Afghanistan Withdrawal Debate in Congress

The Washington Post reports today: "House leaders will allow three
hours of formal debate, probably Wednesday, on an antiwar resolution
written by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), one of the leading antiwar
voices in Congress. The resolution, which has 16 co-sponsors, calls for
the United States to remove all of its troops from Afghanistan in 30
days -- or by the end of the year, if it is determined that trying to
do so in a month would be too dangerous."

BRUCE FEIN
Author of the book Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy,
Fein was a Justice Department attorney in the Nixon administration. He
said today: "Congress has been continually deferring to the president
on war. That stands the Constitution on its head. Congress needs to
decide about war."

ROBERT NAIMAN
Naiman is policy director of Just Foreign Policy. He just wrote the piece "Kucinich Forces Congress to Debate Afghanistan,"
which states: "The Pentagon doesn't want Congress to debate
Afghanistan. The Pentagon wants Congress to fork over $33 billion more
to pay for the current military escalation, no questions asked, no
restrictions imposed for a withdrawal timetable or an exit strategy.

"Ideally, from the point of view of the Pentagon, Congress would
fork over that money right away, before the coming Kandahar offensive
that the $33 billion is supposed to pay for, because you can expect a
lot of bad news out of Afghanistan in the form of deaths of American
soldiers and Afghan civilians once the Kandahar offensive starts, and
it would sure be awkward if all that bad news reached Washington while
the $33 billion was hanging fire."