Making Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. REED. Madam President, this legislation clearly calls for a report to be submitted by the President of the United States to establish a timetable, and I think the suggestion that will not have incredible consequences in the real world is somewhat naive.

If the President of the United States is forced to give Congress a timetable stating dates, even if those dates have some variables attached to them, that sets in motion a train of events that is anything but a simple statement of vision. That statement of vision was given by the President at West Point. In fact, he was criticized for specifically indicating that there would be a point at which American forces begin the withdrawal, but he did that. I think anyone questioning the President's not only willingness to do this, but understanding the need to redeploy our forces, should look at today's headlines in the Washington Post where the Vice President has, once again, reiterated that we are coming out of Iraq; that the timetables the President talked about, the vision he talked about, all of those things he is following through on, and he will do the same thing in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, the President's strategy is clear: to provide military resources to reseize the momentum; to provide the opportunity to build civilian capacity; and starting, as the Senator from Wisconsin indicated, at a fixed date will begin a drawdown and will begin changing our mission from combat operations to more counterterrorism operations, more training of Afghani forces.

Frankly, what I think the President--and I will presume to speak at this moment, at last in my view--sees in the future is a significant drawdown of our military presence while we build up our civilian presence. That civilian presence might include some trainers, police trainers. It might include a lot of folks. Indeed, this vision is tied directly to the concern we all have. There are active al-Qaida cells in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Yemen, and one of the advantages of a presence in Afghanistan is effectively cooperating with and encouraging the Pakistanis.

I urge rejection of the amendment.

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