On the recordMay 25, 2011
I want to thank the Members who offered this amendment. I too support a drawdown in Afghanistan. I want to see us get to the point where we can bring our troops home, and I think we're making progress in that direction, but there are two things that I do want to correct. One, it's a little bit of a myth that no one has ever defined success. Success has been defined by the President clearly. We want a government in Afghanistan that can stand so that the Taliban and al Qaeda do not come back to power. That is success--when we are confident that that government can stand and we can draw down so that we don't go right back to where we were before 9/11. That is what we are trying to accomplish. And the second thing is, we all want to transition to a lesser mission, to be able to bring our troops home, and counterterrorism is the focus. We would not, however, have been able to run the mission against bin Laden that we did if we didn't have the broader support in Afghanistan. If we pull out and think that we can run a counterterrorism mission with a government that is collapsing around us and that does not support us, then we kid ourselves. That's why it is so important, as Mr. Coffman said so well, to make sure that we complete the mission and we have a government that can stand so that we can begin to responsibly draw down. I think it's important we draw down, but we have to do so in a responsible way.
