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IRAQ
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Floor Statements
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America Must Not Occupy (#326)
Watch Video | | September 10, 2009 | |
| Mr. Speaker, tomorrow is the eighth anniversary of one of the most tragic days in America's history, September 11, 2001.
On that day, our Nation was attacked, and nearly 3,000 Americans were killed. We continue to grieve for them and for their families, and tomorrow we celebrate a national day of remembrance and service in their honor and memory.
Soon after 9/11, Mr. Speaker, American troops invaded Afghanistan, where the attacks had been planned. Many Americans have considered the war in Afghanistan a good war. Our troops have shown incredible skill and bravery in a very difficult conflict over those 8 years. But now, 8 years later, our troops are still in Afghanistan and are still facing a growing insurgency. The Taliban appears to have regained control of half the country, and many al Qaeda operatives have fled to Pakistan. As a result, a growing number of Americans now oppose a war that no longer serves our national security interests.
In three recent polls, more Americans called for reductions in our troop levels rather than increases, and in one poll, the majority of Americans said that the war in Afghanistan is simply not worth fighting.
Despite this, General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, is expected to ask the President to commit more troops. There are reports that General McChrystal may ask for as many as 30,000 more, which would bring the American troop level to about 100,000. Enlarging the American footprint in Afghanistan, Mr. Speaker, will almost certainly lead the Afghanistan people to see the United States as an occupying force, and if history has taught us anything, it is that the Afghan people will resist any foreign occupation. That is the bitter lesson that the Soviet Union and the British empire learned.
Even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is concerned about the problem. In a recent interview, Secretary Gates said he asked General McChrystal about the implications of significant additional forces and whether the Afghans will see this as the United States becoming more of an occupier rather than a partner.
Secretary Gates also spoke last week about the failures of previous foreign forces in Afghanistan. He said one reason for their failures is that the Afghans concluded that they were there for their own imperial interests and not there for the interests of the Afghan people.
Mr. Speaker, the worst thing our Nation can do right now is to stumble into an occupation that the Afghan people do not want, one that will last many years, that will cost many lives and that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars that we can't afford.
We should not double-down on a strategy that hasn't worked. We need a brand new strategy, one that is based, among other things, on economic development for the Afghan people, on better governance and on improvements in policing and in intelligence. We need to have strategies that are the best ways to capture violent extremists, and we must have a clear exit strategy and a timetable for the withdrawal of our brave troops.
If we do that, if we can stop more people from dying--our troops and the Afghan people--we will truly be honoring the 3,000 who died on September 11, 2001. |
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