Posts Tagged ‘bring troops home’
Bipartisan House sends anti-war message to Obama
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A coalition of House Republicans and Democrats voiced its frustration at President Obama’s policy in Afghanistan, amassing more than 200 votes on a plan to speed up the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
The move for a quicker exit from Afghanistan was narrowly defeated on a 204-215 vote. In all, 178 Democrats and 26 Republicans voted for the plan by Reps. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and Walter Jones, R-N.C. Similar legislation last year got 138 votes, with far less GOP support.
Today’s action was the first test in the House of Representatives of Obama’s Afghanistan policy since the president announced May 1 that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan by U.S. special operations forces.
Obama is set to begin withdrawing some of the 100,000 troops from Afghanistan starting in July. But lawmakers have become increasingly impatient about U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and have been asking for a clear strategy for success.
Now that bin Laden is dead, people say America’s longest war should end. Nearly 60% of Americans said in a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll that they agreed with the statement that the United States “has accomplished its mission in Afghanistan and should bring its troops home.”
“There is no clear mission. The Karzai government is corrupt. We continue to borrow money to pay for this war,” McGovern said. “We need to rethink what we’re doing in Afghanistan…”
McGovern and Jones got an interesting coalition of liberals and conservatives to support their amendment, including votes from the top Democrats in the House: Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md. On the GOP side, Tea Party favorites such as Joe Walsh of Illinois and Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina were among the conservatives to support the amendment.
Just as an aside, our neighbors up in the Great White North – with a conservative Prime Minister – are preparing to reduce the number of Canadians dedicated to making war by almost 10%. Anyone in Congress or the White House ready to start down that road with the Pentagon?
