The US House of Representatives on Wednesday soundly rejected an effort by anti-war lawmakers to force withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.
The outcome of the vote, 356-65 against the resolution, was never in doubt. Nevertheless, the three-and-a-half-hour debate gave those who oppose US President Barack Obama’s war policies a platform to vent their frustrations.
Opposing the resolution was easy for almost all Republicans, who have been solidly behind Obama’s decision to increase US troop strength in Afghanistan from 70,000 to 100,000. Only five Republicans supported the measure.
It was a harder vote for some Democrats, particularly in an election year where opposing the war can be equated with opposing the troops. Several expressed discomfort with a war that has lasted eight-and-a-half years and cost the nation more than 930 American lives and the treasury more than US$200 billion, but said they were voting against the resolution because it was ill-timed and unrealistic.
Among the “no” voters was Democratic Representative Patrick Kennedy, who gave an impassioned speech.
The US policy of needlessly sending troops into harm’s way was “shameful,” Kennedy said. He also lambasted the national media, calling their lack of attention to the loss of life in Afghanistan “despicable.”
Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich, a former presidential candidate, wrote the resolution that would have directed the president to remove all US troops from Afghanistan within 30 days of its adoption. If the president deemed that deadline unsafe, he would have had until the end of the year to end US military presence in the nation.
Obama has said he wants to begin withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan starting in July next year.
Kucinich based his resolution on the 1973 War Powers Act, passed during the Vietnam War era to require the president to obtain congressional approval when he sends US forces to a conflict for more than 90 days.
Congress authorized the use of military force to fight terrorists in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, but Kucinich said both the Obama and former president George W. Bush’s administrations had wrongfully used that authority as carte blanche to circumvent the role of Congress in sending Americans to war.
“Unless this Congress acts to claim its constitutional responsibility, we will stay in Afghanistan for a very, very long time at great cost to our troops and to our national priorities,” Kucinich said.
Republicans warned that a precipitous withdrawal would be a serious mistake, allowing the Taliban to regain power and assuring that al-Qaeda and other terror groups would again have a staging ground to launch attacks against the US and the West.
“In the case of Afghanistan, President Obama has demonstrated great responsibility and a sense of the national security interests of the United States,” Republican Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart said.
“He deserves our support,” he said.
In the middle were Democrats such as Representative Earl Blumenauer, who voted against the resolution despite “profound reservations” about committing troops and vast resources to one of the world’s most corrupt nations.
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