[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 27874-27879]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. President Obama will soon make a decision that will 
chart the course for America's involvement in Afghanistan for years to 
come.
  I personally am not upset that it has taken President Obama this long 
to determine his response to General McChrystal's request for an 
additional 35,000 U.S. combat troops to be sent to Afghanistan. This is 
a monumental decision, and it comes when the radical Islamic Taliban 
and al Qaeda movements seem to be gaining momentum. It also comes when 
our troops throughout the world are stretched to the breaking point and 
when our economy is frayed. It comes when the debt that America is 
piling up is not just alarming but suicidal. This is not the time for 
business as usual, nor is it the time for brash decision-making. A 
decision to send U.S. troops to Afghanistan will cost money, lots of 
it; and it will cost lives.
  In the past, powerful nations were humbled in the rugged terrain of 
that desolate country. Yes, a desolate country, dotted by thousands of 
small villages, populated by tribal people so independent and so 
ferocious that they have never been conquered. Throughout history, 
attempts to conquer Afghanistan have met with bloody failure. War there 
is not defeating an enemy; it is conquering a people. And these people 
have never been conquered.
  British writer Rudyard Kipling once wrote: ``When you lie wounded on 
the Afghan plain and the women are coming to cut the remains, roll to 
your right and blow out your brains and go to your God like a 
soldier.''
  The British Army dominated vast expansions of India for two 
centuries, but it was never able to subdue the Afghans. Thousands of 
British troops lost their lives trying to do just that. In 1842 a 
British force of 16,000 withdrew from their fortress in Kabul. That 
force was then beset upon by Afghan tribesmen who cut them to pieces. 
Only one member of the original contingent of 16,000 made it to the 
city of Jalalabad. That one person who survived was the regimental 
surgeon, Dr. W. Brydon. It was thought that perhaps he was permitted to 
survive.
  Russia too has had its comeuppance in the hostile Afghan countryside. 
It was one of the Soviet Union's most telling chapters, and it was also 
one of the Soviet Union's last chapters.
  After America's inglorious conclusion of its military operations in 
Vietnam, our Soviet global adversary was emboldened. Then with the fall 
of the Shah of Iran, a power vacuum was created that the Soviets hoped 
to fill. They were then engaged in a post-Vietnam War offensive 
throughout the world. So when chaos and volatility erupted in 
Afghanistan as a result of a blood rift between two Afghan communist 
factions, Soviet leaders sent in the Red Army. They did that to unify 
the communist factions and to pacify the countryside in Afghanistan, 
which was already hostile to the communist ideology and very hostile to 
foreign troops. Perhaps as a payback for the massive Soviet aid 
provided the North during our conflict in Vietnam or perhaps just as a 
means of weakening the Soviet global military power, during Ronald 
Reagan's administration, during his Presidency, our government provided 
weapons and other support for the Afghan insurgent forces who were 
battling Soviet occupation troops.

                              {time}  1845

  As compared with other 20th-century Presidents, Reagan rarely 
depended on a policy of deploying U.S. troops to solve problems and to 
combat enemies. I know that goes against what a lot of people think 
about Ronald Reagan. U.S. forces under Ronald Reagan, yes, were sent in 
to the small island nation of Grenada, which was in the throes of a 
Marxist military clique's murderous rampage. Grenada was a limited 
operation, but it was significant because it proved America was willing 
to use its military forces after suffering a demoralizing national 
malaise which is best remembered in history as the ``Vietnam 
Syndrome.''
  Another deployment President Reagan agreed to make was sending 
marines into Lebanon, which resulted in a catastrophic attack on our 
marines which left 290 of them dead and many others severely injured. 
After that, Reagan was reluctant to deploy our troops. And during his 
administration, if you take a look at the records, he deployed troops 
into combat many fewer times than most other Presidents did during the 
last century. Yet, he is portrayed as a Cold Warrior and is branded, 
and was branded then, by the liberal left as a warmonger. Yet, he 
deployed our troops fewer times than most other American Presidents.
  Yes, Ronald Reagan, more than any other leader, was one who we should 
basically praise for the defeat of Soviet communism. That enemy 
threatened our security and the freedom of our people and the freedom 
of people throughout the world, yet he did not send our troops into 
hostile action after the Beirut debacle resulted in the death of so 
many of our marines. Well, if he didn't send in our troops to various 
places, how, then, was our country so well defended during that time, 
and how was the evil power of Soviet communism defeated?
  Well, the answer is what is called the ``Reagan Doctrine.'' This 
strategy was based on the concept of helping others fight their battles 
when their foe was our foe. Rather than sending U.S. troops into 
Central America, for example, when the Soviets armed its stooges who 
were in the process of establishing a Marxist dictatorship in 
Nicaragua, and the Soviet Union sent a billion and a half dollars worth 
of military equipment to back up that Marxist regime, no, Reagan didn't 
send U.S. troops down there to fight the Sandinistas. He armed those 
Nicaraguans who were resisting that regime, the so-called ``Contras.''
  In Africa, America helped arm Jonas Savimbi and his Unita group as 
they fought a Soviet-backed regime in Angola. And neither of these two 
groups were perfect. They had many imperfections. These were flawed 
allies. But they were fighting for their own country, and they were 
fighting their own countrymen. We did not rely on sending in U.S. 
troops. We supported those people locally who were fighting their 
adversary as long as their adversary was our adversary as well.
  And, of course, most importantly, we armed and we supported the 
Mujahedeen in Afghanistan who directly took on the military might of 
the Soviet Union. Again, many of the Mujahedeen were people who were 
totally inconsistent with our outlook and our views on respect and on 
freedom and individual rights. Many of them were, by the way, very, 
very supportive of treating people decently and were not radical 
Muslims in that regard. But they were flawed people who we supported

