At a news conference on Capitol Hill this afternoon, Feingold rejected the president's plan to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Obama is scheduled to announce his plans tonight, during a televised prime-time address.
"This is a mistake, to move in the direction of a huge troop build-up," Feingold said. Obama "is doing what he thinks is right. We just disagree."
Feingold was relatively mild; after all, he and Obama are both Democrats. And he gave the president the benefit of the doubt: "Anything I say would be tempered by giving the president an opportunity to actually explain how what I'm hearing about this plan would actually hold together."
But: "I continue to question the wisdom of sending thousands of more troops into Afghanistan."
Feingold said the U.S.'s goal in the region "...continues to be dealing with Al Qaeda, not nation-building in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is not primarily based in Afghanistan any more." Furthermore, he said, more troops in Afghanistan would further de-stabilize Pakistan.
He also said he agrees with a troop removal time-frame of three years, one of Obama's expected points. "I would be very much in favor of this," Feingold said. "I don't see how that dovetails with increasing our troops to over 100,000."
What might Feingold and other senators do to prevent the president from sending more troops to Afghanistan? He suggested not including funding for troops, resolutions for time-frames and other approaches. "As far as I'm concerned, everything would be on the table to prevent this error from occurring," he said.
UPDATE: After the President's address, Sen. Herb Kohl, D-WI, issued the following statement:
“We cannot simply walk away from Afghanistan, let the Taliban and al Qaeda take over and threaten the stability of a nuclear armed Pakistan. After careful review the President has laid out a new strategy, with timelines and benchmarks and more emphasis on training Afghan troops and police. We should give his new strategy an opportunity to work, but be clear that this is not an open-ended commitment if the Afghan people and government fail to do their part.”
If we are not going to fight to win (and under Obama we are not) we need to bring the troops home.
ReplyDeleteOmama has done a great job giving us a new Vietnam.
I question the wisdom of letting the world know our plan. Why would you lay your cards out on the table for the enemy. Did Japan let us know they were going to bomb Pearl Harbor? This makes absolutely no sense to me. Would Ford lay out their business plan and marketing plan ot to Chrysler? You know what spec models and features they have in the works. The American people don't need to know the plan. We elect a President (like him or not) to lead the country and make war decision based on military advice. You make a war plan and execute it - you don't make a plan, advertise it and then execute it!
ReplyDeleteAnon 6:24, as much as I outright hate Obama and everything he stands for, this is not solely his fault. The Bushes and Clinton are the ones who issued us into Afghanistan long before Obama ever came on the scene, particularly George W. Bush who escalated the war to its highest point. Is it really our newest Viet Nam? I think you might be right on that one. I don't understand why, since Korea, our congress has refused to let us fight to win.
ReplyDeleteAnon 7:54, you nailed it! But as long as we have idiots like Herb Kohl in congress and extremely liberal left newspapers and news shows doing the reporting, our strategies will continue to be front page news for every Muslim hate organization to use against us. Just one more little piece of evidence that the real enemy within our own country are the liberals who continue to destroy the moral fabric of the country and undermine our military forces.
Don't worry too much - "Omama" will be giving plenty of speeches and conducting "talks" during this process which will make everything OK. Our enemies will simply be in awe when he speaks and give up.
ReplyDeleteThe liberal "Letters to the Editor" writers to the JT will be strangely silent during this build up of troops under Obama. They show their true colors because they only objected when anything was proposed by the Satan Bush.
ReplyDeleteObama must have doone something right if Feingold is against it!
ReplyDeleteConservatives are out of their minds again. They should all be standing up and applauding this decision. This isn't too much of a departure from Bush policy. The main difference is that it is much more thoroughly thought out with clear goals and objectives.
ReplyDeleteIt just proves that conservatives hate Obama more than they love their own ideology.
1:56 - Yea, let's let the enemy know our plan.
ReplyDeleteSad to say, Afghanistan is the "Graveyard of Empires." Nobody--not even Alexander the Great, who claimed it back when it was called "Bactria"--could govern the place. Every power which invaded Afghanistan or meddled in its affairs paid dearly for the error with soldiers' lives and severe depletion of national resources. The sooner we bring our troops home from Afghanistan, the better.
ReplyDeleteWhere are all the troops from the new friends of the USA that the President has been courting and bowing to all over the globe since January?
ReplyDeleteThey are silent - why?
We should be getting out of this potential Viet Nam and bringing our troops home. Let the Taliban and all their little factions have the place. Let them destabilize the region. Let them further destabilize Pakistan. And then let Pakistan nuke them off the face of the planet.
ReplyDeleteCome on! The less radical Muslims there are on the planet the better off we'll all be, including the peaceful Muslims. We don't need more dead Americans for some patch of sand no one gives a rat's patoot for, anyway!
It's Obama's failure now. 2009 was the worst year for casualties since we invaded in 2001 - with twice as many troops killed as any other year. Why do you think that is? Obama dithered, and American soldiers died.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing in Afghanistan that's worth the limb, mental stability or life of a single American soldier. Historically speaking, everyone who intervened in the affairs of that plague pit wished he'd never heard of it. Although the rulers of the Persian Empire tried to control part of Afghanistan, they failed. When Alexander the Great sought to govern it, he failed. The same applied to several sovereigns who governed long-forgotten realms in the Indian subcontinent: they failed. Western Tibetan warlords and kings who endeavored to control the mountain passes and trade routes in Northern Afghanistan learned the same hard lesson: they failed. Later on, the Mongol monarchs and their putative heirs (the Moguls of India) attempted to rule the place and they failed. Closer to our time, several Russian czars and the rulers of the British Empire met the identical fate: they failed. Finally, the Soviet Union's leaders made an attempt to annex Afghanistan. Not only did they fail, but they destroyed their own empire in the process of trying to do the impossible. EVERYONE WHO HAS GONE INTO AFGHANISTAN AND ATTEMPTED TO GOVERN IT DIRECTLY (OR INDIRECTLY CONTROL IT THROUGH PUPPET RULERS) HAS FAILED. The time for us to leave Afghanistan is NOW.
ReplyDeleteHey - you liberals voted for him.
ReplyDeletePlease don't blame me--I voted for "None of the Above."
ReplyDeleteKinda hysterical. Obama sending tens of thousands more troops over to the middle east? I thought he was supposed to be the voice of reason. More of the same. Different party same result.
ReplyDeleteI have contacted both our US Senators twice related to my concerns about out of control spending and the true costs of the current healthcare plan in the senate. In both cases it is clear that neither took the time to understand my concerns. Their responses just send back the party lines about savings that are being proven wrong. Even the CBO numbers are admittedly off by a significant factor. The real shock comes in years 10 and beyond with healthcare, when the four years of front end taxes without coverage is spent. So much for indepentent thinkers in the senate.
ReplyDeleteAny ideas how to find elected officials that actually listen to the voters once they get into office?