Madam Speaker, President Obama has said that our Nation's policy in Afghanistan rests on a three-legged stool. The three legs are: One, security, which means more troops; two, economic development; and three, helping the Afghan Government to do a better job of serving the needs of the Afghan people.

Last week, National Security Adviser James L. Jones gave a frank assessment about the strategy. He made it clear that the most important leg of the strategy is economic development. This is what he said, and I quote him: ``This war will not be won by the military alone. We tried that for years. The piece of our strategy that has to work in the next year is economic development. If that is not done right, there are not enough troops in the world to succeed.''

Madam Speaker, I welcome Jones' comments and agree with him completely about the importance of economic development. The administration must commit more to the economic strategy.

Look at the supplemental funding bill for Afghanistan which Congress passed last month and which I voted against and you will see that we have our priorities wrong. Ninety percent of the bill's funding goes toward purely military operations, while only 10 percent goes to support smart power, which includes economic development, humanitarian aid, and diplomacy. Madam Speaker, a 90/10 split favoring a military option is a doomed strategy that has virtually no chance of succeeding.

To win the battle for Afghanistan, we must show the Afghan people that the United States is helping build better lives for themselves. But after 7 years of occupation, the Afghan people don't see enough evidence that their lives are better now than they were before we arrived. In fact, in some ways, their lives have worsened. That's because we relied almost exclusively on the military leg of the stool and ignored economic development and the other elements of smart power. As a result, some Afghans now join the Taliban out of a sense of resentment and frustration. Some support the Taliban simply because they are poor and the Taliban will pay them.

Mariam Nawabi, a former senior adviser to the Afghan American Chamber of Commerce and an activist for Afghan women, recently was asked what advice she would give President Obama, and here's what she said: ``I would tell him to direct more money into economic development and the creation of jobs. To end the violence, the money needs to reach the villages. If the money doesn't get to the village itself, there is no change and the young men are left without support and become fodder for the Taliban.''

Madam Speaker, we must redirect our mission in Afghanistan. We must shift our resources towards a civilian surge, a surge of experts and workers who can help the Afghan people to develop their economy, and our military forces actually could be redirected to support these efforts. We must also have a diplomatic surge, a surge that engages all of Afghanistan's neighbors in an effort to assist the Afghan people and shore up the central government.

In addition, we must develop a series of rigorous metrics to evaluate the progress of these efforts and report the results to the Congress of the United States and to the American people which will then send the message that our involvement in Afghanistan is not open-ended. We can also use this process to develop a timeline for the full redeployment of our troops and military contractors out of Afghanistan.

And finally, Madam Speaker, the government of Kabul must eliminate corruption. They must respect the rule of law and show that it is working on behalf of the Afghan people.

Madam Speaker, the previous administration failed in Afghanistan because it did not understand the importance of smart power. President Obama does. That's an important step forward. But our next step is to put smart power to work, which will bring peace to Afghanistan, and it will strengthen America's national security.