[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 4679]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       GETTING OUT OF AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Jones) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago, we had the opportunity 
to vote to bring our troops home from Afghanistan. It was Mr. 
Kucinich's resolution that many of us hoped that my party would have 
joined. We only had eight Republicans vote to bring our troops home 
this year from Afghanistan.
  Mr. Speaker, what is so ironic, we sit on this floor and we debate 
cutting the budget, doing this and that, and yet we are supporting a 
corrupt leader named Karzai in Afghanistan.
  In fact, I want to share with the people that a former Marine general 
is my confidential adviser. I don't have permission to use his name. I 
could, I guess, but I don't have his permission. This is what he said 
in a recent email to me:
  ``What do we say to the mother and father, the wife, of the last 
soldier or marine killed to support a corrupt government and corrupt 
leader in a war that can't be won?''
  Let me share with you, Mr. Speaker, a couple of comments from the 
leader of Afghanistan, President Karzai, on March 12, 2011, in The New 
York Times:
  ``I request that NATO and America should stop these operations on our 
soil,'' he said. ``This war is not on our soil. If this war is against 
terror, then this war is not here'' because there is no terrorism here 
on our soil.
  Karzai further stated, on December 8, 2010, in a meeting with 
Petraeus and Eikenberry, that he now has three main enemies: the 
Taliban, the United States, and the international community. He said, 
``If I had to choose sides today, I'd choose the Taliban.''
  This is the leader of a country where our young men and women are 
going and getting killed and losing their legs and their arms. It makes 
no sense, Mr. Speaker.
  According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll on March 15 of this 
year, 73 percent of Americans no longer think the war in Afghanistan is 
worth fighting. Mr. Speaker, 73 percent of the American people say the 
war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting.
  I was very disappointed when Secretary Gates recently spoke to the 
Armed Services Committee, which I serve on, and I would like to read 
his quote because we are going to be there until about 2014 or 2015 
unless this Congress demands that we start bringing our troops home. 
This is his quote:
  ``That is why we believe that, beginning in fiscal year 2015, the 
U.S. can, with minimal risk, begin reducing Army active duty end 
strength by 27,000 and the Marine Corps by somewhere between 15,000 and 
20,000. These projections assume that the number of troops in 
Afghanistan would be significantly reduced by the end of 2014, in 
accordance with the President's strategy.''
  Mr. Speaker, we are going to be there until 2014 or maybe even 2015.
  I also would like to show this poster. This was in the Greensboro, 
North Carolina, paper called the News & Record on February 27, 2011. 
There's a flag-draped coffin coming off a plane, Mr. Speaker, and the 
paper in Mr. Howard Coble's district said, ``Get out.'' Get out of 
Afghanistan before it's too late. And it's a black hole with no end to 
it.
  In closing, Mr. Speaker, I would like to read from a letter from a 
marine down in my district, Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North 
Carolina. He served 31 years and retired as a colonel in the United 
States Marine Corps.
  ``I urge you to make contact with all of the current and newly 
elected men and women to Congress and ask them to end this war and 
bring our young men and women home. If any of my comments will assist 
in this effort, you are welcome to use them and my name,'' Dennis G. 
Adams, Lieutenant Colonel, Retired, United States Marine Corps.
  Mr. Speaker, before I close, yesterday, with Congresswoman Sue 
Myrick, I went to Walter Reed Hospital to visit the young soldiers and 
marines who have lost their legs, their arms. Two of them that we saw, 
Mr. Speaker, have no body parts below their waist. No body parts below 
their waist. And here we are supporting a corrupt leader of a nation 
that, quite frankly, will never be a nation. It is a country.

                              {time}  1030

  It is not a nation. It never will have a national government. Why are 
we wasting $7 billion a month in Afghanistan, and our young men and 
women are coming back with broken bodies?
  Mr. Speaker, it is time to get out of Afghanistan. I close by asking 
God to please bless our men and women in uniform. I ask God to please 
bless the families of our men and women in uniform. I ask God, in his 
loving arms, to hold the families who've given a child dying for 
freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq.
  I ask God to bless the House and Senate that we will do what is right 
in the eyes of God. And I will ask God to please bless the President, 
that he will do what is right in the eyes of God.
  And I will say three times, God, please, God, please, God, please 
continue to bless America.

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