[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19673]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                SMART SECURITY AND THE KATRINA HURRICANE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Dent). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, Katrina, the Category 4 hurricane that hit 
the gulf coast last week, leveled nearly everything in its path. It 
tore apart homes and destroyed entire coastal cities. It has taken the 
lives of countless hundreds, if not thousands. It will cost an 
estimated $150 billion to rebuild and repair the affected region.
  Sadly, the Federal Government's response to Katrina was lackluster at 
best and shamefully negligent at worst. Despite the public's 
forewarning that there was a knowledge of Katrina's severity, the Bush 
administration failed to provide adequate Federal aid and hands-on 
support for the thousands of citizens stuck in the storm's aftermath. A 
large part of this failure stems directly from the lack of qualified 
first responders, the thousands of Guardsmen and Reservists who are 
currently stuck fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  It is during wholesale natural disasters like these that Americans 
should be able to rely on our Nation's capable National Guard and 
Reserve forces.
  Unfortunately, it has not worked out that way because the Bush 
administration has more than 50,000 National Guardsmen and Reservists 
stationed in Iraq. That amounts to just over 40 percent of the total 
U.S. military forces there.
  The Army's Guard and Reserve units are supposed to be our Nation's 
emergency force, America's defenders of last resort. Yet the Army's Web 
site actually defines the Army reserve as being ``like a part-time job 
that enables soldiers to keep their civilian careers while they 
continue to train near home.''
  But the President has 50,000 of them fighting in a war very, very far 
from home, shouldering a disproportionate share of the burden in Iraq. 
He has them suffering for a war that was supposedly about weapons of 
mass destruction and then about Saddam's link to al Qaeda and then 
about bringing democracy to Iraq. But no matter how we slice it, the 
war in Iraq was never a war of last resort. The emergency units should 
have remained here at home in case of a real emergency. In fact, all 
3,700 of Louisiana's National Guardsmen are currently stationed in Iraq 
and will not return home to help their devastated State or their own 
families, for that matter, for another week. Unfortunately, it was only 
a matter of time before the deployment of thousands of Guardsmen and 
Reservists to Iraq ended up hurting Americans right here at home.
  The city of New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast has learned 
that lesson in a painful way, losing family members, loved ones, 
friends, and pets that could have been saved if their government had 
provided more human support and a smarter approach to dealing with 
Katrina's aftermath.
  It is my hope that our national overreliance on military solutions 
during the past 4 years, made painfully clear by the Katrina hurricane, 
will lead us to a smarter national security strategy in the future. 
That is why I have introduced SMART Security: a Sensible, Multilateral, 
American Response to Terrorism. SMART is based on the belief that we 
should pursue the military solution only in the most extreme 
circumstances and after every diplomatic solution has been exhausted. 
SMART would divert resources for military spending and foreign wars to 
homeland security and energy independence, from outdated weapons 
systems to an ambitious development plan for the troubled regions both 
in the United States and around the world.
  Democracy-building, international aid, human rights education, small 
business development, these are the cures to poverty, to oppression, to 
hopelessness that plague both the people of Iraq and the survivors in 
the gulf, particularly in New Orleans. SMART projects protect America 
by relying on the very best of America, not violence and conquest, but 
our capacity for global leadership, our belief in freedom, and our 
compassion for the vulnerable people here at home and around the world.
  Mr. Speaker, Katrina's aftermath has given us a firsthand look at 
what happens when a nation's forces are stretched thin. That is why it 
is time for us to start bringing our troops home. The Iraqi people need 
the United States, they need the U.S. National Guard out of Iraq, and 
no less important, the American people need them here at home where 
they belong.

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