Lynn C. Woolsey: “Tonight the President of the United States has an opportunity to show the bold leadership that the American people are…”

“Tonight the President of the United States has an opportunity to show the bold leadership that the American people are crying out for regarding Afghanistan. Tonight he will announce how many troops will be redeployed out of Afghanistan. This must not be, as early reports are indicating, a token withdrawal, bringing only as few as 5,000 troops home now and 5,000 troops home by the end of the year, because that number falls tragically and painfully short of what the national security and moral decency demands. There are many interpretations, Mr. Speaker, of ``sizable, swift or significant'' as the requests have been for him in his drawdown, but none of those interpretations go so low as 5,000 now and 5,000 by the end of the year. ``Sizable, swift or significant'' is not what 5,000 troops would accomplish. Ten thousand troops doesn't even bring us to where we were before the surge. That is not a new way forward in Afghanistan. We were promised a new way forward in Afghanistan, and it is going to take 18 months just to get even that much done. How many times are we going to move the goalposts? Anything less than a major shift in Afghanistan policy will be a huge disappointment to the Americans who are paying for it in blood and treasure. Clear, strong majorities of our country believe it is time we finally end this awful foreign policy blunder. This is not a partisan stance. You just heard Congressman Walter Jones from North Carolina. This is common sense.…”