Afghanistan War Powers Resolution

Floor Speech

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Kucinich resolution directing the President to remove United States Armed Forces from Afghanistan.

It is time to bring U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan to an end and to bring our troops home. The war effort in Afghanistan is no longer serving its purpose of enhancing the security of the United States, which should be our goal.

We were attacked on 9/11 by al Qaeda. Al Qaeda had bases in Afghanistan. It made sense to go in and destroy those bases. And we did. We have every right, we have every duty to destroy bases which are being used to plot against the United States. But the CIA tells us that there are now fewer than 100 al Qaeda personnel in all of the country of Afghanistan.

It is past time to admit that our legitimate purpose in Afghanistan--to destroy al Qaeda bases--has long since been accomplished. But it is a fool's errand to try to remake a country that nobody since Genghis Khan has managed to conquer. What makes us think, what arrogance gives us the right to assume that we can succeed where the Mongols, the British, the Soviets failed? No government in Afghanistan, no government in Kabul, has ever been able to make its writ run in the entire country.

Why have we undertaken to invent a government that is not supported by the majority of the people, a government that is corrupt, and try to impose it on this country? Afghanistan is in the middle of what is at this point a 35-year civil war. We have no business intervening in that civil war, we have no ability to win it for one side or the other, and we have no necessity to win it for one side or the other. This whole idea of counterinsurgency, that we are going to persuade the people who are left alive after our firepower is applied to love the government that we like is absurd.

It will take tens of years, hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of American lives, if it can be done at all, and we don't need to do it. It's their country. If they want to have a civil war, we can't stop them. We can't choose the rulers that they have, we don't have to like the rulers that they have, and we don't have to like their choices. It's not up to us.

At this point we must recognize that rebuilding Afghanistan is both beyond our ability and beyond our mandate to prevent terrorists from attacking the United States. And if it be said that there are terrorists operating in Afghanistan, that may be, but it is also true of Yemen, Somalia and many other countries. We do not need to invade and conquer and occupy all those countries, and Afghanistan provides no greater necessity or justification for military operations.

We are throwing $100 billion a year--plus countless lives--down a drainpipe, for no useful purpose at all--and with very little discussion of our purposes and of whether our policy matches our purposes.

To continue so bad a policy at so high a cost is simply unconscionable. It is unjustifiable to sacrifice more money and more lives this way. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting to bring the U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan to a close.

Now, I want to say a word about supporting the troops. I believe it is more supportive of the troops to bring them home from a war that they should not be fighting than it is to give them weapons to fight an unnecessary war in which some of them, unfortunately, will lose their lives.

So I say support our troops. Bring them home. Support the country. Stop fighting where it no longer makes sense.

Vote for this resolution. Let's bring our troops home.

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