[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12523-12524]
[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, last week, as we debated the Defense 
appropriations bill for the upcoming year, my

[[Page 12524]]

good friend, Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, joined me in 
a measure that would guarantee that Congress would vote on funding the 
Enduring Strategic Partisanship Agreement with Afghanistan. This 
agreement with Afghanistan is a 10-year agreement that will start after 
2014. It has been negotiated and will soon be signed by President Obama 
and President Karzai.
  During the debate, I quoted the former Commandant of the Marine Corps 
with regard to this agreement. I called him and asked him what he 
thought about the agreement. He sent me a paragraph back. I used one 
sentence that I will use again today, Mr. Speaker:

       Simply put, I am not in favor of this agreement signed. It 
     basically keeps the United States in Afghanistan to prop up a 
     corrupt regime. It continues to place our troops at risk.

  The amendment failed. I want to thank the 76 Republicans who joined 
me in that vote, along with 100 Democrats, but it failed.
  The problem is we really have no oversight in Afghanistan. It is a 
joke at best. The joke is, though, it is not really a joke because of 
the young men and women who are dying in Afghanistan, even today. The 
waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan goes unchecked. We sent 
inspectors general over there. They do their best, but it is a no-win 
situation in Afghanistan.
  Mr. Speaker, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll just last 
week, only 28 percent of the American people believe the war in 
Afghanistan has been worth fighting. I believe that that number would 
be even lower if they knew that we are going to sign a 10-year 
agreement with Afghanistan after 2014. If they were polled on that, I 
believe that the 28 percent would go down to about 8 percent.
  The American people are just finding out that we have this 10-year 
agreement with Afghanistan where we keep spending billions of dollars 
per month and have a presence of at least 10,000 to 15,000 military.
  During this same week last week, a poll was done of Congress, and 12 
percent of the American people approve of Congress. If it gets much 
lower, we will be right at zero. And I'm not sure the American people 
will be wrong if they give us a zero, quite frankly, especially when I 
look at the fact that we continue to spend money in Afghanistan; we 
continue to cut programs right here in America for our young, our old, 
and our infrastructure.
  The American people are frustrated and fed up because they don't 
think we in Congress are listening to them. When it comes back to 
Afghanistan and the fact that we would allow a 10-year agreement to go 
on with a corrupt leader in Afghanistan, it makes no sense to the 
American people; it makes no sense to many of us in Congress in both 
parties.
  Mr. Speaker, during that debate, I made the statement on the floor 10 
minutes after 11 p.m. that night that probably no one on the floor--and 
in fairness to that statement, there were only about 10 or 12 people on 
the floor--that they probably did not realize, but from March 1 until 
July 1 we had lost 78 of our soldiers and marines in Afghanistan.
  Mr. Speaker, that is why I brought this poster down today. It is a 
family. It happens to be the Army. They are prepared to walk behind a 
caisson, probably at Arlington, to bury an American hero. The sad part 
about it, Mr. Speaker, is there's a wife, I'm assuming--it looks like 
probably the wife. She has sunglasses on and a black dress. She's 
holding the hand of her little girl, who appears to be 6, 7, maybe 8. 
The little girl is holding her mother's hand and the little girl has 
her finger in her mouth.
  How many more families in this country have to go through a sadness 
and a tragedy like this family while we sit here in Congress and we 
never debate the war? We debate the funding that we did last week. It 
was a 10-minute debate--5 for my amendment and 5 against. Mr. McGovern 
and I had 5 minutes. Yet we do not debate the policy that continues to 
send troops, continues to send money, and all we do is continue to let 
this war go on and on and on.
  Mr. Speaker, it's not fair to the families who have loved ones in the 
military. Again, I will continue to come to the floor one time a week 
and rail about the policy in Afghanistan. It is a failed policy. 
History has said no nation has ever changed Afghanistan, and we are not 
going to change Afghanistan no matter how much money we spend or how 
much blood we spend. It is not fair to our military.
  Mr. Speaker, I will close by asking God to please bless our men and 
women in uniform, to please bless the families of our men and women in 
uniform. I will ask God in His loving arms to hold the families who 
have given a child dying for freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq.
  I will ask God to bless the House and the Senate, that we will do 
what is right in the eyes of God for God's people.
  I will ask God to please bless the President, that he will do what is 
right in the eyes of God for God's people today and God's people 
tomorrow.
  And three times I will say, God, please, God, please, God, please, 
continue to bless America.

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