GOP chairmen split on Afghan troop decision

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, offered mild praise for President Obama’s decision to keep more troops than planned in Afghanistan, while his counterpart in the House blasted the decision to keep the troops there without also increasing defense spending

“I welcome President Obama’s decision to reverse his previous plan to drawdown U.S. forces in Afghanistan,” McCain said in a written statement Wednesday. “While I believe conditions on the ground warranted retaining the current force level, the decision to retain 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan into next year is certainly preferable to cutting those forces by nearly half.”

{mosads}Meanwhile, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) demanded Obama immediately send Congress a supplemental funding request to pay for the extra troops.

“The precision of the president’s new Afghanistan Troop Cap would be comical were its consequences not so tragic for our mission and military readiness,” Thornberry said in a written statement Wednesday. “The White House must submit a supplemental funding request to accommodate troop levels in Afghanistan immediately.”

Right now, there are about 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan with the mission of training, advising and assisting Afghan forces in fighting the Taliban and conducting counterterrorism operations against groups such as al Qaeda.

That number was set to drop to 5,500 by year’s end. But on Wednesday morning, a day before leaving for a NATO summit where Afghanistan will be a chief concern, Obama announced he will leave about 8,400 there instead.

Though McCain was pleased with the announcement, he questioned the decision not to stay put at 9,800.

“When the President himself describes the security situation in Afghanistan as ‘precarious,’ it is difficult to discern any strategic rationale for withdrawing 1,400 U.S. troops by the end of the year,” McCain said.

Thornberry, who has been arguing for an increase in defense spending as part of this year’s defense policy bill, said that while the Afghanistan mission is vital, the troops won’t have the resources they need to carry it out.

“It is time that the president level with the American people about what it will really take to achieve our goals in Afghanistan, and how much it will cost,” he said. “The truth is that many thousands more Americans are performing military functions in Afghanistan — than even the current troop cap authorizes.”

Thornberry also alluded to the fight over his strategy to increase defense spending, which is to take money out of a war account for base spending, forcing the next president to request supplement war funding when he or she takes office. Democrats say that tactic could leave troops overseas without the money they need to keep fighting. 

“For all of the bluster about funding troops in harm’s way,” Thornberry said, ”it is the president who proposes to extend the vital mission without any resources behind it.”