Murphy Encourages National Discussion on the War in Afghanistan

After his third trip to Afghanistan, the first in his term on the Foreign Affairs Committee, U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, D-5th District, said he was concerned that he didn’t notice much change.

“I think the problem is that there weren’t enough things that were different from my last trips,” Murphy said after he held a meeting at the about the war in Afghanistan. “The fields are still filled with poppy, the Afghan government is still corrupt, and Pakistan is still a problem. …. 10 years into this war, more things should be different.”

Murphy said that a Republican congressman who was also part of the congressional delegation on the trip confided that he feared to openly oppose the war, believing that “even if he opposed the war, it wasn’t right for him to openly talk about that,” Murphy said. The man's perspective was similar to what former President George W. Bush and U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-CT, have said, that “if you criticize the war, that you’re putting troops in jeopardy," Murphy explained

“The opinions in this delegation, in some respects, could not have been farther apart,” Murphy said. He said a national discussion is necessary between politicians and the public to improve on the situation in the Middle East.

The other congressmen on the trip included Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-2, of Louisiana; Rep. Bill Schuster, R-9, of Pennsylvania; Rep. Sean Duffy, R-7, of Wisconsin; Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-11, of Illinois; and Rep. Jon Runyan, of New Jersey.

Visiting congressmen are constantly escorted by U.S. troops and generals, Murphy said, but it's necessary to look beyond the military “wire” and get out of the conference room and into the villages. Talking to the soldiers and civilians gives a more realistic picture of the war zone atmosphere in Afghanistan, he said.

“I think some members are afraid to put our military and civilian leaders in tough positions in these high-level meetings, but you have to ask tough questions and followup questions to get the real answers,” Murphy said. “You can start to see some of the real story if you’re outside the wire."

He called himself the “skunk in the party,” asking tough questions of military personnel and civilian personnel. He said he went over wanting to know how U.S. troops could succeed in Afghanistan if Pakistan continues to be a safe harbor for their enemies. He also asked why the American government was asking the Afghan people to make a choice between the Taliban and an Afghan government if both were unstable, why a more targeted counter-insurgency strategy wouldn’t work, and whether it was necessary to have a large presence of U.S. troops there.

"You always have to take your trips into war zones with a grain of salt. … You are there to be sold. It’s a 48-hour sales pitch,” Murphy said. “More likely than not, you see what they’re going to want you to see.”

Getting around that, Murphy said, required getting out of Kabul. The committee left the Afghan capital and headed to the western province of Herat.

Murphy and his colleagues were still escorted by U.S. military generals, taken in a cargo plane to a military base in Herat. From there, they travelled aboard Black Hawk helicopters to get to a village where, two weeks earlier, the Taliban had been killing people, Murphy said.

“We wanted to go see an area that hadn’t seen American forces,” Murphy said.

There, Murphy and the other delegates walked through a field of beautiful, purple flowers, which the local village elders said were poppies, an opiate, grown for the drug trade and providing revenue for the country.

“'We don’t want to grow poppy and the Taliban makes us,'” Murphy said some of the villagers told the group. “We harvest it, we hand it to them and we don’t know where they take it.”

Murphy said the group also walked over irrigation canals funded by American dollars and guarded by American troops. The water from those systems irrigates the poppy fields.

“We are taking one step forward while taking two steps back,” Murphy said.

He said that communicating with civilians helps spread the word that “what we are trying to do is give local people a choice between growing affiliation with the Taliban or stable local Afghan government structure.” 

“We can’t force the Afghans to move away from corruption and forsake their relationships with warlords," Murphy said.

The group coincidentally returned May 1, the night President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan.

“It was somewhat gratifying to be the last congressional delegation to see the bin Laden wanted poster on the wall of the Special Forces command center  just outside of Kabul,” Murphy said. “I think this country is a lot safer place with bin Laden dead, and I have even more faith in the capabilities of our special operations forces, knowing how well they performed in this mission.”

Some people have questioned whether bin Laden should have been captured alive, for questioning and to stand trial, like the Nazis in the Nuremberg trials.

“I don’t make too much of people who second-guess the Seals. He got what was coming to him, and I’m not sure if you can exercise a lot of 20-20 hindsight on this operation,” Murphy said.

One event that stuck with Murphy and the other committee members on the trip was the poignancy of being part of a memorial service for nine American men and women, eight airmen and one civilian, shot and killed by a rogue Afghan pilot serving in an advisory role, a friend of theirs. One of the dead was Maj. Raymond G. Estelle of New Haven.

Murphy opposed the war in Iraq in his 2006 campaign, describing the decision as a “textbook example of mission creep” that involved “spending money that we didn’t have” and diverting the focus from “a fight worthwhile.” He did, however, say that “the war is legal.”

“I went to Afghanistan this time believing 10 years was enough,” Murphy said, referring to the time elapsed since the 9/11 attacks. His stance against the war has become a cornerstone of his campaign for the U.S. Senate; he is seeking the seat being vacated by Lieberman.

The trip reaffirmed for Murphy that “we should end our combat" in Afghanistan. He said continued training may be needed but said that the U.S. is spending an average of $2.5 billion a week in Afghanistan.

When an audience member mentioned the idea of a “war tax,” Murphy said that the United States does “not have a scratch” in the war as it did in World War II or Vietnam, when there was a draft and the people were paying for it.

Murphy said there is a disconnect between “the impression in the U.S. that we’re going to be drawing down troops this summer” and the military’s plan to begin pulling troops out in 2014. He said that there is also a disconnect in Obama’s reports about the war in the Afghanistan and what his orders are to the military.

“There seems to be a double message here,” Murphy said. “I think the president needs to rethink the message he has given to the military.”