Coburn: win in Afghanistan or get out
Sen. Tom Coburn thinks we should either try to win the War in Afghanistan or pull our troops out.
Coburn talked about the war, the Supreme Court, congressional overspending and other topics in an interview aired on Tulsa Beacon Weekend on KCFO AM970.
Coburn said the first thing Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the troops in Afghanistan, will do is change the rules of engagement.
“We were handicapping ourselves,” Coburn said. “It’s true that we don’t want to harm any civilians over there. But there is no way we should put one of our soldiers at risk taking that kind of risk in terms of rules of engagement.
“My philosophy is that if we are going to go, let’s go to win - if we are not going to do that, I don’t want us there. Otherwise, it becomes a waste. I have a lot of confidence in Petraeus. He was the successful author of what we did in Iraq when it didn’t look good. We are not going to see the same outcome in Afghanistan that we saw in Iraq. But if we can stabilize the three or four major cities and get the Afghanis trained, then we can get out of there.”
The Pakistanis are providing more help with the Taliban and al Qaeda, who are hiding in western Pakistan, Coburn said.
A trained police force and military in major cities will go a long way toward stabilizing the situation, Coburn said. The police force and military must be loyal to the country and not influenced by bribes and the drug trade, he said.
“You are never going to change some of the outback areas,” Coburn said. “They are going to remain lawless. And there is no way we will be able to influence that. You have to tone down on your objective and make sure there is the capability to go into northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan to control those who are threatening us.”
It’s hard to say if President Obama will follow that strategy.
“We can implement this,” Coburn said. “I can’t tell you what the President thinks. I think anytime you put a certain date that you will start leaving, what you have done is send a signal to your enemies. That’s the worst strategy, and to be honest, I think he said that to please the Left - not to have a military objective or a policy objective, but for political purposes. And when you start doing things politically associated with a war rather than trying to win a war, you are losing the war.”
As of last week, Coburn had not met with Petraeus and he is uncertain if the general will ask for more troops for Afghanistan. He plans to ask Petraeus that question in September in a trip to Afghanistan.
Obama has nominated Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court. Coburn recently questioned her in his role on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“I am very concerned,” Coburn said. “I asked her a couple of things that are important. She believes that Supreme Court precedent trumps the original intent of our founders. I got her to say that. That is scary to me. That says that these are not stable, unchangeable words - that nine learned people are smarter than our founders.
“No society has ever progressed the way our society has progressed under that wonderful thought that was based on John Locke’s treatises and great studies of the Athenian Empire and Roman Empire. And what the founders knew was that history.”
Coburn said he was also concerned about her comments on inalienable rights.
“She won’t look to natural rights or inalienable rights in our Declaration of Independence,” Coburn said. “We actually grant the government the ability to have governance over us because these are our rights. They are not given to us by the government. They are given by our Creator. That worries me.”
Her vast interpretation of the Commerce Clause indicates that the federal government can do anything it wants to do, Coburn said.
“I think she thinks anything is okay if they decide it,” Coburn said. “That’s what worries me.”
Coburn is up for re-election and faces fellow Republicans Evelyn Rogers and Lewis Spring in the July 27 primary.
For almost six years, Coburn has been battling earmarks in the Senate.
“An earmark is when a senator or a congressman slips something into a bill to benefit a defined interest outside of competition, outside of need and outside of policy. It’s really to benefit the politician because they get credit for doing so.
“The other problem with earmarks is that there is a confluence of campaign donations that seems to be associated with them.
“If you were to do earmarks, and I don’t, the last person you would take a campaign contribution from would be anybody associated with earmarks. We don’t see that happening.
Coburn said the “mother of all earmarks” was the “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska. Sen. Ted Stevens placed $700 million on an earmark to build two bridges for 50 people in rural Alaska.
“That’s what raised the knowledge of earmarks,” Coburn said of his pointing out the bridge funding. “It’s not wrong to want to help the people of Oklahoma. But only on a competitive basis and only through grants that nobody in the political realm will decide upon.”
