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Video: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/clip.php?appid=596279065Transcript:Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise to speak in a matter that is very hard to discuss these days, when we are dealing with the aftermath of the destruction that has been visited upon our country. I rise to speak of a matter that is at the very heart of our fight against terrorism. Today I met with the Secretary of State, along with my Senate Foreign Relations Committee colleagues, including the occupant of the Chair, for about 2 hours. I applaud the actions of President Bush and Secretary Powell and the rest of the administration throughout this terrible crisis. I applaud what he had to say at our meeting. Of all the topics Secretary Powell discussed with me and other members of the Foreign Relations Committee, none was more important in my view than this: We must make a bold, brave, and powerful decision to provide generous relief and reconstruction aid to the people of Afghanistan and neighboring countries, even as we move toward war. We must wage a war against the vicious thugs who attacked our nation, but we must not permit this war to be mischaracterized as a battle against the people of Afghanistan or the wider Muslim world.
If we can't make this critical distinction, all our efforts are doomed to failure. The people of Afghanistan, who are looking for a way of ridding themselves of the Taliban regime, might direct their anger at us rather than at the brutal warlords who have caused them so much misery and pain. The people of Muslim countries from Morocco to Indonesia could turn against the United States, with disastrous consequences for many years to come--notwithstanding my belief that we will prosecute this military effort with discreet and precise efforts to minimize civilian casualties. We have already seen how those who wish us ill can portray legitimate, restrained military action as an indiscriminate attack on innocent civilians, and how such an argument can be persuasive to so many people in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein, a man who has killed far more Muslims than any American attack before, during, or since the gulf war, has depicted the United States-led actions against Iraq as an assault on Iraqi women and children, an assault on Islam. That is a guy who has killed more believers of Islam than just about anybody else--and yet he is able to put out a boldfaced lie, the lie that our soldiers have gone out of their way to hurt innocent civilians. In fact, our soldiers have always gone out of their way to avoid collateral damage to civilians, even during the height of the gulf war. The United Nations' sanctions imposed since that time place no restrictions on the delivery of food or medicine to the people of Iraq. Quite the opposite. Yet Saddam has won the international battle. He has convinced a significant portion of the Islamic world that we are the reason the people of Iraq do not have food and medicine in sufficient supply. It is Saddam who is starving his own people, deliberately sitting on billions of oil dollars earmarked for humanitarian aid to the people of Iraq while he pursues his weapons of mass destruction and builds himself more palaces. The reason I bring this up is that throughout much of the Muslim world Saddam's propaganda remains convincing. People see these images of children and their mothers scrambling for food, the footage of destroyed buildings, and they know the United States conducts bombing raids to enforce the no-fly zone and we are leading an international coalition to maintain sanctions. So they conclude, with his distinct urging, that we are not acting in accordance with U.N. resolutions and the consent of the world community, but that we are acting in the way Saddam Hussein portrays us as acting: victimizing his people, oppressing women and children, and causing great hardship. No matter how we cut it, he has won the battle over who's at fault. If you had told me that was going to be the case after the gulf war, I would have told you that you were crazy. One of the reasons he has won is we are so accustomed in America to not beating our own chests about what we do for other people, we are so accustomed to thinking that people are going to be open minded, as we are. It is almost beyond our capacity to believe anyone could think we were responsible for those women and children and old people in Iraq starving, being malnourished, and not having adequate medical care. It is very simple in the Muslim world right now. When America bombs, America is blamed for anything else that happens. And not just blamed for what we have done, but we are blamed for what we have not done. It is not fair, but it is the fact. As the world's only superpower, we receive a lot of misdirected blame under the best of circumstances. The nuances and subtleties of geopolitics don't get translated to the language of the street. And once the bombs start to fall, any vestige of nuance is blown away with whatever they hit. We cannot allow what happened in Iraq to happen in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, have been trying to cast the current conflict in terms of religion and have been calling our efforts a crusade against Islam. You mention the word ``crusade'' in the Middle East and it has a very different context than when we use it here. It is not accidental that the word is used by bin Laden. It conjures up several hundred years of painful history. This is not a crusade. It is not a war against Muslims. And we cannot permit bin Laden and the Taliban to portray it as such. So how do we prevent it from happening this time? We have all said the right words. President Bush, Secretary Powell, and most Senators gathered in this Chamber have all spoken out forcefully. Our rhetoric has been fine, but if we want to convince the world's 1.6 billion Muslims of our sincerity, it will take much more than our rhetoric. It will take action, real action, to save the lives of real people.After my long-time involvement with and strong advocacy for Muslims in Europe, whenever I go to the Balkans I can barely take a step without being reminded of this dynamic. If my name is mentioned among Muslim leaders, I am thanked for being one of their saviors; I am thanked for being one of the people who has fought to help them--and I'm sure all those American servicemen and servicewomen over there now protecting the Muslims in the Balkans feel the same. But none of that message has gotten to the Middle East. It is ironic. So what we need to do is back up our words with our wallets. In my view, we must do this ahead of time.
We say we have no beef with the Afghan people, and we do not. But one out of four Afghans--perhaps 7 million people--are surviving on little more than grass and locusts. We say our fight is only against the terrorists, along with their sponsors, and it is. But the people of Afghanistan have been subjected to constant warfare for the past two decades. They are looking for help, and they are looking at us.We did not cause the terrible drought that brought so many Afghans to the brink of starvation, and we did not cause the Soviet invasion or the civil war that followed. We were interested in Afghanistan, but only when it suited our own interests.We paid attention during the 1980s, but then came down with a case of attention deficit disorder. As soon as the last Russian troops pulled out in 1989, our commitment seemed to retreat along with them. And I was here, so I share this responsibility.
The years of bloody chaos that followed were what gave rise to the Taliban. If we had not lost interest a decade ago, perhaps Afghanistan would not have turned into the swamp of terrorism and brutality that it has become.I say this not to cast stones, because I was here. We do not need to ask who ``lost'' Afghanistan. There is more than enough blame to go around. It is not a matter of political party or ideological outlook. Nobody--Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative--stepped up to the plate when it counted because we did not take it as seriously as it turned out to be. It is time we all stepped up to the plate.In fairness to the folks who were here, like me and others, the truth of the matter is we get called on from all over the world and we find ourselves responding to whatever the crisis of the moment is. It is time to reverse more than a decade of neglect, not only for the sake of Afghanistan, but for our sake. Not only for the sake of Pakistan, which faces growing instability exacerbated by the enormous burden of sheltering millions of Afghan refugees. Not only for the sake of the Central Asian republics, all of which are threatened by chaos fomented in Kabul and Kandahar. We have to take action not merely for their sake, but for our own sake.
The tragedy of September 11 served as a stark reminder that isolation is impossible. What happens in South and Central Asia has direct impact on what happens right here in the United States. If we ever were able to think of our nation as one buffered from far-away events, we can no longer maintain that illusion. So what can we do? Let me make this very bold proposal as to what I think we should and could do. The plight of the Afghans had reached a crisis point before September 11, and the prospect of military action has made matters even worse. The U.N. places the number of Afghan refugees at about 3 million, and in Iran at about one half that, with another million displaced within Afghanistan itself. These people are living--if one can call it that--in conditions of unspeakable deprivation. One camp in the Afghan city of Herat is locally called, quite appropriately, ``the slaughterhouse.'' The expectation of U.S. attacks has already prompted more desperate people to flee their homes, and a estimated 1.5 million may soon take to the road. U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan has issued an appeal for $584 million to meet the needs of the Afghan refugees and displaced people, within Afghanistan and in neighboring countries. This is the amount deemed necessary to stave off disaster for the winter, which will start in Afghanistan in just a few weeks. We must back up our rhetoric with action, with something big and bold and meaningful. We can offer to foot the entire bill for keeping the Afghan people safely fed, clothed, and sheltered this winter, and that should be the beginning.
We can establish an international fund for the relief, reconstruction, and recovery of Central and Southwest Asia. We can do this through the U.N. or through a multilateral bank, but we must be in it for the long haul with the rest of the world.
The initial purpose of the fund would be to address the immediate needs of the Afghans displaced by drought and war for the next 6 months. But the fund's longer-term purpose would be to help stabilize the whole region by, as the President says, draining the swamp that Afghanistan has become.
We can kick the effort off in a way that would silence our critics in the rest of the world: a check for $1 billion, and a promise for more to come as long as the rest of the world joins us. This initial amount would be more than enough to meet all the refugees' short-term needs, and would be a credible downpayment for the long-term effort. Eventually the world community will have to pony up more billions, but there is no avoiding that now, not if we expect our words ever to carry any weight.
If anyone thinks this amount of money is too high, let me note one stark, simple and very sad statistic. The damage inflicted by the September 11 attack in economic terms alone was a minimum of several hundred billion dollars and a maximum of over $1 trillion. The cost in human life, of course, as the Presiding Officer knows, is far beyond any calculation.
The fund I propose would be a way to put some flesh on the bones, not only of the Afghan refugees, but on the international coalition that President Bush has assembled. All nations would be invited to contribute to this fund, and projects for relief and reconstruction could be carried out under the auspices of the United Nations. Countries that are leery of providing military aid against the Taliban could use this recovery fund as a means to demonstrate their commitment to the wider cause.
Money from the fund would be used for projects in several countries. In the short term, it could help front-line countries handle the social problems caused by existing refugee burdens or the expected military campaign. This would further solidify the alliance and give wavering regimes, especially Pakistan, a valuable ``deliverable'' to present to its own people.
The fund would also be used for relief efforts within Afghanistan itself. This could take several forms. It could help finance air drops of food and medical supplies. It could support on-the-ground distribution in territories held by the Northern Alliance and other friendly forces. And perhaps, most significantly, it could provide the Pashtun leaders of the south with a powerful incentive to abandon the Taliban and join the United States-led effort.
Think of the impact. Many Pashtun chiefs, including current supporters of the Taliban, are already on the fence. If the Pashtuns, who are now going hungry, saw relief aid pouring into neighboring provinces or in from the air, with their own leaders stubbornly stuck by Mullah Omar and refused such aid well, we could suddenly find ourselves with a lot of new allies. The seemingly intractable problem of forging a political consensus in Afghanistan might become a whole lot easier to solve.
A massive humanitarian relief effort will not guarantee a favorable political solution.
But it clearly is within the realm of possibility. We can establish our credibility by committing ourselves to providing this aid now, before the first bomb falls.
The funding that I propose will address not only the short-term goal, but the more important (and more difficult) longer term ones as well. Whatever we do in Afghanistan--whether it involves the commitment of military, political, or humanitarian assets--must be geared toward a long-term solution. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past. If we think only in the short term, only of getting Bin Laden and the Taliban--which we must do, but that is not all we must do--we are just begging for greater trouble down the line.
We have a unique opportunity here and right now--a window of opportunity that will not be open forever. Now, while the attention of the country and the world is focused on this vital issue, we can create a consensus necessary to build a lasting peace in the region.
This will be a multinational, multiyear, multibillion-dollar commitment. And if we take a leading role, I am confident that other nations will follow.
Today is not the time to speak about political reconstruction of Afghanistan. The situation is extremely fluid, and delicate negotiations are in progress. This Chamber is not the appropriate place for such a sensitive discussion.
Today is also not the time to discuss all the details of the long-term economic reconstruction package for the region. Once the immediate refugee crisis is dealt with, there will be plenty of opportunity to deal with the nitty-gritty of how best to help the people in the region rebuild their lives. I will not presume to lay out a long-term agenda today. But some of the foremost items on such an agenda might include the following: Creation of secular schools, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan, to break the stranglehold of radical religious seminaries that have polluted a whole generation of Afghan boys. The Taliban movement is an outgrowth of this network of extremist seminaries, a network which has been funded by militant forces around the world and has fed off the lack of secular educational opportunities.
We can also be involved in the restoration of women's rights. The Taliban created a regime more hostile to the rights of women than any state in the whole world. Women under Taliban rule have been deprived of even the most basic of human rights. A critical element of the new school system, I should emphasize, will be providing equal education for girls and boys alike. If Afghan girls and women do not have a chance to go to school, they will never be able to have the rights they are so cruelly denied now by the Taliban.
De-mining operations: Afghanistan is the world's most heavily mined country. Clearing these mines will take time, money, and expertise. Until these fields are cleared, farmers--whether currently trapped in refugee camps or trapped by drought--cannot start farming their land.
Creation of full-scale hospitals and village medical clinics in Afghanistan and throughout the region. As in the case of schools, the absence of such services has created a void filled by radical groups.
People sometimes ask why extremist organizations have been so successful in recruiting support in the Muslim world. Let me tell you, they don't do it all by hate. Many militant groups provide valuable social services in order to gain goodwill, and then twist that goodwill to vicious ends.
Another thing we can provide is a crop substitution program for narcotics. This week, the Taliban reversed its short-lived ban on growing opium. As part of a long-term solution, we have to help the Afghan farmers find a new way to support their families. We cannot let Afghanistan resume its place as the world's No. 1 source of heroin.
Building basic infrastructure: Just as Saddam manipulated images of war in Iraq, the Taliban could have success doing the same. We have to counter this effort by drilling wells, building roads, providing technical expertise, and a whole range of development projects.
We are portrayed as bringing destruction to the region. We must fight that perception: we must prove to the world that we are not a nation of destruction, but of reconstruction.
This afternoon, the members of the Foreign Relations Committee and I had a very productive meeting with the Secretary of State. Everything I have said here today is an attempt to support Secretary Powell and President Bush in their efforts to send the world a simple message: Our fight is against terrorism--not against Islam. We oppose the Taliban not the Afghan people.
We stand ready as a great nation, as a generous nation, as a nation that has led the world in the past, a nation whose word is its bond, and we stand ready to match our words with our actions.
I thank the Chair. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. Here's what actually happened... When $4.5 billion was pledged by several countries in January 2002 to aid Afghanistan I got my hopes up that Biden's "bold proposal" had been taken seriously, but as history shows us, those hopes were in vain. Timeline of the reconstruction efforts since the invasion: http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=afghanwar_tmln&afghanwar_tmln_us_invasion__occupation=afghanwar_tmln_economic_reconstructionTimeline of the redirection of forces and attention to Iraq: http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=afghanwar_tmln&afghanwar_tmln_us_invasion__occupation=afghanwar_tmln_us_redirection_of_forces_to_iraqBTW... Here are some details on how there are now 6,000,000 children going to school there compared to less than a million boys during the Taliban reign: http://www.ungei.org/news/afghanistan_2343.html |
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