[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 21]
[House]
[Page 28252]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         KARZAI INAUGURATION NO CURE FOR WHAT AILS AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, today Hamid Karzai was inaugurated to 
serve another 5-year term as President of Afghanistan. International 
leaders, including President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, are 
calling upon Karzai to reform his government, clean up corruption, and 
make us all proud of being his allies.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, there is an old saying that fits this occasion, 
``Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.'' The Karzai 
government is ineffective, incompetent, and corrupt. He stole the 
elections. He has placed drug lords and warlords in key positions of 
power and influence. He has tolerated and promoted cronyism, graft, and 
a flourishing drug trade in his government and throughout his country, 
all of which have destroyed the confidence of the Afghan people in 
their own government and contributed to the resurgence of the Taliban.
  What in the world makes anyone believe that he will be a catalyst for 
change? If someone won an election by committing rampant fraud, 
wouldn't he be more likely to commit fraud again and again? Why would 
he change a winning strategy? If someone personally picked and 
appointed warlords to take up key positions in his government, what 
makes you think he will now kick them out? Because the U.S. and Gordon 
Brown of Great Britain have asked him to?
  If corruption and cronyism keep his friends healthy, wealthy, and 
happy, what makes you think he will turn off the spigot? Because he 
creates a special commission to look into the problem? Because his 
corrupt police are now going to have a special anticorruption unit and 
a unit to fight major crime?
  What have they been doing up until now? Is he going to morph into 
being a new man, a different kind of leader, because he put a few words 
into his inaugural address about the need to create a clean government, 
the kind of government that people can trust?
  Corruption is like a sickness, easier to spread than to cure.
  Mr. Speaker, we do not have a partner we can trust in Afghanistan, 
yet we are asking tens of thousands of our servicemen and -women to go 
to Afghanistan and fight and die for Mr. Karzai's government. That's 
too high a price to pay, Mr. Speaker.
  Soon the President will announce and outline the new U.S. strategy in 
Afghanistan, including a likely increase in the number of troops to be 
deployed there. I believe in the President's desire to do what's good 
for Afghanistan and the United States. I believe he wants to get it 
right and to be able to hand off to his successor at some point in the 
future a stable country, an Afghanistan that has turned the corner on 
violence and division and is beginning to flourish and develop once 
again.
  I want that, too. But I do not think that sending more troops to a 
corrupt government is going to achieve that, no matter how many 
commissions and special police units are created or how many pretty 
words are put into an inaugural address. We should not send a single 
additional soldier to Afghanistan. It's that simple. We cannot afford 
to be fooled again.

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