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Who Said This?
By maudeaster on 2011-04-21 06:47:55
What Congressman do you think shared these thoughts? “We need a meaningful dialog about what it means to defend
yourself as a country... We don’t need troops all over the world... We don’t look like a republic. We look like an empire...
We haven’t revisited our national security establishment since the end of the Cold War... Remember Eisenhower’s warning
about the military-industrial-complex... We need more diplomacy.” Are you thinking about Democratic Congressmen
Dennis Kucinich or Jim McGovern? They surely share some of these perspectives, but the answer is Rep. Chris Gibson, the
Republican Congressman who represents eastern and northern parts of the Capital District and beyond. A Women Against
War delegation met with Gibson this week and had a very interesting conversation. Clearly, there are more areas than we
had realized in which some Republicans and some Democrats might work together for the kind of more peaceful US role in
the world that we seek. Gibson also told us he is opposed the US military involvement in Libya. In fact, we learned that last
week he introduced the War Powers Reform Act (HR1609) to strengthen Congress’ voice on when US troops are committed
to hostilities (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d112:1:./temp/~bdcRkc::|/bss/) Gibson, himself an Iraq combat
veteran, also welcomed the complete withdrawal of US forces from Iraq this year. He warned us not to be taken in by
excuses that troops needed to remain to train Iraqis on new US tanks and other equipment, pointing out that small, short-
term training missions could accomplish that task. All that said, we went to talk to Gibson primarily to ask him to join
Congressional efforts to speed up US withdrawal from Afghanistan and on that specific issue, we got nowhere. Gibson
explained that he has confidence in President Obama’s process for planning a gradual drawdown. We were disappointed and
will continue to dialog with him about the need to counteract Pentagon pressures to slow down US departure. Overall,
however, the conversation encouraged us to think that interesting new political alliances may ensure that major military
budget reductions are part of solving deficit challenges and that a fresh look at US foreign policy may come from many
directions!
