Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones) be allowed to control half of my time. I yield myself 2 minutes. In the next 2 hours, we are going to…
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones) be allowed to control half of my time.
I yield myself 2 minutes.
In the next 2 hours, we are going to demonstrate that the American people oppose this war by a margin of two to one. I will enter into the Record this Washington Post poll that was published on March 15 which says that nearly two-thirds of Americans say the war isn't worth fighting.
In the next 2 hours, we are going to demonstrate that we are spending $100 billion per year on this war. There are those who are saying the war could last at least another 10 years. Are we willing to spend another $1 trillion on a war that doesn't have any exit plan, for which there is no timeframe to get out, no endgame, where we haven't defined our mission? The question is not whether we can afford to leave. The question is, can we afford to stay? And I submit we cannot afford to stay.
In the next 2 hours, we are going to demonstrate that the counterintelligence strategy of General Petraeus is an abysmal failure, and it needs to be called as such. So I want to conclude this part of my presentation with an article by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times, which says, ``What are we doing spending $110 billion this year supporting corrupt and unpopular regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan that are almost identical to the governments we are applauding the Arab people for overthrowing?''
[From The Washington Post, Mar. 15, 2011]
Poll: Nearly Two-Thirds of Americans Say Afghan War Isn't Worth
Fighting
(By Scott Wilson and Jon Cohen)
Nearly two-thirds of Americans now say the war in
Afghanistan is no longer worth fighting, the highest
proportion yet opposed to the conflict, according to a new
Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The finding signals a growing challenge for President Obama
as he decides how quickly to pull U.S. forces from the
country beginning this summer. After nearly a decade of
conflict, political opposition to the battle breaks sharply
along partisan lines, with only 19 percent of Democratic
respondents and half of Republicans surveyed saying the war
continues to be worth fighting.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans say Obama should
withdraw a ``substantial number'' of combat troops from
Afghanistan this summer, the deadline he set to begin pulling
out some forces. Only 39 percent of respondents, however, say
they expect him to withdraw large numbers.
The Post-ABC News poll results come as Gen. David H.
Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, prepares to
testify before Congress on Tuesday about the course of the
war. He is expected to face tough questioning about a
conflict that is increasingly unpopular among a broad cross
section of Americans.
Petraeus will tell Congress that ``things are progressing
very well,'' Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Monday.
But because of battlefield gains made by U.S. and coalition
forces since last year, Morrell told MSNBC, ``it's going to
be heavy and intensive in terms of fighting'' once the winter
cold passes.
The poll began asking only in 2007 whether the Afghan war
is worth fighting, but support has almost certainly never
been as low as it is in the most recent survey.
The growing opposition presents Obama with a difficult
political challenge ahead of his 2012 reelection effort,
especially in his pursuit of independent voters.
Since Democrats took a beating in last year's midterm
elections, Obama has appealed to independents with a middle-
of-the-road approach to George W. Bush-era tax cuts and
budget negotiations with Republican leaders on Capitol Hil1.
He called a news conference last week to express concern
about rising gasoline prices, an economically pressing issue
for many independent voters.
But his approach to the Afghan war has not won over the
independents or liberal Democrats who propelled his campaign
two years ago, and the most recent Post-ABC News poll
reinforces the importance of Republicans as the chief
constituency supporting his strategy. The results suggest
that the war will be an awkward issue for the president as he
looks for ways to end it. Nearly 1,500 U.S. troops have died
since the fighting began in 2001.
During his 2008 campaign, Obama promised to withdraw
American forces from the Iraq war, which he opposed, and
devote more resources to the flagging effort in Afghanistan,
which he has called an essential front in combating Islamist
terrorism targeting the United States.
After a months-long strategy review in the fall of 2009, he
announced the deployment of an additional 30,000 U.S. troops
to Afghanistan--taking the total to more than 100,000--and a
July 2011 deadline for the start of their withdrawal.
The number of respondents to the Post-ABC News poll who say
the war is not worth fighting has risen from 44 percent in
late 2009 to 64 percent in the survey conducted last week.
Two-thirds of independents hold that position, according to
the poll, and nearly 80 percent said Obama should withdraw a
``substantial number'' of troops from Afghanistan this
summer. Barely more than a quarter of independents say the
war is worth its costs, and for the first time a majority
feel ``strongly'' that it is not.
Obama, who met with Petraeus on Monday at the White House,
has said he will determine the pace of the withdrawal by
assessing conditions on the ground.
At the same time, U.S. and NATO forces have come under
sharp criticism from the Afghan government. Over the weekend,
after a NATO bombing killed nine children, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai demanded that international troops ``stop their
operations in our land,'' a more pointed call than previous
ones he has made following such deadly NATO mistakes.
The telephone poll was conducted March 10 to 13 among a
random national sample of 1,005 adults. Results from the full
poll have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5
percentage points.
The survey also asked respondents to assess Obama's
performance in managing the political changes sweeping across
the Middle East and North Africa. Overall, 45 percent of
respondents approve of his handling of the situation, and 44
percent disapprove.
In Libya, where Moammar Gaddafi is battling a rebel force
seeking to end his 41-year rule, Obama is under increasing
pressure to implement a no-fly zone over the country to
prevent the Libyan leader from taking back lost territory and
to protect civilians from government reprisals.
Nearly six in 10 Americans say they would support U.S.
participation in a no-fly zone over Libya, the poll found,
despite recent warnings from Defense Secretary Robert M.
Gates that doing so would be a ``major operation.''
But the survey found that American support dips under 50
percent when it comes to unilateral U.S. action, as Democrats
and independents peel away.
When told that such a mission would entail U.S. warplanes
bombing Libyan antiaircraft positions and ``continuous
patrols,'' about a quarter of those initially advocating U.S.
participation turn into opponents.
After a meeting Monday with Danish Prime Minister Lars
Loekke Rasmussen, Obama said, ``We will be continuing to
coordinate closely both through NATO as well as the United
Nations and other international fora to look at every single
option that's available to us in bringing about a better
outcome for the Libyan people.''
In general, Americans do not think that the changes in the
Middle East and North Africa will prove beneficial to U.S.
economic and security interests.
More than seven in 10 respondents said demonstrators are
interested in building new governments, although not
necessarily democratic ones. Almost half of those surveyed
view the turmoil as undermining the United States' ability to
fight terrorist groups in the region.
I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).
I would like to insert into the Record a report from the United Nations that says that 2010 was the worst year for civilian casualties in Afghanistan with nearly 3,000 civilians killed.
Afghanistan--Annual Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict
2010
Kabul, Afghanistan, March 2011
Executive Summary
The human cost of the armed conflict in Afghanistan grew in
2010. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and
UNAMA Human Rights recorded 2,777 civilian deaths in 2010, an
increase of 15 per cent compared to 2009. Over the past four
years, 8,832 civilians have been killed in the conflict, with
civilian deaths increasing each year. The worsening human
impact of the conflict reinforces the urgent need for parties
to the conflict to do more to protect Afghan civilians, who,
in 2010, were killed and injured in their homes and
communities in even greater numbers. UNAMA Human Rights and
the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission urge the
Anti-Government Elements and Pro-Government Forces to
strengthen civilian protection and fully comply legal
obligations to minimize civilian casualties.
civilian deaths
Of the total number of 2,777 civilians killed in 2010,
2,080 deaths (75 per cent of total civilian deaths) were
attributed to Anti-Government Elements, up 28 per cent from
2009. Suicide attacks and improvised explosive devices (IEDs)
caused the most civilian deaths, totaling 1,141 deaths (55
per cent of civilian deaths attributed to Anti-Government
Elements). The most alarming trend in 2010 was the huge
number of civilians assassinated by Anti-Government Elements.
Four hundred and sixty two civilians were assassinated
representing an increase of more than 105 per cent compared
to 2009. Half of all civilian assassinations occurred in
southern Afghanistan. Helmand province saw a 588 per cent
increase in the number of civilians assassinated by Anti-
Government Elements and Kandahar province experienced a 248
per cent increase compared to 2009.
Afghan national security and international military forces
(Pro-Government Forces) were linked to 440 deaths or 16 per
cent of total civilian deaths, a reduction of 26 per cent
from 2009. Aerial attacks claimed the largest percentage of
civilian deaths caused by Pro-Government Forces in 2010,
causing 171 deaths (39 per cent of the total number of
civilian deaths attributed to Pro-Government Forces).
Notably, there was a 52 per cent decline in civilian deaths
from air attacks compared to 2009. Nine per cent of civilian
deaths in 2010 could not be attributed to any party to the
conflict.
I would like to put into the Record a report from the Afghanistan Rights Monitor relating to the number of civilians killed and wounded and displaced.
ARM Annual Report
Civilian Casualties of War
January--December 2010
Kabul, Afghanistan, February 2011
Executive Summary
Over nine years after the internationally-celebrated demise
of the repressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan, civilian
Afghans increasingly suffer from the armed violence and
rights violations committed by various internal and external
armed actors. More ordinary Afghans were killed and injured
in 2010 than a year before. And while US officials dubbed
Afghanistan as their longest foreign war, Afghans suffered it
for 32 years relentlessly.
Almost everything related to the war surged in 2010: the
combined numbers of Afghan and foreign forces surpassed
350,000; security incidents mounted to over 100 per week;
more fighters from all warring side were killed; and the
number of civilian people killed, wounded and displaced hit
record levels.
Collecting information about every security incident and
verifying the often conflicting reports about their impacts
on civilian people were extremely difficult and risky. The
war was as heatedly fought
through propaganda and misinformation as it was in the
battlefields thus making independent and impartial war
reporting tricky and complex.
Despite all the challenges, we spared no efforts in
gathering genuine information, facts and figures about the
impacts of war on civilian communities. Our resources were
limited and we lacked the luxury of strategic/political
support from one or another side of the conflict because we
stood by our professional integrity. We, however, managed to
use our indigenous knowledge and delved into a wealth of
local information available in the conflict-affected villages
in order to seek more reliable facts about the war.
From 1 January to 31 December 2010, at least 2,421 civilian
Afghans were killed and over 3,270 were injured in conflict-
related security incidents across Afghanistan. This means
everyday 6-7 noncombatants were killed and 8-9 were wounded
in the war.
ARM does not claim that these numbers--although collected
and verified to the best of our efforts--are comprehensive
and perfect. Actual numbers of the civilian victims of war in
2010 could be higher than what we gathered and present in
this report.
Unsurprisingly, about 63 percent of the reported civilian
deaths and 70 percent of the injuries were attributed to the
Armed Opposition Groups (AOGs) (Taliban, Hezb-e-Islami and
the Haqqani Group); 21 percent of deaths (512 individuals)
and 22 percent of injuries (655) were attributed to US/NATO
forces; and 12 percent of deaths (278 individuals) and 7
percent (239) injuries were caused by pro-government Afghan
troops and their allied local militia forces.
In addition to civilian casualties, hundreds of thousands
of people were affected in various ways by the intensified
armed violence in Afghanistan in 2010. Tens of thousands of
people were forced out of their homes or deprived of
healthcare and education services and livelihood
opportunities due to the continuation of war in their home
areas.
In November 2010, ARM was the first organization to voice
concerns about the destruction of hundreds of houses,
pomegranate trees and orchards in several districts in
Kandahar Province by US-led forces as part of their
counterinsurgency operations. In January 2011, an Afghan
Government delegation reported the damage costs at over
US$100 million. In compensation, US/NATO forces have doled
out less than $2 million.
Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are widely considered
as the most lethal tools which killed over 690 civilians in
2010. However, as you will read in this report, there is
virtually no information about the use of cluster munitions
by US/NATO forces. Despite Afghanistan's accession to the
international Anti-Cluster Bomb Treaty in 2008, the US
military has allegedly maintained stockpiles of cluster
munitions in Afghanistan.
A second key issue highlighted in this report is the
emergence of the irregular armed groups in parts of
Afghanistan which are backed by the Afghan Government and its
foreign allies. These groups have been deplored as criminal
and predatory by many Afghans and have already been accused
of severe human rights violations such as child recruitment
and sexual abuse.
I would like to put into the Record a report from the Congressional Research Service that the war in Afghanistan has cost over $454 billion to date.
Introduction: War Funding to Date
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the
United States has initiated three military operations:
Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) covering primarily
Afghanistan and other small Global War on Terror (GWOT)
operations ranging from the Philippines to Djibouti that
began immediately after the 9/11 attacks and continues;
Operation Noble Eagle (ONE) providing enhanced security for
U.S. military bases and other homeland security that was
launched in response to the attacks and continues at a modest
level; and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) that began in the
fall of 2002 with the buildup of troops for the March 2003
invasion of Iraq, continued with counter-insurgency and
stability operations, and is slated to be renamed Operation
New Dawn as U.S. troops focus on an advisory and assistance
role.
In the ninth year of operations since the 9/11 attacks
while troops are being withdrawn in Iraq and increased in
Afghanistan, the cost of war continues to be a major issue
including the total amount appropriated, the amount for each
operation, average monthly spending rates, and the scope and
duration of future costs. Information on costs is useful to
Congress to assess the FY2010 Supplemental for war costs for
the Department of Defense (DOD) and State/USAID, FY2011 war
requests, conduct oversight of past war costs, and consider
the longer-term costs implications of the buildup of troops
in Afghanistan and potential problems in the withdrawal of
U.S. troops from Iraq. This report analyzes war funding for
the Defense Department and tracks funding for USAID and VA
Medical funding.
Total War Funding by Operation
Based on DOD estimates and budget submissions, the
cumulative total for funds appropriated from the 9/11 attacks
through the FY2010 Supplemental Appropriations Acts for DOD,
State/USAID and VA for medical costs for the wars in Iraq,
Afghanistan and enhanced security is $1,121 billion
including: $751 billion for Iraq; $336 billion for
Afghanistan; $29 billion for enhanced security; and $6
billion unallocated.
Of this total, 67% is for Iraq, 30% for Afghanistan, 3% for
enhanced security and 1/2% unallocated. Almost all of the
funding for Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) is for
Afghanistan.
This total includes funding provided in H.R. 4899/P.L. 111-
212, the FY2010 Supplemental Appropriations Act enacted July
29, 2010.
