Speech by Rep. Mark Souder (R-Indiana), July 15, 2004

(Mr. SOUDER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I do not believe this is mission creep, this is more like Mission Success. But I want to say first before I get into it, and I appreciate that the gentleman from California has agreed to withdraw his amendment, as I have tremendous respect for the gentleman from California who has truly been committed to Colombia, who was in the Peace Corps in Colombia, and has worked through many of these problems. And the gentleman from Massachusetts has shown, through his personal visits to Colombia in a repeated way and in different areas that he is truly and deeply concerned, as is the gentlewoman from Illinois.

I think it is important that even when we have deep differences of philosophy on how to approach narcotics, how to approach things like sending our troops overseas, that we treat each other with respect here in this body and it is very important, even in these most contentious times, that we try to do that here; and we all need to work towards that. But we do have some disagreements.

First, the reason I say that I believe it is Mission Success is that one way we measure this is whether we have succeeded in reducing the massacres which have gone down this year compared to last year by 41 percent, massacre victims by 55 percent, kidnappings by 46 percent, executive kidnappings by 60 percent, illegal roadblocks by 66 percent, roadblock kidnappings by 61 percent, bank robberies by 66 percent; in addition to the statistics we are getting on cocaine and heroin seizures which are substantially up, but which often, as we all know are fungible, because it seems like we always discover more but, in fact, at this point, we cannot even find in organized areas big plots of heroin, which has been a growing problem. They have moved it into higher altitudes; and, quite frankly, we did not understand how hard it was going to be to continue to make the reductions. Similar in coca. They have reconfigured. We are making progress. We believe we are at a critical tipping point.

We have an administration in Colombia that has finally understood a basic point, not only about the DMZ, but about going after, in a repeated way, the coca growers.

I am a strong supporter, as the gentleman from California knows, of alternative development. We have met down in Colombia with leaders there and understand unless we can rebuild their justice system, it is the oldest democracy in South America, but unless we can rebuild that justice system, we have deep problems, and we have worked to try to make sure funding goes both ways.

But, quite frankly, nobody will run for office if they think they are going to be assassinated. Businessmen are fleeing the country if they think they are going to be kidnapped. I went in Nelson Mandela Village with many of the displaced people, and they do not want to go home because, first, the FARC comes through and terrorizes them, then the paramilitaries come through and terrorize them; often the kidnappings, and what they need is some order.

We have an administration under President Uribe who is giving the order. And, to my view, and I think to most observers, this is the model for Iraq. By the way, we are not asking for 800; we are saying a cap, and that way we do not have to come back. The number there of advisors varies. These are not fighters, soldiers in the sense of them shooting bullets like in Afghanistan and Iraq. These are advisors. In my opinion, this is where we want to be in Iraq, this is where we want to be in Afghanistan, where we are arguing how many advisors we have there.

But the people on the ground in Colombia who are fighting and dying are Colombians, not Americans. And they are fighting, by the way, over something that is our drug habit and Western Europe's drug habit. They did not have, and I heard them all the time here, a civil war. They have at different points in time, like many countries, had people who are displaced landowners or people who felt land distribution was unfair, which it generally is in South America, and had a civil war; but this is now a narcotics war with only a small pocket.

The total support for the FARC is less than the drug lords, terrorists, dealers, and other terrorists groups in the United States. We would not like it if Colombia referred to us as having a civil war because we have drug dealers in our country or we have terrorists in our country. The group that tried to negotiate the peace, and many of them have come out, may have at one time been there for altruistic, civil war motives; but this is a classic terrorism war at this point, and Uribe is going after it. He, as much as anybody. And we can see it in Medellin; we can see it in Putumayo and in other areas working for alternative development.

I believe this lifting of the cap which may be only 450, may be 500, hopefully will eliminate the need to come in, if there are times when we need a few more, of advisors to train the Colombians and to use the model where they are really turning the progress. Quite frankly, if we do not reach a tipping point, we have a problem, and we need to work together, that after these people start to move back into their villages, after they start to rebuild their communities, we absolutely have an obligation to help with the financial alternative development, to help them rebuild those institutions.

I appreciate the gentleman from Arizona (Chairman Kolbe) and the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) working in this bill to allow, one group that I worked with was Kid Save where we have many of these older kids who are orphaned or who have been abandoned, and this bill now allows some money to be able through AID to help those kids in adoption in the United States and in Colombia; and that is the type of thing we need to be working towards. But to achieve that, we have to have order.

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