Duncan Hunter

The plan to revive the Iraq war by sending a surge of 30,000 troops is the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam. If it is carried out, I will resist it.

I disagreed with President Obama, his decision to surge in Afghanistan, as I did with President Bush on the surge in Iraq.

He has earned this attention here today. He has earned this Congress coming together and this committee holding this.

This isn't Yemen, this isn't Somalia. This is supposed to be one of our number one neighbors, Mexico.

What kind of a low bar do we have we set for this President, we ask him to make a phone call?

In 2011, when Afghanistan was raging, you had nine times more likely of a chance to be killed in Mexico than to be killed in Afghanistan.

This is much worse than Afghanistan.

Frankly, I am tired of the lip service, of the thanks for your service, while I watch the President give speeches...

Mexico stole Andrew's chance at a quick recovery.

I thank the gentleman, my good friend, and the chairman, whom I am very, very lucky and honored to serve under and serve with. Madam Speaker, I oppose this amendment. It is not an easy vote. I have been looking for reasons to support this…

A national maritime strategy that addresses these issues in a comprehensive way must be developed immediately.

We strongly support the provision that you and Congressman Garamendi included in the Coast Guard bill to restore the U.S.-flag share of food aid cargoes to the 75-percent level.

This is a great industry, and I think we are doing God's work in this committee by, like Mr. Garamendi said, strengthening our industrial base, our ability to build ships, our ability to work with steel, and not become one of these bygone…

If we want to grow our economy and remain a world power capable of defending ourselves and our allies, we must work together to strengthen our merchant marine.

It is hard but hard is not hopeless.

If you had been President, how would you have prevented where we have come to find ourselves?

What we have to do, I think, are practical things.

I think we should support their ability to govern autonomously as much as possible.

I think we should freeze, for example, domestic discretionary. We should make cuts in the social spending and push that spending back to the point where it will accommodate a 5 or 6 percent of GNP being spent on national security.

I guess the first question is, no one has talked about a political end-state, or what we would have to describe in our policy is that here is what we want to see in the next 10 years, and here is why we are doing all of this.

The only people that have been able to persuade leadership in Iraq to be conciliatory... is the Americans.

We stopped the attack at midpoint. We stopped our operation.

We need a force right now to stand up to this invasion and this occupation.

First, my recommendation to support the tribes is not a conditional one, not based on anything that Maliki could do.

We need to reestablish that dynamic. That is a way to blunt ISIS in terms of its deepening occupation of western Iraq.