Some 94% of this funding goes to the Department of Defense
(DOD) to cover primarily incremental war-related costs, that
is, costs that are in addition to DOD's normal peacetime
activities. These costs include: military personnel funds to
provide special pay for deployed personnel such as hostile
fire or separation pay and to cover the additional cost of
activating reservists, as well pay for expanding the Army and
Marine Corps to reduce stress on troops; Operation and
Maintenance (O&M) funds to transport troops and their
equipment to Iraq and Afghanistan, conduct military
operations, provide in-country support at bases, and
repairing war-worn equipment; Procurement funding to cover
buying new weapons systems to replace war losses, and upgrade
equipment, pay modernization costs associated with expanding
and changing the structure of the size of the Army and Marine
Corps; Research, Development, Test & Evaluation costs to
develop more effective ways to combat war threats such as
roadside bombs; Working Capital Funds to cover expanding the
size of inventories of spare parts and fuel to provide
wartime support; and Military construction primarily to
construct facilities in bases in Iraq or Afghanistan or
neighboring countries.
In addition, the Administration initiated several programs
specifically targeted at problems that developed in the
Afghan and Iraq wars: Coalition support to cover the
logistical costs of allies, primarily Pakistan, conducting
counter-terror operations in support of U.S. efforts;
Commanders Emergency Response Program (CERP) providing funds
to individual commanders for small reconstruction projects
and to pay local militias in Iraq and Afghanistan to counter
insurgent or Taliban groups; Afghan Security Forces Fund and
the Iraq Security Forces Fund to pay the cost of training,
equipping and expanding the size of the Afghan and Iraqi
armies and police forces; and Joint Improvised Explosive
Device (IEDs) Defeat Fund to develop, buy, and deploy new
devices to improve force protection for soldiers against
roadside bombs or IEDs.
I would like to put into the Record an article by Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes in the Washington Post that says there is no question the Iraq war added substantially to the Federal debt.
[From the Times, Feb. 23, 2008]
The Three Trillion Dollar War--The Cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan
Conflicts Have Grown to Staggering Proportions
(By Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes)
The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the
war and it was wrong about the costs of the war. The
president and his advisers expected a quick, inexpensive
conflict. Instead, we have a war that is costing more than
anyone could have imagined.
The cost of direct US military operations--not even
including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded
veterans--already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in
Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.
And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are
projected to be almost ten times the cost of the first Gulf
War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War,
and twice that of the First World War. The only war in our
history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3
million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years,
at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for
inflation) of about $5 trillion (that's $5 million million,
or K2.5 million million). With virtually the entire armed
forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the
cost per troop (in today's dollars) was less than $100,000 in
2007 dollars. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of
$400,000 per troop.
Most Americans have yet to feel these costs. The price in
blood has been paid by our voluntary military and by hired
contractors. The price in treasure has, in a sense, been
financed entirely by borrowing. Taxes have not been raised to
pay for it--in fact, taxes on the rich have actually fallen.
Deficit spending gives the illusion that the laws of
economics can be repealed, that we can have both guns and
butter. But of course the laws are not repealed. The costs of
the war are real even if they have been deferred, possibly to
another generation.
Background
American voters must choose: more benefits or more defence;
$3 trillion budget leaves little for Bush to bank on; MoD
forced to cut budget by K1.5bn; they're running our tanks on
empty.
On the eve of war, there were discussions of the likely
costs. Larry Lindsey, President Bush's economic adviser and
head of the National Economic Council, suggested that they
might reach $200 billion. But this estimate was dismissed as
``baloney'' by the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. His
deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, suggested that postwar reconstruction
could pay for itself
through increased oil revenues. Mitch Daniels, the Office of
Management and Budget director, and Secretary Rumsfeld
estimated the costs in the range of $50 to $60 billion, a
portion of which they believed would be financed by other
countries. (Adjusting for inflation, in 2007 dollars, they
were projecting costs of between $57 and $69 billion.) The
tone of the entire administration was cavalier, as if the
sums involved were minimal.
Even Lindsey, after noting that the war could cost $200
billion, went on to say: ``The successful prosecution of the
war would be good for the economy.'' In retrospect, Lindsey
grossly underestimated both the costs of the war itself and
the costs to the economy. Assuming that Congress approves the
rest of the $200 billion war supplemental requested for
fiscal year 2008, as this book goes to press Congress will
have appropriated a total of over $845 billion for military
operations, reconstruction, embassy costs, enhanced security
at US bases, and foreign aid programmes in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
As the fifth year of the war draws to a close, operating
costs (spending on the war itself, what you might call
``running expenses'') for 2008 are projected to exceed $12.5
billion a month for Iraq alone, up from $4.4 billion in 2003,
and with Afghanistan the total is $16 billion a month.
Sixteen billion dollars is equal to the annual budget of the
United Nations, or of all but 13 of the US states. Even so,
it does not include the $500 billion we already spend per
year on the regular expenses of the Defence Department. Nor
does it include other hidden expenditures, such as
intelligence gathering, or funds mixed in with the budgets of
other departments.
Because there are so many costs that the Administration
does not count, the total cost of the war is higher than the
official number. For example, government officials frequently
talk about the lives of our soldiers as priceless. But from a
cost perspective, these ``priceless'' lives show up on the
Pentagon ledger simply as $500,000--the amount paid out to
survivors in death benefits and life insurance. After the war
began, these were increased from $12,240 to $100,000 (death
benefit) and from $250,000 to $400,000 (life insurance). Even
these increased amounts are a fraction of what the survivors
might have received had these individuals lost their lives in
a senseless automobile accident. In areas such as health and
safety regulation, the US Government values a life of a young
man at the peak of his future earnings capacity in excess of
$7 million--far greater than the amount that the military
pays in death benefits. Using this figure, the cost of the
nearly 4,000 American troops killed in Iraq adds up to some
$28 billion.
The costs to society are obviously far larger than the
numbers that show up on the government's budget. Another
example of hidden costs is the understating of U.S. military
casualties. The Defense Department's casualty statistics
focus on casualties that result from hostile (combat)
action--as determined by the military. Yet if a soldier is
injured or dies in a night-time vehicle accident, this is
officially dubbed ``noncombat related''--even though it may
be too unsafe for soldiers to travel during daytime.
In fact, the Pentagon keeps two sets of books. The first is
the official casualty list posted on the DOD Web site. The
second, hard-to-find, set of data is available only on a
different website and can be obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act. This data shows that the total number of
soldiers who have been wounded, injured, or suffered from
disease is double the number wounded in combat. Some will
argue that a percentage of these noncombat injuries might
have happened even if the soldiers were not in Iraq. Our new
research shows that the majority of these injuries and
illnesses can be tied directly to service in the war.
From the unhealthy brew of emergency funding, multiple sets
of books, and chronic underestimates of the resources
required to prosecute the war, we have attempted to identify
how much we have been spending--and how much we will, in the
end, likely have to spend. The figure we arrive at is more
than $3 trillion. Our calculations are based on conservative
assumptions. They are conceptually simple, even if
occasionally technically complicated. A $3 trillion figure
for the total cost strikes us as judicious, and probably errs
on the low side. Needless to say, this number represents the
cost only to the United States. It does not reflect the
enormous cost to the rest of the world, or to Iraq.
From the beginning, the United Kingdom has played a pivotal
role--strategic, military, and political--in the Iraq
conflict. Militarily, the UK contributed 46,000 troops, 10
per cent of the total. Unsurprisingly, then, the British
experience in Iraq has paralleled that of America: rising
casualties, increasing operating costs, poor transparency
over where the money is going, overstretched military
resources, and scandals over the squalid conditions and
inadequate medical care for some severely wounded veterans.
Before the war, Gordon Brown set aside 1
billion for war spending. As of late 2007, the UK had spent
an estimated 7 billion in direct operating
expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan (76 per cent of it in
Iraq). This includes money from a supplemental ``special
reserve'', plus additional spending from the Ministry of
Defense.
The special reserve comes on top of the UK's regular
defense budget. The British system is particularly opaque:
funds from the special reserve are ``drawn down'' by the
Ministry of Defense when required, without specific approval
by Parliament. As a result, British citizens have little
clarity about how much is actually being spent.
In addition, the social costs in the UK are similar to
those in the U.S.--families who leave jobs to care for
wounded soldiers, and diminished quality of life for those
thousands left with disabilities.
By the same token, there are macroeconomic costs to the UK
as there have been to America, though the long-term costs may
be less, for two reasons. First, Britain did not have the
same policy of fiscal profligacy; and second, until 2005, the
United Kingdom was a net oil exporter.
We have assumed that British forces in Iraq are reduced to
2,500 this year and remain at that level until 2010. We
expect that British forces in Afghanistan will increase
slightly, from 7,000 to 8,000 in 2008, and remain stable for
three years. The House of Commons Defense Committee has
recently found that despite the cut in troop levels, Iraq war
costs will increase by 2 per cent this year and personnel
costs will decrease by only 5 per cent. Meanwhile, the cost
of military operations in Afghanistan is due to rise by 39
per cent. The estimates in our model may be significantly too
low if these patterns continue.
Based on assumptions set out in our book, the budgetary
cost to the UK of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through
2010 will total more than 18 billion. If we
include the social costs, the total impact on the UK will
exceed 20 billion.
I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Barney Frank.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record a report from the Afghanistan Study Group that says that the current U.S. military effort is helping to fuel the very insurgency we are attempting to defeat.
I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.
May I ask, Mr. Speaker, how much time each group has remaining.
I yield myself 1 minute.
Mr. Speaker, Members of this House are talking about cutting $100 billion from the budget. Well, we can trim the Federal budget of more than $100 billion in out-of-control spending.
Members have been very concerned about out-of-control spending. They are calling for a reduction in the Federal budget. Cutting spending on the war in Afghanistan would solve their concerns. Spending on the war is greater than the minimum amount of Federal spending certain Members believe must be cut from the budget for fiscal responsibility.
In the fiscal year 2012 budget request, the President has requested $113.4 billion to continue the war. In fact, congressional appropriations of over $100 billion for the Afghanistan war has been the rule in recent years; and as we've seen, there is talk of extending this war for another 10 years. $1 trillion, perhaps?
Spending on the Afghanistan war has increased much faster than overall government spending in recent years. Consider a comparison of the average annual rates of growth of government spending versus the Afghanistan war spending from 2008 through 2011.
I yield myself 10 more seconds.
Overall government spending has increased 9 percent from 2008 through 2011, but Afghanistan war spending has increased 25 percent. If you want to save $100 billion, then vote for this resolution.
I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner).
(Mr. FILNER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
I would like to include in the Record an article on AlterNet by Tom Engelhardt which discusses the open-ended nature of the Afghanistan war.
How To Schedule a War: The Incredible Shrinking Withdrawal Date
(By Tom Engelhardt)
Going, going, gone! You can almost hear the announcer's
voice throbbing with excitement, only we're not talking about
home runs here, but about the disappearing date on which, for
the United States and its military, the Afghan War will
officially end.
Practically speaking, the answer to when it will be over
is: just this side of never. If you take the word of our
Afghan War commander, the secretary of defense, and top
officials of the Obama administration and NATO, we're not
leaving any time soon. As with any clever time traveler,
every date that's set always contains a verbal escape hatch
into the future.
In my 1950s childhood, there was a cheesy (if thrilling)
sci-fi flick, The Incredible Shrinking Man, about a fellow
who passed
through a radioactive cloud in the Pacific Ocean and soon
noticed that his suits were too big for him. Next thing you
knew, he was living in a doll house, holding off his pet cat,
and fighting an ordinary spider transformed into a monster.
Finally, he disappeared entirely leaving behind only a
sonorous voice to tell us that he had entered a universe
where ``the unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast
eventually meet, like the closing of a gigantic circle.''
In recent weeks, without a radioactive cloud in sight, the
date for serious drawdowns of American troops in Afghanistan
has followed a similar path toward the vanishing point and is
now threatening to disappear ``over the horizon'' (a place
where, we are regularly told, American troops will lurk once
they have finally handed their duties over to the Afghan
forces they are training).
If you remember, back in December 2009 President Obama
spoke of July 2011 as a firm date to ``begin the transfer of
our forces out of Afghanistan,'' the moment assumedly when
the beginning of the end of the war would come into sight. In
July of this year, Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke of
2014 as the date when Afghan security forces ``will be
responsible for all military and law enforcement operations
throughout our country.''
Administration officials, anxious about the effect that
2011 date was having on an American public grown weary of an
unpopular war and on an enemy waiting for us to depart,
grabbed Karzai's date and ran with it (leaving many of his
caveats about the war the Americans were fighting,
particularly his desire to reduce the American presence, in
the dust). Now, 2014 is hyped as the new 2011.
It has, in fact, been widely reported that Obama officials
have been working in concert to ``play down'' the president's
2011 date, while refocusing attention on 2014. In recent
weeks, top administration officials have been little short of
voluble on the subject. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
(``We're not getting out. We're talking about probably a
years-long process.''), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen,
attending a security conference in Australia, all ``cited
2014 . . . as the key date for handing over the defense of
Afghanistan to the Afghans themselves.'' The New York Times
headlined its report on the suddenly prominent change in
timing this way: ``U.S. Tweaks Message on Troops in
Afghanistan.''
Quite a tweak. Added Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller:
``The message shift is effectively a victory for the
military, which has long said the July 2011 deadline
undermined its mission by making Afghans reluctant to work
with troops perceived to be leaving shortly.''
Inflection Points and Aspirational Goals
Barely had 2014 risen into the headlines, however, before
that date, too, began to be chipped away. As a start, it
turned out that American planners weren't talking about just
any old day in 2014, but its last one. As Lieutenant General
William Caldwell, head of the NATO training program for
Afghan security forces, put it while holding a Q&A with a
group of bloggers, ``They're talking about December 31st,
2014. It's the end of December in 2014 . . . that [Afghan]
President Karzai has said they want Afghan security forces in
the lead.''
Nor, officials rushed to say, was anyone talking about 2014
as a date for all American troops to head for the exits, just
``combat troops''--and maybe not even all of them. Possibly
tens of thousands of trainers and other so-called non-combat
forces would stay on to help with the ``transition process.''
This follows the Iraq pattern where 50,000 American troops
remain after the departure of U.S. ``combat'' forces to great
media fanfare. Richard Holbrooke, Obama's Special
Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was typical in
calling for ``the substantial combat forces [to] be phased
out at the end of 2014, four years from now.'' (Note the
usual verbal escape hatch, in this case ``substantial,''
lurking in his statement.)
Last Saturday, behind ``closed doors'' at a NATO summit in
Lisbon, Portugal, Afghan War commander General David Petraeus
presented European leaders with a ``phased four-year plan''
to ``wind down American and allied fighting in Afghanistan.''
Not surprisingly, it had the end of 2014 in its sights and
the president quickly confirmed that ``transition'' date,
even while opening plenty of post-2014 wiggle room. By then,
as he described it, ``our footprint'' would only be
``significantly reduced.'' (He also claimed that, post-2014,
the U.S. would be maintaining a ``counterterrorism
capability'' in Afghanistan--and Iraq--for which ``platforms
to . . . execute . . . counterterrorism operations,''
assumedly bases, would be needed.)