[[Page 27875]]

to fight the Soviet Union that we brought down. That's how the Soviet 
Union was brought down, not by sending in U.S. troops, but not trying 
to be perfectionists in who we would then support, but to try to defeat 
our primary enemy.
  During those years, I worked in the Reagan White House as a senior 
speech writer and, yes, as a special assistant to President Reagan. I 
worked with a small cadre of patriots who made the Reagan Doctrine 
real. In fact, the speech-writing department is actually given credit 
by many to actually have developed that doctrine and made it into a 
doctrine rather than a loose strategy.
  Well, those people in the White House who made it real and turned it 
into a policy, into actual strategies that were being put in place and 
put to use during the Cold War were a very, as I say, small group of 
patriots; Constantine Menges, who came from the CIA and then over into 
the National Security Council, Bill Casey of the CIA, Colonel Oliver 
North, Admiral Poindexter, Dr. Paula Dobriansky, Vince Canistrano, Ken 
DeKrafenty, all of those on the White House team, on Reagan's team, the 
administration team, who played a crucial war role in defeating Soviet 
communism, not by orchestrating moves to send more troops here or more 
U.S. troops here, but instead to try to support those people throughout 
the world who were fighting against Soviet tyranny themselves.
  And, of course, we had support, and we had an initiation of such 
ideas and concepts and support of the policy by Dr. Jack Wheeler, who 
is also a person who worked with us in the White House but was 
independent and went into these various places around the world and met 
the leaders of various anti-Soviet insurgencies throughout the world 
and reported directly back to us and the White House as to what was 
going on in those insurgencies.
  Yes, of course, we need also to thank Members of Congress who were 
supportive of those efforts. Let us note that Ronald Reagan has often 
said that it was bipartisanship that ended the Cold War. But I remember 
very clearly Ronald Reagan being called a warmonger. I remember very 
clearly those efforts to defeat the expansion of Soviet power in 
Central America being undermined directly by people in this Congress 
who wanted to label Ronald Reagan as the problem rather than communist 
tyranny as the problem.
  But there were other people on the other side of the aisle and on the 
Republican side of the aisle who were active in support of the Reagan 
Doctrine, the concept of helping freedom fighters throughout the world 
instead of sending U.S. troops.
  The most prominent name nowadays is Charlie Wilson. Yes, Charlie 
Wilson as an appropriator, who helped get the money for the Afghan 
freedom fighters, played a significant role, as his book and subsequent 
movie suggests. But he was not the only one. Charlie deserves credit, 
but so do those other people, some of the ones I just mentioned, and 
others, people who made sure that those people who are fighting for 
freedom in various countries did get those supplies and that the Reagan 
Doctrine, the concept was implemented.
  We made sure that the Russians learned the lesson that we learned in 
Vietnam. The introduction of U.S. combat troops in Vietnam did not 
work. And it was that war that tremendously weakened us. But it was the 
introduction of combat troops, I believe, into Vietnam that weakened us 
because the dynamics were changed. Having massive troops deployed in a 
totally foreign culture did not work for our side in Afghanistan. And 
here we had our troops in a totally foreign land on the other side of 
the planet, and by introducing those troops, rather than focusing 
perhaps on helping the people in Vietnam to fight their battle, we set 
up a dynamic that worked itself out, yes, and as it worked itself out, 
it defeated our efforts and left the United States with 50,000 dead, a 
world humiliation and a country in retreat.
  I spent some time in Vietnam in 1967, although I was not in the 
military. Part of my experience was in the Central Highlands, where I 
hooked up with a special forces unit that was operating out of an old 
French fort near the Vietnamese city in the Central Highlands by the 
name of Pelku. It was there that I first saw a strategy that worked. 
Our special forces teams had turned the montagnards, Vietnams's 
indigenous mountain people, into an American ally in this bloody, 
elongated conflict. Yes, our military forces in Vietnam were never 
defeated--our military likes to say that. They were never defeated on 
the battlefield, not in one major battle. But we lost the war. The 
strategy was wrong.
  In the Central Highlands, the montagnards were with us. In fact, I 
felt very secure, and I knew the montagnards would put a high priority 
on protecting me while I was with them, even though I was an American. 
Yes, in the Highlands, the montagnards were with us. Those were the 
people that occupied the Highlands in Vietnam. And had the war been 
decided there, with those montagnards and those people, our enemies 
would have been defeated instead of an American defeat.
  In Afghanistan, America gave the people of Afghanistan the weapons 
they needed to fight the Soviet Army. And when we provided them Stinger 
missiles, we gave them the means not just to fight, but to win. By the 
way, we also promised to help rebuild their torn country as we 
encouraged them to fight, bleed and sacrifice in order to defeat the 
Soviet Army.
  The Afghans paid a monstrous price for their victory: 1 million 
killed, even more wounded, and devastation throughout their society. 
These brave and heroic people stood up and defeated our mutual enemy.
  I was blessed with not just meeting the leaders of the anti-Soviet 
Mujahedeen when they visited Washington back in the 1980s. I actually 
went into Afghanistan with a Mujahedeen combat unit and participated 
for a short time in the battle of Jalalabad, which was the last major 
battle in which Soviet troops were present.
  I do not recount these moments in history to bring praise upon 
myself, but instead to lend personal authority to the battles we 
endured then and to the issues that confront us today. That weeklong 
exposure to that Afghan battle gave me a lasting admiration for these 
unconquered people. It was the courage of the Afghan people, more than 
any others, that broke the will of the communist leadership in Moscow 
and, yes, brought about the collapse of the Soviet communist threat 
that had loomed over our heads for decades.
  When Soviet troops moved out of Afghanistan, instead of fulfilling 
our promise to help rebuild their war-torn land, we left those brave 
people to sleep wounded in the rubble. We did not even provide them the 
resources they needed to clear their country of land mines that we had 
given them during their war against the Soviet Army. Thus, we left them 
with a country in which, for a decade, the legs were blown off their 
children as they walked through the countryside. We didn't even provide 
them the help to clear their mines at that time.
  Now that decision to walk away from Afghanistan was the decision not 
of Ronald Reagan, but of President George Herbert Walker Bush. And, of 
course, as we walked away, the anti-Soviet Mujahedeen broke into 
warring factions. The chaos and misery was predictable. But, of course, 
we just walked away. We let them just go down into the depths of misery 
and of conflict and of self-mutilation of that society.
  Eventually, during the Clinton years, our government made a secret 
pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to end the chaos in Afghanistan by 
introducing a new force called the Taliban. Now I had seen the 
strategies before of assisting forces in Afghanistan who are radical 
Islamists. I, in fact, spent considerable time in the White House 
pounding on people's desks saying, why are we providing military 
support for people like Hekmatyar Gulbuddin, Sayaff and others of the 
radical Islamists, who were fighting, yes, the Soviets, but who were 
also killing other elements within the anti-Soviet Mujahedeens, killing 
them because they were not as radical in their Islamic tradition?

