POLITICO
By: Josh Gerstein and Mike Allen
June 7, 2011 04:42 AM EDT
As President Barack Obama prepares to make a major decision about the pace of U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, congressional opposition to the decade-long war appears to be hardening.
But it’s unclear whether critics of the president’s Afghanistan policy can force him to accelerate the pullout, which he has promised will begin next month.
Obama must decide whether he will accept an initial withdrawal of about 5,000 troops — which many experts expect the Pentagon to recommend — or whether he will insist on a more robust downsizing, as an increasing number of lawmakers from both parties are urging.
“There has been a steady erosion of political support for a sustained engagement in Afghanistan,” said Peter Feaver, a former National Security Council official under President George W. Bush.
The most dramatic sign of that trend came May 26, when the House narrowly defeated an amendment that would have pushed Obama to speed up the promised withdrawal and broaden negotiations with the Taliban. The measure failed on a 204-215 vote, as 26 Republicans joined 178 Democrats to challenge Obama’s policy.
Despite the increasing resistance on Capitol Hill, public opposition to the war has eased somewhat since the killing of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. military raid in Pakistan last month. An ABC News-Washington Post poll taken in early June found 54 percent of respondents consider the war not worth fighting, down from a high of 64 percent in March. However, nearly three-quarters of Americans say they want to see a “substantial” U.S. withdrawal this summer.
The president was guarded about his plans during an interview Monday.
“What I’ve said is that this summer is going to be a summer of transition,” he told Cleveland TV station WEWS. “By killing bin Laden, by blunting the Taliban, we have now accomplished a lot of what we set out to accomplish 10 years ago.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emphasized Monday that the size of the withdrawal is unresolved.
“There have been no decisions made,” Clinton said during a meeting with French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe. “We’re still gathering our best assessment.” She said the plan for full withdrawal of combat troops by 2014 remains on track.
Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters that he favors a “modest” drawdown in July. Obama has previously said the initial pullout will be “significant.”
During a briefing Monday, White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to adopt or explain either adjective.
“It depends on how you define what ‘modest’ is or ‘significant’ is,” he said. “It will be a real drawdown, but it will depend on the conditions on the ground.”
Beyond general war fatigue, increasing attention to the debt and deficit on Capitol Hill is adding pressure to limit the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, which costs about $2 billion a month.
“To try and get the country to function like a free democracy is going to take a lot of years,” said Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.). “Because of our deficit, you can’t justify doing it.”
Carney said the expense of the operation will not be the driving factor in Obama’s decision on the pace of the pullout.
“Every decision is made with a mind [toward] costs, but this is a national-security decision, primarily,” Carney said.
The killing of Al Qaeda leader bin Laden by Navy SEALs last month also has emboldened lawmakers pushing for a faster drawdown of American troops.
“Bin Laden is dead. Declare victory and come home,” said North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones, a leader of the GOP anti-war coalition.
John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who studies public opinion on U.S. wars, said some attitudes have changed since bin Laden’s death because the “only real reason for being there that had any political clout was to prevent another 9/11.”
“Bin Laden has been … built up so assiduously as a Darth Vader character,” Mueller said. “But if you go to the movies, you know that when Darth Vader dies, you know the whole thing is over.
Yet Gates, who was traveling in Afghanistan on Monday, said he has seen little immediate effects from bin Laden’s death on the war effort.
“It’s a month since bin Laden was killed. So I think it’s really just too early to know what the impact will be,” Gates told troops who raised the issue with him.
From the highest ranks of the Pentagon to ground commanders, defense and military officials are convinced the Afghanistan strategy is working but needs more time and political patience to succeed.
Gates is not blind to the political pressure from Washington but is certainly not resigned to defeat on the issue, according to advisers.
The secretary sees the situation as reminiscent of fall 2007, when the surge in Iraq produced significant U.S. progress, but the war remained unpopular, and Congress wanted to tie funding to a withdrawal date. The Pentagon stuck to its position and ultimately prevailed and hopes to do so again.
“We’ve made tremendous strides … in the last 15 to 18 months, but my view is we’ve got to keep the pressure on,” Gates said.
However, Gates signaled he isn’t sure how big a withdrawal Obama will order initially.
“The drawdown is a subject that we’re going to be talking about over the next two or three weeks,” the defense secretary told a soldier who asked about the pace.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a key GOP backer of Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, has warned repeatedly that anti-war liberals and conservative budget hawks could eventually join together in an “unholy alliance” to force a quick pullout. “My concern is that, for different reasons, they join forcesand we lose the ability to hold this thing together,” he said last year.
However, some analysts expressed doubts that Congress has the stomach for an all-out confrontation with Obama over Afghanistan policy, such as a serious effort to cut off funding for the war.
“You can have Gallup numbers under 50 [percent supporting the war] and still be able to have the political support to continue the current policy,” noted Feaver, a political science professor at Duke.
Some congressional aides said the continued support from key senators, such as Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), is more important than the prevailing view in the House or among the public.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has generally endorsed Obama’s approach, said Monday she’s not particularly comfortable with public debate about the withdrawal plan.
“I’m not one to project what you’re going to do, from an intelligence point of view,” Feinstein said. “The Taliban, the Haqqani [terrorist network], Al Qaeda, none of the above are stupid. They all read. They all know. And the degree to which we telescope what we’re going to do will determine what they do. … A lot of discussion makes no sense.”
Feaver added that talk about a Senate firewall to protect the war effort is itself a sign of eroding support.
“One measure of how dire the situation is is when you’re relying on a couple of key senators to hold the thing together,” Feaver said.
Congress could start restraining Obama in more tangential ways, such as stepping up efforts to end U.S. involvement in Libya. “Congress can exact pain on other national security issues,” Feaver said. “Some of the Libya stuff is really a bank shot off of Afghanistan frustration.”
Feaver said opposition to Obama’s policy in Afghanistan is still less intense than the resistance President George W. Bush faced to the surge in Iraq.
“That was substantially more widespread and entrenched and motivated than anything Obama has faced yet,” the former Bush aide said. “Even today, I’d say we’re nowhere near the 2007 standard, but we’re inching in that direction.”
Mike Allen reported from Afghanistan. Reid Epstein and Meredith Shiner also contributed to this report.
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