Meanwhile, unnamed ``senior U.S. officials'' in Lisbon were
clearly buttonholing reporters to ``cast doubt on whether the
United States, the dominant power in the 28-nation alliance,
would end its own combat mission before 2015.'' As always,
the usual qualifying phrases were profusely in evidence.
Throughout these weeks, the ``tweaking''--that is, the
further chipping away at 2014 as a hard and fast date for
anything--only continued. Mark Sedwill, NATO's civilian
counterpart to U.S. commander General David Petraeus,
insisted that 2014 was nothing more than ``an inflection
point'' in an ever more drawn-out drawdown process. That
process, he insisted, would likely extend to ``2015 and
beyond,'' which, of course, put 2016 officially into play.
And keep in mind that this is only for combat troops, not
those assigned to ``train and support'' or keep ``a strategic
over watch'' on Afghan forces.
On the eve of NATO's Lisbon meeting, Pentagon spokesman
Geoff Morrell, waxing near poetic, declared 2014 nothing more
than an ``aspirational goal,'' rather than an actual
deadline. As the conference began, NATO's Secretary General
Anders Fogh Rasmussen insisted that the alliance would be
committed in Afghanistan ``as long as it takes.'' And new
British Chief of the Defense Staff General Sir David Richards
suggested that, given the difficulty of ever defeating the
Taliban (or al-Qaeda) militarily, NATO should be preparing
plans to maintain a role for its troops for the next 30 to 40
years.
war extender
Here, then, is a brief history of American time in
Afghanistan. After all, this isn't our first Afghan War, but
our second. The first, the CIA's anti-Soviet jihad (in which
the Agency funded a number of the fundamentalist extremists
we're now fighting in the second), lasted a decade, from 1980
until 1989 when the Soviets withdrew in defeat.
In October 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush
administration launched America's second Afghan War, taking
Kabul that November as the Taliban dissolved. The power of
the American military to achieve quick and total victory
seemed undeniable, even after Osama bin Laden slipped out of
Tora Bora that December and escaped into Pakistan's tribal
borderlands.
However, it evidently never crossed the minds of President
Bush's top officials to simply declare victory and get out.
Instead, as the U.S. would do in Iraq after the invasion of
2003, the Pentagon started building a new infrastructure of
military bases (in this case, on the ruins of the old Soviet
base infrastructure). At the same time, the former Cold
Warriors in Washington let their dreams about pushing the
former commies of the former Soviet Union out of the former
soviet socialist republics of Central Asia, places where,
everyone knew, you could just about swim in black gold and
run geopolitically wild.
Then, when the invasion of Iraq was launched in March 2003,
Afghanistan, still a ``war'' (if barely) was forgotten, while
the Taliban returned to the field, built up their strength,
and launched an insurgency that has only gained momentum to
this moment. In 2008, before leaving office, George W. Bush
bumped his favorite general, Iraq surge commander Petraeus,
upstairs to become the head of the Central Command which
oversees America's war zones in the Greater Middle East,
including Afghanistan.
Already the guru of counterinsurgency (known familiarly as
COIN), Petraeus had, in 2006, overseen the production of the
military's new war-fighting bible, a how-to manual dusted off
from the Vietnam era's failed version of COIN and made new
and magical again. In June 2010, eight and a half years into
our Second Afghan War, at President Obama's request, Petraeus
took over as Afghan War commander. It was clear then that
time was short--with an administration review of Afghan war
strategy coming up at year's end and results needed quickly.
The American war was also in terrible shape.
In the new COIN-ish U.S. Army, however, it is a dogma of
almost biblical faith that counterinsurgencies don't produce
quick results; that, to be successful, they must be pursued
for years on end. As Petraeus put it back in 2007 when
talking about Iraq, ``[T]ypically, I think historically,
counterinsurgency operations have gone at least nine or 10
years.'' Recently, in an interview with Martha Raddatz of ABC
News, he made a nod toward exactly the same timeframe for
Afghanistan, one accepted as bedrock knowledge in the world
of the COINistas.
What this meant was that, whether as CENTCOM commander or
Afghan War commander, Petraeus was looking for two
potentially contradictory results at the same time. Somehow,
he needed to wrest those nine to 10 years of war-fighting
from a president looking for a tighter schedule and, in a war
going terribly sour, he needed almost instant evidence of
``progress'' that would fit the president's coming December
``review'' of the war and might pacify unhappy publics in the
U.S. and Europe.
Now let's do the math. At the moment, depending on how you
care to count, we are in the 10th year of our second Afghan
War or the 20th year of war interruptus. Since June 2009,
Petraeus and various helpers have stretched the schedule to
2014 for (most) American combat troops and at least 2015 or
2016 for the rest. If you were to start counting from the
president's December surge address, that's potentially seven
more years. In other words, we're now talking about either a
15-year war or an on-and-off again quarter-century one. All
evidence shows that the Pentagon's war planners would like to
extend those already vague dates even further into the
future.
On Ticking Clocks in Washington and Kabul
Up to now, only one of General Petraeus's two campaigns has
been under discussion here: the other one, fought out these
last years not in Afghanistan, but in Washington and NATO
capitals, over how to schedule a war. Think of it as the war
for a free hand in determining how long the Afghan War is to
be fought.
It has been run from General Petraeus's headquarters in
Kabul, the giant five-sided
military headquarters on the Potomac presided over by
Secretary of Defense Gates, and various think-tanks filled
with America's militarized intelligentsia scattered around
Washington--and it has proven a classically successful
``clear, hold, build'' counterinsurgency operation.
Pacification in Washington and a number of European capitals
has occurred with remarkably few casualties. (Former Afghan
war commander General Stanley McChrystal, axed by the
president for insubordination, has been the exception, not
the rule.)
Slowly but decisively, Petraeus and company constricted
President Obama's war-planning choices to two options: more
and yet more. In late 2009, the president agreed to that
second surge of troops (the first had been announced that
March), not to speak of CIA agents, drones, private
contractors, and State Department and other civilian
government employees. In his December ``surge'' address at
West Point (for the nation but visibly to the military),
Obama had the temerity as commander-in-chief to name a
specific, soon-to-arrive date--July 2011--for beginning a
serious troop drawdown. It was then that the COIN campaign in
Washington ramped up into high gear with the goal of driving
the prospective end of the war back by years.
It took bare hours after the president's address for
administration officials to begin leaking to media sources
that his drawdown would be ``conditions based''--a phrase
guaranteed to suck the meaning out of any deadline. (The
president had indeed acknowledged in his address that his
administration would take into account ``conditions on the
ground.'') Soon, the Secretary of Defense and others took to
the airwaves in a months-long campaign emphasizing that
drawdown in Afghanistan didn't really mean drawdown, that
leaving by no means meant leaving, and that the future was
endlessly open to interpretation.
With the ratification in Lisbon of that 2014 date ``and
beyond,'' the political clocks--an image General Petraeus
loves--in Washington, European capitals, and American Kabul
are now ticking more or less in unison.
Two other ``clocks'' are, however, ticking more like bombs.
If counterinsurgency is a hearts and minds campaign, then the
other target of General Petraeus's first COIN campaign has
been the restive hearts and minds of the American and
European publics. Last year a Dutch government fell over
popular opposition to Afghanistan and, even as NATO met last
weekend, thousands of antiwar protestors marched in London
and Lisbon. Europeans generally want out and their
governments know it, but (as has been true since 1945) the
continent's leaders have no idea how to say ``no'' to
Washington. In the U.S., too, the Afghan war grows ever more
unpopular, and while it was forgotten during the election
season, no politician should count on that phenomenon lasting
forever.
And then, of course, there's the literal ticking bomb, the
actual war in Afghanistan. In that campaign, despite a
drumbeat of American/NATO publicity about ``progress,'' the
news has been grim indeed. American and NATO casualties have
been higher this year than at any other moment in the war;
the Taliban seems if anything more entrenched in more parts
of the country; the Afghan public, ever more puzzled and less
happy with foreign troops and contractors traipsing across
the land; and Hamid Karzai, the president of the country,
sensing a situation gone truly sour, has been regularly
challenging the way General Petraeus is fighting the war in
his country. (The nerve!)
No less unsettling, General Petraeus himself has seemed
unnerved. He was declared ``irked'' by Karzai's comments and
was said to have warned Afghan officials that their
president's criticism might be making his ``own position
`untenable,' '' which was taken as a resignation threat.
Meanwhile, the COIN-meister was in the process of imposing a
new battle plan on Afghanistan that leaves counterinsurgency
(at least as usually described) in a roadside ditch. No more
is the byword ``protect the people,'' or ``clear, hold,
build''; now, it's smash, kill, destroy. The war commander
has loosed American firepower in a major way in the Taliban
strongholds of southern Afghanistan.
Early this year, then-commander McChrystal had
significantly cut back on U.S. air strikes as a COIN-ish
measure meant to lessen civilian casualties. No longer. In a
striking reversal, air power has been called in--and in a big
way. In October, U.S. planes launched missiles or bombs on
1,000 separate Afghan missions, numbers seldom seen since the
2001 invasion. The Army has similarly loosed its massively
powerful High Mobility Artillery Rocket System in the area
around the southern city of Kandahar. Civilian deaths are
rising rapidly.
I yield myself such time as I may consume.
We keep coming back to 9/11. We're near the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, and which was predicated on a lie, no weapons of mass destruction. The war in Afghanistan is based on a misreading of history. The Soviet Union understood that at hard cost. The occupation is fueling an insurgency.
Now, Jeremy Scahill in the Nation points out that Taliban leaders have said they've seen a swelling in Taliban ranks since 9/11 in part attributed to the widely held perception that the Karzai government is corrupt and illegitimate, and that Afghans, primarily ethnic Pashtuns, want foreign occupation forces out. They're only fighting to make foreigners leave Afghanistan. Occupation fuels insurgency. That is an ironclad fact.
I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).
I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.
I want to point out that for those Members who are concerned about the finances of this government, U.S. debt soared from $6.4 trillion in March 2003 to $10 trillion.
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner economist, and his associate, Linda Bilmes, pointed out that at least a quarter of that increase is directly attributable to the war in Iraq. As a result of two costly wars, funded by debt, our fiscal house was in abysmal shape even before the financial crisis, and those fiscal woes compounded the downturn. The global financial crisis was due at least in part--this is a quote-- to the war.
Now they continue. The Iraq war didn't just contribute to the severity of the fiscal crisis, though it kept us from responding to it effectively. So, my friends, finance is a national security issue. If we are broke, we can't defend ourselves.
I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).
I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez).
(Ms. VELAZQUEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)
I reserve the balance of my time.
I would like to insert into the Record a recent report from The Washington Post that says that we've seen the steepest increase in lost limbs among soldiers and marines occurring in the last 4 months.
[From the Washington Post, Mar. 9, 2011]
Report Reveals Steep Increase in War Amputations Last Fall
(By David Brown)
The majority of American soldiers undergoing amputation for
war wounds last fall lost more than one limb, according to
data presented Tuesday to the Defense Health Board, a
committee of experts that advises the Defense Department on
medical matters.
Military officials had previously released data showing
that amputations, and especially multiple-limb losses,
increased last year. The information presented to the 20-
member board is the first evidence that the steepest increase
occurred over the last four months of the year.
In September 2010, about two-thirds of all war-theater
amputation operations involved a single limb (usually a leg)
and one-third two or more limbs. The split was roughly 50-50
in October and November. In December, only one-quarter of
amputation surgery involved only one limb; three-quarters
involved the loss of two or more limbs.
The Marines, who make up 20 percent of the forces in Iraq
and Afghanistan, were especially hard hit. Of the 66 wounded
severely enough to be evacuated overseas in October, one-
third lost a limb.
In the first seven years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars,
about 6 percent of seriously wounded soldiers underwent
amputation.
Wounds to the genitals and lower urinary tract--known as
genitourinary injuries--accounted for 11 percent of wounds
over the last seven months of 2010, up from 4 percent in the
previous 17 months, according to data presented by John B.
Holcomb, a trauma surgeon and retired Army colonel.
The constellation of leg-and-genital wounds are in large
part the consequence of stepping on improvised explosive
devices--homemade mines--and are known as ``dismounted IED
injuries.''
The data were assembled by Holcomb and two physicians at
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where all
seriously injured soldiers are taken on their way back to the
United States.
The steep increase in both the rate and number of
amputations clearly disturbed both Holcomb and members of the
board, which met at a Hilton hotel near Dulles International
Airport.
Holcomb, who spent two weeks at Landstuhl in December and
is a former head of the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical
Research, said he had heard of ``unwritten pacts among young
Marines that if they get their legs and genitals blown off
they won't put tourniquets on but will let each other die on
the battlefield.''
Richard H. Carmona, who was U.S. surgeon general from 2002
to 2006 and is now on the board, said the information was
``very disturbing.''
He said it has made him ask: ``What is the endgame here? Is
the sacrifice we are asking of our young men and women worth
the potential return? I have questions about that now.''
Carmona, 61, served as an Army medic in Vietnam before
going to college and medical school. He has a son who is an
Army sergeant and is serving in Iraq.
Jay A. Johannigman, an Air Force colonel who has served
multiple deployments as a trauma surgeon, said his stint at
the military hospital at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan last
fall ``was different'' both personally and medically.
``We see the enormous price our young men and women are
paying. It should not be for naught,'' he said. He didn't
want to elaborate.
Why amputation-requiring injuries increased so much in
recent months isn't entirely understood. It is partly a
function of tactics that emphasize more foot patrols in rural
areas. Some people have speculated the mines may be
constructed specifically to cause the devastating wounds.
``Do the Marines know? Probably,'' said Frank Butler, a
doctor and retired Navy captain who has spearheaded
improvements in battlefield first aid over the last decade.
``But they're not releasing a thing. And they shouldn't.''
I would also like to insert into the Record a report from the ``American Conservative'' which says that late last year IED deaths among our own soldiers were up, not down.
[From The American Conservative, Mar. 10, 2011]
How's That Population-Centric COIN Going?
(Posted by Kelley Vlahos)
If the success or failure of the Afghan military ``surge''
rests on whether the U.S. can bring down the level of
violence and protect the civilian population from the
Taliban--a metric that the now fading COINdinistas had once
insisted could be achieved with the right strategy--then two
new statistics to emerge this week don't bode well for the
prospects of the nearly 2-year-old counterinsurgency
operation in Afghanistan.
First, more of our soldiers today are coming home this year
with amputations than in the previous year, according reports
coming out of the Defense Health Board this week. According
to The Washington Post, which was apparently the only
mainstream news outlet to cover the board's meeting in
Northern Virginia on Tuesday, the steepest increase in lost
limbs among soldiers and Marines occurred in the last four
months.
