On the recordMay 25, 2011
I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I certainly appreciate the gentleman from California's commitment to deficit reduction, but I'm afraid that this particular amendment is short-sighted. In Afghanistan and elsewhere, more and more of what our troops are doing is living with, working with, and cooperating with the Afghans or the native peoples wherever they happen to be. Helping those peoples to defend themselves is far better and cheaper for us than having us defend them ourselves. But a basic tenet to make that work is to understand the culture and the social dynamics of those various populations, which are different, of course, from one place to another. It is a basic tenet of counterinsurgency that you have to understand the population you are there to protect. This program that the gentleman wants to eliminate is a significant research program to see if modeling that sort of social dynamics will work. And I would say to the gentleman that the Defense Science Board looked at this very program earlier this year and found that it was one of the emerging technologies where investment is likely to have the highest payoff--the highest payoff. The report went further to say, consistent to some extent with what the gentleman was saying, that there is other work being done in this area.…
