Dem Insiders Want Faster Timetable For Afghanistan Withdrawal
In the wake of Tuesday night's vote in the House on the Afghanistan war funding bill which 102 House Dems opposed, the latest Congressional Insiders Poll offers more signs of restiveness among Dems over the Afghan conflict.
In this week's survey, 76% of the 38 House and Senate Democrats who responded said that they wanted the Obama administration to consider a timetable for withdrawing more rapidly from Afghanistan. Last year Pres. Obama announced that troops would begin to be withdrawn from Afghanistan in July 2011, he but did not set a firm exit date for U.S. forces. Since then, various administration officials have suggested that conditions in the field could affect the pace of the drawdown.
Among the 38 House and Senate GOPers who responded, 89 percent said the administration should not consider a faster timetable for withdrawing. But that should hardly be taken as a great vote of confidence in Obama's conduct of the war. Several GOPers criticized the strategy of using a timetable. Others said that the new field commander there, Gen. David Petraeus, needs more time to figure out what's the best strategy for allied forces. And as one GOP Congressional Insider said, "The White House needs to get its head out of the sand and start educating the public about why this fight is critical to our national security." That hardly sounds like a fan.
Ironically, when the Congressional Insiders were asked just one month ago about how much confidence they had in the Obama administration's conduct of the war in Afghanistan, 13 percent of the Democrats said they were very confident and 51 percent said they were somewhat confident. This probably reflects the reluctance of many Democrats to question so directly the President as commander-in-chief. At the same time, among the GOP Congressional Insiders, 17 percent said they not confident at all and 54 percent said they not very confident in the administration's conduct of the war.
For all the results to the latest poll and all the Congressional Insider comments click here.
They just need to get out of there. It's been too long.