[[Page 27876]]

  That backfired on us then, and, in fact, during the gulf war, the 
first gulf war, it is significant that the Mujahedeen radicals that we 
had supported, Hekmatyar Gulbuddin in particular, sided with Saddam 
Hussein. This after we had provided him with more than a mountain of 
weapons. No. I argued against this stupid strategy based on empowering 
religious fanatics. It was totally unjustified, especially when there 
was a moderate alternative. During the war with the Soviets, there was 
a moderate alternative in that we had groups of Mujahedeen fighters who 
were not the radical Islamists that eventually became the Taliban.

                              {time}  1900

  It is a mistake many people make. They think the Mujahedeen were the 
Taliban. The Taliban came later. But I could see that empowering 
religious fanatics when there was a moderate alternative was not the 
right way to go. And after the Soviets had been driven out, there was a 
moderate alternative. The moderate alternative was King Zahir Shah. He 
was an exiled king right before the Soviets took over. The fact is he 
had ruled that country for 40 years. He was the only leader who ever 
gave Afghanistan a time of tranquility and progress. And he did that by 
not trying to impose his rule on the rest of the people of Afghanistan, 
but instead ruled as a monarch, as a symbol, as a father of his 
country.
  Well, he was available. He was living in exile in Rome. I argued that 
case that he should be the one brought back to unify the country, not 
some radical Muslim sect like the Taliban, but the Saudis and the 
Pakistanis were insistent. They thought they could control the Taliban 
and they would use the Taliban--control of the Taliban to control 
Afghanistan. Of course, America just went long with it.
  President Bill Clinton and his administration signed on to that deal. 
Well, it is was an easy way out. We're going to provide so much money 
and assistance, and the Pakistanis were there. Of course, then people 
didn't realize that the Pakistani military and the ISI, who we have 
since proven were actually radical Islamists themselves, they were the 
allies of the worst anti-American radicals in that region.
  So, in reality, America, in the mid-1990s, was covertly supporting 
the Taliban. We covertly supported its creation and we made sure that 
our aid was channeled into those areas that supported the Taliban, but 
we shortchanged all the other nonradical Islamists like Masood and 
others who were there and didn't get that same level of aid.
  Most importantly, the people of Afghanistan believed then, as they do 
now, that the United States helped create and was behind the Taliban. 
If they believed it, and they are living with it, the American people 
should know this as well.
  Well, the fact that the Clinton administration was covertly 
supporting the Taliban did not stop a number of us from doing something 
else, from trying to create another alternative. Ben Gilman, chairman 
of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, along with a small team of 
activists--and I'm very proud to have been one of them--struggled to 
change U.S. policy and went out to support those who opposed the 
Taliban.
  I was in and out of Afghanistan personally. Our team was working to 
build an anti-Taliban coalition by uniting ethnic and tribal leaders, 
especially those in the non-Pashtun areas of Afghanistan. It should be 
noted that we also worked with Pashtuns who are anti-Taliban; leaders 
like Abdul Haq, who was a terrific leader and one of the great leaders 
in the Mujahedeen effort to fight the Soviet army during their 
occupation. He was a Pashtun leader that we were working with.
  Yes, there was King Zahir Shah, who was also Pashtun, but by and 
large we were trying at the very least to get those in the northern 
part of the country and those ethnic groups other than Pashtuns, 
because in Afghanistan, yes, not all Pashtuns are Taliban, but almost 
all Taliban are Pashtuns.
  During that time, during the 1990s when we were working trying to 
create that coalition, I met with General Dostum, Commander Masood, 