Grant seminars around Oklahoma have resulted in $400 million to $500 million in federal grants to help state communities.
“But when you are doing earmarks on things that are not a priority, not competitively bid, not transparent, when we have a $1.5 trillion dollar deficit - the problem is earmarks are the gateway drugs for overspending,” Coburn said. “If you have an earmark in a bill, you are not going to vote against that bill because you have already made a political calculation that you want that for you. So we have people who would not otherwise be voting for bills voting for bills because there is something in it. It’s a fraudulent currency that causes us not to do the right thing.”
Coburn crafted the Earmark Transparency Bill which would create one website where Americans could see how that money is being spent. Now, they have to search up to 550 sites to find that information.”
The bill is in a committee with 10 of 17 members saying they will support it. However, Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Democrat, is blocking its passage.
“He doesn’t want members who ask for earmarks and don’t get them to have to publish them,” Coburn said. “If you are asking for it, you ought to publish it. You ought to be proud of it. It’s ‘old school’ versus transparency. The best way to have a better government is to make it more transparent.”
Coburn said one of the reasons why America has $13 trillion in debt is because we have not limited the federal government and ignored the Tenth Amendment. The states should be responsible for everything not listed in the enumerated powers of the federal government.
“What is so great is that Americans are waking up to this,” Coburn said. “They are engaged. They are concerned.
“It’s not anger although there is some anger. Anger as an emotion goes up and down. It’s fear. It’s fear about the future. The fact is that the federal government has grown way too big and outside the bounds of what it was ever intended to be.
“And for us to get back the future for our children, we have to limit the size and scope of the federal government.”
Americans need to change who is in Congress to reverse this trend, Coburn said. Coburn has fought to limit the size and scope of the federal government. He has offered more amendments than any senator in the last five years and has conducted more oversight hearings.
“Yet we have not accomplished much because we still have people there who want to grow their political careers on the back of growing the government,” Coburn said. “What is so exciting to me is Americans across the country are awake and are going to change who is in Congress. The key thing is what will we do with the change. Will we start doing the things necessary to get our ship righted and get back on the road to prosperity for the next couple of generations?”
Coburn said the Founding Fathers never intended for Congress to be filled with career politicians making up 80 percent of its membership.
“In the Senate, we have 70 people who have never done anything but work in politics,” Coburn said. “So it’s not surprising that we have grown away from what our founders intended because the people we have representing us don’t have real world experience.”
Coburn said congressional term limits will never happen without a constitutional convention.
Coburn thinks it is a “shame” that Oklahoma state government has not joined the legal challenge to Obamacare, the federal takeover of health - that will force most Americans to buy health insurance.
“It tells you what (Attorney General) Drew Edmondson thinks about our Bill of Rights,” Coburn said of Edmondson’s refusal to join the effort. “If the federal government can tell you that as a business owner that you have to provide insurance, if they can tell me as an individual I have to buy insurance, we have eviscerated the Constitution, we have eviscerated the Tenth Amendment, and the Bill of Rights no longer means anything.
“Because there is nothing they can’t tell you to do. I asked Kagan that question. If I wanted to pass a bill that said you had to eat three vegetables and three fruits every day, would that be constitutional? Of course, she wouldn’t answer the question. But the point is - is there a limit on the power of the federal government?
“We crossed that line a long time ago but this is way outside what was ever intended by our Founders.”
The federal government is delving deeply into areas outside its constitutional scope.
America has spent $3 trillion on education since President Carter formed the Department of Education in the 1970s.
“What is the result?” Coburn asked. “The result is graduation rates are lower, SAT scores are lower, ACT scores are lower, knowledge has lessened, math skills are poor and grammar skills are poor. The federal government is involved in something that is truly a family and local responsibility and ruined it.”
Are schools a place to give teachers jobs or are schools a place to create opportunity for excellence in education and the pursuit of freedom and prosperity?
“We’ve got it backwards. We are looking at schools as it’s a place for teachers.”
Coburn’s campaign website is www.tomcoburn.com.