The Marines, who make up 20 percent of the forces in Iraq
and Afghanistan, were especially hard hit. Of the 66 wounded
severely enough to be evacuated overseas in October, one-
third lost a limb.
In the first seven years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars,
about 6 percent of seriously wounded soldiers underwent
amputation.
Wounds to the genitals and lower urinary tract--known as
genitourinary injuries--accounted for 11 percent of wounds
over the last seven months of 2010, up from 4 percent in the
previous 17 months, according to data presented by John B.
Holcomb, a trauma surgeon and retired Army colonel.
The constellation of leg-and-genital wounds are in large
part the consequence of stepping on improvised explosive
devices--homemade mines--and are known as ``dismounted IED
injuries.''
The data regarding the increased amputations were already
reported in Friday's WaPo, but apparently the fact they
spiked in the last few months only came out in the meeting.
Who knows if that point would've ever seen the light of day
if a reporter hadn't been there. A source close to the board
told me that media rarely show up to cover the DHB, which is
a pity, because its members, which include both civilian and
retired military doctors and scientists, probably know more
about the ``big picture'' regarding the health and welfare of
our troops in the battlefield than anyone else and tend to
talk candidly among themselves about conditions there.
The data was presented Tuesday by John B. Holcomb, a trauma
surgeon and retired Army colonel. As a former head of the
U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research, he said he had
heard of ``unwritten pacts among young Marines that if they
get their legs and genitals blown off they won't put
tourniquets on but will let each other die on the
battlefield.''
New DHB member Richard Carmona, a former U.S. Surgeon
General under Bush, apparently didn't get the memo about
keeping his emotional responses in check. The Vietnam veteran
called the new statistics ``very disturbing,'' and then
asked, ``What is the endgame here? Is the sacrifice we are
asking of our young men and women worth the potential return?
I have questions about that now.''
He should definitely have questions, considering that Gen.
David Petraeus, Lt. Gen. William ``svengali'' Caldwell and
others have been all over the press in recent weeks talking
about how promising it looks in Afghanistan the Taliban's
``halted momentum,'' and all that.
Meanwhile, the other big news today is that civilian deaths
in Afghanistan are up, too.
According to a new U.N. report, civilian deaths as a result
of war violence rose 15 percent from the year before in
Afghanistan (some of the highest levels since the war began
in 2001). More than two-thirds of those deaths--2,777--were
caused by insurgents (up 28 percent) and 440 were caused by
Afghan Army/NATO forces (down 25 percent*). While the Taliban
is responsible for most civilian deaths, the U.S. has made
``protecting the population'' a major strategic goal for
winning over the Afghan people, legitimizing the Karzai
government and draining the Taliban of its authority.
Instead, it's been publicly blamed and repudiated by Afghans
for a number of civilian bombing deaths, the most recent
being nine Afghan boys killed ``by accident'' in a U.S. air
strike in Kunar province.
This week, President Karzai, rejected an apology from
Petraeus for the killings, and later accepted another attempt
at apology from Sec. Def. Bob Gates. It didn't help that
Petraeus' apology came a week after he suggested that the
young victims of another NATO attack in Kunar had gotten
their burn marks not from the strike, but from their parents,
who might have hurt the kids themselves in disciplinary
actions. It didn't go over so well, especially since Afghan
authorities say 65 people were killed, many of them women and
children. NATO has now admitted that some civilians may have
been hurt, but insists the operation had targeted insurgents.
Again, my mind goes back to the COINdinistas, many of whom
remain delusional about the direction of the war, and others
who might be furiously back-peddling or remolding themselves
as we speak. In June 2009, Triage: The Next Twelve Months in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, was published by the pro-COIN
Center for a New American Security (CNAS). In it, fellow
Andrew Exum, CNAS CEO Nathaniel Fick, David Kilcullen and
Ahmed Humayun wrote this (emphasis mine):
``To be sure, violence will rise in Afghanistan over the
next year--no matter what the United States and its allies
do. What matters, though, is who is dying. And here a
particular lesson may be directly imported from the U.S.
experience in Iraq. In 2007, during the Baghdad security
operations commonly referred to as ``the surge,'' U.S.
casualties actually increased sharply. What U.S. planners
were looking for, however, was not a drop in U.S.
casualties--or even a drop in Iraqi security force casualties
but a drop in Iraqi civilian casualties. In the same way,
U.S. and allied operations in Afghanistan must be focused on
protecting the population even at the expense of allied
casualties.''.
Afghan civilian casualties, whether at the hands of the
coalition, the Taliban, or the Afghan government, will be the
most telling measure of progress.
Well, violence is up, and deaths among NATO and its allies
are up. And so are civilian casualties.
Meanwhile, while the CNAS team said in June 2009 that NATO/
Afghan soldier deaths were expected to rise, they also
claimed that another metric of success would be an eventual
flattening of IED (Improvised Explosive Devices) incidents.
Another indicator of cooperation (with local Afghans) is
the number of roadside bombs (improvised explosive devices,
or IEDs) that are found and cleared versus exploded. IED
numbers have risen sharply in Afghanistan since 2006 (though
numbers are still low, and IEDs still unsophisticated,
compared to Iraq). The coalition should expect an increase in
numbers again this year. However, a rise in the proportion of
IEDs being found and defused (especially when discovered
thanks to tips from the local population) indicates that
locals have a good working relationship with local military
units a sign of progress.
Despite all his spin to the contrary, Petraeus cannot hide
the fact that late last year, IED deaths among our own
soldiers were up, not down. A chart issued within its own
November progress report to Congress last November shows
that, and it shows that the found and cleared IEDs had not
risen above the attacks in most areas of the country.
Plus, metric or no metric, the recent data indicating
serious injuries of U.S. soldiers this late in the game--
while every other assessment outside the military bubble says
the Taliban are making more gains not less--should leave any
thinking person at this point to question, ``is it really
worth it?''
Not sure what it will take before the COINdinistas admit
events on the ground are falling short of their own metrics.
Sounds like a good follow-up to ``Triage,'' but will anyone
there have the guts to write it?
I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas, Representative Jackson Lee.
I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis).
I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis).
I would like to put into the Record an article from the National Interest which states that many U.S. and western troops cannot leave their bases without encountering IEDs or more coordinated attacks from insurgents.
[From The National Interest, Mar. 9, 2011]
Pulling a Fast One in Afghanistan
(By Christopher A. Preble)
I have just returned from a discussion of U.S. strategy in
Afghanistan and Pakistan hosted by the Foundation for the
Defense of Democracies. The meeting of 25 or so journalists,
think tankers, and current and former government officials
featured introductory remarks by Gilles Dorronsoro, visiting
scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, and FDD's Bill Roggio. FDD
President, Cliff May, moderated the session. The meeting was
officially on the record, but I'm relying solely on my hand-
written notes, so I won't quote the other attendees directly.
I would characterize the general mood as grim. A few
attendees pointed to the killing of a number of Taliban
figures in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and reports of
progress in Marja and the rest of Helmand province as
evidence of progress. These gains, one speaker maintained,
were sustainable and would not necessarily slip in the event
that U.S. forces are directed where elsewhere.
Dorronsoro disputed these assertions. He judged that the
situation today is worse than it was a year ago, before the
surge of 30,000 additional troops. The killing of individual
Taliban leaders, or foot-soldiers, was also accompanied by
the inadvertent killing of innocent bystanders, including
most recent nine children. So there is always the danger that
even targeted strikes based on timely, credible intelligence,
will over the long term replace one dead Talib with two or
four or eight of his sons, brothers, cousins, and tribesman.
How many people have said ``We can't kill our way to
victory''?
For Dorronsoro, the crucial metric is security, no number
of bad guys and suspected bad guys killed. And, given that he
can't drive to places that he freely visited two or three
years ago, he judges that security in the country has gotten
worse, not better. Many U.S. and Western troops cannot leave
their bases without encountering IEDs or more coordinated
attacks from insurgents. U.S. and NATO forces don't control
territory, and there is little reason to think that they can.
Effective counterinsurgencies (COIN) are waged by a credible
local partner, a government that commands the respect and
authority of its citizens. That obviously doesn't exist in
Afghanistan. The Afghan militia, supposedly the key to long-
term success, is completely ineffective.
Secretary Gates asserted on Monday that the draw down of
U.S. troops would begin as scheduled this July, although, as
the Washington Post's Greg Jaffe writes, ``he cautioned that
any reductions in U.S. forces would likely be small and that
a significant U.S. force will remain in combat for the rest
of 2011.'' NATO remains committed to 2014 as the date to hand
over security to the Afghan government. Whether the United
States retains a long-term presence in the country is the
subject of much speculation.
For the people from FDD, it shouldn't be. Roggio stressed
that the problem with U.S. strategy is that Americans were
looking for an exit, when we should be making a long-term
commitment to Afghanistan. May concurred. When I asked them
to clarify how long term, both demurred (Roggio said ``a
decade or more'' but didn't elaborate). I also inquired about
the resources that would be required to constitute
``commitment''. Given that we have over 100,000 troops on the
ground, and that we will spend over $100 billion in
Afghanistan in this year alone, how much more of a commitment
would they find acceptable? Again, no definitive answer.
Roggio did claim, however, that a long-term commitment
would increase the prospect of turning the Pakistanis. This
is the crucial other piece in the puzzle. Nearly everyone in
the meeting agreed that the unwillingness of the Pakistanis
to cooperate with the United States had allowed a safe haven
to be created in North Waziristan and elsewhere along the
AfPak border. Most in the meeting admitted that Pakistan's
interests in Afghanistan did not always align with our own.
None had an answer for decisively changing this calculus, but
some agreed with Roggio that evidence of progress in
Afghanistan--combined with a credible commitment on the part
of the U.S. to remain for the long-haul--would convince the
Pakistanis to side with the Americans.
If you're reading carefully, you can see a circular logic
here, brilliantly encapsulated by Dorronsoro. I paraphrase:
We cannot win Afghanistan without turning Pakistan, but we
cannot turn the Pakistanis without warning in Afghanistan. It
is no wonder that one attendee declared herself growing
increasingly depressed as the meeting wore on.
I would like to insert into the Record an article from Cato-at- Liberty's Web site entitled America's Aimless Absurdity in Afghanistan.
America's `Aimless Absurdity' In Afghanistan
(Posted By Malou Innocent On March 7, 2011)
Rasmussen reports that 52% of Americans want U.S. troops
home from Afghanistan within a year, up from 43% last fall.
Of course, polls are ephemeral snapshots of public opinion
that can fluctuate with the prevailing political winds;
nonetheless, it does appear that more Americans are slowly
coming to realize the ``aimless absurdity'' of our nation-
building project in Central Asia.
Earlier today, former Republican senator Judd Gregg of New
Hampshire said on MSNBC's ``Morning Joe'': ``I don't think we
can afford Afghanistan much longer.'' He continued: ``The
simple fact is that it's costing us. Good people are losing
their lives there, and we're losing huge amounts of resources
there. . . . So I think we should have a timeframe for
getting out of Afghanistan, and it should be shorter rather
than longer.''
Gregg is absolutely right. It is well past time to bring
this long war to a swift end. Yet Gregg's comments also
reflect a growing bipartisan realization that prolonging our
land war in Asia is weakening our country militarily and
economically.
To politicians of any stripe, the costs on paper of staying
in Afghanistan are jarring. Pentagon officials told the House
Defense Appropriations Subcommittee that it costs an average
of $400 per gallon of fuel for the aircraft and combat
vehicles operating in land-locked Afghanistan. The U.S.
Agency for International Development has spent more than $7.8
billion on Afghanistan reconstruction since 2001, including
building and refurbishing 680 schools and training thousands
of civil servants. Walter Pincus, of The Washington Post,
reported that the Army Corps of Engineers spent $4 billion
last year on 720 miles of roads to transport troops in and
around the war-ravaged country. It will spend another $4 to
$6 billion this year, for 250 more miles.
War should no longer be a left-right issue. It's a question
of scarce resources and limiting the power of government.
Opposition to the war in Afghanistan can no longer be swept
under the carpet or dismissed as an issue owned by peaceniks
and pacifists, especially when our men and women in uniform
are being deployed to prop up a regime Washington doesn't
trust, for goals our president can't define.
I would like to put into the Record an article from Truthdig posted on
AlterNet entitled Afghanistan: Obscenely Well-Funded but Largely Unsuccessful War Rages on Out of Sight of the American Public.
[From AlterNet, Nov. 18, 2010]
Afghanistan: Obscenely Well-Funded, But Largely Unsuccessful War Rages
on Out of Sight of the American Public
(By Juan Cole)
Not only is it unclear that the U.S. and NATO are winning
their war in Afghanistan, the lack of support for their
effort by the Afghanistan president himself has driven the
American commander to the brink of resignation. In response
to complaints from his constituents, Afghanistan's mercurial
President Hamid Karzai called Sunday for American troops to
scale back their military operations. The supposed ally of
the U.S., who only last spring petulantly threatened to join
the Taliban, astonished Washington with this new outburst,
which prompted a warning from Gen. David Petraeus that the
president was making Petraeus' position ``untenable,'' which
some speculated might be a threat to resign.
During the past two months, the U.S. military has fought a
major campaign in the environs of the southern Pashtun city
of Kandahar, launching night raids and attempting to push
insurgents out of the orchards and farms to the east of the
metropolis. Many local farmers were displaced, losing their
crops in the midst of the violence, and forced to become day
laborers in the slums of Kandahar. Presumably these Pashtun
clans who found themselves in the crossfire between the
Taliban and the U.S. put pressure on Karzai to call a halt to
the operation.
That there has been heavy fighting in Afghanistan this fall
would come as a surprise to most Americans, who have seen
little news on their televisions about the war. Various
websites noted that 10 NATO troops were killed this past
Saturday and Sunday alone, five of them in a single battle,
but it was hardly front page news, and got little or no
television coverage.
The midterm campaign circus took the focus off of foreign
affairs in favor of witches in Newark and eyes of Newt in
Georgia. Distant Kandahar was reduced to an invisible battle
in an unseen war, largely unreported in America's mass media,
as though it were irrelevant to the big campaign issues--of
deficits and spending, of taxes and public welfare. Since it
was President Obama's offensive, Democrats could not run
against it. Since it is billed as key to U.S. security,
Republicans were not interested in running against it.
Kandahar, city of pomegranates and car bombs, of poppies and
government cartels, lacked a partisan implication, and so no
one spoke of it.
In fact, the war is costing on the order of $7 billion a
month, a sum that is still being borrowed and adding nearly
$100 billion a year to the already-burgeoning national debt.
