10 Years of Needless War

VIDEO

Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee: Madam Speaker, I rise along with others this morning to note the 10th anniversary of our seemingly endless war in Afghanistan. This is a war that long ago became much more about money for the Pentagon and defense contractors than about any real threat to the American people.

And, unfortunately, just yesterday we authorized spending at a level of $118.7 billion for the coming year in Iraq and Afghanistan. Madam Speaker, we have turned the Defense Department into the Department of Foreign Aid, and the American people are tired of it. They want us to stop rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan and start taking care of our own people.

We have spent and are spending billions and billions, hundreds of billions that we do not have, that we are having to borrow on people who do not appreciate it unless they are on our payroll.

I know last year, Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan, told ABCNews that he wanted us to stay there another 15 or 20 years. Well, he wants our money; but we don't have enough of it, and we can't afford this.

Alfred Regnery, the publisher of the conservative The American Spectator magazine wrote last October that "Afghanistan has little strategic value" and "the war is one of choice rather than necessity." He added that it has been a wasteful and frustrating decade.

General Petraeus testified in front of one of the congressional committees several months ago that we should never forget that Afghanistan has become "the graveyard of empires."

The American people do not want, nor can we afford, endless, permanent wars; nor do they want 11- or 12-year wars that last about three times as long as World War II.

Charlie Reese was a columnist for the Orlando newspaper, and a few years ago, probably in the mid- or late 1990s, he was voted the most popular columnist by C-SPAN viewers. Over 25,000 people, I think, participated in that poll.

But he was very much opposed to these wars, and he wrote this about the Iraq war, but it applies equally well to Afghanistan: He said this war was "against a country that was not attacking us, did not have the means to attack us, and had never expressed any intention of attacking us. And for whatever real reason we attacked, it was not to save America from any danger, imminent or otherwise."

William F. Buckley, Jr., the conservative icon, wrote this a few years ago: He said, "A respect for the power of the United States is engendered by our success in engagements in which we take part. A point is reached when tenacity conveys not steadfastness of purpose, but misapplication of pride."

I want to repeat that. He said, "A respect for the power of the United States is engendered by our success in engagements in which we take part. A point is reached when tenacity conveys not steadfastness of purpose, but misapplication of pride."

I think the American people long ago reached the point where they felt that these wars should come to an end and we should start taking care of our own country.

Georgie Ann Geyer, the conservative foreign policy columnist, wrote this a few years ago: "Americans, still strangely complacent about overseas wars being waged by a minority in their name, will inevitably come to a point where they will see they have to have a government that provides services at home or one that seeks empire across the globe."

Madam Speaker, fiscal conservatives should be the ones most horrified by all this waste and all this spending. I wonder sometimes if there are any conservatives at the Pentagon, any fiscal conservatives at the Pentagon.

I will say once again, these wars became long ago more about money and power than they did about any real threat. It is a shame what we are doing to the young people of this country, both those in the military and those outside the military.

Just this past Sunday, I went to the funeral of another soldier, a young 21-year-old man in Madisonville, Tennessee, who had been killed in Afghanistan. And I can tell you it's time to stop all the killings of all of our young people and let them have a good future in this country once again.