Editor’s Note: Official Washington (including the mainstream news media) is thrilled that Gen. David Petraeus is now commanding U.S. forces in Afghanistan. There’s also a consensus that Republican National Chairman Michael Steele put his foot in his mouth by criticizing “the war of Obama’s choosing.”
But the conventional wisdom may be wrong again, as Marjorie Cohn argues in this guest essay:
Last week, the House of Representatives voted 215-210 for $33 billion to fund Barack Obama’s troop increase in Afghanistan. But there was considerable opposition to giving the President a blank check.
One hundred sixty-two House members supported an amendment that would have tied the funding to a withdrawal timetable. One hundred members voted for another amendment that would have rejected the $33 billion for the 30,000 new troops already on their way to Afghanistan; that amendment would have required that the money be spent to redeploy our troops out of Afghanistan.
Tags: war in Afghanistan, Marjorie Cohn, war funding, Afgnaistan, McChrystal
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