Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Utah. Members of the Committee, a test of a great democracy is its capacity to make the grave decision to send its citizens to war. Such a decision was made after the attack on September 11 of 2001. It was a bipartisan decision. It was made for the right reasons at the right time and for the right result. Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden planned and executed the 9/11 mission from Afghanistan. And we sent our soldiers to war. Vermont soldiers and soldiers from all around the country sacrificed bravely and served well. But an equally grave challenge and test for a democracy is whether once that machinery of war has been put in gear, when circumstances change as the national security requires, can that democracy amend its decision, amend its policy as conditions have changed? We are at that moment today. It is a bipartisan question that faces us all. And the amendment that Mr. Chaffetz and I offer suggests that the policy that we are now pursuing, nation building in Afghanistan, is no longer the policy that is either financially sustainable nor in our best national security interests. There are three reasons: number one, the threat of al Qaeda has diminished in Afghanistan; the threat of terrorism in the world has not. This is not a nation state-centered threat. It is dispersed and decentralized. Mr. Chaffetz and I say let us have a decentralized and dispersed response.…”