Mr. SCHIFF. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.
Madam Chairman, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3994, the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act, and the Lantos amendment addressing the immediate security concerns in Afghanistan.
Last March I had the opportunity to accompany a delegation led by the gentleman from California (Chairman Rohrabacher) to Afghanistan and assess some of the desperate needs of that country.
The challenges there were immediate and were very apparent. The day after our arrival, 300 people were arrested for attempting to overthrow the Karzai government. Three days after that, there was an effort to blow up the defense minister. Two weeks after that, a bumper opium crop was ready for harvest. As we drove through the country, rocks were painted red and painted white, one side that had been demined, another side that had not.
The challenges before that country are immense, but none was pointed out I think more graphically than the reports we received while we were there that al Qaeda and Taliban were circulating pamphlets in some of the small villages that said, "The Americans will leave. They will be here a few years and then they will leave. We are Muslims; we do not leave. If we find you working with the Americans, talking with the Americans, we will kill you and we will kill your family. We do not leave.''
This, indeed, is the challenge for this country. The challenge for us is to support to rebuild the economy in Afghanistan, the infrastructure in Afghanistan, the educational system in Afghanistan, to make sure that this country never again becomes a haven for terrorists like al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The rap on any democracy and the rap on the United States is that we have no staying power, and we must prove this wrong. We must demonstrate that we have the commitment; that we have seen history and we are determined not to repeat it. This act goes a long way to providing the building blocks to restore that nation to its people and to protect our country from any future September 11.