Yet in all the talk in all the campaigns in the hustings
about the dangers of the federal budget deficit, hardly any
candidates fingered the war as economically unsustainable.
The American public cannot have a debate on the war if it
is not even mentioned in public. The extreme invisibility of
the Afghanistan war is apparent from a Lexis Nexis search I
did for ``Kandahar'' (again, the site of a major military
campaign) for the period from Oct. 15 to Nov. 15. I got only
a few dozen hits, from all American news sources (National
Public Radio was among the few media outlets that devoted
substantial airtime to the campaign).
The campaign in the outskirts of Kandahar had been modeled
on last winter's attack on the farming area of Marjah in
Helmand Province. Marjah was a demonstration project,
intended to show that the U.S., NATO and Afghanistan security
forces could ``take, clear, hold and build.''
Petraeus' counterinsurgency doctrine depends on taking
territory away from the insurgents, clearing it of
guerrillas, holding it for the medium term to keep the
Taliban from returning and to reassure local leaders that
they need not fear reprisals for ``collaborating,'' and then
building up services and security for the long term to ensure
that the insurgents can never again return and dominate the
area. But all these months later, the insurgents still have
not been cleared from Marjah, which is a site of frequent gun
fights between over-stretched Marines and Taliban.
There is no early prospect of Afghan army troops holding
the area, or of building effective institutions in the face
of constant sniping and bombing. Marjah is only 18 square
miles. Afghanistan is more than 251,000 square miles. If
Marjah is the model for the campaign in the outskirts of
Kandahar, then the latter will be a long, hard slog. Kandahar
is even more complicated, since the labyrinthine alleyways of
the city and its hundreds of thousands of inhabitants offer
insurgents new sorts of cover when they are displaced there
from the countryside.
Counterinsurgency requires an Afghan partner, but all along
the spectrum of Afghan institutions, the U.S. and NATO are
seeking in vain for the ``government in a box'' once promised
by Gen. Stanley McChrystal. The people in the key provinces
of Helmand and Kandahar are largely hostile to U.S. and NATO
troops, seeing them as disrespecting their traditions and as
offering no protection from violence. They see cooperating
with the U.S. as collaboration and want Mullah Omar of the
Taliban to join the government.
Although the U.S. and NATO have spent $27 billion on
training Afghan troops, only 12 percent of them can operate
independently. Karzai and his circle are extremely corrupt,
taking millions in cash payments from Iran and looting a
major bank for unsecured loans, allowing the purchase of
opulent villas in fashionable Dubai. It is no wonder that
Petraeus is at the end of his rope. The only question is why
the Obama administration is not, and how long it will hold to
the myth of counterinsurgency.
I would like to put into the Record an article published on AlterNet titled Totally Occupied: 700 Military Bases Spread Across Afghanistan, by Nick Turse at TomDispatch.com.
[From AlterNet, Posted on February 10, 2010, Printed on March 17, 2011]
Totally Occupied: 700 Military Bases Spread Across Afghanistan
(By Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com)
In the nineteenth century, it was a fort used by British
forces. In the twentieth century, Soviet troops moved into
the crumbling facilities. In December 2009, at this site in
the Shinwar district of Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province,
U.S. troops joined members of the Afghan National Army in
preparing the way for the next round of foreign occupation.
On its grounds, a new military base is expected to rise, one
of hundreds of camps and outposts scattered across the
country.
Nearly a decade after the Bush administration launched its
invasion of Afghanistan, TomDispatch offers the first actual
count of American, NATO, and other coalition bases there, as
well as facilities used by the Afghan security forces. Such
bases range from relatively small sites like Shinwar to mega-
bases that resemble small American towns. Today, according to
official sources, approximately 700 bases of every size dot
the Afghan countryside, and more, like the one in Shinwar,
are under construction or soon will be as part of a base-
building boom that began last year.
Existing in the shadows, rarely reported on and little
talked about, this base-building program is nonetheless
staggering in size and scope, and heavily dependent on
supplies imported from abroad, which means that it is also
extraordinarily expensive. It has added significantly to the
already long secret list of Pentagon property overseas and
raises questions about just how long, after the planned
beginning of a drawdown of American forces in 2011, the U.S.
will still be garrisoning Afghanistan.
400 Foreign Bases in Afghanistan
Colonel Wayne Shanks, a spokesman for the U.S.-led
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), tells
TomDispatch that there are, at present, nearly 400 U.S. and
coalition bases in Afghanistan, including camps, forward
operating bases, and combat outposts. In addition, there are
at least 300 Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National
Police (ANP) bases, most of them built, maintained, or
supported by the U.S. A small number of the coalition sites
are mega-bases like Kandahar Airfield, which boasts one of
the busiest runways in the world, and Bagram Air Base, a
former Soviet facility that received a makeover, complete
with Burger King and Popeyes outlets, and now serves more
than 20,000 U.S. troops, in addition to thousands of
coalition forces and civilian contractors.
In fact, Kandahar, which housed 9,000 coalition troops as
recently as 2007, is expected to have a population of as many
as 35,000 troops by the time President Obama's surge is
complete, according to Colonel Kevin Wilson who oversees
building efforts in the southern half of Afghanistan for the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. On the other hand, the Shinwar
site, according to Sgt. Tracy J. Smith of the U.S. 48th
Infantry Brigade Combat Team, will be a small forward
operating base (FOB) that will host both Afghan troops and
foreign forces.
Last fall, it was reported that more than $200 million in
construction projects--from barracks to cargo storage
facilities--were planned for or in-progress at Bagram.
Substantial construction funds have also been set aside by
the U.S. Air Force to upgrade its air power capacity at
Kandahar. For example, $65 million has been allocated to
build additional apron space (where aircraft can be parked,
serviced, and loaded or unloaded) to accommodate more close-
air support for soldiers in the field and a greater
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability.
Another $61 million has also been earmarked for the
construction of a cargo helicopter apron and a tactical
airlift apron there.
Kandahar is just one of many sites currently being
upgraded. Exact figures on the number of facilities being
enlarged, improved, or hardened are unavailable but,
according a spokesman for ISAF, the military plans to expand
several more bases to accommodate the increase of troops as
part of Afghan War commander Stanley McChrystal's surge
strategy. In addition, at least 12 more bases are slated to
be built to help handle
the 30,000 extra American troops and thousands of NATO forces
beginning to arrive in the country.
``Currently we have over $3 billion worth of work going on
in Afghanistan,'' says Colonel Wilson, ``and probably by the
summer, when the dust settles from all the uplift, we'll have
about $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion worth of that [in the
South].'' By comparison, between 2002 and 2008, the Army
Corps of Engineers spent more than $4.5 billion on
construction projects, most of it base-building, in
Afghanistan.
At the site of the future FOB in Shinwar, more than 135
private construction contractors attended what was termed an
``Afghan-Coalition contractors rodeo.'' According to
Lieutenant Fernando Roach, a contracting officer with the
U.S. Army's Task Force Mountain Warrior, the event was
designed ``to give potential contractors a walkthrough of the
area so they'll have a solid overview of the scope of work.''
The construction firms then bid on three separate projects:
the renovation of the more than 30-year old Soviet
facilities, the building of new living quarters for Afghan
and coalition forces, and the construction of a two-kilometer
wall for the base.
In the weeks since the ``rodeo,'' the U.S. Army has
announced additional plans to upgrade facilities at other
forward operating bases. At FOB Airborne, located near Kane-
Ezzat in Wardak Province, for instance, the Army intends to
put in reinforced concrete bunkers and blast protection
barriers as well as lay concrete foundations for Re-Locatable
Buildings (prefabricated, trailer-like structures used for
living and working quarters). Similar work is also scheduled
for FOB Altimur, an Army camp in Logar Province.
The Afghan Base Boom
Recently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Afghanistan
District-Kabul, announced that it would be seeking bids on
``site assessments'' for Afghan National Security Forces
District Headquarters Facilities nationwide. The precise
number of Afghan bases scattered throughout the country is
unclear.
When asked by TomDispatch, Colonel Radmanish of the Afghan
Ministry of Defense would state only that major bases were
located in Kabul, Pakteya, Kandahar, Herat, and Mazar-e-
Sharif, and that ANA units operate all across Afghanistan.
Recent U.S. Army contracts for maintenance services provided
to Afghan army and police bases, however, suggest that there
are no fewer than 300 such facilities that are, according to
an ISAF spokesman, not counted among the coalition base
inventory.
As opposed to America's fast-food-franchise-filled bases,
Afghan ones are often decidedly more rustic affairs. The
police headquarters in Khost Farang District, Baghlan
Province, is a good example. According to a detailed site
assessment conducted by a local contractor for the Army Corps
of Engineers and the Afghan government, the district
headquarters consists of mud and stone buildings surrounded
by a mud wall. The site even lacks a deep well for water. A
trench fed by a nearby spring is the only convenient water
source.
The U.S. bases that most resemble austere Afghan facilities
are combat outposts, also known as COPs. Environmental
Specialist Michael Bell of the Army Corps of Engineers,
Afghanistan Engineer District-South's Real Estate Division,
recently described the facilities and life on such a base as
he and his co-worker, Realty Specialist Damian Salazar, saw
it in late 2009:
``COP Sangar . . . is a compound surrounded by mud and
straw walls. Tents with cots supplied the sleeping quarters .
. . A medical, pharmacy and command post tent occupied the
center of the COP, complete with a few computers with
internet access and three primitive operating tables. Showers
had just been installed with hot [water] . . . only available
from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. . . .
``An MWR [Morale, Welfare and Recreation] tent was erected
on Thanksgiving Day with an operating television; however,
the tent was rarely used due to the cold. Most of the troops
used a tent with gym equipment for recreation . . . A cook
trailer provided a hot simple breakfast and supper. Lunch was
MREs [meals ready to eat]. Nights were pitch black with no
outside lighting from the base or the city.''
What Makes a Base?
According to an official site assessment, future
construction at the Khost Farang District police headquarters
will make use of sand, gravel, and stone, all available on
the spot. Additionally, cement, steel, bricks, lime, and
gypsum have been located for purchase in Pol-e Khomri City,
about 85 miles away.
Constructing a base for American troops, however, is
another matter. For the far less modest American needs of
American troops, builders rely heavily on goods imported over
extremely long, difficult to traverse, and sometimes
embattled supply lines, all of which adds up to an
extraordinarily costly affair. ``Our business runs on
materials,'' Lieutenant General Robert Van Antwerp, commander
of the Army Corps of Engineers, told an audience at a town
hall meeting in Afghanistan in December 2009. ``You have to
bring in the lumber, you have to bring in the steel, you have
to bring in the containers and all that. Transport isn't easy
in this country--number one, the roads themselves, number
two, coming through other countries to get here--there are
just huge challenges in getting the materials here.''
To facilitate U.S. base construction projects, a new
``virtual storefront''--an online shopping portal--has been
launched by the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency (DLA).
The Maintenance, Repair and Operations Uzbekistan Virtual
Storefront website and a defense contractor-owned and
operated brick-and-mortar warehouse facility that supports it
aim to provide regionally-produced construction materials to
speed surge-accelerated building efforts.
From a facility located in Termez, Uzbekistan, cement,
concrete, fencing, roofing, rope, sand, steel, gutters, pipe,
and other construction material manufactured in countries
like Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan can be rushed to nearby
Afghanistan to accelerate base-building efforts. ``Having the
products closer to the fight will make it easier for
warfighters by reducing logistics response and delivery
time,'' says Chet Evanitsky, the DLA's construction and
equipment supply chain division chief.
America's Shadowy Base World
The Pentagon's most recent inventory of bases lists a total
of 716 overseas sites. These include facilities owned and
leased all across the Middle East as well as a significant
presence in Europe and Asia, especially Japan and South
Korea. Perhaps even more notable than the Pentagon's
impressive public foreign property portfolio are the many
sites left off the official inventory. While bases in the
Persian Gulf countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and the
United Arab Emirates are all listed, one conspicuously absent
site is Al-Udeid Air Base, a billion-dollar facility in
nearby Qatar, where the U.S. Air Force secretly oversees its
on-going unmanned drone wars.
The count also does not include any sites in Iraq where, as
of August 2009, there were still nearly 300 American bases
and outposts. Similarly, U.S. bases in Afghanistan--a
significant percentage of the 400 foreign sites scattered
across the country--are noticeably absent from the Pentagon
inventory.
Counting the remaining bases in Iraq--as many as 50 are
slated to be operating after President Barack Obama's August
31, 2010, deadline to remove all U.S. ``combat troops'' from
the country--and those in Afghanistan, as well as black sites
like Al-Udeid, the total number of U.S. bases overseas now
must significantly exceed 1,000. Just exactly how many U.S.
military bases (and allied facilities used by U.S. forces)
are scattered across the globe may never be publicly known.
What we do know--from the experience of bases in Germany,
Italy, Japan, and South Korea--is that, once built, they have
a tendency toward permanency that a cessation of hostilities,
or even outright peace, has a way of not altering.
After nearly a decade of war, close to 700 U.S., allied,
and Afghan military bases dot Afghanistan. Until now,
however, they have existed as black sites known to few
Americans outside the Pentagon. It remains to be seen, a
decade into the future, how many of these sites will still be
occupied by U.S. and allied troops and whose flag will be
planted on the ever-shifting British-Soviet-U.S./Afghan site
at Shinwar.
General Petraeus and others in the administration continue their PR campaign. Overwhelming evidence is proving their upbeat assessments of our strategy is false. A recent article by the Los Angeles Times cited a report released by the Foreign Affairs Committee and the British Parliament that concluded that ``despite the optimistic appraisals we heard from some military and official sources, the security situation across Afghanistan as a whole is deteriorating. Counterinsurgency efforts in the south and east have allowed the Taliban to expand its presence and control in other previously relatively stable areas in Afghanistan.''
Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York, Mr. Charles Rangel.
(Mr. RANGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining for each individual.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.
Mr. Speaker, spending on the Afghanistan war is rising at an accelerating rate. Over just 3 years, in a period of 3 years--2010, 2011, and 2012--we will spend 45 percent more on the war in Afghanistan than we did in the preceding
8 years, $336.9 billion versus $231.2 billion. This is an example of out-of-control Federal spending.
If Congress is serious about being fiscally responsible and about cutting the Federal budget by three figures, then cutting spending on the out-of-control $100 billion-a-year war in Afghanistan must be a serious consideration. This legislation, House Concurrent Resolution 28, gives those who are concerned about the costs of this war an opportunity finally to have a choice.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.
Is it the province of the Chair to determine that closing statements are in order?
Further parliamentary inquiry. Does the Chair have the right to determine that closing statements are the order of business here?
