NYT: G.O.P. May Be Vital to Obama on Afghan War

September 3, 2009
G.O.P. May Be Vital to Obama on Afghan War
By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON — As President Obama prepares to decide whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan, the political climate appears increasingly challenging for him, leaving him in the awkward position of relying on the Republican Party, and not his own, for support.

The simple political narrative of the Afghanistan war — that this was the good war, in which the United States would hunt down the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks — has faded over time, with popular support ebbing, American casualties rising and confidence in the Afghan government declining. In addition, Afghanistan’s disputed election, and the attendant fraud charges that have been lodged against President Hamid Karzai, are contributing further to the erosion of public support.

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Congressional Democrats, particularly those on the left, report increasing disenchantment among constituents with the idea of a long and possibly escalating conflict in Afghanistan, especially as the American strategy comes to resemble a long-term nation-building approach rather than a counterterrorism operation.

“I and the American people cannot tolerate more troops without some commitment about when this perceived occupation will end,” Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said Wednesday in an interview. He said he had been to 60 town hall meetings in his state so far this year. During the first half of the year, he said, there were no comments about Afghanistan or Iraq. But in the past two months, that has changed, with more people focused on troop losses in Afghanistan.

Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of international relations and history at Boston University, said, “There was a time, back in 2003 and 2004, when it was possible to drum up popular support for the war by attaching to the argument claims that the United States of America was eliminating evil and advancing democracy and women’s rights.

“But this is many years later, with the economy in shambles, 5,000 American soldiers dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those notions are no longer as compelling as they might have been. War exhaustion sets in,” said Professor Bacevich, author of “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/world/asia/03policy.html?_r=1&hp