[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8620-8621]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          1,000 AMERICANS DEAD IN AFGHANISTAN IS FAR TOO MANY

  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, on Tuesday, a suicide bomber deliberately 
crashed his minivan on a street in Kabul during one of the busiest 
times of the day. According to The New York Times account, and I quote 
them, ``The blast blew bodies apart. Limbs and entrails flew hundreds 
of feet, littering yards and walls and streets. In a passenger bus, an 
Afghan woman lay dead in her seat, cut in half, with her baby still 
squirming in her arms. Fifty yards away, a man's head lay on the hood 
of a truck.'' It was the most devastating strike seen in the Afghan 
capital in some time, Madam Speaker. It served as a kind of ``welcome 
home'' from the insurgents to President Karzai, just returning home 
from his visit to the United States, who was getting ready to brief 
reporters at the Presidential palace, just a short distance away from 
the site of the explosion.
  Aside from the gruesome civilian casualties, this attack is also 
significant because it claimed the lives of five of our soldiers, which 
brings the total number of U.S. troop fatalities in the war in 
Afghanistan to over 1,000. This tragic milestone should fill us with 
horror, Madam Speaker. It should keep every one of us awake at night.
  For years, the failure to make progress in Afghanistan flew under the 
radar as the war in Iraq grabbed most of the attention and headlines. 
But more than 100 months into the Afghanistan conflict, the mission is 
clearly floundering. More than half of those 1,000 deaths have occurred 
just since September of 2008. The decision to send more troops has only 
intensified the violence and emboldened the militants, doing nothing to 
bring lasting stability to Afghanistan and to its people.
  This war has not accomplished any of its stated goals. Here we are, 
8\1/2\ years after we supposedly drove out the Taliban, and lo and 
behold, the Taliban is resurgent, poised to fill the power vacuum in 
districts and villages where we've done nothing to build strong and 
legitimate governing institutions. Remember the reportedly successful 
military offensive over the winter in Marja? A few months later, it 
turns out, the residents are fleeing in droves because the Taliban has 
reasserted itself. One U.S. official now calls Marja ``a work in 
progress but not trending in the right direction.'' And this is one of 
the places where we had declared victory.

[[Page 8621]]

  We have been patient, Madam Speaker. We have given the strategy a 
chance to work. It failed. It has failed at nearly every turn, and 
1,000 deaths is far too many. Before the number grows, let's bring our 
troops home.

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