[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14539]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        A DECADE IN AFGHANISTAN

  (Mr. QUIGLEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. QUIGLEY. Mr. Speaker, we have been in Afghanistan for 10 years.
  Two years ago, on the eighth anniversary of our invasion of 
Afghanistan, I stood in this same spot and asked: Have our 8 years, 791 
American deaths, and billions of U.S. dollars spent in Afghanistan made 
America safer? My conclusion, sadly, was no.
  Two years later, I am left asking the same questions and reaching the 
same conclusions: al-Qaeda is still not primarily in Afghanistan, but 
in Pakistan, Yemen, Africa and elsewhere. We still cannot afford a vast 
ground war and rebuilding effort abroad. We should be fighting a 
smaller, smarter war that goes after terrorists instead of building 
nations. It's time to get out of Afghanistan before another year passes 
and we are back here saying the same thing all over again.

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