Steve Buyer: “The mission here is to develop a country that can govern, sustain and defend itself, govern, sustain and defend. So…”

“The mission here is to develop a country that can govern, sustain and defend itself, govern, sustain and defend. So under that, under govern, you have political. Under sustain, you have economic. And under defend, you have security. So as I listened to my colleagues come to the floor and say it only requires a political solution, really? These are not inextricable. I also appeal for consistency. I just heard the last speaker talk about the necessity for national interests, so he said it is not in our national interests to be in Iraq. Let's stop and think about that for a second. Let's be consistent. In the 1990s, Republicans operated under what was called the Weinberg Doctrine, that only commit U.S. ground troops if there is a national vital security interest. And that is how we kind of were guiding ourselves based off the Weinberg Doctrine. Then what happens? We have got Bosnia. We said oh, that is a European problem. Then the U.N. came in, the U.N. was ineffective. President Clinton made a judgment, and he upset Republicans. He made a judgment that because of the atrocities in Bosnia, the ethnic cleansing that was occurring, that it took U.S. ground troops, a presence of them.”