Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: “The issue of providing compensation to Afghan civilians is one whose efficacy is not questioned. Our brave troops on the…”

“The issue of providing compensation to Afghan civilians is one whose efficacy is not questioned. Our brave troops on the ground offer such support through the allocation of the Commander's Emergency Response Program funding and other avenues that allow U.S. forces to compensate civilians for the damage caused due to ongoing U.S. operations. However, the manner by which my esteemed colleague from Ohio, my good friend, Mr. Kucinich, seeks to go about addressing this issue would establish an extremely troublesome precedent regarding our operations in and our policy toward Afghanistan. Simply put, U.S. taxpayer funds, U.S. assistance for Afghanistan, should not be used to fund long-term compensation programs under the Post-Operations Humanitarian Relief Fund of the International Security Assistance Force for damage caused by foreign forces and not U.S. forces. By contrast, the underlying bill acknowledges ongoing U.S. efforts to support war victims affected by U.S. operations and then calls for a feasibility study to be conducted in order to assess if there is a need to expand U.S. assistance to Afghan civilian war victims.”