Posted on 05/27/2011 6:30:38 AM PDT by Cardhu
WASHINGTON — War-weary Republicans and Democrats yesterday sent the strongest message yet to President Obama to end the war in Afghanistan as the commander in chief decides how many US troops to withdraw this summer A measure requiring an accelerated timetable for pulling out the 100,000 troops from Afghanistan and an exit strategy for the nearly 10-year-old conflict secured 204 votes in the House, falling just short of passage but boosting the hopes of its surprised proponents.
“It sends a strong signal to the president that the US House of Representatives and the American people want change," Representative James McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, said shortly after the vote.
Obama will begin drawing down troops in July, with all combat forces due out by 2014. McGovern and others fear that the initial reduction will be a token cut of some 5,000, numbers they argue fail to reflect that Osama bin Laden is gone and the United States cannot afford spending $10 billion a month on the war.
In an Associated Press-GfK poll earlier this month, 59 percent opposed the war, and 37 percent favored it, with significant support for Obama’s plan to start removing troops this summer.
“Five thousand on July 1 and nothing else, that won’t fly,’’ said Representative John Garamendi, Democrat from California. “That will create a great deal of anger.’’
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
impeach the bastard.
The Afghanistan War was initiated per the constitution. You want to put pressure on Obama, put pressure on him in regards to his blatant abuse of the Consitution and War Powers Act vis a vis Libya. I don’t know how much military action we are still engaged in with Libya but this needs to be debated in Congress and voted on for us to continue any involvement in Libya.
As for pulling troops out of Afghanistan, I want to hear from General Petraeus testifying before Congress before any troops are pulled out. If he thinks the situation on the ground warrants pulling troops out, then so be it.
Petraeus is going to give the party (e.g. Obama) line like any other bureucrat would. Let’s get out of this UNDECLARED quagmire.
Note that the following voted to continue Obama’s War: Bachmann, West, Pence, and Ryan.
We need to get out of Afghanistan and Libya. There is no reason to be there and we can’t afford it.
There are two situations in Afghanistan right now.
Most important is one you never hear about. The US is building, or has built, a $100m intelligence gathering station in *northern* Afghanistan, near Mazar-i-Sharif. From there, we can monitor eastern Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, far western China and northern Pakistan. It other words, it is intelligence gathering heaven, worth 20 times its cost. It is vital we stay there.
That being said, the fight in Afghanistan is mostly in the South, and optimally, the US is hoping for a “hammer and anvil” approach to the bad guys. This is because half of the Afghan border is shared with Pakistan.
So we use aggressive force to insure that South Afghanistan is no safe haven, while the Pakistani army works on their side of the border. Even more important, we do “drone zap” missions to take out the bad guys upper leadership and middle management.
While doing this is very expensive, about the best we can hope for is for the Afghan army to just hold South Afghanistan once it has been cleared, Pakistan to be more unified under their central government and keeping a boot firmly implanted in their behind.
Then we can leave southern Afghanistan, and quietly stay at our base up North.
Very interesting, I notice Russia was missed out the list of countries. It probably is of great importance but not really vital in this age of satellite communication.
Anything picked up that really seems of intelligence value is usually planted to further their interests rather than yours.
A much simpler reason. From that point in Afghanistan, the closest part of Russian is between 1500 and 2000 miles away.
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