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“TRIBUTE TO CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER BRADLEY GAUDET AND REMARKS ON AFGHANISTAN” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H4322-H4324 on June 16, 2011.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRIBUTE TO CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER BRADLEY GAUDET AND REMARKS ON
AFGHANISTAN
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 30 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, June 5, the State of Texas and our Nation lost a true hero. Chief Warrant Officer Brad Gaudet was killed in Afghanistan after his helicopter crashed near Kabul.
Brad was the best and brightest of what the First Congressional District of Texas has to offer. Raised in Lufkin, Texas, and a graduate of Stephen F. Austin University, he was truly a son of East Texas.
General MacArthur once said, ``Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: To build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.'' For Brad, these three ideas were not just to strive for. He understood them, he embodied them, he lived them.
Brad, just 31 years old, was a husband, a father, a son, and a brother. Outgoing and aggressive, Brad truly personified the Army's old slogan, ``Be All You Can Be.'' The summer before his senior year in high school, Brad joined the Reserves and went to boot camp. His family joked that he was never more prepared for the upcoming high school football season than he was that year.
Upon graduating from Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas, Brad enlisted in the Army and was sent to Fort Rucker in Alabama. There he pursued his dream of flying and graduating from flight school. The next stage of his military service brought him to Fort Drum in New York, where he met the love of his life, Ginny.
During his second deployment, Brad achieved Pilot in Command rank, a highly-skilled specialty officer which is very difficult to achieve for those who are not commissioned officers. This speaks to his hard work, his outstanding training, his performances, the respect his superiors had for him.
A true family man, last month Brad rushed home from his third deployment in Afghanistan just in time to help with the delivery of his newly born daughter, Addyson. His family will always remember his great sense of humor, his infectious smile, his kind heart, and his desire to brighten anyone's day.
Today I want to extend my prayers and condolences to Brad's wife, Ginny; his two young daughters, Tealie and Addyson; his parents, his relatives and his friends. Their American warrior is home. He has met his maker, his master. His duty is done and he is at peace.
George Orwell said, ``We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.''
A grateful Nation is so very proud of this son of East Texas. We grieve the loss of our warrior brother. We honor Brad for his courage, his sacrifice and his selfless commitment to duty, honor and country. He gave his all in service for the sake of safety, freedom and liberty.
May God bless the sacrifices and the last full measure of devotion that Brad Gaudet paid, and may he bless us all because he was such a patriot.
Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would ask occupants in the gallery to please refrain from applause.
Mr. GOHMERT. I would like to address myself for a moment to Afghanistan. That is where Brad Gaudet and so many Americans have fought and have died. It was the place where the Taliban flourished. They trained terrorists; they prepared for the chance to come kill thousands of Americans in New York City; they came up with plans to kill Americans in other places in the United States, so it was important that we go take out the home bases of the Taliban.
For those that know the history of our fighting in Afghanistan, they know that what we initially did was send in advisers and trainers and people to help the Afghans to fight and take out the Taliban, and in fact a group that proved most helpful was the Northern Alliance. Some say it was run by warlords, but these tribal regions with their leaders accepted munitions, accepted training, accepted what it took to bring war upon the Taliban, and they whipped the Taliban, at least until later when the Taliban resurged.
But after the Northern Alliance defeated the Taliban, we did something that I was not aware of, until some of the warlords or Northern Alliance leaders wanted to sit down with somebody from our government and our State Department they said had refused to meet with them.
These were the leaders of groups who risked their lives. Many in the group lost their lives fighting the Taliban, and whipped them. And when my friend Dana Rohrabacher said, Hey, these folks want to meet with somebody from the U.S. Government, the State Department won't meet with them, will you go with me, I said sure.
Initially we were going to try to meet near northern Afghanistan, but when the Uzbeks found out, as I understand it, they didn't want to give visas to these people. We thought maybe we would meet in India, and they didn't want to give them visas. So at the last minute we arranged to meet in Berlin. Five of the nine did meet.
Something that many Americans don't realize, the Taliban in preparing for 9/11 knew that there was a man who was charismatic, who was a powerful leader, who had the chance to bring together Afghanistan as a nation, the Afghans as a people. Even though it is so very tribal, one person had the chance to really pull it all together, and on either September 9 or September 10 of 2001, he was boldly assassinated so that when a day later 9/11 occurred there would be nobody that the U.S. could really turn to as one individual to rally Afghans against the Taliban.
