[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 12059]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   THE SITUATION IN AFGHANISTAN TODAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Kinzinger) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KINZINGER of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, this is a very important 
issue that, unfortunately, hasn't gotten as much attention lately as it 
should.
  I'm a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, spent most of my time in Iraq; 
but I remember I was in a nation outside of Afghanistan getting ready 
to fly an airplane one day, this was back in the mid-2000s, and, Mr. 
Speaker, the majority leader from the other Chamber basically got on 
television and said, the war in Iraq is lost. He said, it's lost, it's 
done, it's over. I remember that because I was on a treadmill getting 
ready to go fly a mission into Afghanistan when I heard that.
  The interesting thing about that is, I guarantee you, our enemy in 
Iraq probably cheered loudly at the moment they saw the majority leader 
from the Senate say those words.
  We know that something very courageous happened. The President of the 
United States at the time said, not only is the war not lost, we're 
sending more troops and we're going to win this thing, and we did. We 
saw the enemy realize that America could never be defeated on the 
battlefield, it could only be defeated by its will, and President Bush 
sent a very strong and loud message that America's will will not be 
defeated.
  This is a situation we face in Afghanistan today. Look, as a Member 
of Congress, as a politician, the easiest thing for me to do is to 
stand up here and say the war in Afghanistan is lost and we need to 
just go home.
  And I tell you, you look at the polling, and with the lack of a 
President leading this country on the public opinion side of what we're 
doing in Afghanistan, I'd probably get a lot of people sending Facebook 
messages and emails saying, go get 'em; it's time to leave Afghanistan.
  But you know what? If I did that, I wouldn't be able to look at 
myself in the mirror and say that I did the right thing, because the 
right thing is generations of people that have lived under oppression 
and have lived for years under the Taliban regime. They stood up. They 
kicked the Taliban out of their nation, and they've looked at the 
United States and said, it took you decades at your inception to get 
your democracy right. Help us get our democracy right.
  What's at stake here?
  I look over here at this picture, and I see a couple of things. I 
see, number one, a girl by the name of Bibi; and if you could look 
closely at that picture, you would see that she does not have a nose or 
ears. They were actually cut off by the Taliban. They were cut off by 
swift justice because somebody in her family committed a crime, sold 
her into marriage at the age of 14 years old.
  And at 15 years old she left her abusive husband, went to her uncle's 
house, who turned his back on her, and eventually she was captured and 
apprehended by the Taliban, as they forced her family to cut her nose 
and ears off as justice for running away from a terrible situation.
  She eventually escaped and went to an American forward operating base 
and was saved. And then you see in this other picture, as she lives in 
the United States, she has a prosthetic nose today and is living as 
close to a normal life as possible, despite the trauma that she 
suffered.
  On the bottom down here, you'll see a number of girls in school right 
now, learning and being educated. You know, before we went into 
Afghanistan, there was something like 800,000 people in school. Today 
it's over 6 million.
  In fact, did you know that 60 percent of the Afghan population is 
under the age of 20?
  And there's this movement in Afghanistan called the Civil Society in 
which they stand up and say it's time for freedom and it's time to take 
our country back.
  Are you also aware, Mr. Speaker, that every province is now under 
control of Afghanistan, and the United States has reverted to a 
training mission and a counterterrorism mission. These are all huge 
victories for the Afghan people that we ought to be celebrating.
  But, instead, I wake up the other day and I look in the paper, and 
the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, is 
saying we are exploring an option after 2014 to take all troops out of 
Afghanistan.
  Now, let me ask you a question: Do you think that made the Taliban 
frightened, or do you think they cheered when they saw the President of 
the United States say, I'm considering all troops gone after 2014?
  The whole year of 2014 was pulled out of the hat for political 
reasons. When you say that we're surging in Afghanistan, but as the 
last troop goes in, the first troop's coming out from the surge, it's 
not very effective.
  You know, the Taliban have a saying, actually, that says, America may 
have the watches, but we have the time.
  Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Speaker, we are on the verge of a clear 
victory in Afghanistan for the Afghan people. The biggest mistake we 
can make today is to let politics come into play and to withdraw and 
leave zero troops after 2014. In 50 years, history will judge us for 
that.

                          ____________________