Further parliamentary inquiry. Does the Chair have the ability to direct individual Members that they are to give their closing statements?
The 2001 authorization of military force and the justification for our continued military presence in Afghanistan is that the Taliban in the past provided a safe haven for al Qaeda or could do so again in the future. General Petraeus has already admitted that al Qaeda has little or no presence in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is an international organization, and, yes, they are a threat to America. The Taliban is only a threat to us as long as we continue our military occupation in Afghanistan.
After more than 9 years of military occupation of Afghanistan, can we really continue to claim to be acting in self-defense? The premise that the presence of our troops on the ground keeps us safer at home has been repudiated by recent terrorist attacks on the United States, all done by people other than Afghans outraged at continuing U.S. military occupation of predominantly Muslim countries. That is not to justify what they do, but it is to clarify the condition that we have in Afghanistan.
For how long are we going to continue to dedicate hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives before we realize we can't win Afghanistan militarily?
At the end of the year, the administration and U.S. military leaders were touting peace talks to end the war with high-level Taliban leaders. These Taliban leaders turned out to be fake.
A November 2010 article in The New York Times detailed joint U.S. and Afghan negotiations with Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, a man the U.S. claimed was one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban. According to the New York Times, ``the episode underscores the uncertain and even bizarre nature of the atmosphere in which Afghan and American leaders search for ways to bring the American-led war to an end. The leaders of the Taliban are believed to be hiding in Pakistan, possibly with assistance of the Pakistani government, which receives billions of dollars in U.S. aid.''
How can we claim that a cornerstone of our counterinsurgency strategy is to take out Taliban strongholds across the country while at the same time conducting negotiations with the Taliban in an effort to end the war?
This episode further underlies the significant weakness in our strategy. We think we can separate the Taliban from the rest the Afghan population. Our counterinsurgency strategy fails to recognize a basic principle: Occupations fuel insurgencies. Occupations fuel insurgencies. Occupations fuel insurgencies.
The Taliban is a local resistance movement that is part and parcel of the indigenous population.
We lost the Vietnam war because we failed to win the hearts and minds of the local population. Without providing them with a competent government that provided them with basic security and a decent living, we're committing the same mistake in Afghanistan.
News reports indicate the Taliban is regaining momentum. The increase in civilian casualties due to higher levels of violence by insurgents further undermines the assurances of progress. As we send more troops into the country and kill innocent civilians with errant air strikes, the Taliban gains more support as resistors of foreign occupation. If we accept the premise that we can never leave Afghanistan until the Taliban is eradicated, we'll be there forever.
I would like to insert into the Record an article from The Nation, ``America's Failed War in Afghanistan--No Policy Change Is Going to Affect the Outcome.'' That's by Jeremy Scahill.
[From The Nation, Mar. 17, 2011]
America's Failed War in Afghanistan--No Policy Change Is Going To
Affect the Outcome
(By Jeremy Scahill)
At the end of the NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal this
weekend, the leadership of the Afghan Taliban issued a
statement characterizing the alliance's adoption of a loose
timeline for a 2014 end to combat operations as ``good news''
for Afghans and ``a sign of failure for the American
government.'' At the summit, President Barack Obama said that
2011 will begin ``a transition to full Afghan lead'' in
security operations, while the Taliban declared: ``In the
past nine years, the invaders could not establish any system
of governance in Kabul and they will never be able to do so
in future.''
While Obama claimed that the U.S. and its allies are
``breaking the Taliban's momentum,'' the reality on the
ground tells a different story. Despite increased Special
Operations Forces raids and, under Gen. David Petraeus, a
return to regular U.S.-led airstrikes, the insurgency in
Afghanistan is spreading and growing stronger. ``By killing
Taliban leaders the war will not come to an end,'' said the
Taliban's former foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, in
an interview at his home in Kabul. ``On the contrary, things
get worse which will give birth to more leaders.''
Former and current Taliban leaders say that they have seen
a swelling in the Taliban ranks since 9-11. In part, they
say, this can be attributed to a widely held perception that
the Karzai government is corrupt and illegitimate and that
Afghans--primarily ethnic Pashtuns--want foreign occupation
forces out. ``We are only fighting to make foreigners leave
Afghanistan,'' a new Taliban commander in Kunduz told me
during my recent trip to the country. ``We don't want to
fight after the withdrawal of foreigners, but as long as
there are foreigners, we won't talk to Karzai.''
``The Americans have very sophisticated technology, but the
problem here in Afghanistan is they are confronting ideology.
I think ideology is stronger than technology,'' says Abdul
Salam Zaeef, a former senior member of Mullah Mohammed Omar's
government. ``If I am a Taliban and I'm killed, I'm martyred,
then I'm successful. There are no regrets for the Taliban.
It's very difficult to defeat this kind of idea.''
But it is not simply a matter of ideology versus
technology. The Taliban is not one unified body. The Afghan
insurgency is fueled by fighters with a wide variety of
motivations. Some are the dedicated jihadists of which Zaeef
speaks, but others are fighting to defend their land or are
seeking revenge for the killing of family members by NATO or
Afghan forces. While al Qaeda has been almost entirely
expelled from Afghanistan, the insurgency still counts a
small number of non-Afghans among its ranks. Bolstering the
Taliban's recruitment efforts is the perception in
Afghanistan that the Taliban pays better than NATO or the
Afghan army or police.
The hard reality U.S. officials don't want to discuss is
this: the cultural and religious values of much of the
Pashtun population--which comprises 25-40 percent of the
country--more closely align with those of the Taliban than
they do with Afghan government or U.S./NATO forces. The
Taliban operate a shadow government in large swaths of the
Pashtun areas of the country, complete with governors and a
court system. In rural areas, land and property disputes are
resolved through the Taliban system rather than the Afghan
government, which is widely distrusted. ``The objectives and
goal of the American troops in Afghanistan are not clear to
the people and therefore Afghans call the Americans
`invaders,' '' says Muttawakil. ``Democracy is a very new
phenomenon in Afghanistan and most people don't know the
meaning of democracy. And now corruption, thieves and fakes
have defamed democracy. Democracy can't be imposed because
people will never adopt any value by force.''
The U.S. strategy of attempting to force the Taliban to
surrender or engage in negotiations rests almost exclusively
on attempts to decapitate the Taliban leadership. While
Taliban leaders acknowledge that commanders are regularly
killed, they say the targeted killings are producing more
radical leaders who are far less likely to negotiate than the
older school Taliban leaders who served in the government of
Mullah Mohammed Omar. ``If today Mullah Omar was captured or
killed, the fighting will go on,'' says Zaeef, adding: ``It
will be worse for everyone if the [current] Taliban
leadership disappears.''
In October, there were a flurry of media reports that
senior Taliban leaders were negotiating with the Karzai
government and that U.S. forces were helping to insure safe
passage for the Taliban leaders to come to Kabul. The Taliban
passionately refuted those reports, saying they were
propaganda aimed at dividing the insurgency. Last week the
Taliban appeared vindicated on this point as Karzai spoke in
markedly modest terms on the issue. He told The Washington
Post that three months ago he had met with one or two ``very
high'' level Taliban leaders. He characterized the meeting as
``the exchange of desires for peace,'' saying the Taliban
``feel the same as we do here--that too many people are
suffering for no reason.''
Update: [On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that NATO
and the Afghan government have held a series of ``secret''
peace negotiations with a man who posed as a senior Taliban
leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour. A Western diplomat
involved in the discussions told the Times, ``[W]e gave him a
lot of money.'' It is unclear who, if anyone, the impostor
was working for, though the Times speculated that he could
have been deployed by Pakistan's ISI spy agency or by the
Taliban itself. ``The Taliban are cleverer than the Americans
and our own intelligence service,'' said a senior Afghan
official who is familiar with the case. ``They are playing
games.'' Last month, the White House asked the Times to
withhold Mansour's name ``from an article about the peace
talks, expressing concern that the talks would be
jeopardized--and Mr. Mansour's life put at risk--if his
involvement were publicized. The Times agreed to withhold Mr.
Mansour's name,'' according to the paper.
This incident is significant on a number of levels. If
true, it underscores the ineffective and inaccurate nature of
U.S., NATO and Afghan government intelligence. It also
confirms what Taliban leaders have stated publicly and to
The Nation, namely that it has not negotiated with the
Afghan government or NATO and that it will not negotiate
unless foreign troops leave Afghanistan. The fake Mullah
Mansour, according to the Times, ``did not demand, as the
Taliban have in the past, a withdrawal of foreign forces
or a Taliban share of the government.''
In October, a U.S. official said that reports in U.S. media
outlets of senior Taliban negotiating are propaganda aimed at
sowing dissent among the Taliban leadership. ``This is a
psychological operation, plain and simple,'' the official
with firsthand knowledge of the Afghan government's
strategies told the McClatchy news service. ``Exaggerating
the significance of it is an effort to sow distrust within
the insurgency.''
Today on MSNBC, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell
continued to insist that U.S. and NATO forces have
facilitated safe passage for Taliban leaders for
reconciliation meetings in Kabul. The Taliban maintain there
have been no meetings.
The Taliban impostor incident also calls into question
scores of deadly night raids that have resulted in the deaths
of innocent Afghans. Several survivors of night raids
recently told The Nation that they believed they were victims
of bad intelligence provided by other Afghans for money or to
settle personal grudges.
Contrary to the rhetoric emanating from NATO and
Washington, the Taliban are not on the ropes and, from their
perspective, would gain nothing from negotiating with the
U.S. or NATO. As far as they are concerned, time is on their
side. ``The bottom line for [NATO and the U.S.] is to
immediately implement what they would ultimately have to
implement . . . after colossal casualties,'' stated the
Taliban declaration after the recent NATO summit. ``They
should not postpone withdrawal of their forces.''
Depending on who you ask, the fact that Gen. Petraeus has
brought back the use of heavy U.S. airstrikes and is
increasing night raids and other direct actions by Special
Operations Forces could be seen as a sign of either fierce
determination to wipe out ``the enemy'' or of desperation to
prove the U.S. and its allies are ``winning.'' Over the past
three months, NATO claims that Special Operations Forces'
night raids have resulted in more than 360 ``insurgent
leaders'' being killed or captured along with 960 ``lower-
level'' leaders and the capture of more than 2400 ``lower-
level'' fighters. In July, Special Operations Forces averaged
5 raids a night. Now, according to NATO, they are conducting
an average of 17. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called
the raids ``intelligence-driven precision operations against
high value insurgents and their networks,'' adding, ``There
is no question that they are having a significant impact on
the insurgent leadership.''
The raids undoubtedly have produced scores of successful
kill or capture operations, but serious questions abound over
the NATO definitions of Taliban commanders, sub-commanders
and foot soldiers. Most significantly, the raids consistently
result in the killing of innocent civilians, a fact that is
problematic for NATO and the Karzai government. ``A lot of
times, yeah, the right guys would get targeted and the
right guys would get killed,'' says Matthew Hoh a former
senior State Department official in Afghanistan who
resigned in 2009 in protest of U.S. war strategy. ``Plenty
of other times, the wrong people would get killed.
Sometimes it would be innocent families.'' Hoh, who was the
senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban stronghold,
describes night raids as ``a really risky, really violent
operation,'' saying that when Special Operations Forces
conduct them, ``We might get that one guy we're looking for
or we might kill a bunch of innocent people and now make ten
more Taliban out of them.''
Hoh describes the current use of U.S. Special Operations
Forces in Afghanistan as a ``tremendous waste of resources,''
saying, ``They are the best strike forces the world's ever
known. They're very well trained, very well equipped, have a
tremendous amount of support, and we've got them in
Afghanistan chasing after mid-level Taliban leaders who are
not threatening the United States, who are only fighting us
really because we're in their valley.''
In an interview with The Washington Post in mid-November,
President Karzai called for an end to the night raids. ``I
don't like it in
any manner and the Afghan people don't like these raids in
any manner,'' Karzai said. ``We don't like raids in our
homes. This is a problem between us and I hope this ends as
soon as possible. . . . Terrorism is not invading Afghan
homes and fighting terrorism is not being intrusive in the
daily Afghan life.''
Karzai's comments angered the Obama administration. At the
NATO summit, President Obama acknowledged that civilian
deaths have sparked ``real tensions'' with the Karzai
government, but reserved the right to continue US raids.
``[Karzai's] got to understand that I've got a bunch of young
men and women . . . who are in a foreign country being shot
at and having to traverse terrain filled with IEDs, and they
need to protect themselves,'' Obama said. ``So if we're
setting things up where they're just sitting ducks for the
Taliban, that's not an acceptable answer either.'' Republican
Senator Lindsey Graham blasted Karzai's statement calling for
an end to night raids, saying, ``it would be a disaster for
the Petraeus strategy.''
Along with Afghan government corruption, including a cabal
of war lords, drug dealers and war criminals in key
positions, the so-called Petraeus strategy of ratcheting up
air strikes and expanding night raids is itself delivering
substantial blows to the stated U.S. counterinsurgency
strategy and the much-discussed battle for hearts and minds.
The raids and airstrikes are premiere recruiting points for
the Taliban and, unlike Sen. Graham and the Obama
administration, Karzai seems to get that. In the bigger
picture, the U.S. appears to be trying to kill its way to a
passable definition of a success or even victory. This
strategy puts a premium on the number of kills and captures
of anyone who can loosely be defined as an insurgent and
completely sidelines the blowback these operations cause.
``We found ourselves in this Special Operations form of
attrition warfare,'' says Hoh, ``which is kind of like an
oxymoron, because Special Operations are not supposed to be
in attrition warfare. But we've found ourselves in that in
Afghanistan''
I would like to put into the Record an article from Aljazeera.net, which points out that for all practical purposes, Washington has given up on its counterinsurgency strategy.
[From Aljazeera.net, Mar. 7, 2011]
Failing in Afghanistan Successfully--Despite Hundreds of Billions of
Dollars and Thousands of Troops, the U.S. Is Unable To Conclude Its
Longest War
(By Marwan Bishara)
While we have been fixated on successive Arab breakthroughs
and victories against tyranny and extremism, Washington is
failing miserably but discreetly in Afghanistan.
The American media's one-obsession-at-a-time coverage of
global affairs might have put the spotlight on President
Obama's slow and poor reaction to the breathtaking
developments starting in Tunisia and Egypt. But they spared
him embarrassing questions about continued escalation and
deaths in Afghanistan.
In spite of its international coalition, multiple
strategies, hundreds of billions of dollars, and a surge of
tens of thousands of troops, the U.S. is unable to conclude
its longest war yet or at least reverse its trend.
Recent ``reports'' from the war front have been of two
kinds. Some official or analytical in nature and heavily
circulated in Washington portray a war going terribly well.