Ishmael Khan, and many others. Our team brought together all the 
leaders of the ethnic groups of the Afghan ethnic groups and the 
significant tribes. We brought them together in Frankfurt and Bonn in 
1997, and Istanbul in 1998.
  Then, in December of 2000, I and Chairman Gilman brought the key 
Afghan players right here to Washington, D.C., to our Foreign Affairs 
Committee room in the Rayburn Building. As a result of that meeting, 
organized by Chairman Gilman and myself, what resulted from that 
meeting was a phone call made during that meeting from the participants 
here, who were anti-Taliban people that we brought here. That telephone 
call was made to King Zahir Shah, who was then living in exile in Rome.
  During that phone call an agreement was reached that the king would 
return to Afghanistan into Masood's territory and lead a loya jirga, 
which is a gathering of leaders of Afghanistan, in July of 2001. When 
that agreement did not bear fruit, when that meeting did not occur, Ben 
Gilman and I dispatched committee staff in late August and early 
September of 2001 to Rome and to Pakistan to find out why that loya 
jirga had failed to materialize.
  So whatever the Clinton administration was doing, whatever their tilt 
to the Taliban, there were others of us trying to do what was right, 
and, yes, all of that activity paid off. Eventually, after 9/11, the 
Afghan tribal and ethnic leaders on our team and basically those people 
that we had been encouraging to get together and form a coalition, that 
coalition emerged after 9/11 as the Northern Alliance.
  Most important for Americans to understand now, it was the Northern 
Alliance--Afghans themselves, not U.S. combat troops--that drove the 
Taliban out of Afghanistan after 9/11. Many people now are very loose 
in their words when they discuss how the Taliban was defeated and 
driven out after 9/11. When we drove them out. You can hear that over 
and over again. Well, it was a magnificent victory, but America only 
had 200 troops on the ground, Special Forces, when the Taliban were 
driven out of Afghanistan.
  So when you hear people say, Oh, well, the only thing wrong in Iraq 
was we didn't come in with enough boots on the ground, we only had 200 
boots on the ground in Afghanistan, and, in fact, those 200 boots gave 
us a tremendous victory, and it also gave us a tremendous opportunity 
to rebuild that nation and to demonstrate the benefit of being 
America's friend. It gave us the opportunity to make up for breaking 
our word after the war with the Soviets and to regain the trust and 
admiration of moderate Muslims throughout the world. We had that 
chance.
  Afghanistan, which, by the way, is about the same size as Iraq, we 
had driven out a force of tens of thousands of Taliban soldiers and 
their al Qaeda allies, not by U.S. troops--only 200 U.S. troops were 
there--but instead by providing air support and supplies and 
communications to those people in Afghanistan who were fighting against 
this radical Islamic gangsters who had oppressed them.
  Well, after the Taliban was defeated, instead of focusing on 
Afghanistan, instead of keeping our promise, going back to keep our 
word, which we had given so long ago--and, I might say, we renewed that 
promise when we asked them to drive out the Taliban--instead, President 
Bush rushed the United States into an invasion/liberation attack of 
Iraq. The battle for Iraq, however, was fought by U.S. combat troops, a 
totally different strategy from what had worked in Afghanistan.
  By the way, we could well have implemented a similar strategy in Iraq 
by arming the Kurds and the Shiites, by making deals and cutting deals 
with Shiite leaders, by reaching out to different people in their 
military and in their government. Instead, no, we sent in large numbers 
of U.S. troops in combat units. Only when we pulled our forces back and 
used our financial resources to buy the goodwill of people in Iraq did 
the Iraq war turn in the right direction.
  We have heard a lot about the surge. I voted for the surge and I have 
tried to

