[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11073-11074]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             U.S. SHOULD WITHDRAW FROM IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, 
criticized the U.S. in a graduation speech in Boston on Sunday. He said 
the U.S. had ``the power and hence the responsibility'' to get involved 
in Afghanistan even before the tragic events we refer to as 9/11. 
President Karzai said because the U.S. did not get involved sooner, the 
result was ``horrible suffering for the Afghan people.''
  This is a man who was given a hero's welcome at the White House, the 
State and Defense Departments, and the

[[Page 11074]]

World Bank just yesterday. This is a man who was a special guest at two 
joint sessions of Congress. This is a man who probably would not be 
president today if not for the U.S., and to whom our taxpayers have 
given billions of dollars since September of 2001.
  It takes a lot of gall for President Karzai to come to the U.S. and 
blame us for the horrible suffering of the Afghan people because we did 
not get involved in Afghanistan in a big way before 2001.
  Since 2001, U.S. taxpayers have sent billions to Afghanistan for 
economic, humanitarian, and reconstruction assistance. We have sent 
several hundreds of millions of dollars each year, in addition to what 
the military is spending, and most of what the military is doing in 
Iraq and Afghanistan is pure foreign aid. No country in the history of 
the world has even come close to doing as much for other countries as 
has the United States. No country in the history of the world has even 
come close to doing as much for Afghanistan as has the United States. 
Yet President Karzai comes here and makes a major speech and instead of 
thanking the American people over and over, as he should have, he 
criticizes us for not getting involved sooner.
  Just yesterday, the front page of The Washington Post carried a story 
about the parents of Pat Tillman who was killed by friendly fire in 
Afghanistan. The parents bitterly attacked the Army for lying and 
covering up the details of their son's death, and they have every right 
to do so. Pat Tillman's dad said, ``They blew up their poster boy'' and 
then lied about it to create a ``patriotic fervor'' in the U.S.
  I voted to go to war in Afghanistan because I and everyone but one in 
Congress felt we had to respond to 9/11, but we should have gotten out 
of there after 3 or 4 months; and if we had, Pat Tillman would still be 
alive today.
  I voted against going to war in Iraq because, among many other 
reasons, Saddam Hussein's total military budget was only a little over 
two-tenths of 1 percent of ours, and he was no threat to us whatsoever. 
It is no criticism of the military to say this was a totally 
unnecessary war.
  Unless conservatives now believe in massive foreign aid, huge deficit 
spending, world government and placing almost the entire burden of 
enforcing U.N. resolutions on our taxpayers and our military, all 
things that conservatives have opposed in the past, then conservatives 
should want us to get out of both Iraq and Afghanistan.
  William F. Buckley, Jr., the godfather of conservatism, wrote a 
column a few days ago saying it is now time to exit Iraq. Many leaders 
of our military will want us to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan for many 
years so they can get higher and higher appropriations. But in a few 
months, our national debt will reach $9 trillion. By the end of this 
fiscal year, we will have spent over $300 billion in Iraq and 
Afghanistan and probably another $100 billion in the coming fiscal year 
which starts October 1.
  Mr. Speaker, seven more Americans were killed in Iraq yesterday. Our 
colleague, the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), just told me 
that four guardsmen from his State were killed today. Already this 
month has been one of the bloodiest of the entire war. The headlines on 
the front page of the Washington Times says: ``Car bombings kill scores 
across Iraq.''
  Our Founding Fathers did not intend for us to run Iraq or Afghanistan 
or any other country. Our first obligation should be to the American 
people and no one else. We should be friends to other countries, but we 
cannot afford to continue spending hundreds of billions all over the 
world.
  In just a few years we will not be able to pay our own people all the 
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, drug costs, military and civil 
service and private pensions that we have promised. To stay any longer 
in Iraq or Afghanistan goes against every traditional conservative 
position. We can no longer afford it in either blood or treasury.

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