On the other hand, hard news from the ground tell a story of
U.S. fatigue, backtracking and tactical withdrawals or
redeployments which do not bode well for defeating the
Taliban or forcing them to the negotiations' table.
For example, while the U.S. military's decision to withdraw
from the Pech valley was justified on tactical need to
redeploy troops for the task of ``protecting the
population'', keen observers saw it as a humiliating retreat
from what the Pentagon previously called a very strategic
position and sacrificed some hundred soldiers defending it.
Likewise, strategic analysts close to the administration
speak triumphantly of U.S. surge and hi-tech firepower
inflicting terrible cost on the Taliban, killing many
insurgents and driving many more from their sanctuaries.
But news from the war front show the Taliban unrelenting,
mounting counterattacks and escalating the war especially in
areas where the U.S. has ``surged'' its troops. And while the
majority of the 400 Afghan districts are ``calmer'', they
remain mostly out of Kabul's control.
What success?
Those with relatively long memories recall the then defence
secretary Donald Rumsfeld's claims that most of Afghanistan
was secure in early 2003 and that American forces had changed
their strategy from major combat operations to stabilisation
and reconstruction project.
But the Taliban continued to carry daily attacks on
government buildings, U.S. positions and international
organisations. Two years later, the U.S. was to suffer the
worst and deadliest year since the war began.
Today's war pundits are in the same state of denial. For
all practical purpose, Washington has given up on its
counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy devised under McChrystal
and Petreaus.
Instead, it is pursuing a heavy handed and terribly
destructive crackdown that includes special operations,
assassinations, mass demolitions, air and night raids etc.
that have led to anything but winning the country, let alone
its hearts and minds.
The killing of nine Afghan children last week--all under
the age of 12--by U.S. attack helicopters has once again put
the spotlight on the U.S. military's new aggressive methods.
The results are so devastating for the conduct of the war
and to Washington's clients, that President Karzai not only
distanced himself from the U.S. methods, but also publicly
rejected Washington's apology for the killings.
Nor is the recruitment and training of the Afghan forces
going well. Indeed, many seem to give up on the idea that
Afghan security forces could take matters into their hands if
the U.S. withdraws in the foreseeable future.
Worse, U.S. strategic co-operation with Pakistan--the
central pillar of Obama's PakAf strategy--has cooled after
the arrest of a CIA contractor for the killing of two
Pakistanis even though he presumably enjoys diplomatic
immunity.
Reportedly, it has also led to a ``breakdown'' in co-
ordination between the two countries intelligence agencies,
the CIA and the ISI.
But the incident is merely a symptom of a bigger problem
between the two countries. A reluctant partner, the Pakistani
establishment and its military are unhappy with U.S. strategy
which they reckon could destabilise their country and
strengthen Afghanistan and India at their expense.
That has not deterred Washington from offering ideas and
money to repair the damage. However, it has become clear that
unlike in recent years, future improvement in their bilateral
relations will most probably come as a result of the U.S.
edging closer to Pakistan's position, not the opposite.
All of which makes one wonder why certain Washington
circles are rushing to advance the ``success story''.
Running out of options
The Afghan government's incapability to take on the tasks
of governing or securing the country beyond the capital, and
the incapacity of the Obama administration to break the
Taliban's momentum does not bode well for an early conclusion
of the war.
To their credit some of Obama's war and surge supporters
realise that there is no military solution for Afghanistan.
Clearly, their claims of battlefield successes help justify
the rush to talk to the Taliban.
But it is not yet clear whether the presumably ongoing
exploratory secret negotiations with the Taliban are serious
at all, or will lead to comprehensive negotiations and
eventually a lasting deal. The last ``Taliban commander''
Washington dialogued with in the fall turned out to be an
impostor--a shopkeeper from Quetta!
If the Taliban does eventually accept to sit down with
Obama or Karzai envoys, the U.S. needs to explain why it
fought for 10 years only to help the group back to power.
Secretary of state Hillary Clinton has begun the
humiliating backtracking last month: ``Now, I know that
reconciling with an adversary that can be as brutal as the
Taliban sounds distasteful, even unimaginable. And diplomacy
would be easy if we only had to talk to our friends. But that
is not how one makes peace.''
Facing up to the reality
The mere fact that the world's mightiest superpower cannot
win over the poorly armed Taliban after a long decade of
fighting, means it has already failed strategically,
regardless of the final outcome.
The escalation of violence and wasting billions more cannot
change that. It is history. The quicker the Obama
administration recognises its misfortunes, minimises its
losses and convenes a regional conference over the future of
Afghanistan under UN auspices, the easier it will be to
evacuate without humiliation.
Whether the U.S. eventually loses the war and declares
victory; negotiates a settlement and withdraw its troops,
remains to be seen. What is incontestable is that when you
fight the week for too long, you also become weak.
All of which explains the rather blunt comments made in a
speech at the end of February, by U.S. Defence Secretary
Robert Gates when he said ``. . . any future defense
secretary who advises the president to again send a big
American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or
Africa should `have his head examined,' as General MacArthur
so delicately put it.''
Amen.
I would like to insert into the Record, from AlterNet, an article by Derrick Crowe and Robert Greenwald posted on February 6, 2011, titled Damning New Report Shows U.S. Strategy is Blocking Chance for Peace in Afghanistan.
[From AlterNet, Feb. 6, 2011]
Damning New Report Shows U.S. Strategy Is Blocking Chance for Peace in
Afghanistan
(By Derrick Crowe and Robert Greenwald)
See: http://www.alternet.org/story/149815/ The new report from NYU's Center for International
Cooperation is a damning description of the U.S. policies in
Afghanistan since 2001, and a warning that the escalated
military strategy blocks the road to peace while making the
Taliban more dangerous.
Separating the Taliban from al-Qaeda: The Core of Success
in Afghanistan is the latest
in a continuous string of statements from Afghanistan experts
that the U.S. war policies that were launched a year ago
aren't making us safer and aren't worth the substantial
costs: $1 million per U.S. troop in Afghanistan per year, for
a total of more than $375.5 billion wasted so far. The report
is written by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn,
Kandahar-based researchers who've spent more than four years
researching the Taliban and the recent history of southern
Afghanistan.
I would like to place into the Record an article from ABC News titled Afghan Security the Worst in a Decade, according to the U.N.
ABC News--Afghan Security the Worst in a Decade: UN
The security situation in Afghanistan has worsened to its
lowest point since the toppling of the Taliban a decade ago
and attacks on aid workers are at unprecedented levels, a
United Nations envoy said.
Robert Watkins, the outgoing UN deputy special
representative of the Secretary General for Afghanistan, says
from a humanitarian perspective, security ``is on everyone's
minds''.
``It is fair to say that security in the country is at its
lowest point since the departure of the Talibans,'' he said.
Mr Watkins says before last year's surge in NATO military
forces, the insurgency was centred in the south and south-
east of the country.
``Since the surge of NATO forces last year, we have seen
the insurgency move to parts of the country where we've never
seen before,'' he said.
``We've now confronted with security problems that we'd
never dream that we'd have.
``While NATO is claiming that it has turned the corner . .
. we still see these very difficult security problems.''
UN relief agencies now have regular access to just 30 per
cent of the country. Access is mixed for another 30 per cent
while there is hardly any access to the remaining 40 per
cent.
Mr Watkins says a key issue is the ``conflation of
political, military, developmental and humanitarian aid''.
``Because of the way aid is dispersed in Afghanistan . . .
it has contributed to perception in parts of the Afghan
population that somehow humanitarian work is lumped into this
political and military effort,'' he said.
``We have to emphasise that we recognise that there has to
be separation and we have to be very careful to try to
address this perception.''
But he pointed out that a positive development was that the
international and Afghan military have publicly acknowledged
that some kind of negotiated settlement was necessary to end
the instability.
``[This year] can be a crucial year if there is a
breakthrough in finding some kind of reconciliation
efforts,'' he said.
The Taliban, a hardline Islamist movement, was forced from
power in late 2001 after a US invasion launched in the wake
of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
I would like to place into the Record an article from The New York Times discussing the counterintelligence strategy titled U.S. Pulling Back in Afghan Valley it Called Vital to War.
[From The New York Times, Feb. 24, 2011]
U.S. Pulling Back in Afghan Valley It Called Vital to War
(By C. J. Chivers, Alissa J. Rubin and Wesley Morgan)
Kabul, Afghanistan.--After years of fighting for control of
a prominent valley in the rugged mountains of eastern
Afghanistan, the United States military has begun to pull
back most of its forces from ground it once insisted was
central to the campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The withdrawal from the Pech Valley, a remote region in
Kunar Province, formally began on Feb. 15. The military
projects that it will last about two months, part of a shift
of Western forces to the province's more populated areas.
Afghan units will remain in the valley, a test of their
military readiness.
While American officials say the withdrawal matches the
latest counterinsurgency doctrine's emphasis on protecting
Afghan civilians, Afghan officials worry that the shift of
troops amounts to an abandonment of territory where multiple
insurgent groups are well established, an area that Afghans
fear they may not be ready to defend on their own.
And it is an emotional issue for American troops, who fear
that their service and sacrifices could be squandered. At
least 103 American soldiers have died in or near the valley's
maze of steep gullies and soaring peaks, according to a count
by The New York Times, and many times more have been wounded,
often severely.
Military officials say they are sensitive to those
perceptions. ``People say, `You are coming out of the Pech';
I prefer to look at it as realigning to provide better
security for the Afghan people,'' said Maj. Gen. John F.
Campbell, the commander for eastern Afghanistan. ``I don't
want the impression we're abandoning the Pech.''
The reorganization, which follows the complete Afghan and
American withdrawals from isolated outposts in nearby
Nuristan Province and the Korangal Valley, runs the risk of
providing the Taliban with an opportunity to claim success
and raises questions about the latest strategy guiding the
war.
American officials say their logic is simple and
compelling: the valley consumed resources disproportionate
with its importance; those forces could be deployed in other
areas; and there are not enough troops to win decisively in
the Pech Valley in any case.
``If you continue to stay with the status quo, where will
you be a year from now?'' General Campbell said. ``I would
tell you that there are places where we'll continue to build
up security and it leads to development and better
governance, but there are some areas that are not ready for
that, and I've got to use the forces where they can do the
most good.''
President Obama's Afghan troop buildup is now fully in
place, and the United States military has its largest-ever
contingent in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama's reinforced campaign
has switched focus to operations in Afghanistan's south, and
to building up Afghan security forces.
The previous strategy emphasized denying sanctuaries to
insurgents, blocking infiltration routes from Pakistan and
trying to fight away from populated areas, where NATO's
superior firepower could be massed, in theory, with less risk
to civilians. The Pech Valley effort was once a cornerstone
of this thinking.
The new plan stands as a clear, if unstated, repudiation of
earlier decisions. When Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the
former NATO commander, overhauled the Afghan strategy two
years ago, his staff designated 80 ``key terrain districts''
to concentrate on. The Pech Valley was not one of them.
Ultimately, the decision to withdraw reflected a stark--and
controversial--internal assessment by the military that it
would have been better served by not having entered the high
valley in the first place.
``What we figured out is that people in the Pech really
aren't anti-U.S. or anti-anything; they just want to be left
alone,'' said one American military official familiar with
the decision. ``Our presence is what's destabilizing this
area.''
Gen. Mohammed Zaman Mamozai, a former commander of the
region's Afghan Border Police, agreed with some of this
assessment. He said that residents of the Pech Valley
bristled at the American presence but might tolerate Afghan
units. ``Many times they promised us that if we could tell
the Americans to pull out of the area, they wouldn't fight
the Afghan forces,'' he said.
It is impossible to know whether such pledges will hold.
Some veterans worry that the withdrawal will create an ideal
sanctuary for insurgent activity--an area under titular
government influence where fighters or terrorists will
shelter or prepare attacks elsewhere.
While it is possible that the insurgents will concentrate
in the mountain valleys, General Campbell said his goal was
to arrange forces to keep insurgents from Kabul, the
country's capital.
``There are thousands of isolated mountainous valleys
throughout Afghanistan, and we cannot be in all of them,'' he
said.
The American military plans to withdraw from most of the
four principal American positions in the valley. For security
reasons, General Campbell declined to discuss which might
retain an American presence, and exactly how the Americans
would operate with Afghans in the area in the future.
As the pullback begins, the switch in thinking has fueled
worries among those who say the United States is ceding some
of Afghanistan's most difficult terrain to the insurgency and
putting residents who have supported the government at risk
of retaliation.
``There is no house in the area that does not have a
government employee in it,'' said Col. Gul Rahman, the Afghan
police chief in the Manogai District, where the Americans'
largest base in the valley, Forward Operating Base Blessing,
is located. ``Some work with the Afghan National Army, some
work with the Afghan National Police, or they are a teacher
or governmental employee. I think it is not wise to ignore
and leave behind all these people, with the danger posed to
their lives.''
Some Afghan military officials have also expressed pointed
misgivings about the prospects for Afghan units left behind.
``According to my experience in the military and knowledge
of the area, it's absolutely impractical for the Afghan
National Army to protect the area without the Americans,''
said Major Turab, the former second-in-command of an Afghan
battalion in the valley, who like many Afghans uses only one
name. ``It will be a suicidal mission.''
The pullback has international implications as well. Senior
Pakistani commanders have complained since last summer that
as American troops withdraw from Kunar Province, fighters and
some commanders from the Haqqani network and other militant
groups have crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan to create
a ``reverse safe haven'' from which to carry out attacks
against Pakistani troops in the tribal areas.
The Taliban and other Afghan insurgent groups are all but
certain to label the withdrawal a victory in the Pech
Valley, where they could point to the Soviet Army's
withdrawal from the same area in 1988. Many Afghans
remember that withdrawal as a symbolic moment when the
Kremlin's military campaign began to visibly fall apart.
Within six months, the Soviet-backed Afghan Army of the
time ceded the territory to mujahedeen groups, according to
Afghan military officials.
The unease, both with the historical precedent and with the
price paid in American
blood in the valley, has ignited a sometimes painful debate
among Americans veterans and active-duty troops. The Pech
Valley had long been a hub of American military operations in
Kunar and Nuristan Provinces.
American forces first came to the valley in force in 2003,
following the trail of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the
Hezb-i-Islami group, who, like other prominent insurgent
leaders, has been said at different times to hide in Kunar.
They did not find him, though Hezb-i-Islami is active in the
valley.
Since then, one American infantry battalion after another
has fought there, trying to establish security in villages
while weathering roadside bombs and often vicious fights.
