Afghanistan

Floor Speech

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I rise today with a number of my colleagues to express our continuing concern about the President's decision to escalate our military effort in Afghanistan by an additional 30,000 troops. Thirty thousand additional Americans put into harm's way in Afghanistan is a big deal, Madam Speaker, and I am concerned that the House of Representatives will be adjourning for the year without a real, meaningful, substantive debate about this important issue.

I happen to believe that increasing our military presence by 30,000 troops will make it 30,000 times harder to extricate ourselves from this mess. But whatever my colleagues believe about this decision--support, oppose, or noncommittal--we owe it to ourselves and to the people that we represent to have a thorough debate about our policy.
I would urge this administration to submit their supplemental request for this escalation sooner rather than later. Congress has a constitutional role to play. We have the power of the purse and the responsibility to declare war. We haven't played that role in any meaningful way since 2001. That was the last time that this Chamber had a debate on Afghanistan, 2001.

In those eight long years hundreds of American soldiers have lost their lives, thousands have been wounded, and we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and we still do not have a clear exit strategy. Everyone seems to agree that Afghanistan requires a political solution. The question I still have is this: When does our military commitment to that political solution come to an end so that we could bring our troops home?

In no way do I believe that we should abandon Afghanistan or its people. They have been through far too much trauma over the last several decades. Nor do I believe that we should abandon our fight against the people who murdered thousands of Americans on September 11, 2001.

Indeed, I am concerned that by committing over 100,000 American troops to nation building in Afghanistan, we will be less able to target those who attacked us, and that is al Qaeda, because al Qaeda no longer has a large presence in Afghanistan. Our top generals say that maybe there are 100 or less al Qaeda still in Afghanistan. They have moved to Pakistan.

I do not believe that the best, most effective way to fight al Qaeda is to increase our military footprint in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan we need a new strategy.

I would urge my colleagues to read a recent op ed in The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof. He points out that for the cost of one U.S. soldier deployed in Afghanistan, we could build 20 schools in Afghanistan. Let me repeat that. For the cost of one American soldier in Afghanistan for a year we could build 20 schools in Afghanistan.

Not only that, it seems that before the administration announced this new escalation, they failed to thoroughly consult with the elders and the local leaders and others in Afghanistan about the best way forward. Madam Speaker, without local support, without the support of the local leaders who have the respect of the Afghan people, nothing we do will work or be sustainable.

I also continue to be deeply troubled about the Karzai government. Today President Karzai is scheduled to convene a three-day conference on corruption. At a minimum, this conference is supposed to provide a forum where the Afghan government admits publicly that it runs on bribery, graft and cronyism which, in turn, fuels the Taliban insurgency.

President Karzai called this conference--not because he campaigned on cleaning up this government--but because of international pressure. He ran a fraudulent election that undermined international support for the war on Afghanistan, and this is an attempt to show the international community, and especially the United States, that he will somehow clean up his own house.

We will have to wait and see if it's more than just more talk, talk, talk. We will have to see if he is willing to kick out of office the very warlords, drug lords, family members, and cronies he appointed to high government positions, and if he does, whether he appoints reform-minded Afghans in their place.

Again, Madam Speaker, we are about to embark on another huge escalation in a very troubled part of the world.
Congress needs to debate this critical issue. Our men and women in uniform, and every other American we represent, deserve no less.
[From the New York Times, Dec. 3, 2009]

OP-ED Columnist; Johnson, Gorbachev, Obama
(By Nicholas D. Kristof)

Imagine you're a villager living in southern Afghanistan.

You're barely educated, proud of your region's history of stopping invaders and suspicious of outsiders. Like most of your fellow Pashtuns, you generally dislike the Taliban because many are overzealous, truculent nutcases.

Yet you are even more suspicious of the infidel American troops. You know of some villages where the Americans have helped build roads and been respectful of local elders and customs. On the other hand, you know of other villages where the infidel troops have invaded homes, shamed families by ogling women, or bombed wedding parties.

You're angry that your people, the Pashtuns, traditionally the dominant tribe of Afghanistan, seem to have been pushed aside in recent years, with American help. Moreover, the Afghan government has never been more corrupt. The Taliban may be incompetent, but at least they are pious Muslim Pashtuns and reasonably honest.

You were always uncomfortable with foreign troops in your land, but it wasn't so bad the first few years when there were only about 10,000 American soldiers in the entire country. Now, after President Obama's speech on Tuesday, there soon will be 100,000. That's three times as many as when the president took office, and 10 times as many as in 2003.

Hmmm. You still distrust the Taliban, but maybe they're right to warn about infidels occupying your land. Perhaps you'll give a goat to support your clansman who joined the local Taliban.

That's why so many people working in Afghanistan at the grass roots are watching the Obama escalation with a sinking feeling. President Lyndon Johnson doubled down on the Vietnam bet soon after he inherited the presidency, and Mikhail Gorbachev escalated the Soviet deployment that he inherited in Afghanistan soon after he took over the leadership of his country. They both inherited a mess--and made it worse and costlier.

As with the Americans in Vietnam, and Soviets in Afghanistan, we understate the risk of a nationalist backlash; somehow Mr. Obama has emerged as more enthusiastic about additional troops than even the corrupt Afghan government we are buttressing.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned in his report on the situation in Afghanistan that ``new resources are not the crux'' of the problem. Rather, he said, the key is a new approach that emphasizes winning hearts and minds: ``Our strategy cannot be focused on seizing terrain or destroying insurgent troops; our objective must be the population.''

So why wasn't the Afghan population more directly consulted?

``To me, what was most concerning is that there was never any consultation with the Afghan shura, the tribal elders,'' said Greg Mortenson, whose extraordinary work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan was chronicled in ``Three Cups of Tea'' and his new book, ``From Stones to Schools.'' ``It was all decided on the basis of congressmen and generals speaking up, with nobody consulting Afghan elders. One of the elders' messages is we don't need firepower, we need brainpower. They want schools, health facilities, but not necessarily more physical troops.''

For the cost of deploying one soldier for one year, it is possible to build about 20 schools.

Another program that is enjoying great success in undermining the Taliban is the National Solidarity Program, or N.S.P., which helps villages build projects that they choose--typically schools, clinics, irrigation projects, bridges. This is widely regarded as one of the most successful and least corrupt initiatives in Afghanistan.

``It's a terrific program,'' said George Rupp, the president of the International Rescue Committee. ``But it's underfunded. And it takes very little: for the cost of one U.S. soldier for a year, you could have the N.S.P. in 20 more villages.''

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