National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I offer this amendment with several original cosponsors: Senator Mike Lee, Senator Rand Paul, Senator Tom Udall, and Senator Sherrod Brown. I would like to thank them for joining in this effort to address our military presence in Afghanistan and the fact that our military forces have done such an excellent job of completing the original missions of destroying al-Qaida training camps and bringing justice to those responsible for 9/11.

But over this past decade, our mission has changed to one of nation building--a mission that is obstructed by vast corruption, by extraordinary traditional cultural resistance to a strong central government, and by a very high illiteracy rate. These factors should have us rethinking how to have the most effective use of our military forces, our intelligence assets, in taking on the war on terror, and that we should be engaging in counterterrorist efforts using our resources wherever the terrorist threat emerges across the world rather than concentrating these vast resources in Afghanistan.

Our sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers could not have done a better job in their military mission. But it is right that now we do less nation building abroad and we do more nation building at home. It is right that now we refocus our effort to have the most effective strategy to take on terrorism around the world. It is in that philosophy that we come together in a bipartisan fashion to propose this amendment. We ask that colleagues take a chance to consider it and join us in redirecting our efforts to be more effective.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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