[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 10949]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




CIVILIAN AID TO AFGHANISTAN: IF IT'S SO IMPORTANT, WHY AREN'T WE DOING 
                              MORE OF IT?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Woolsey) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, there was a very compelling op-ed piece in 
The Washington Post last week by U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan 
Crocker. In it, he paid tribute to the many American civilians who are 
risking their lives doing important humanitarian work to bring security 
and stability to Afghanistan.
  I couldn't agree more with Ambassador Crocker that those men and 
women working for or contracting with the State Department or USAID are 
doing extraordinary work rebuilding infrastructure, helping children to 
go to school, improving infant and maternal health, wiring the Afghan 
people to the Internet.
  Mr. Speaker, the burning question is this: If this work is so 
important, why aren't we doing more of it? The human need in 
Afghanistan is far greater than the resources we're devoting to the 
effort.
  For the last few years, we've had a military surge in Afghanistan, a 
surge that's led to more death, more violence, more instability, and 
more strength for the extremists and insurgent forces we're trying to 
defeat.
  What we need, Mr. Speaker, is a civilian surge. We need a great 
emphasis on development and diplomacy, on democracy promotion and debt 
relief, on peacekeeping and conflict resolution, not just in 
Afghanistan, but in impoverished and unstable countries around the 
developing world.
  All of this is at the heart of the SMART Security proposal that I've 
been promoting since 2004 that I introduced during the middle of the 
Iraq war. Contrary to the conventional wisdom we've been fed, military 
aggression does not advance our national security goals. It undermines 
them. It makes us less safe, not more. It emboldens terrorists, instead 
of vanquishing them.
  We've tried it this way for more than a decade now, Mr. Speaker, and 
it simply has not worked. It hasn't fundamentally changed the fortunes 
of the Afghan people, and it hasn't driven the Taliban and other 
terrorist networks into oblivion.
  At an international conference on aid to Afghanistan this past 
weekend, Secretary of State Clinton said that the administration would 
request Afghanistan aid funding at or near levels provided over the 
last decade. But at or near is not enough. It comes to somewhere 
between $1 billion to $4 billion a year, which seems like a lot of 
money, until you realize that's what we spend on military operations in 
Afghanistan roughly every week or so; $10 billion a month waging a 
destructive war on Afghanistan that is killing civilians, but only a 
few billion dollars a year rebuilding Afghanistan and empowering 
civilians.
  That just doesn't make sense. Ambassador Crocker has pointed this 
out. Our priorities are totally out of whack.
  We can't continue on the same current destructive course, Mr. 
Speaker. This military occupation is failing America and failing 
Afghanistan.
  Let's finally end this war. Let's bring our troops safely home and 
start investing in civilian aid and other SMART security initiatives, 
and let's do it now.
  Let's also expand these initiatives to prevent war around the world.

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