[[Page 27877]]

be as supportive as I could, realizing a defeat in Iraq would have been 
a horrible and demoralizing event for the people of the United States, 
and it would have emboldened terrorists and radical Islamists 
throughout the world. I tried be supportive, but we were obviously 
doing the wrong thing. We obviously used the wrong strategy. The 
competence of the last administration in carrying out that war and 
building peace was abysmal. We could have done what we did in 
Afghanistan and let the Iraqis liberate themselves from Saddam 
Hussein's tyranny.
  The human and financial cost of the Iraq liberation and how it was 
accomplished, all of the incompetence that went with it, will be the 
subject of scrutiny for years to come. However, we have moved forward 
and there are some signs or every sign of success in Iraq. That 
success--it's clear that that success was brought about not necessarily 
by large numbers of U.S. troops, but instead, not just the surge of 
troops, but General Petraeus's ability to use financial resources to 
win the loyalty of Sunnis and other tribal leaders in Iraq.
  But what is also clear is that our Iraq focus after the defeat of the 
Taliban prevented us from doing what was right by the Afghan people. 
And there is a cost to that as well. There is a cost that we will pay 
for not doing what was right to the Afghan people and just rushing off 
to commit our treasure and our troops into Iraq by stretching ourselves 
too thin so we couldn't do the right thing in Afghanistan.
  Now, what is that price that we're paying? Now, after years after the 
initial success of driving the Taliban out, the Taliban's radical 
Islamic threat is growing. And the response to this threat? Send in 
more U.S. combat troops. Whenever that's been tried as just a simple 
answer, it's failed. Whenever there's been unconventional warfare that 
we have had to deal with, that strategy of sending in more U.S. combat 
units has not worked, whether in Vietnam or Afghanistan or anywhere 
else. Foreign troops in a foreign land fighting as combat units will 
almost always end up in hostile territory, and even those locals 
inclined otherwise will eventually turn against foreign troops to side 
with their own countrymen. That dynamic is very easy to identify.
  President Obama is being asked by General McChrystal, who I deeply 
admire, to send 35,000 more U.S. combat troops into Afghanistan. If my 
experience tells me anything, it is that the introduction of more U.S. 
combat units into Afghanistan will be counterproductive and perhaps 
disastrous. And the likely downside to sending more U.S. combat troops 
is recognized by our own U.S. Ambassador, General Eikenberry, who is 
now our U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. General Eikenberry is a career 
military officer with impeccable credentials and an exemplary record. 
He has told President Obama that more U.S. troops will mean that the 
Afghans will remain dependent on our military rather than stepping 
forward and fighting their own battle.
  By sending more U.S. combat troops, we will encourage exactly the 
wrong behavior by the Afghans. And, obviously, the Afghans have proved 
time and again that they are willing to fight. They're willing to fight 
for their families, for their villages, for their way of life. And, 
yes, they're willing to fight for Afghanistan.

