Statement
of Committee Chairman Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-California), hearing
of the House Armed Services Committee: "Fiscal Year 2005 National
Defense Authorization budget request" March 24, 2004
For Immediate Release:
March 24, 2004 Contact:
Harald Stavenas
Angela Sowa
(202) 225-2539
OPENING REMARKS OF CHAIRMAN DUNCAN HUNTER
U.S. European and Southern Commands Fiscal Year 2005 Posture Hearing
Over
the last year or so, a number of critics have accused the administration
of acting unilaterally in the world. If your test for multilateralism
is global consensus, it would be easy to believe that those charges
were accurate. In fact, they couldn’t be further from the
truth.
Even though France, Germany, and Belgium criticized the United
States for Operation Iraqi Freedom, some thirty-four countries
have contributed forces to providing security and stability in
Iraq. Three fall under General Hill’s area of responsibility
and twenty-two of those countries fall under General Jones’.
Collectively, they constitute a majority of our allies in NATO.
The United States is also working cooperatively with thirty-four
other countries in the International Security and Assistance Force
in Afghanistan, under NATO leadership.
In Haiti, the United States has deployed peacekeepers in cooperation
with troops from France, Canada, and Chile. And, in Colombia,
the United States is actively engaged in raising standards of
professionalism and instilling a respect for human rights in the
Colombian military, both of which are necessary if the Colombia’s
fragile democracy is to prevail against narco-terrorists.
In Africa, the Administration is launching the Pan-Sahel initiative
to assist Mali, Niger, Chad, and Mauritania in reducing the ungoverned
spaces they share and closing down a possible refuge for terrorists
and their allies. In Liberia, U.S. forces worked closely with
the Economic Community of West African States—an organization
of 15 countries—to bring fighting there to a halt and restore
some degree of law and order.
Clearly, this is not the picture of a country unable to work and
play well with others. Instead of the caricature painted by certain
pundits, it is the image of an Administration moving proactively
and multilaterally to change material facts on the ground and
improve U.S. national security. And ultimately, that’s where
our security lies, in proactively changing our environment by
acting to remove the threats to our security, not in accepting
the lowest common denominator on which the world’s governments
can all agree.
Being proactive means changing some of our historical national
security relationships. It means that some activities and locations
accustomed to being at the center of U.S. policymaking during
the Cold War will become less important, and that some feelings
could be hurt as the United States changes its global defense
posture to reflect the new strategic landscape we face. Ultimately,
it means changing our global footprint and relocating many of
our military forces around the world.
Generals Jones and Hill understand that and are at the center
of these shifts. Even as we meet, they’ve been reconfiguring
their activities to better deal with the war on terror. Gentlemen,
I look forward to hearing how your commands are adopting to our
new strategic circumstances.
As of
March 24, 2004, this document was also available online at http://www.house.gov/hasc/pressreleases/2004/04-03-24hunter.htm
