Guest Column - Renewing Our Commitment To Our Veterans

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Congressman Bob Etheridge
Guest Column - Renewing Our Commitment To Our Veterans
A Veterans' Day Message
November 11, 2005

As we pause this Veterans' Day to honor the men and women who have served our nation's military, let us take stock of our current military operations.

As a veteran of the United States Army, I want what all veterans want: for America to win.

More than four years after September 11th, Osama bin Laden remains at large. That is simply unacceptable. Unfortunately, too many assets were pulled out of Afghanistan, where bin Laden is widely believed to be, and shifted them to Iraq. We need more special forces in Afghanistan to get the job done right. We should double the bounty on bin Laden every month he remains on the lamb. America's veterans, and our entire country, must not accept the status quo when the man whose hands drip with American blood thumbs his nose at us in cost-free defiance.

We need to get the job done right once and for all in Iraq as well. The American people deserve a full accounting of the Administration's actions and representations of intelligence leading up to the war. But the fact remains we are at war in Iraq with a blood-thirsty insurgency of the remnants of Saddam's outlaw regime and foreign fighters pouring across the border to kill Americans.

More than 2,000 American soldiers have given their lives to this fight. Thousands more have given their limbs, their sight, their blood, sweat and tears. I have visited them in Iraq and in American military hospitals. We owe it to them to win in Iraq. The leader of the insurgency, Zarqawi, is a terrorist of the worst sort. We should double the bounty on him every month until he is captured. We also should internationalize the security forces in Iraq as it transitions to autonomy. The whole world has a stake in a successful outcome in Iraq, and it should not just be American and Iraqi blood on the line.

More than 27,000 North Carolinians have served in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are our friends, neighbors and families. Civilian North Carolinians have taken meaningful steps to show our troops our support - by wearing yellow ribbons, by saying prayers, and by sending letters and care packages. These gestures are the fuel that enables our troops to endure the hazards of war.

The long-term goal of peace in the Middle East begins with our sincere effort to win the hearts and minds of the region's peoples. First we must denounce torture. Information obtained through torture is almost always unreliable. It is in our own self-interest to treat prisoners humanely because we don't want captured American soldiers to be tortured. Finally, torture is morally wrong. It sends a message that we will resort to barbarism and abandon our highest ideals when the going gets tough. I support Senator John McCain, who suffered many years of torture in a North Vietnamese POW camp, in calling for a clear American policy against torture.

Finally, we should resolve this Veterans' Day to put the needs of our veterans and our communities higher on the national agenda. Too often when politicians in Washington call for tax cuts and "belt tightening" veterans' services face the axe. We have beaten back several recent misguided budgets, but I want to go one step further. Our national leaders should acknowledge that our needs at home are at least as important as the needs in Iraq, which I have voted for every time. I am supporting the American Parity Act that says Congress must match every dollar spent on schools, roads and health care in Iraq, with a dollar for schools, roads and health care in America.

This Veterans' Day, let us renew our commitment to the more than 767,000 veterans living in North Carolina.

May God bless our veterans, our troops and our military families. And may God continue to bless America.