[Peace-discuss] Tim on war funding

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Afghanistan War: Why Are We Doing It?
	by Rep. Tim Johnson, July 03, 2010

Statement in the House by Rep. Tim Johnson of Illinois on funding the war in 
Afghanistan.

I stand in opposition to this rule and in sincere but deep opposition to this 
$63 billion massive spending bill, and particularly the war spending component 
of the bill.

I speak, I believe, on the behalf of the hundreds of thousands of brave men and 
women who serve America in the Middle East with neither a defined objective nor 
the ability to assess victory or defeat; and on behalf of families of our 
military personnel around the world who have lost their fathers or their mothers 
or their sons or their daughters in a valiant but shortsighted effort and battle 
that can never be won; and on behalf of the American taxpayers who have seen 
more than $1 trillion poured into an attempt to fight terror, where there is not 
even a remote relationship to the welfare of the American people; and really, 
also, on behalf of the innocent children who have had the misfortune to simply 
be in the ever-changing line of fire and the vicinity of terrorists who move 
effortlessly from Iraq to Somalia to Yemen to Paraguay to Afghanistan like the 
Whack-a-Mole at the county fair in the form of unconventional and ill-defined 
tribal warfare that 2,000 years have taught us we simply cannot fight.

I think it was November of 1952, when I was about 6 years old, that Charles 
Schultz and his Peanuts comic strip came out with the annual saga where, every 
year, Charlie Brown comes up to the football, and Lucy tells Charlie Brown year 
after year, "Just one more time, we’ll let you kick ball." And each year, she 
pulled the football out, only to find Charlie Brown on his rear end.

I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, in this somewhat 
stretched analogy, that a series of Commanders-in-Chief are Lucy, and we’re 
Charlie Brown, and the football is the illusive promise of a goal that we simply 
cannot reach. We cannot force a culture to accept our values, and we cannot 
impose Western democracy on a people who don’t understand or accept it and whose 
leadership is corrupt and antidemocratic beyond repair. And we cannot continue 
to spend the billions and, arguably, trillions of dollars of the hardworking men 
and women in this country in a venture that has no objective, no end game, and 
no proximate connection to the well-being of our Nation.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, we cannot afford 
economically, we cannot afford militarily, and we cannot afford as a people to 
pass this bill. This President who, frankly, won an election based on his strong 
antiwar message, like many of his predecessors, asked us one more time to spend 
a few more billion dollars — in this case $38 billion — and a few thousand more 
men and women in an effort to kick the football just one more time. It simply 
isn’t doable.

I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, that this rule underlies 
a bill that the vast majority, I believe, of the American people don’t want. I 
represent a district in central Illinois, and I think I speak in many ways for 
middle America. I voted for the authorization of force in Iraq and, frankly, 
Afghanistan; and I believe, like many of us, I may have questioned my vote. But 
I believe that we’re the greatest nation on Earth, thanks in large part to the 
generations of fighting men and women who have given their lives to this great 
cause and democracy and this great Nation of ours.

As we prepare to celebrate our independence in a few days, I think I speak on 
behalf of the average American citizen who says, For what? What is this money 
being expended for? Why are we doing it? And what’s the end game? And I would 
suggest to you, Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, that there is no end game, 
and I would respectfully ask that this rule and the underlying bill be defeated.

http://original.antiwar.com/tim-johnson/2010/07/02/afghanistan-war-why-are-we-doing-it/