The Growing Division Of Republican Isolationists
When it comes to the war that lasted nearly a decade, John McCain was one of the strongest supporters of the man who defeated him.
But his tone was very different voice on Wednesday that the Republican Party leader in military affairs ripped Obama plans to withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by next summer, reversing the pressure the White House launched earlier in terms of Obama. This, the Arizona Republican said, was unnecessarily dangerous.
"Both Gates and General Petraeus had earlier recommended a modest retirement," said McCain The Daily Beast. "I think it should be based on conditions. I just think it's an unnecessary risk. "When asked if the amount of Obama provides a little more than a modest withdrawal, McCain said:" Absolutely. "
But McCain is at odds with many of his own party in a war that polls show is increasingly unpopular. With Osama bin Laden is dead, and the total price of the war in Afghanistan is approaching half a trillion dollars, Republicans on Capitol Hill are fighting each other over how, when and whether to continue supporting what is now "The current Obama's war.
Tensions in the GOP caucus have been on vivid display as the House prepared to debate the annual budget battle over the Pentagon, which amounted to about $ 700 million a year, with $ 2 million a week from to continue the war in Afghanistan.
Although the traditional GOP defense hawks demanding more American troops to remain in the country as the President wants, a growing chorus of Republicans, many of whom rejected the aggressive freshman GOP orthodoxy of the Bush era, and asked nothing to stop the war.
McCain echoed the warnings of his friend, Lindsey Graham, another top Republican on defense policy, said the program Meet the Press that any withdrawal would jeopardize the security of the region: "It's going to destabilize Pakistan beyond what exists today. It will be a colossal mistake to national security. "
But as dark as these predictions was that many of McCain and other Republicans Graham say that the future of the American people are at stake, as billions of dollars flowing away from home and projects in the boxes across Afghanistan the world. (In fact, Obama has adopted this argument rhetoric in his televised speech in which he called "nation-building at home.")
Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, wants an American presence has been significantly reduced in the war, which he is suffering from clear goals and objectives. "It's hard to say that we are advancing our strategic interests to justify both $ 2 billion a week," he told The Daily Beast. If the Republicans never cut funding for the war, said, "I do not want to go there, but at some point will come."
While Flake has long been a lone voice calling for the U.S. commitment to a smaller area, it was clear on Wednesday that domestic budgetary pressures and questions about long-term stability of the Kabul government, the Republicans have been much closer, and Flake, ways of thinking.
Rep. Joe Walsh, a freshman favorite Tea Party of Illinois, said his view of war has changed dramatically over the past year. "Nine months ago ... It would still say:" It remains to win, because my neighborhood was somehow on the fence, "Walsh told CNN." But now, they say, "Stop, we're going to take home."
See Walsh echoed a trio of Representatives conservative House Republican Jason Chaffetz in Utah recruits, John Duncan of Tennessee, and three-term Rep. John Campbell, California, who sent a letter to Obama last month to ask for end the formal operations in the war.
"After fighting the longest war in U.S. history, it is time to redeploy our resources to solve our most pressing threats," they write. "It's time to bring the war in Afghanistan to a formal end."
The spiral, which would have been imagined under the presidency of George W. Bush, who started the war, which destroyed the Taliban regime three Republicans wrote a letter to the Hill three most liberal Democrats, shows how the debate has moved away from the traditional partisan line, which are defined in the discussions start with the wars Afghanistan and Iraq.
Dennis Kucinich, Ohio Democrat known to be doves, said he had found a new and unexpected allies in the GOP freshmen in its efforts to force the White House to put an end to American commitments in Afghanistan and more recently in Libya.
"The new class of Republicans are products of a much more intense at the base. They are very close to their constituents, "said Dennis Kucinich." The American people, and great opposition. They reflect the desires of their constituents. "
Kucinich said the budget conscious aggressively recruits share your concern about the effect of war with U.S. national priorities.
"Back home I hear, too," he said. "People say, 'What do you do? We have all these problems here and do not care what happens to house". "
A Pew poll released last week showed that many more Americans, 60 percent, blaming the country's fiscal crisis of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, domestic spending has increased (24 percent) or reducing " Bush taxes (19 percent).
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said among themselves, Republicans on Wednesday of his, but said the differences of opinion are not new, just barely visible.
"I think there are obvious differences, and I think many of our members, no Republican in the White House, feel free to express any reservations that may have been somewhat 'muted by the previous government," McConnell told the Christian Science Monitor breakfast.
Republicans are not only torn on the issue of war. Furthermore votes Kucinich and other liberal Democrats who have long called for a complete withdrawal of U.S., says Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee this week that it is becoming more comfortable with the support of the United States continues to Hamid Karzai government in Afghanistan.
"We do not do this for us, we do to stabilize the country, to get rid of Al Qaeda ... to help them have a decent society," Feinstein told The Daily Beast. "If they do not want we do what we need to get out. "
