Pakistan Enduring Assistance And Cooperation Enhancement Act Of 2009
Floor Speech
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Mr. KIRK. I thank the chairman.
I want to praise the chairman and his team for putting together a bipartisan bill regarding our assistance to Pakistan. This is a very critical region for the United States and assistance is authorized under this legislation, and necessary. But as was stated before, when Colin Powell called the President of Pakistan right after September 11, he offered a choice: you're either with us or against us. And President Musharraf picked well. Under that arrangement, we did provide $12 billion to Pakistan but largely without strings attached. And the Pakistani effort against the militants, especially in the frontier autonomous region, was initially aggressive but then petered out. The United States was providing $16 million a month to the Pakistani military but after 2005 was receiving little benefit.
Under the new government, that is, unquestionably, a democratic government, I think we have a more stable partner to deal with in the war on terror, specifically in what the Pentagon would call the ``al Qaeda core.'' With this new government really representing the essence of the Pakistani middle class, we now take on their true aspirations in which the central issue for the long term is not nuclear competition with India, but how quickly Pakistan is falling behind India's rising economic growth.
In that view, then, a bunch of radicals ruining the economic and business climate of Pakistan is a mortal danger to the future income of Pakistanis. On that basis, a war on terror is solidly grounded in democracy, in the Pakistani middle class, and the joint interest to the United States. But this bill reflects what we have learned over the last 5 years, that strings should be attached, that benchmarks should be established, that we should have accountability in that very difficult part of the world.
I will also praise this bill because it is probably the only free trade bill this Congress will adopt, and it represents a true bipartisan will that will help add to the employment of Pakistan and stability of that country.
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