Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, my amendment really should be called the define the mission act for Ukraine or the define the mission amendment. We voted on this last summer as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, and 129 of our colleagues agreed that the administration should define the mission. Before this, this might have been summarized as the Powell doctrine for years. Before we get into a war, we should decide what we are trying to achieve with the war. The administration has gotten by in Ukraine since the inception by saying as much as it takes, as long as it takes. We searched for that phrase and found it back in 2004 when the administration at that time decided that we were going to shift from going after the terrorists that bombed the United States on 9/11, or used airplanes to target our citizens, to rebuilding Afghanistan. The phrase they used was ``as much as it takes, as long as it takes.'' That was used to keep the mission going all the way until the Biden administration left in the most disastrous way possible by taking the military out first and leaving civilians behind and getting them out. That was on August 31, 2021. The very next day, on September 1, 2021, the Biden administration entered into a strategic partnership agreement with Ukraine to support their membership in the European Union and NATO. This led to an escalation, and the Biden administration, rather than using leverage to create a peaceful resolution and prevent a war in Ukraine, fostered that war.…”