Majority Makers

MAJORITY MAKERS -- (House of Representatives - September 19, 2007)

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Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Congressman SUTTON, for yielding.

And I just want to follow up with my friend from the Armed Services Committee about the lack of strategic balance that presently is occurring right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. In late August, German authorities arrested three terrorists who were plotting a major attack on an American military installation in Germany. Where were they trained? Well, we know the answer. They were trained in northern Pakistan, in that region of the world where our own military and intelligence officials have identified the real threat to Europe and the U.S. in terms of where future hits are going to take place.

As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I was in Afghanistan in May. We had briefings from military commanders over there who have said that training camps are in full level of activity, and they made a flat prediction that we are going to see attempted attacks emanating from that region of the world.

Let's step back. We have 26,000 troops in Afghanistan; 165,000 troops in Iraq. Is this a strategy that is really aimed at what is in the national interest of this country? I mean obviously if we look at just recent events in terms of where arrests are taking place, where the real training is taking place to hit Europe and the U.S., the fact of the matter is it is in the northern part of Pakistan, which is an area that the Taliban is now pretty much able to move and operate unimpeded because we have a dysfunctional relationship with the Pakistani Government and the Afghan Government is too weak to basically police those borders.

And I think a lot of the debate that is taking place right now after the Petraeus-Crocker report, which is appropriately focused on whether or not the benchmarks that the Iraq Government set forth have been met and what is the level of wear and tear in terms of our Armed Forces, they are clearly important to discuss, but we also need to have an overall strategic vision about what is in the national interest of this country. And the fact is being involved at the level that we are at right now in a civil war in Iraq is not in America's national interest, and for the sake of our military families, as Congresswoman Shea-Porter indicated, and certainly for a safer, smarter foreign policy, we need to have a change in course and a redeployment.

Over the summer the New York Times did a study on the situation right now in terms of the mid-level officer corps of our Armed Services, our ground forces. In the 2001 graduating class from West Point, which just completed their 5-year tour of duty, 44 percent of the class have left the Armed Forces. That is the highest number in three decades. People need to think about that in terms of what is happening to the best and the brightest in our military. They are voting with their feet. They are leaving the armed services. And many commanders from the Vietnam era, General Shinseki being one of them, the Army chief of staff who had the wisdom and vision to predict that we would need hundreds of thousands of troops if we were going to truly police Iraq after Afghanistan, have spoken all across the country about the fact that what's happening in Iraq today is having the same effect, same negative effect, on our Armed Forces that the war in Vietnam had, which is a hollowed-out mid-level officer corps of our armed services. It took a generation to recover from that, and we are now seeing, with the exodus that is happening right now with, again, the best and brightest of our West Point graduates leaving our armed services, that we, for the sake of our own future, ground forces and military readiness, need to have a change of course in Iraq.

And Senator Webb has an amendment that's coming up, the Dwell Time Amendment, which will require the Armed Forces by law to make sure that our Armed Forces have the same amount of dwell time as they do deployment. I think that is an important step. I am very excited that it looks like we are going to get to the 60-vote number in the Senate and overcome a cloture, that we are going to start bringing some sanity back into our military and defense policy so that we don't destroy the greatest warfighting machine in the world.

And I know Congressman Welch from Vermont, my neighbor to the north and a good Red Sox fan, is also someone who has talked a lot about this issue in terms of the impact on our military families, and I would be happy to hear from Congressman Welch from Vermont.

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