The Long View

Via BooMan, the question of Afghanistan is the elephant in the room, and it looks like progressive Dems are going elephant hunting.

The leading Senate Democrat on military matters said Thursday that he was against sending more American combat troops to Afghanistan until the United States speeded up the training and equipping of more Afghan security forces.

The comments by the senator, Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, illustrate the growing skepticism President Obama is facing in his own party as the White House decides whether to commit more deeply to a war that has begun losing public support, even as American commanders acknowledge that the situation on the ground has deteriorated.

Senator Levin’s comments, made in an interview and in the draft of a speech he will deliver Friday, are significant because his stature on military matters gives him the ability to sway fellow lawmakers, and his pivotal committee position provides a platform for vetting Mr. Obama’s major decisions on troops.

Underscoring the increasing unease, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said earlier on Thursday that the president would face opposition if he sought to fulfill an expected request from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, for more American combat troops.

“I don’t think there is a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or in Congress,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters, emphasizing that she was eager to see a report due from the White House in two weeks on benchmarks to measure the success of the administration’s six-month-old strategy.

Republicans will insist that Obama send more troops in. The problem of course is that Afghanistan is not Iraq...and the Republicans don't have the votes by themselves. BooMan sums it up:

If there is anything that can bring about bipartisanship in Washington, it's Afghanistan. It's clear from comments made this week by Carl Levin and Nancy Pelosi that Obama doesn't have automatic support for additional troop increases in Afghanistan. If he asks for more troops, he'll have to rely on a lot of Republicans to get the funding.

He can only spit in the face of progressives so many times before even they get the point. Besides, a majority of Americans now oppose the war there.

In the end, economics will force us out anyway. We simply can't afford more war.