Ms. WOOLSEY. Madam Speaker, the American people are rapidly losing confidence in the Nation's Afghanistan policy. Public opposition has reached an all-time high. According to the new ABC News/Washington Post poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans, or 64 percent, say this war isn't worth fighting. I wonder if any of the programs that my Republican colleagues want to cut have sunk to that level of nonsupport. And yet this charade goes on.
The July drawdown, the date we should be leaving Afghanistan, is rapidly approaching; and there are precious few signs of preparations for a massive military redeployment. In fact, top officials have been ``walking back'' the July 2011 commitment from almost the moment the President made it.
General Petraeus has returned to Capitol Hill this week to pat us on the head and tell us the same things he's told us before. During testimony he gave last year, he offered up this--I call it a doozy--describing the July deadline as ``the point at which a process begins to transition security tasks to Afghan forces at a rate to be determined by conditions at the time.'' With all due respect to the general, Madam Speaker, that's an awful lot of weasel words.
His testimony in the Senate yesterday didn't inspire much confidence either. He continues to offer the same bland and tone-deaf talking points--a lot of vague reassurances about progress we've supposedly made, while being sure to say that challenges remain so he can continue justifying a substantial troop presence. He's over here on the House side today. I hope my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee will hold his feet to the fire, demanding the clarity and candor that the American people deserve.
With everyone hanging on General Petraeus' every word, even though he is the symbol of a discredited and unpopular policy, I thought some of us should speak for the overwhelming majority opinion--for that 64 percent. So yesterday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus Peace and Security Task Force held a briefing with a fascinating group of panelists. We heard from Robert Pape, the suicide terrorism scholar, who posed an interesting analogy--if suicide bombings are the lung cancer of terrorism, then foreign occupation is the smoking habit, the lethal but preventable addiction that's feeding the illness.
Matthew Hoh, the former marine captain and State Department official, noted that we're laying off police officers here at home while building up a corrupt and ineffective police force in Afghanistan. And Rolling Stone contributing editor Michael Hastings, who recently broke the story about the Army using psyops propaganda on U.S. Senators, was also there; and he made this observation. He said General Petraeus is giving us ``the Charlie Sheen counterinsurgency strategy, which is to give exclusive interviews to every major network and keep saying you're winning and hope the public actually agrees with you.''
Madam Speaker, it was a compelling briefing. I hope all of us in the 112th Congress will listen to people like Professor Pape, Mr. Hoh, and Mr. Hastings. But, most of all, I hope we'll listen to the American people, who are angry, disillusioned, and pleading with us to bring our troops home. They want us to do that so there will be no more deaths like Staff Sergeant Mark Wells, the young man from Congressman Poe's district.