[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 18156]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       DESTROYING THEIR PROPERTY AND INSULTING THEIR INTELLIGENCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Madam Speaker, the trip taken by the U.S. delegation to 
the NATO summit in Lisbon was an expensive one indeed. The decision 
made there to extend our military occupation of Afghanistan into 2014 
and possibly beyond will exact untold, unsustainable, unacceptable 
costs.
  A war that has already tragically cost us 1,400 American lives will 
now take many hundreds more. A war that has already drained the 
Treasury of $370 billion will drive us further into debt and stall our 
economic recovery. And a war that has undermined our national security 
goals will continue to make us less safe.
  Here we are patting down holiday travelers at the airport while we 
escalate a war that is fomenting, rather than fighting, terrorism. 
That's the current state of our national security policy. Talk about 
missing the forest for the trees.
  This decision to stay the disastrous course in Afghanistan represents 
a broken promise plain and simple, a promise that was to at least begin 
ending this war in July of next year. Meanwhile, as the timetable 
extends, the tactics seem to grow more violent.
  Remember shock and awe in Iraq? Well, we are now engaged in what one 
American officer called, ``Awe, shock, and firepower'' in the form of 
enormous tanks now rolling into Afghanistan for the first time during 
this war. As if Afghans needed another reminder of the 1980s Soviet 
invasion, which was heavy on tank artillery, and left an indelible mark 
on the national consciousness.
  The optics here, Madam Speaker, are very bad, and the rhetoric is 
disturbing as well, with one official boasting to the Washington Post, 
and I quote him, he said, ``We've taken the gloves off.'' And another 
saying that counterinsurgency, and I quote him, ``doesn't mean you 
don't blow up stuff or kill people who need to be killed.'' Of course, 
the problem is that we are killing a lot of people who don't need to be 
killed, innocent civilians caught in the crossfire.
  How exactly are we supposed to win people's hearts and minds when we 
are destroying their homes and exterminating their families? When will 
we understand that this kind of warfare, this entire war is the best 
propaganda tool the Taliban could ask for? And besides, Madam Speaker, 
tank deployment flies directly in the face of the COIN doctrine that is 
supposed to be guiding our Afghanistan strategy. We have all heard 
General Petraeus wax philosophical about U.S. troops moving within 
communities, helping forge a bond between the people and their 
government. Except that tanks and night raids are about just the 
opposite--removing our troops from Afghan communities in favor of 
launching deadly explosives from a safe distance.
  But apparently NATO officials have come up with a creative way out of 
that contradiction. The Post reports that an Afghan farmer asked a 
general at a public meeting, ``Why do you have to blow up so many of 
our fields and homes?'' He was told that when villagers travel to town 
to submit a claim for property damage it helps better connect them to 
their government. Can you imagine a response more galling, Madam 
Speaker? Now we are not only destroying their property, we are 
insulting their intelligence, too.
  This must end, it must end now. And Madam Speaker, we must bring our 
troops home. Our troops should have come home a long time ago.

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