{time} 1520
They took him out before they committed their act of atrocity against Americans. They knew what they were doing. They planned well. But our American soldiers know what they're doing. And when we sent special forces and intelligence folks to help, they were able to whip the Taliban. And I didn't realize until we met with these Northern Alliance leaders that after they initially whipped the Taliban, we demanded that they disarm. According to them, they were told, Look, we're the United States of America. You have nothing to fear. We're here. We'll make sure that you're not harmed. You fought for us. You whipped the Taliban. It was our mutual enemy. And so turn in all of your weapons.
I said, You turned in everything? They said, Well, we've got some small arms. We can't fight the Taliban with the little bit we've got left. We gave all of that back--plus some of our own. And the Taliban has re-surged. The war has gone on much longer than it should have. There were reports of corruption. The poppy production has surged much more than anything else there in Afghanistan. And what they had heard was that our government was negotiating directly with Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan, and with Pakistan. And what they had been hearing was that our government was negotiating indirectly with the Taliban itself. They want to destroy America. And the word that they had gotten was basically that the United States just wanted out, and if they would let us get out without a major incident, between the Taliban, Karzai, Pakistan, they could just divide things up however they wanted.
I want our troops, I want our people, I want our resources out of Afghanistan. But we've got to make sure that people like Brad Gaudet and so many others that have given their lives haven't done it for nothing. But it seems that that initial success may have given us a good roadmap to how you succeed in Afghanistan. Equip the people that are our friends, who have the same enemies as we have, and let them do the fighting. Things went well when that's the way it went. We provided trainers, advisers, gave them some intelligence, and they whipped the bad guys for us. What would be wrong with getting back to that point instead of what the rumors are that this administration is prepared to do--let the Taliban take back up where they left off once we leave.
If the Taliban gets a foothold again, as they want to do, if al Qaeda gets a foothold and if radical Islam gets a strong foothold in Afghanistan again, does anybody really think they won't come after us again? They have pledged that we're a great Satan, that we must be eliminated. The most free country in the world, the greatest country in the history of mankind, and these people want it destroyed because it didn't fit into their narrow scope of having a global caliphate where one religious leader dictates to everybody. We kind of like our freedom, where those of us who are Christians are free to worship and those who wish to worship any other way are free to do so. That's America. But it's not time to just cut our losses and leave.
It's time to act smartly. I am very much afraid this administration will continue to reward our enemies and to turn against our allies and friends. You can't keep maintaining foreign affairs and any credibility in the world when you turn against your friends, thinking that your enemies are going to like you better because you showed you would turn on your own friends. Your enemies don't like you any better when you turn against your friends. In fact, what happens is they not only don't like you, they no longer respect you. Because some in the world, they don't like us--they hate us--and they think we ought to be destroyed, but they respect our power. And once they see that a Nation will turn against its friends and hurt its own friends and allies, they know this country should not even be respected. As I've said many times, we don't have to keep paying people to hate us. They'll do it for free. It's time to quit paying our enemies to continue to nurture hatred against us. It's time to be a true friend to our allies.
We heard one of the greatest speeches I've heard in my 6\1/2\ years in Congress from that podium right there, and it didn't come from any State of the Union. It came from the leader of Israel. We heard from Palestinians. They thought the speech was a declaration of war. It means they didn't listen to the speech because, as Prime Minister Netanyahu made clear, as soon as the Palestinians are willing to tell their people there will be a Jewish State of Israel, peace can be worked out very quickly after that. But no one wants to say that on the Palestinian side. So, as Patrick Henry said, men cry, ``Peace, peace,'' but there is no peace, and there will be no peace in the Middle East.
Here, we think that gee--at least this administration--we heard our friends, our enemies will love us. They've been trying that since the Clinton administration when the Clinton administration classified an anti-Khomeini and Ahmadinejad, as of now, group called the MEK, their initials. They're an antitotalitarian regime group, and they're over 3,000 residents of Camp Ashraf in Iraq. We as a Nation gave them our sovereign promise we'll make sure you're safe and secure. When we turned things over to the elected government of Iraq, we were assured by that government that they would take care of that promise and they would keep the residents at Camp Ashraf safe. Yet nearly a week ago, when a group of six of us met with the Prime Minister of Iraq there in Baghdad and tried to discuss the issue of the Iraqi military going to Camp Ashraf and killing perhaps 35 residents of Camp Ashraf, wounding perhaps a hundred or more from reports from a video Dana Rohrabacher had seen--I had not--he said it's very clear these were unarmed civilians killed by the Iraqi military. That's not the promise we made to those people in Camp Ashraf. It's not the promise that the Iraqi leaders, including Maliki, made to those Iranians in Camp Ashraf. Yet the Iraqi military killed civilians in Camp Ashraf.
