Congresswoman Norton's Statement on Sending Troops to Afghanistan (12/1/09)

Congresswoman Norton's Statement on Sending Troops to Afghanistan

December 1, 2009

In advance of President Barack Obama's announcement today to send additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton issued the following statement:

"I owe it to this president, and to every president, to hear him out on his plans for war. I have supported President Barack Obama's months of careful study before committing this country to yet another troop escalation. Because I represent the nation's capital, which was targeted on 9/11 and where three school children were lost, I have special reasons to want Afghanistan to no longer be a failed state from which another attack on the United States can be launched.

"I can only hope that President Obama has found an alternative between pulling out and digging in. The public will not be with him long on another escalation of war in the midst of a "Great Recession" that refuses to recede. This is a good time to recall and to re-read the history of the world's great powers. Answering every call to war has almost always appeared necessary to them in order to maintain world leadership, but they have almost always lost that leadership, not on the battlefields, but at home."