[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 8487]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            USE MORE STICKS, FEWER CARROTS WITH AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, last week's state visit did absolutely 
nothing to ease serious concerns about the leadership of Afghanistan 
President Hamid Karzai. Our counterterrorism strategy is supposed to 
depend on having a stable, responsive, transparent, democratic 
government that enjoys the confidence of the Afghan people. Instead, 
Mr. Karzai's government has proven itself to be irresponsible and 
ineffective in a way that jeopardizes his country's future and the 
safety of American troops. Karzai has lashed out at the United States, 
even threatening at one point to join the Taliban. And our own 
Ambassador to Afghanistan has publicly questioned his reliability as a 
strategic partner.
  While we have no choice but to have a dialogue with President Karzai, 
it is critical that our approach to this relationship involve at least 
as many sticks as carrots. We owe the American people some assurance 
that we are not letting the Afghan Government misuse our tax dollars 
with impunity.
  Mr. Speaker, the Center for American Progress has a new report that 
discusses the crisis of governance in Afghanistan. The government, it 
says, ``operates on a highly centralized patronage model in which power 
and resources are channeled through Karzai's personal and political 
allies. The system lacks the connection, the rules, and the checks and 
balances necessary to make leaders truly accountable to the domestic 
population.''
  One of the allies, Mr. Speaker, referenced in the report is Karzai's 
brother, a thuggish political boss who rules Kandahar with an iron 
fist. There is evidence that he operates his own militia and is 
actively involved in the drug trade. The report goes on to note that 
our Afghanistan strategy has overemphasized the military solution and 
neglected the critical task of helping build viable state organs, 
especially at the local level.
  In Marja, for example, we left no government infrastructure behind 
after the military cleared out the Taliban. Our single-minded focus on 
using hard power to vanquish terrorists just isn't working. The Taliban 
remains a potent political force; and the more government fails to 
provide basic services, the more likely are the Afghan people to rush 
into the arms of the Taliban.
  The answer, Mr. Speaker, is the smart security platform. I have been 
advocating this smart security platform for years. Instead of a 
military surge which represents more of the same old failed policy, 
what we clearly need is an aggressive civilian surge.

                              {time}  1930

  We need to divert resources away from troop deployment and toward 
programs that will empower the Afghan people and bolster the capacity 
and competence of their government, a government that works for their 
people and with the international community.
  At his press conference with President Karzai, President Obama said 
that ``Afghans are a proud people who have suffered and sacrificed 
greatly because of their determination to shape their own destiny.'' 
Mr. Speaker, that is undoubtedly true, and that's why they deserve 
better than government by cronyism, and American troops also deserve 
better than to shed blood for a corrupt and dysfunctional regime.
  So, Mr. Speaker, it's time to bring our troops home and launch a 
smart security plan, and it's important that we do it today.

                          ____________________