Source:
NY TimesSeveral leading Republicans have criticized Mr. Obama’s willingness to spend more freely on domestic programs and urged him to provide General McChrystal with the resources he is seeking in Afghanistan.
“Keeping our country safe: Isn’t that the first job of government?” said Senator Christopher S. Bond, a Republican from Missouri and the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “If we have just a minimalist counterterrorism strategy, the Taliban will come back over the mountains from Pakistan, and they will be followed by their co-conspirators from the Al Qaeda organization.” Cost is far from the only concern about escalating the war. The debate intensified last week amid disclosures that the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl W. Eikenberry, had sent cables to Washington expressing his reservations about deploying additional troops, citing weak Afghan leadership and widening corruption.
That kind of doubt could also make some in Congress hesitant to support an expansion of the war, especially with the midterm elections coming next year.
Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/us/politics/15cost.html?_r=1&hp
That is an interesting attack on programs like health care reform. The first job of the federal government is to wage war, thus we should cut domestic programs in order to have more $$$ available for that purpose. Oddly, Republicans never mentioned this rationale as they approved and supported Bush's deficit busting tax cuts in the midst of two wars.