[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 19098-19099]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN AND NO DEFINITION OF ``VICTORY''

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I have to my side the faces of marines who 
have given their lives for this country. They are from Camp Lejeune, 
which is in the district I represent. These are the faces of those 
young men and women who gave their lives for this country.
  I come to the floor today because I join the American people. I am 
very concerned about committing our troops to 4 more years in 
Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a vast country. It has never been a nation. 
It doesn't have a government, and we are trying to build a government 
in Afghanistan. I want to share just a couple of comments. This is from 
The Washington Examiner.
  It reads: ``Catch-and-Release of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan 
angers troops.''
  ``More than 500 suspected Taliban fighters detained by United States 
forces have been released from custody at the urging of Afghan 
Government officials, angering both American troops and some Afghans 
who oppose the policy on the grounds that many of those released return 
to the battlefield to kill NATO soldiers and Afghan civilians.''
  Recently, on November 28 of this year, there was a ``60 Minutes'' 
segment by Anderson Cooper. It was called ``Good Cop, Bad Cop: 
Afghanistan's National Police.'' I want to read just a couple of 
excerpts from this:
  ``While the Afghan Army has made some strides in recent years, the 
national police force has developed a reputation for drug abuse, 
illiteracy and desertion.''
  ``Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that up to 19 
Afghan police officers from southwest of Kabul defected to the Taliban 
en masse, taking their guns with them and burning down their own 
station house.''
  Just another part from that ``60 Minutes'':
  ``What is certain is that the United States has spent 9 years and 
more than $7 billion building and training the Afghan police force. 
``60 Minutes'' wanted to find out what has become of that investment.''
  I am going to paraphrase very quickly:
  There has been very little success. The Afghan police are still 9 
years behind in training, and we have already spent 9 years training 
them. I don't know how that adds up to anything positive.
  I am going to save some of the other comments from the ``60 Minutes'' 
segment to use later on this week and to use, certainly, next year when 
we come back.
  Mr. Speaker, I have signed over 9,747 letters to families and 
extended families who have lost loved ones in the wars in Iraq and 
Afghanistan. I do that every weekend so I can be reminded of my mistake 
of voting to give President Bush the authority to go into Iraq--a war 
we never had to fight. It was manipulated by those within the 
administration, and it never had to be; and, yes, we lost young men and 
women in that battle.
  On Afghanistan, I have joined my colleagues on both the Democratic 
side and the Republican side to ask: What is the end point? What is the 
definition of ``victory''? What are we trying to achieve? You can never 
get a straight answer. I don't care who gives you an answer; you don't 
know what the end point is.
  So there we are, spending $6 billion, $7 billion a month in 
Afghanistan, but we can't fix the streets in America. We

[[Page 19099]]

can't build schools in America; yet we have borrowed that $6 billion, 
$7 billion from our Chinese friends. We owe them the money while we 
spend it in a foreign country, and we can't even take care of our own 
people.

                              {time}  1910

  So, Mr. Speaker, again, the faces of these young marines--and they 
could be soldiers, they could be airmen, they could be Navy, but these 
young marines who died at 20 and 21, the only thing their parents can 
do in the years ahead, or their loved ones, is to show the face of a 
21-year-old marine that died at 21 and will always be seen as a young 
man who gave his life for this country.
  It's time for this Congress to come together and say to President 
Obama, We don't need 4 more years of spending money--and more important 
than money is the blood of the American soldier and marine and 
serviceman that is dying for this country.
  So with that, Mr. Speaker, I will, as I always do, I will ask God to 
please bless our men and women in uniform, to please bless the families 
of our men and women in uniform, to bless the families who have given a 
child dying for freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I will ask God to 
please bless the House and Senate, that we will do what is right in the 
eyes of God. And I will ask God to please give wisdom, strength and 
courage to President Obama, that he will do what is right in the eyes 
of God for today and tomorrow's generation.

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