As I tried to explain to Prime Minister Maliki, when he said for us to be concerned and to try to do something about the killings would be a violation of their national sovereignty, I tried to explain that actually it does involve sovereignty, but the U.S. sovereignty was involved in promising their safety at Camp Ashraf, and his sovereignty was involved when they promised the safety of those residents at Camp Ashraf.
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So we have a vested interest with all of the American lives and treasure that were laid down and invested in Iraq. We have a very strong vested interest in seeing that justice is done and in seeing that people who made promises to us keep those promises, because if we don't see to that, then how can we expect anyone to trust us? How can we expect anyone to truly negotiate fairly with us, expecting we'll keep our word?
Sometimes you make bad deals, but if you're going to keep your word and if you're going to be known for being a country and a people of honor and a people of their word, you've got to keep your word. As a former judge and chief justice, some things I've seen have been unjust, but when we can do something about it to help us keep our word to those who've trusted us, we've got to do it. We can't look back.
So we were a bit surprised when our group of six Members of Congress--four Republicans and two Democrats--flew up to Erbil and met with folks up there. It's always good to see troops around, American troops. They're the best I've ever seen. The 4 years I spent in the Army, starting in the late 1970s, left me concerned that, if we were attacked back in those days, we were in a lot of trouble. But the military I see and I meet and I visit with--those from my district and from all over the country--so impress me and so impress those around them. We have an incredible military, these days, of our service men and women.
When we left Erbil in northern Iraq and were flying out, we got word that our Embassy had been contacted by Prime Minister Maliki, and was told that our group was not welcome in Iraq any longer. I have attended far too many funerals of people from Texas and other funerals of Americans who laid down their lives and, in doing so, provided people like Prime Minister Maliki the chance to come back from exile, to be elected in that country and to be a leader, that I don't think it's too much to ask for a little gratitude. We're not asking for anything in return.
I know there was some discussion--it wasn't from me--about, Gee, maybe you could help us, instead of doing deals with China for your oil after we secured your country and got rid of the tyrant Saddam Hussein. Maybe you could deal with us. I'm not asking for those things. I'm just asking for a little gratitude for the lives and the treasure that were expended to give people in Iraq the freedoms they have today.
I expect people who have become leaders in Iraq to keep their word to us, because if they can't be trusted, if they won't keep their word, well, they can lock me out of their country all they want to, but we have the power of the purse.
I didn't join in the lawsuit against the administration over the War Powers. I think they're well-intended dear friends who are involved in that suit this week. I didn't engage in that as a party for one reason, which is that this body has the power constitutionally of the purse. We don't need a War Powers Act. We don't need any interpretation by the Supreme Court of whether the War Powers is effective or whether the War Powers is not, because we have the ultimate weapon in this body called the power of the purse.
If the President wants to send our American treasure and our American military, which composes 65 percent of NATO's military, what a joke to say, Hey, we're turning it over to NATO. We won't be involved anymore. We're 65 percent of NATO's military. If we're going to have a President who sends people over there, not because Congress thought it was a good idea and not because a majority of the American people did but because the Arab League asked us to and because some in the U.N. thought it was a good idea, then Congress has the ultimate power, and we don't need the War Powers to do it. We don't need the Supreme Court's okay. All we need to do is shut down every dime being spent in Libya until such time as we can be sure that whoever takes over Libya will not be worse for the United States than the crazy murderer who is there now. We need to be sure of that.
I know the President made the mistake one day of saying he had visited all 57 States. I'm well aware that there are not 57 States in this country, although there are 57 members of OIC, the Islamic states in the world. Perhaps there was some confusion as to whether he'd been to all 57 Islamic states as opposed to all 50 U.S. States. Nonetheless, we have an obligation to the 50 American States, not to the 57 Muslim Islamic states.
Our oath that we took is in this body--in this House--and it's to the people of America. It's not to the Muslim Brotherhood, who may very well take over Egypt.
Once they do, they'll be bent upon setting up a caliphate around the world, including in the United States, and this administration will have been complicit in helping people who want to destroy our country out of the ignorance to think, if you help your enemies, they're going to like you better. Not only do they not like you, as I said, they disrespect you when they see how foolhardy you are.
It's time to quit involving this country in warfare around the world unless we can be sure that such warfare helps us keep our oath to the United States of America.
And to quote my dear friend from Texas, also a former judge, ``And that's just the way it is.''
I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.
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