[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14822-14823]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      10TH ANNIVERSARY OF OUR SEEMINGLY ENDLESS WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Madam Speaker, I rise along with others this 
morning to note the 10th anniversary of our seemingly endless war in 
Afghanistan. This is a war that long ago became much more about money 
for the Pentagon and defense contractors than about any real threat to 
the American people.
  And, unfortunately, just yesterday we authorized spending at a level 
of $118.7 billion for the coming year in Iraq and Afghanistan. Madam 
Speaker, we have turned the Defense Department into the Department of 
Foreign Aid, and the American people are tired of it. They want us to 
stop rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan and start taking care of our own 
people.
  We have spent and are spending billions and billions, hundreds of 
billions that we do not have, that we are having to borrow on people 
who do not appreciate it unless they are on our payroll.
  I know last year, Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan, told 
ABCNews that he wanted us to stay there another 15 or 20 years. Well, 
he wants our money; but we don't have enough of it, and we can't afford 
this.
  Alfred Regnery, the publisher of the conservative The American 
Spectator magazine wrote last October that ``Afghanistan has little 
strategic value'' and ``the war is one of choice rather than 
necessity.'' He added that it has been a wasteful and frustrating 
decade.
  General Petraeus testified in front of one of the congressional 
committees several months ago that we should never forget that 
Afghanistan has become ``the graveyard of empires.''
  The American people do not want, nor can we afford, endless, 
permanent wars; nor do they want 11- or 12-year wars that last about 
three times as long as World War II.
  Charlie Reese was a columnist for the Orlando newspaper, and a few 
years ago, probably in the mid- or late 1990s, he was voted the most 
popular columnist by C-SPAN viewers. Over 25,000 people, I think, 
participated in that poll.
  But he was very much opposed to these wars, and he wrote this about 
the Iraq war, but it applies equally well to Afghanistan: He said this 
war was ``against a country that was not attacking us, did not have the 
means to attack us, and had never expressed any intention of attacking 
us. And for whatever real reason we attacked, it was not to save 
America from any danger, imminent or otherwise.''
  William F. Buckley, Jr., the conservative icon, wrote this a few 
years ago: He said, ``A respect for the power of the United States is 
engendered by our success in engagements in which we take part. A point 
is reached when tenacity conveys not steadfastness of purpose, but 
misapplication of pride.''
  I want to repeat that. He said, ``A respect for the power of the 
United States is engendered by our success in engagements in which we 
take part. A point is reached when tenacity conveys not steadfastness 
of purpose, but misapplication of pride.''
  I think the American people long ago reached the point where they 
felt that these wars should come to an end and we should start taking 
care of our own country.
  Georgie Ann Geyer, the conservative foreign policy columnist, wrote 
this a few years ago: ``Americans, still strangely complacent about 
overseas wars being waged by a minority in their name, will inevitably 
come to a point where they will see they have to have a government that 
provides services at home or one that seeks empire across the globe.''
  Madam Speaker, fiscal conservatives should be the ones most horrified 
by all this waste and all this spending. I wonder sometimes if there 
are any conservatives at the Pentagon, any fiscal conservatives at the 
Pentagon.

[[Page 14823]]

  I will say once again, these wars became long ago more about money 
and power than they did about any real threat. It is a shame what we 
are doing to the young people of this country, both those in the 
military and those outside the military.
  Just this past Sunday, I went to the funeral of another soldier, a 
young 21-year-old man in Madisonville, Tennessee, who had been killed 
in Afghanistan. And I can tell you it's time to stop all the killings 
of all of our young people and let them have a good future in this 
country once again.

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