The Hill reports today that some Congressional Democrats won’t be satisfied with a withdrawal from Iraq–they want out of Afghanistan, too.
Chairman Abercrombie
Abercrombie isn’t just a fringe figure in the Democratic party. He’s the chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Air and Land Forces, which has oversight responsibility for U.S. Army and Air Force operations, budget, and equipment and weapons systems procurement. He is also a member of the Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee, which oversees the Department of the Navy, including the United States Marine Corps. Another Democratic Rep. who sounded off to the Hill:
Does she forget that 9/11, the bombing of the USS Cole, the embassy attacks, and the first World Trade Center attack were all plotted long before we arrived in that country. It’s only since U.S. forces have taken the fight to Afghanistan that we’ve seen those attacks stop. And what exactly would this withdrawal look like? The Hill quotes Dana Balicki, a spokesmen for Code Pink, the womynist antiwar group.
Maybe we can send Mz. Balicki herself to have a powwow “with all groups that have power” in Afghanistan. These “groups”–and I assume she’s talking about the Taliban and al Qaeda–consider women little more than chattel, to say nothing of the fantasy that these fanatics might be interested in any type of settlement that would be acceptable to the American people. Abercrombie is also pushing for “diplomatic engagement,” but with who, and to what end? What concessions do they think we might get? This message was repudiated by Reid and Pelosi, who continue to point to the war in Afghanistan as “the real war on terror.” But if American forces pull out of Iraq, one wonders how long it would be before the Dem leadership tried to pull the plug on Afghanistan, too. As Dennis Kucinich tells the Hill:
