Afghanistan a decade ago

 From When the Tea Party Came to Town [p.99f]

At about 10:30 in the morning on March 1, 2011, the House floor was completely empty and no more than eight high school students sat in the public galleries when a Republican congressman named Walter Jones walked to the well to give the seventh of sixteen morning hour speeches that day. He was a slightly built, gray-haired sixty-eight-year-old man with the gentle bearing of a Sunday school teacher, and he spoke in the elastic twang that was typical of the eastern flank of North Carolina, where he had in fact spent his entire life, in the town of Farmville. For the past sixteen years, Jones had represented the state's 3rd District, a largely coastal region that also included the Marine Corps base of Camp Lejeune. To hold that seat is to be unerringly pro-military. But in recent years Walter Jones had developed a surprising interpretation of what this meant.

Gesturing to a large placard he had placed on a stand beside him, Jones said, "I bring a photograph of a flag-draped coffin--it's called a transfer case--being escorted off a plane at Dover Air Force Base.

"Mr. Speaker it is time to bring our troops home. They have been in Afghanistan for over ten years. I would also say it is time that this Congress met its constitutional responsiblity to debate war and whether we should be there or bring our troops home...

"How many more young men and women must lose their legs, their lives, for a corrupt government that history has proven will never be changed? Why should they be dying and losing their legs for Karzai, who doesn't even know that we're his friends? It makes no sense."

He read from a letter sent to him by a retired military general, which maintained that the war in Afghanistan "can't be won." He read from another letter, this one by a recently retired Marine lieutenant colonel who viewed the war as haveing "gone on for too long." He spoke of a recent visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to stand beside the bed of a twenty-two-year-old Army private whose body below the waist had all been blown away.

And then he concluded with a kind of prayer, with eyes closed: "God bless the House and Senate that we will do what is right in Your eyes for today's generation and tomorrow's generation. I ask God to give wisdom, strength and courage to President Obama that he will do what is right in the eyes of God.

"And three times I will ask: God, please, God, please, God, please continue to bless America."

Walter Jones walked away from the microphone. The next speaker happened to be Democratic Minority Whip Steny Hoyer. He grabbed the Republican's hand and spoke in his ear for a moment.

Then, when the Democrats' second-ranking leader turned to the microphone, his first words were not from his prepared text. "First I want ot congratulate the gentleman from North Carolina," Hoyer said with a stricken expression. "He is a Republican and I am a Democrat, but I will tell you this: We are friends, and we work together. And he is one of the most conscientious members of this House, who follows his conscience and his moral values in making decisions. He gave a very moving and important speech on the floor today. I thank the gentleman, Mr. Jones, from North Carolina."