[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 16359]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Jones) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, at this point in our Nation's history, I 
believe both parties will acknowledge that we have major economic 
issues facing our country. As Congress just recently came to a 
temporary resolution which raised the debt ceiling by $230 billion, it 
is incredible to me that we still found $30 billion in aid to send to 
Afghanistan and $1.6 billion in aid to send to Pakistan.
  Mr. Speaker, at a time when America is drowning in debt, this is 
completely unacceptable. And even more important than the money are the 
American lives that have been lost--six in the time the government was 
shut down and one the weekend after.
  As we work to fix our national problems, we should be wise enough to 
follow the lead of the nations who have interfered in Afghanistan 
before us--England and Russia are only two examples--and stop wasting 
lives and money on a country that will never change. History tells us 
that it is time to bring our troops home.
  I want to thank ABC News for their effort each Sunday morning during 
``This Week with George Stephanopoulos'' to faithfully list the names 
of the Americans who have been killed in Afghanistan, just as they did 
during the Iraq war. It is with sadness that I report that they have 
added seven names to this list over the last 3 weeks.
  Mr. Speaker, on the poster beside me are the faces of two little 
girls, Stephanie and Eden, whose father, Sergeant Kevin Balduf, from 
Camp Lejeune Marine Base, which is in my district, was killed in 
Afghanistan. He and Colonel Palmer, from Cherry Point Marine Air 
Station, also in my district, were trying to train the Afghans to be 
policemen. One of the trainees turned their pistol on Palmer and Balduf 
and killed both of them. So these little girls are standing at 
Arlington Cemetery with their mom holding their hands.
  Perhaps more disheartening is the fact that two of the most recent 
deaths in Afghanistan also were an example of Afghans that we were 
trying to train killing Americans. We were just trying to help them.
  Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago, I spoke on the floor about an article I 
read, entitled, ``The Forgotten War'' by Ann Jones. I also will submit 
an article written by an Iraq war veteran named Jayel Aheram, who now 
attends the University of Southern California, which is entitled, 
``Afghanistan War Must End Immediately.'' Both of these articles hold 
the same conclusion: the war in Afghanistan is a misuse of American 
youth, American money, and American military power.
  It is time for the Congress of the United States to face the fact 
that we have our own problems here in America. To send over $600 
billion to Afghanistan to build roads, schools, and utility plants so 
the Taliban can blow them up makes no sense.
  It is time for little girls like these two to have their daddies at 
home and not in a coffin.

                 [From the Daily Trojan, Oct. 7, 2013]

                  Afghanistan War Must End Immediately

                           (By Jayel Aheram)

       Yesterday marked the 12 year anniversary of the war in 
     Afghanistan. Americans have grown weary of the drawn-out 
     conflict's undefined goals and increasingly unsustainable 
     financial costs. According to a CBS News poll, support for 
     the war in Afghanistan plummeted last year to its lowest with 
     only 1 in 4 Americans agreeing that the United States is 
     doing the right thing. President Barack Obama responded to 
     this political reality when he announced last February that 
     ``by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be 
     over.'' But will there really be an end to the Afghanistan 
     war?
       There were three ends to the war in Iraq: The first was in 
     May 2003, when President George W. Bush announced, ``Mission 
     accomplished,'' in an infamous speech aboard the USS Abraham 
     Lincoln just two months after the invasion of Iraq. The 
     second was in September 2010, when ``combat troops'' silently 
     crossed the Iraqi border into Kuwait, an event Obama's MSNBC 
     boosters were breathlessly proclaimed as the triumphant ``End 
     of the Iraq War.'' The third was in December 2011, when the 
     Iraqi parliament refused to grant further immunity to U.S. 
     troops beyond 2011, finally forcing to U.S. troops' 
     withdrawal from Iraq. If Iraq had three ``end of wars,'' how 
     many will there be in Afghanistan? According to the 
     Washington Post, a few thousand U.S. combat troops will 
     likely remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014 to train and advise 
     security forces. Despite this promise by Obama of the war's 
     end, American presence in Afghanistan will merely add to the 
     grim death toll after 2014.
       According to Los Angeles Times, an American service member 
     was killed last week in an ``insider attack''--incidents 
     where Afghan allies attack the U.S. troops who train them. 
     This recent event follows another from the weekend before in 
     which three U.S. troops were killed. According to NATO, in 
     2011 and 2012, 97 coalition members were killed by their 
     Afghan counterparts in these insider attacks. Even as the 
     United States shifts its role from combat to advisory and 
     training, deaths from insider attacks will most likely 
     continue. Taliban leaders, including Mullah Muhammad Omar, 
     have urged their sympathizers and members to continue to 
     infiltrate the security forces and kill American trainers and 
     Afghan trainees.
       Bob Dreyfuss wrote in The Nation that military commanders 
     believe in an ``insurgent math''--that is, for every civilian 
     the U.S. military kills, 20 insurgents take their place. 
     Approximately 6,841 civilians have been killed since the 
     beginning of the Afghanistan war. Using this ``insurgent 
     math,'' that would mean the U.S. military has created more 
     than 120,000 insurgents who continue to threaten the lives of 
     U.S. troops and Afghans loyal to the Karzai regime. These 
     newly created insurgents have empowered the Taliban as 
     evidenced by a recent article by the Associated Press, which 
     reported that Taliban fighters have started an insurgent 
     campaign of regaining lost territories as foreign troops 
     depart. After 12 long years, $600 billion spent, more than 
     2,000 military deaths, 6,000 civilian deaths and tens of 
     thousands of lives irrevocably altered, when will Americans 
     muster the political will and courage to end America's 
     longest war? Renaming the war is not progress, it is not 
     peace and it will certainly not stop American deaths.

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