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Tag: troop removal

Senate Dems Push Obama To Get Out of Afghanistan

Top Senate Democrats Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), as well as a litany of others from their own party and even two tea-party caucus members wrote the president today insisting on a substantial reduction of the U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan:

We write to express our strong support for a shift in strategy and the beginning of a sizable and sustained reduction of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, beginning in July 2011,” the lawmakers wrote.

Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Tea Party-favorite Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) led the effort.

“We must accelerate the transfer of responsibility for Afghanistan’s development to the Afghan people and their government,” the lawmakers wrote.

The senators say the U.S. should maintain an ability to eliminate any new terrorist threats and continue to train the Afghan National Security Forces.

They say the current force size is excessive.

“These objectives do not require the presence of over 100,000 American troops engaged in intensive combat operations,” they wrote.

Polls have shown that Americans credit the exploding federal budget deficit (and the cuts in social programs the GOP is making in response) mostly to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that perhaps explains why some of the Democratic Party’s most populist members (if not their most dovish) signed on. The Hill

 

Huntsman Calls for Quick Afghanistan Exit; Strategist John Weaver Slams His Candidate’s Party

Esquire is teasing its August issue this week, featuring exclusive interviews with former Utah Governor and Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, who will formally enter the Republican presidential fray next Tuesday, as well as with his chief strategist, former John McCain advisor John Weaver.

Huntsman took the leftmost tack on Afghanistan of any Republican candidate except libertarian Texas Rep. Ron Paul, making even Mitt Romney’s recent statements that we needn’t be fighting a “war of independence” for the Afghanis, but that he would keep U.S. troops in the country per the Pentagon’s advice, seem relatively hawkish:

“If you can’t define a winning exit strategy for the American people, where we somehow come out ahead, then we’re wasting our money, and we’re wasting our strategic resources,” Huntsman told Esquire.  “It’s a tribal state, and it always will be. Whether we like it or not, whenever we withdraw from Afghanistan, whether it’s now or years from now, we’ll have an incendiary situation… Should we stay and play traffic cop? I don’t think that serves our strategic interests.”

Weaver, for his part, decried the “cranks” in the Republican primaries:

Weaver sees Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and the presumed front-runner, as a man afraid to take a stand — or, more accurately, as a man unafraid of taking every stand. “What version are we on now?” Weaver said. “Mitt 5.0? 6.0?”

And in former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, another leading candidate, Weaver sees what he considers the worst tendencies of his party — pandering to the G.O.P.’s hard-right margins at the risk of falling out of serious presidential contention.

Huntsman is setting himself up as the moderate, reasonable alternative to Mitt Romney; but the dynamic of the race is such that Romney will be the moderate, reasonable alternative to whoever emerges from the far-right as the choice of Tea Party activists and evangelicals. Whether there is ideological space for a challenge to Romney from the left will be key in determining whether Huntsman’s campaign is viable. [Esquire]