Adam Smith

I think it is incredibly important that the United States stay present in the Indo-Pacific region.

They are looking to export an ideology, an authoritarian ideology, and they are also looking to diminish our influence in the world.

China is, without question, the largest national security challenge and competitor that we have in the world today.

I believe passionately in representative democracy. I think it works. I think it is the best system of government going.

For the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry), the ranking member of the committee, pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. General Leave

I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney).

I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished majority leader of the House.

To me the biggest loser in Afghanistan is the nation that stays the longest.

It is my sincere hope that we not only reduce our troop levels to 2,500, but that we reduce them to zero, that we leave Afghanistan.

As awful as the Taliban is, and there is a lot of awful governments all over the world doing a lot of awful things, do we really think that at this point, if the Taliban came back into power--they are fighting ISIS too, by the way.

I think the American people are saying, for what?

The idea that we are going to defeat the Taliban, peace is going to come, and we are going to have a stable government there, most people think is insane.

I would say off the top of my head, you know, I can't predict the future, but if you tell me I got to bet a hundred dollars one way or the other, I am betting rather confidently that the chaos is going to continue.

I would urge this committee as it moves ahead to do the right thing, the thing we promised, bring these brave people here.

It is, I am afraid to say, folly to think that a full U.S. troop withdrawal is somehow going to make us safer.

These are surrender talks. We are waving the white flag, basically saying to the Taliban, you win, we lose.

It will take strategic patience and it will take continued U.S. engagement.

I think we need to make clearer to the American public why we have troops deployed in Europe...

We can't keep doing things the same way we have done them to date.

I do think that what Secretary Esper has done with the bottom-up review... is a very appropriate thing to be doing.

If we do things to undermine the alliance in what appears to be a gratuitous way without working with them, it undermines the strength of that alliance and plays right into Russia's hands.

I feel very strongly that, as I think every member of this committee does, that the NATO alliance has served our country very well.

I think that is something that there is bipartisan consensus on.

The military has made clear to me, and we have had conversations about this, they will not follow an illegal order. They will not follow an order that would illegally help the president overturn the election. They will uphold the…

It is becoming hard to keep up with what the president is saying and what the president is doing. He is making promises that he didn't see fit to push through his legislation in his three and a half years as president. And at the same…