                              {time}  1915

  Well, that is so obvious. Yet the easy answer for America's decision-
makers is to send more U.S. combat troops. Well, easy answers have a 
great deal of appeal to power brokers, but easy answers usually don't 
solve the problems.
  Yes, sending more U.S. combat troops sounds less complicated than 
having to deal with Afghan ethnic, tribal, and village leaders on the 
ground. Sending more troops sounds a lot easier and less complicated 
than undoing the horrendous strategic mistakes our State Department has 
made in forcing a foreign structure onto Afghan society since 9/11.
  In short, our government has tried to force the people of Afghanistan 
to accept centralized rule from Kabul. And even if that government 
wasn't corrupt, even if Karzai's brother wasn't a drug dealer, the 
centralized power and decision-making that we have tried to force on 
the Afghan people--or at least supported that being put on them--is 
totally contrary to the Afghan history and culture. These people are 
brave. They will not be subdued and pacified by a Kabul army or 
especially by a foreign army, even if it's our Army.
  No, we must make allies of the brave people of Afghanistan, not send 
in more U.S. combat troops to fight them. Even if our troops fight 
against their enemies, it is still wrong because even if we're fighting 
against the Taliban, who are our enemies, it is still wrong because it 
creates a dependency of the other Afghans on us to do their fighting. 
And in the long run, the brave, courageous people of Afghanistan will 
not appreciate that we have made them dependent upon us. That will not 
be appreciated.
  They are a people of tremendous integrity. I walked through 
Afghanistan that one week that I spent at the battle of Jalalabad, and 
I remember seeing these people. If they got wounded, if they were 
wounded, they were gone. There was no medical evacuation there. If they 
stepped on a land mine, they were gone. And when they were wounded, 
they didn't cry out in pain. You had young people there fighting right 
alongside elderly people.
  These people were a country, a brave and courageous country. I 
remember as we walked through the countryside, the southern part of 
that country had been blown asunder by Soviet airplanes. People were 
living in caves, and they would come out. They didn't know that I 
wasn't an Afghan. They didn't know that I was American. I had a beard 
and an AK-47 strapped across my shoulder, and they came and they would 
say, Please let us, Mujahedeen, our brothers, let us give you some tea 
and bread. The people would come out of their caves where their 
families were living to give us tea and bread. And as we left, some of 
the Mujahedeen leaders that were with me said, You know, that's all the 
bread they had. Their family is not going to have that bread tonight.
  What kind of people are these? These are wonderfully courageous 
people of integrity, sharing their bread because they were part of this 
national effort. We do not want that power and strength and integrity 
turned against us. We want them on our side, and we must be on their 
side. Sending more U.S. combat troops will not accomplish that mission.
  U.S. Army Major Jim Gant has written a booklet entitled ``One Tribe 
At a Time.'' In it, he details his account of being embedded with 
Afghan villagers, and he lays out a strategy to defeat the Taliban from 
the bottom up, not from the top down. Certainly we will defeat them not 
by sending in more American combat units to do the fighting but, 
instead, let these ferocious people do their own fighting with our 
support.
  It's a cost-effective plan; and even though it's more complex than 
simply sending more troops, it's the only plan that can succeed. It's 
focused on sending our teams, combat teams, to live with the Afghans in 
their villages, helping them build their militia structure, providing 
them guns and ammo and, yes, buying goodwill of their leaders and 
perhaps helping them rebuild their country's infrastructure. Perhaps a 
clinic in a region, perhaps helping them get a clean water supply.
  Afghanistan has the third highest infant mortality rate of any 
country in the world. Yet we want to spend our money sending troops. 
After we promised we would help them rebuild their society, they still 
lose their children not just to land mines that weren't cleared off but 
to dirty water that destroys their children's lives, makes them sick 
and makes them die of diarrhea. It's a terrible, terrible thing.
  And what is the cost of the 35,000 troops that is being suggested 
that we send to Afghanistan? Already I am saying that the strategy 
doesn't work. But what is the actual financial cost? The cost is $35 
billion, $1 billion for every 1,000 troops annually. We can buy all the 
goodwill we need, and we can help rebuild Afghanistan for far less than 
it

[[Page 27878]]

