US lawmakers on Tuesday easily approved urgent funding for US President Barack Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan, despite a huge leak of secret military files that stoked anger at the unpopular war.
The 308-114 vote in the US House of Representatives set the stage for Obama to sign the legislation, which provides some US$37 billion to fund the conflict in Iraq and pay for his “surge” of 33,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
However, more than 100 Democrats voted against the measure, which also provides funds for disaster relief in Haiti.
PHOTO: AFP
The House also beat back a blunt challenge to Obama’s war strategy, defeating a resolution calling for the removal of US forces from Pakistan by a crushing 38-372 margin.
The margins called into question what impact the stunning disclosure of some 92,000 previously secret Pentagon documents on the war by the whistleblowing Web site WikiLeaks would have on the US debate on the conflict.
However, lawmakers — who face a war-weary public in November mid-term elections — argued passionately about the nearly nine-year-old conflict and Obama’s plan to right the faltering campaign in time to start a draw-down by July next year.
“Wake up, America. WikiLeaks’ release of secret war documents gave us 92,000 reasons to end the wars. Pick one,” Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich, author of the Pakistan measure, said as debate began.
Representative Buck McKeon, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, invoked US forces on the frontlines and declared that “cutting off their funding in the middle of that fight is tantamount to abandonment.”
However, Democratic Representative Dave Obey, chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, said he was “reluctantly” voting no out of doubts “that this operation will hurt our enemies more than us.”
“The Afghan government has not demonstrated the focused determination, reliability and judgment necessary to bring this effort to a rational and successful conclusion,” Obey said.
As the US Army launched a criminal investigation into the WikiLeaks disclosures, Obama said the documents showed he was right to craft a new Afghan war-fighting approach and vowed to stick with it.
“We have to see that strategy through,” said the president, who declared leaked documents “don’t reveal any issues that haven’t already informed our public debate on Afghanistan.”
The disclosures so far have shed new light on a difficult five-year span of the war, ending in December last year when Obama unveiled his new strategy, but appeared short on blockbuster revelations.
Foes of the war were drawing strength from the leaks by the whistleblower’s Web site, which seemed to buttress criticisms of what Kucinich dubbed “corrupt” governments in Kabul and Islamabad and a sometimes unfocused US approach.
Republican Representative Ron Paul and Kucinich had seized the chance to introduce a so-called “War Powers” resolution, named after a Vietnam-era law aimed at boosting congressional control over overseas military deployments, to force Obama to pull forces out of Pakistan.
The Obama administration and its allies in the Congress — many of whom have expressed grave doubts about the conflict — sought to play down the impact of the leak and denied any shift in policy on Pakistan.
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