Democrats go squishy on Afghanistan, Pakistan

NY Times:

Congressional Democrats are voicing increased concern about the Obama administration’s plans to escalate military involvement in Afghanistan and to try to stabilize the rapid deterioration in Pakistan, complicating the push by the White House for $83.4 billion in war spending and other aid.

“I’ve got the sinking feeling we are getting sucked into something we will never get out of,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts.

The sentiment is increasingly echoed in both the House and the Senate. While it hardly signals that Congress is about to pull the plug on the war — leaders there are confident of a bipartisan vote to approve the administration’s request — it shows that even with a Democrat as commander in chief, his party’s longstanding qualms over the course of the war remain.

Indeed, the Obama administration may have a harder time than the Bush administration in resisting Congressional calls for some kind of strings attached to the spending, whether in the form of measurements for success, or something even more restrictive, if still undefined.

Even Representative David R. Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat who as chairman of the Appropriations Committee will have to shepherd the money through the House, said Thursday that he was uncertain what his ultimate position would be.

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This is one reason why I think Democrats should never be trusted with national security. At best they are wimps. They have a profound ignorance of counterinsurgency warfare and there fore assume that every operations is quagmire city. They tend to overrate our enemies and underrate the ability of our own forces. They were clearly willing to lose the war in Iraq which would have been a wonderful thing for al Qaeda, but a terrible thing for the people of Iraq and the Middle East. These guys need to spend more time with the Counterinsurgency Field Manual and less time talking with MoveOn.