will cost for just 1 year's worth of 35,000 combat troops. For $1 
billion, we could buy the goodwill of the tribal and ethnic leaders.
  For a very small amount of money, we can help them build up their own 
militias by which they can then defend themselves and not worry, Is the 
U.S. going to go away and leave us vulnerable? Americans cannot patrol, 
subdue and pacify every area of the globe where hostile forces lurk, 
especially in Afghanistan. It will break our bank. Our young men and 
women in our services will be unnecessarily killed and maimed; and in 
the end, the same thing will happen to us that happened to the Soviet 
empire: it will break our bank, and the American people will not be 
willing to shoulder responsibility anywhere in the world because of the 
horrendous complications that have arisen from our jumping in to doing 
the battle for everyone in Afghanistan and other places of the world.
  Yes, we do need to use our military forces in places; but if we do 
this, if we send them off to missions that can't be accomplished, we 
are not doing our duty by them. And how do we know that? If there are 
two military truisms, history lessons that should have been learned in 
the last century, they are: Don't march on Moscow, and don't invade 
Afghanistan.
  Afghanistan will not fall to the Taliban if we support those brave 
people who defeated the Taliban. Our State Department, in their rush to 
centralize power in Kabul, actually organized the effort and pushed the 
policy of disarming the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance after their 
initial victory. They have then pushed not to develop the militias. 
Every village in Afghanistan, every male child is considered to be part 
of the militia and is expected to learn how to use the weapons of the 
day.
  Now through that militia, we can mobilize that. And when they say to 
us--and I have read these accounts over and again. They are afraid that 
America might abandon them again. Well, why are they afraid? Because we 
haven't given them the means to defend themselves. We should not only 
give them the means, but we should help them, support them, provide 
them the air support, give them the financial resources, the 
communication gear so that they will win a victory against radical 
Islam.
  That is the only way that radical Islam will be defeated--not by 
sending U.S. troops all over the world and especially into Afghanistan. 
Yet our foreign service continues to rely on more U.S. troops and, yes, 
on building a national army in Afghanistan that will be controlled by 
the government in Kabul, a corrupt government that is not trusted by 
the people of Afghanistan and is not even trusted by our own leaders.
  This is exactly the wrong approach. Instead, as I say, we should arm 
every village militia which will align with us. Any village militia 
that will align with us, we should be on their side. We should give 
them guns, ammo, supplies, and communications gear. We should back them 
up with air support, and, yes, let's have Special Forces teams embedded 
in the villages, like Major Jim Gant has told us would be an effective 
strategy.
  That strategy and buying the goodwill of tribal leaders, people who 
were there leading their--this is a naturally democratic society from 
the bottom up. By the way, our country would have failed had we 
insisted that all the political power in our country would have been 
decided by the central government. It's the States in our country that 
control the education. It's the States that basically control the 
police and the justice of our people. Had we not had that policy from 
day one, our country would not have succeeded.
  Yet we've been trying to push on people who are even more protective 
of their rights to make their own decisions for their own villagers--
we're trying to push a simple government on them which they don't even 
know. Well, that strategy of buying the goodwill of tribal leaders will 
carry the day. We can go in and identify with these leaders there, work 
with them, work with their people. That is the strategy.
  Yes, as Major Gant says, there is risk in this; but the greater risk 
is a strategy of sending more combat units which rumble through the 
countryside. I met with a group of Afghan veterans just last week, and 
they told me that what they were told to do by their commanding 
officers was, you just take hikes through the countryside until they 
get shot at, and then they start firing back. Or they drive their 
trucks and their vehicles through the Afghan countryside and through 
Afghan villages until they are either shot at or they run over some 
kind of an explosive device, and then they retaliate.
  That is not a strategy for victory, and that's what happens when you 
send major combat units into a country rather than trying to defeat the 
enemy in that country from the bottom up, rather than inserting 
something from the top down. Such a strategy of helping the villagers 
there in Afghanistan who have lived under the Taliban--they hate the 
Taliban. They have seen their schoolteachers beheaded. They have seen 
their young girls being treated like dirt and like animals. They do not 
want to live that way, and they will not submit to the Taliban--unless, 
of course, they aren't given any chance to defend themselves.
  The strategy of helping those people who are willing to fight against 
that form of radical Islam that they know and despise, that is a cost-
effective way of dealing with the challenges that we confront in 
Afghanistan. It will cost less in blood. We won't be putting our people 
in harm's way. And, yes, some teams that go there--yes, some of these 
teams that will be embedded with those villagers, some members of those 
teams will lose their lives.
  But I would dare say, and Major Gant says so as well, that far fewer 
American military personnel will lose their lives that way than if we 
continue the strategy, which is basically alienating the people of 
Afghanistan who eventually will rise up against us because the strategy 
is not something that takes into account their own needs at the village 
and tribal level. It will cost us less in blood. It will cost us less 
in treasure than sending more combat troops to use Major Gant's 
strategy and a strategy of working at the bottom level rather than just 
sending in more troops.
  And to help them rebuild their country at long last. Rebuild their 
country after we promised them what we would do after they defeated the 
Soviet Army and after they kicked out the Taliban. But we owe it not 
only to the Afghan people to look very serious about this; we owe it to 
our troops not to send them on a mission that they cannot accomplish. 
We have an opportunity at this time to do the right thing and not just 
to place ourselves in a position to end up with a military, diplomatic, 
financial, and human embarrassment that we will have lost so many 
people and so many lives for nothing, for an outcome, another quagmire.
  I have one last story that I would like to end my speech on tonight, 
and it is a story that I want to make sure people understand. What I am 
saying today is not in any way a bad reflection on our military. The 
fact is, I met with our veterans from Afghanistan last week in my 
office. They support this strategy. Just because I'm saying they can't 
do everything and fight every battle doesn't mean that I don't respect 
them. In fact, I believe they are heroes. Every one of those people 
willing to put their lives on the line, they are heroes. They are 
willing to risk their lives for us. We owe them our best judgment not 
just an easy answer of sending more military people into a conflict.
  My family was a military family. I grew up in a Marine family. My 
father was a lieutenant colonel in the Marines. We were stationed in 
Marine bases until I was 16.

