"We’re long past the time we should have gotten out of Afghanistan," US Rep. John Duncan (R-TN) told the Oversight & Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security today. The Congressman, who sits on the Ron Paul Institute’s Board of Advisors, brought in quotes from Georgie Anne Geyer, William F. Buckley, Jr., and even the New York Times, to make the case that our involvement in places like Afghanistan for years on end weaken the United States. "I cannot understand how any true fiscal conservative can be in favor of dragging this war on forever," he told the Committee.

Rep. Duncan has long made the case that true conservatives should not support massive and endless military adventurism overseas. Eight years ago, he wrote:

Conservatives who oppose big government and huge deficit spending at home should not support it in foreign countries just because it is being done by our biggest bureaucracy, the Defense Department. We have now spent $1.5 trillion that we did not have – that we had to borrow – in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sadly, Rep. Duncan could have simply re-read that statement today, as aside from the numbers not much has changed since 2009. Certainly "victory" is no closer today than it was back then.

Rep. Duncan expressed regret at the meaninglessness of the ongoing wars in his statement to the Committee today, adding that, "It’s very sad that we have allowed all these trillions of dollars to be spent and all those lives that have been lost needlessly."

Watch the statement below:

Daniel McAdams is director of the The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity. Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.