Along with other slotlike canyons that the United States
has already largely abandoned--including the Korangal Valley,
the Waygal Valley (where the battle of Wanat was fought in
2008), the Shuryak Valley and the Nuristan River corridor
(where Combat Outpost Keating was nearly overrun in 2009)--
the Pech Valley was a region rivaled only by Helmand Province
as the deadliest Afghan acreage for American troops.
On one operation alone in 2005, 19 service members,
including 11 members of the Navy Seals, died.
As the years passed and the toll rose, the area assumed for
many soldiers a status as hallowed ground. ``I can think of
very few places over the past 10 years with as high and as
sustained a level of violence,'' said Col. James W. Bierman,
who commanded a Marine battalion in the area in 2006 and
helped establish the American presence in the Korangal
Valley.
In the months after American units left the Korangal last
year, insurgent attacks from that valley into the Pech Valley
increased sharply, prompting the current American battalion
in the area, First Battalion, 327th Infantry, and Special
Operations units to carry out raids into places that American
troops once patrolled regularly.
Last August, an infantry company raided the village of
Omar, which the American military said had become a base for
attacks into the Pech Valley, but which earlier units had
viewed as mostly calm. Another American operation last
November, in the nearby Watapor Valley, led to fighting that
left seven American soldiers dead.
This article has been revised to reflect the following
correction:
Correction: February 24, 2011
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to
a pullback of American forces in eastern Afghanistan. It is a
pullback from remote territory within Kunar Province, not
from the province as a whole.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We've stated over and over in this debate the cost of this war in this budget alone will be over $113 billion--$113 billion. There are Members who have come to this floor trying to whack a billion dollars in spending here and there. This is $113 billion. You want to cut out waste, let's get out of Afghanistan.
Keep in mind that when you go to the Pentagon, and some of our Members have, and have gone to Afghanistan, there's an open-ended war going on here. There's no end in sight. I've submitted for the Record articles with respect to that. Hear this: We're going to be there through at least 2020. And that's going to cost us an extra, at least an extra trillion dollars.
Where are we going to get that money? Are we going to cut Social Security for that? Are we going to cut health care and cut funds for education? Are we going to cut more funds for home heating aid?
Where are we going to get this money? Are we ready to give up our entire domestic agenda so that we can continue on the path of a war to prop up a corrupt regime whose friends are building villas in Dubai, presumably with money that comes through the United States that's shipped out in planes out of the Kabul airport?
We have to start standing up for America here.
I appreciate and respect every Member of this Congress who served in the military. We honor them, just as I honor the members of my own family; my father, Frank, who was a World War II veteran; my brother Frank, who was a Vietnam veteran; my brother Gary, a Vietnam-era veteran; my sister Beth Ann, an Army veteran. I come from a family that appreciates service to our country.
But how are we serving our troops by letting them in a situation that is absolutely impossible, whether it's greater numbers of them returning home with injuries from IEDs. How are we serving our troops by telling them we're going to keep extending the period of the war? Who's speaking up truly for our troops here? Is it General Petraeus, who says, Well, we'll just keep the war going and maybe--maybe--we'll send 2,000 troops out of Afghanistan or redirect them by 2014. He doesn't get to make the choice. That choice must be made by the Congress of the United States.
It's time that we started to stand up for the Constitution of the United States, which, last I checked, in Article I, section 8 provides that Congress has to make the decision whether or not to send our troops into war. We have not the right to give that over to a President, over to a general, or anybody else. It's our prerogative inside this Congress.
In 2001, Mr. Speaker, I joined with Members of this House in voting for the authorization of military force following the terrorist attacks on 9/11. I don't take a backseat to anyone in standing up to defend this country. But as the United States continues in what is now the longest war in our history, it has become clear that the authorization for military force is being used as a carte blanche for circumventing Congress' role as a coequal branch of government.
I want you to hear this. We're a coequal branch of government. We're not lap dogs for the President. We're not servants of generals. We are a coequal branch of government expressing the sovereign will of the American people.
It has become clear this administration, just as the last administration, is willing to commit us to an endless war and an endless stream of money, just a year after a commitment of an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan and continued assurances of ``progress.'' They have been walking that dog down the road for the last 7 years. Progress.
My legislation invokes the War Powers Resolution of 1973, and if enacted, would require this President to withdraw U.S. Armed Forces out of Afghanistan by December 31, 2011.
Regardless of your support or opposition to the war in Afghanistan, this debate has been a critical opportunity to evaluate the human and the economic cost as this Congress works to address our country's dire financial straits. Those of us that supported the withdrawal may not agree on a timeline, but an increasing number of us agree it's time to think and rethink our current national security strategy. And we have to know the costs are great. We can't get away from the costs of this war.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, his associate, wrote a book about the Iraq war. They projected then a minimum of $3 trillion in costs.
I would like to include in the Record, Mr. Speaker, a statement that I made over 8 years ago at the beginning of the Iraq war, where I pointed out there was nothing--no reason why we should be going to war in Iraq because there was no proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
I mention that in terms of this debate because we're at the confluence of the events--the anniversary of the Iraq war; the confluence of the funding of the war in Afghanistan. We've got to get out of Afghanistan. We've got to get out of Iraq. We've got to start taking care of things here at home.
Analysis of Joint Resolution on Iraq by Dennis J. Kucinich
Washington, Oct 2, 2002.--Whereas in 1990 in response to
Iraq's war of aggression against and illegal occupation of
Kuwait, the United States forged a coalition of nations to
liberate Kuwait and its people in order to defend the
national security of the United States and enforce United
Nations Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq;
KEY ISSUE: In the Persian Gulf war there was an
international coalition. World support was for protecting
Kuwait. There is no world support for invading Iraq.
Whereas after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, Iraq
entered into a United Nations sponsored cease-fire agreement
pursuant to which Iraq unequivocally agreed, among other
things, to eliminate its nuclear, biological, and chemical
weapons programs and the means to deliver and develop them,
and to end its support for international terrorism;
Whereas the efforts of international weapons inspectors,
United States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi defectors led
to the discovery that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical
weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and
that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program
that was much closer to producing a nuclear weapon than
intelligence reporting had previously indicated;
KEY ISSUE: UN inspection teams identified and destroyed
nearly all such weapons. A lead inspector, Scott Ritter, said
that he believes that nearly all other weapons not found were
destroyed in the Gulf War. Furthermore, according to a
published report in the Washington Post, the Central
Intelligence Agency has no up to date accurate report on
Iraq's WMD capabilities.
Whereas Iraq, in direct and flagrant violation of the
cease-fire, attempted to thwart the efforts of weapons
inspectors to identify and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction stockpiles and development capabilities, which
finally resulted in the withdrawal of inspectors from Iraq on
October 31, 1998;
KEY ISSUES: Iraqi deceptions always failed. The inspectors
always figured out what Iraq was doing. It was the United
States that withdrew from the inspections in 1998. And the
United States then launched a cruise missile attack against
Iraq 48 hours after the inspectors left. In advanced of a
military strike, the US continues to thward (the
Administration's word) weapons inspections.
Whereas in 1998 Congress concluded that Iraq's continuing
weapons of mass destruction programs threatened vital United
States interests and international peace and security,
declared Iraq to be in ``material and unacceptable breach of
its international obligations'' and urged the President ``to
take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution
and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into
compliance with its international obligations'' (Public Law
105-235);
Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national
security of the United States and international peace and
security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material
and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by,
among other things, continuing to possess and develop a
significant chemical and biological weapons capability,
actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting
and harboring terrorist organizations;
KEY ISSUES: There is no proof that Iraq represents an
imminent or immediate threat to the United States. A
``continuing'' threat does not constitute a sufficient cause
for war. The Administration has refused to provide the
Congress with credible intelligence that proves that Iraq is
a serious threat to the United States and is continuing to
possess and develop chemical and biological and nuclear
weapons. Furthermore there is no credible intelligence
connecting Iraq to Al Qaida and 9/11.
Whereas Iraq persists in violating resolutions of the
United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in
brutal repression of its civilian population thereby
threatening international peace and security in the region,
by refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi
citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American
serviceman, and by failing to return property wrongfully
seized by Iraq from Kuwait;
KEY ISSUE: This language is so broad that it would allow
the President to order an attack against Iraq even when there
is no material threat to the United States. Since this
resolution authorizes the use of force for all Iraq related
violations of the UN Security Council directives, and since
the resolution cites Iraq's imprisonment of non-Iraqi
prisoners, this resolution would authorize the President to
attack Iraq in order to liberate Kuwaiti citizens who may or
may not be in Iraqi prisons, even if Iraq met compliance with
all requests to destroy any weapons of mass destruction.
Though in 2002 at the Arab Summit, Iraq and Kuwait agreed to
bilateral negotiations to work out all claims relating to
stolen property and prisoners of war. This use-of-force
resolution enables the President to commit U.S.046 troops to
recover Kuwaiti property.
Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its
capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction
against other nations and its own people;
Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its
continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the
United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate
former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of
occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged
in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security
Council;
KEY ISSUE: The Iraqi regime has never attacked nor does it
have the capability to attack the United States. The ``no
fly'' zone was not the result of a UN Security Council
directive. It was illegally imposed by the United States,
Great Britain and France and is not specifically sanctioned
by any Security Council resolution.
Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing
responsibility for attacks on the United States, its
citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred
on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;
KEY ISSUE: There is no credible intelligence that connects
Iraq to the events of 9/11 or to participation in those
events by assisting Al Qaida.
Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other
international terrorist organizations, including
organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American
citizens;
KEY ISSUE: Any connection between Iraq support of terrorist
groups in Middle East, is an argument for focusing great
resources on resolving the conflict between Israel and the
Palestinians. It is not sufficient reason for the U.S. to
launch a unilateral preemptive strike against Iraq.
Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11,
2001 underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the
acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international
terrorist organizations;
KEY ISSUE: There is no connection between Iraq and the
events of 9/11.
Whereas Iraq's demonstrated capability and willingness to
use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current
Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a
surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces
or provide them to international terrorists who would do so,
and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the
United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine
to justify action by the United States to defend itself;
KEY ISSUE: There is no credible evidence that Iraq
possesses weapons of mass destruction. If Iraq has
successfully concealed the production of such weapons since
1998, there is no credible evidence that Iraq has the
capability to reach the United States with such weapons. In
the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq had a demonstrated capability of
biological and chemical weapons, but did not have the
willingness to use them against the United States Armed
Forces. Congress has not been provided with any credible
information, which proves that Iraq has provided
international terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.
Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 678
authorizes the use of all necessary means to enforce United
Nations Security Council Resolution 660 and subsequent
relevant resolutions and to compel Iraq to cease certain
activities that threaten international peace and security,
including the development of weapons of mass destruction and
refusal or obstruction of United Nations weapons inspections
in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution
687, repression of its civilian population in violation of
United Nations Security Council Resolution 688, and
threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in
Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council
Resolution 949;
KEY ISSUE: The UN Charter forbids all member nations,
including the United States, from unilaterally enforcing UN
resolutions.
Whereas Congress in the Authorization for Use of Military
Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1) has
authorized the President ``to use United States Armed Forces
pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678
(1990) in order to achieve implementation of Security Council
Resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674,
and 677'';
KEY ISSUE: The UN Charter forbids all member nations,
including the United States, from unilaterally enforcing UN
resolutions with military force.
Whereas in December 1991, Congress expressed its sense that
it ``supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the
goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 as
being consistent with the Authorization of Use of Military
Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1),'' that
Iraq's repression of its civilian population violates United
Nations Security Council Resolution 688 and ``constitutes a
continuing threat to the peace, security, and stability of
the Persian Gulf region,'' and that Congress, ``supports the
use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United
Nations Security Council Resolution 688'';
KEY ISSUE: This clause demonstrates the proper chronology
of the international process, and contrasts the current march
to war. In 1991, the UN Security Council passed a resolution
asking for enforcement of its resolution. Member countries
authorized their troops to participate in a UN-led coalition
to enforce the UN resolutions. Now the President is asking
Congress to authorize a unilateral first strike before the UN
Security Council had asked its member states to enforce UN
resolutions.
Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act (Public Law 105-338)
expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy
of the United States to support efforts to remove from power
the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a
democratic government to replace that regime;
KEY ISSUE: This ``Sense of Congress'' resolution was not
binding. Furthermore, while Congress supported democratic
means of removing Saddam Hussein it clearly did not endorse
the use of force contemplated in this resolution, nor did it
endorse assassination as a policy.
Whereas on September 12, 2002, President Bush committed the
United States to ``work with the United Nations Security
Council to meet our common challenge'' posed by Iraq and to
``work for the necessary resolutions,'' while also making
clear that ``the Security Council resolutions will be
enforced, and the just demands of peace and security will be
met, or action will be unavoidable'';
Whereas the United States is determined to prosecute the
war on terrorism and Iraq's ongoing support for international
terrorist groups combined with its development of weapons of
mass destruction in direct violation of its obligations under
the 1991 cease-fire and other United Nations Security Council
resolutions make clear that it is in the national security
interests of the United States and in furtherance of the war
on terrorism that all relevant United Nations Security
Council resolutions be enforced, including through the use of
force if necessary;
KEY ISSUE: Unilateral action against Iraq will cost the
United States the support of the world community, adversely
affecting the war on terrorism. No credible intelligence
exists which connects Iraq to the events of 9/11 or to those
terrorists who perpetrated 9/11. Under international law, the
United States does not have the authority to unilaterally
order military action to enforce UN Security Council
resolutions.
Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the
war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and
funding requested by the President to take the necessary
actions against international terrorists and terrorist
organizations, including those nations, organizations or
persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the
terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001 or
harbored such persons or organizations;
KEY ISSUE: The Administration has not provided Congress
with any proof that Iraq is in any way connected to the
events of 9/11.
Whereas the President and Congress are determined to
continue to take all appropriate actions against
international terrorists and terrorist organizations,
including those nations, organizations or persons who
planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks
that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons
or organizations;
KEY ISSUE: The Administration has not provided Congress
with any proof that Iraq is in any way connected to the
events of 9/11. Furthermore, there is no credible evidence
that Iraq has harbored those who were responsible for
planning, authorizing or committing the attacks of 9/11.
Whereas the President has authority under the Constitution
to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of
international terrorism against the United States, as
Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization
for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40); and
KEY ISSUE: This resolution was specific to 9/11. It was
limited to a response to 9/11.
Whereas it is in the national security of the United States
to restore international peace and security to the Persian
Gulf region;
KEY ISSUE: If by the ``national security interests'' of the
United States, the Administration means oil, it ought to
communicate such to the Congress. A unilateral attack on Iraq
by the United States will cause instability and chaos in the
region and sow the seeds of future conflicts all over the
world.