                              {time}  1930

  My brother graduated from Camp Lejeune High School in 1963. His best 
buddy, his very best buddy, graduated from high school with him and 
immediately joined the Marine Corps when he was 17 years old, David 
Battle. David Battle joined the Marine Corps right after he graduated 
with my brother, and he was my brother's best friend. Well, years 
later, when I went to the White House with Ronald

[[Page 27879]]

Reagan, I went to the inaugural ceremony, and then I had off for about 
a week before, or a couple of weeks before, I would actually start on 
the payroll in the White House. My family, my mother and my father and 
my brother, came to the inauguration in 1980, and then we rented a car 
and traveled down to Camp Lejeune to see where we used to live, to see 
if we could remake old acquaintances.
  And we found my brother's best and dearest friend, Sergeant David 
Battle. He was well on his way to retirement. He'd already bought 
himself--only a couple of years away, and he'd bought himself a boat 
that he was going to dig clams and mussels out in the inlets in North 
Carolina and sell it to the local fish markets. He would have his 
retirement. He had served two tours of duty in Vietnam, a wonderful man 
with a wonderful family. His parents were there. His lovely wife was 
there with their two children, and we had an evening that I will never 
forget, a great North Carolina evening.
  And then the next day my family drove to Washington, and I entered 
the White House and took my place on President Reagan's staff. 
President Reagan, as I have mentioned, sent the marines, deployed our 
American marines, into Beirut. It was not a good decision. It was 
something that was a risky proposition and had very little chance of 
success. I knew that, and I actually mentioned it to a lot of people.
  But what especially caught my eye when I was looking at that was that 
the State Department had initiated a policy, a rule of engagement, that 
was accepted by the military, forced on them by the State Department, 
that the marines would not be permitted to have bullets in their guns. 
Their clips would not be in their rifles, would be in pouches because 
the State Department was so afraid they might get trigger happy if they 
were shot at. Yeah. So we sent our marines in. I went around to offices 
in the White House and I pounded on the desk and I said, what are we 
doing here? How could we send our people in to try to defend us and 
tell them they can't, our soldiers, our marines, can't have bullets in 
their guns? This is insane.
  And I was told over and over again, don't worry, Dana. Don't worry. 
Bud McFarlane, George Schultz, Jim Baker, they're all former marines. 
They're going to take care of this. And it didn't get taken care of 
because after I left and was assured it would be taken care of, that 
piece of paper ended up on the bottom of the stack, on the bottom of 
the stack, and our troops, our marines continued for weeks to be in 
harm's way, without bullets in their guns.
  And again, I assumed that these people were going to handle it. I was 
told that they would. And then that horrible day when an Islamic 
terrorist drove a truck filled with explosives through the guard gate 
outside our Marine compound, and the Islamic terrorist smiling because 
he knew our guards could not stop him because their guns were unloaded, 
and he drove that truck into the Marine barracks and blew 290 marines 
to hell--290 marines. And I looked desperately. I looked to see who it 
was, and the first name on the list of casualties was Sergeant David 
Battle, my brother's best friend. I went into my office and wept that 
day.
  And then I stopped crying because I said, I'm going to make a 
resolution right here and now that I will never cease to be pushing and 
pushing and trying to correct a situation that I know is wrong. If it 
takes me being obnoxious, I will do that, because we owe it to the 
people who defend us, the Sergeant David Battles, they salute and march 
off and put themselves in harm's way. They are doing their duty. It is 
up to us to do our duty by them, and not send them on a mission that 
they cannot accomplish, and not send them into harm's way to lose their 
lives for nothing.
  Today, we have a major decision to make in Afghanistan. It is up--I 
would call on all of my colleagues to stand up and be counted on this 
issue, seriously consider what the chances of success are, and if they 
agree with me that the approach being taken of sending more troops in, 
that we stand up and we prevent this policy, like the policy of sending 
our troops into Beirut without bullets in their guns. And we should not 
assume that just sending those guys there will be accomplished because 
other people will watch over and make sure the job's done correctly and 
that our troops are safe.
  It is up to us, each and every one of us, to insist that this 
strategy of simply sending in more troops, at $35 billion, a strategy 
that's more likely to work and accomplish what we want to accomplish, 
is put into place, a strategy that will keep faith with the Afghan 
people, instead of just simply relying on Americans doing more of the 
fighting, help them rebuild their country, rearm them, arm them so they 
can do their own fighting. We owe it to our troops. We owe it to our 
marines, we owe it to the Sergeant David Battles who have given their 
lives over the years for our country, to make sure we do our duty by 
them as they do their duty by us.

                          ____________________