GOP Lawmakers Planning Meeting To Explore Alternatives In Afghan War

[onehandle]

Source: Huffington Post

WASHINGTON -- Three Republican lawmakers who have been outspoken on the war in Afghanistan are trying to push their party to start debating alternative policies and will be convening a meeting next month to start the debate. Reps. Walter Jones (N.C.), Ron Paul (Texas) and Jimmy Duncan (Tenn.) sent a letter to every Republican House member on Monday inviting them them to a Feb. 16 briefing with Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste and Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist -- all of whom have been critical of the direction of the war.

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Organizers are especially interested in talking with 10 freshmen House members that a prominent Tea Party-affiliated group has identified as persuadable on the question of continued U.S. involvement in Afghanistan

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Norquist is the most recent high-profile conservative to call for more debate on Afghanistan. "I'm confident about where that conversation would go," he told attendees of a dinner sponsored by the New America Foundation on Jan. 11, stopping short of calling for withdrawal. "And I think the people who are against that conversation know where it would go, too."

The vast majority of Republican freshmen remain committed to the war in Afghanistan, based on their past public statements. But the Tea Party -- which helped elect many of these new lawmakers -- seems to be increasingly skeptical and concerned about the increasing cost of the war. A recent poll by the Afghanistan Study Group found that two-thirds of conservatives support a troop reduction in Afghanistan. Seventy-one percent of conservatives overall and 67 percent of Tea Party supporters worry that the cost of the war "will make it more difficult for the United States to reduce the deficit this year and balance the federal budget by the end of this decade."

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/24/afghanistan-republican-alternatives-meeting_n_813281.html

[khepri]

1. How ironic

How ironic that Obama's bankrupt, immoral policy might have to be amended by Republicans, not by Obama himself. Just shows us all how far we have come.