY GAP
I'm hardly the only one who has noted the discrepancy
between official statements and the truth on the ground.
A January 2011 report by the Afghan NGO Security Office
noted that pubic statements made by U.S. and ISAF leaders at
the end of 2010 were ``sharply divergent from IMF,
[international military forces, MGO-speak for ISAF]
`strategic communication' messages suggesting improvements.
We encourage [nongovernment organization personnel] to
recognize that no matter how authoritative the source of any
such claim, messages of the nature are solely intended to
influence American and European public opinion ahead of the
withdrawal and are not intended to offer an accurate
portrayal of the situation for those who live and work
here.''
The following month, Anthony Cordesman, on behalf of the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that
ISAF and the U.S. leadership failed to report accurately on
the reality of the situation in Afghanistan.
``Since June 2010, the unclassified reporting the U.S. does
provide has steadily shrunk in content, effectively
`spinning' the road to victory by eliminating content that
illustrates the full scale of the challenges ahead,''
Cordesmen wrote. ``They also, however, were driven by
political decisions to ignore or understate Taliban and
insurgent gains from 2002 to 2009, to ignore the problems
caused by weak and corrupt Afghan governance, to understate
the risks posed by sanctuaries in Pakistan, and to `spin' the
value of tactical ISAF victories while ignoring the steady
growth of Taliban influence and control.''
How many more men must die in support of a mission that is
not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years
of optimistic statements by U.S. senior leaders in
Afghanistan? No one expects our leaders to always have a
successful plan. But we do expect--and the men who do the
living, fighting and dying deserve--to have our leaders tell
us the truth about what's going on.
I first encountered senior-level equivocation during a 1997
division-level ``experiment'' that turned out to be far more
setpiece than experiment. Over dinner at Fort Hood, Texas,
Training and Doctrine Command leaders told me that the
Advanced Warfighter Experiment (AWE) had shown that a
``digital division'' with fewer troops and more gear could be
far more effective than current divisions. The next day, our
congressional staff delegation observed the demonstration
firsthand, and it didn't take long to realize there was
little substance to the claims. Virtually no legitimate
experimentation was actually conducted. All parameters were
carefully scripted. All events had a preordained sequence and
outcome. The AWE was simply an expensive show, couched in the
language of scientific experimentation and presented in
glowing press releases and pubic statements, intended to
persuade Congress to fund the Army's preference. Citing the
AWE's ``results,'' Army leaders proceeded to eliminate one
maneuver company per combat battalion. But the loss of
fighting systems was never offset by a commensurate rise in
killing capability.
A decade later, in the summer of 2007, I was assigned to
the Future Combat Systems (FCS) organization at Fort Bliss,
Texas. It didn't take long to discover that the same thing
the Army had done with a single division at Fort Hood in 1997
was now being done on a significantly larger scale with FCS.
Year after year, the congressionally mandated reports from
the Government Accountability Office revealed significant
problems and warned that the system was in danger of failing.
Each year, the Army's senior leaders told members of Congress
at hearings that GAO didn't really understand the full
picture and that to the contrary, the program was on
schedule, on budget and headed for success. Ultimately, of
course, the program was canceled, with little but spinoffs to
show for $18 billion spent.
If Americans were able to compare the public statements
many of our leaders have made with classified data, this
credibility gulf would be immediately observable. Naturally,
I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the
pubic. But I am legally able to share it with members of
Congress. I have accordingly provided a much fuller
accounting in a classified report to several members of
Congress, both Democrats and Republicans. Senators and House
members.
A nonclassified version is available at
www.afghanreport.com [Editor's note: At press time, Army
public affairs had not yet ruled on whether Davis could post
this longer version.]
tell the truth
When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging
our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe
it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid--
graphically, if necessary--in telling them what's at stake
and how expensive potential success is likely to be U.S.
citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the
risk to blood and treasure is worth it.
Likewise when having to decide whether to continue a war,
alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won
at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation
to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth
and let the people decide what course of action to choose.
That is the very essence of civilian control of the military.
The American people deserve better than what they've gotten
from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of
years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start.
____________________