Feingold to Obama: Consider Afghanistan timetable

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) has a new op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning pining President Barack Obama to outline a “flexible timetable” for troop reductions in Afghanistan.

Wrote the Wisconsin senator:

“President Barack Obama is rightly focusing on this critical part of the world. But I cannot support an open-ended commitment to an escalating war in Afghanistan when the al Qaeda operatives we sought have largely been captured or killed or crossed the border to Pakistan.

[snip]

While we have many important goals in Afghanistan, we must be realistic about our limited ability to quickly change the fundamental political realities on the ground. The recent presidential election shows there will be no easy solution to the sectarianism, corruption and warlordism that plague that country. We should seriously question putting so many American lives at risk to expand, through military force, the reach of a government that has failed to win the support of its own people.”

But what makes Sunday’s op-ed interesting is that Feingold might be the first U.S. senator to call for a withdrawal in the context of Afghanistan. The Huffington Post picked up on this subtlety last week, after the Wisconsin incumbent told the Post-Crescent‘s editorial board that he felt the U.S’s continued troop presence in Afghanistan was “helping to drive more extremists into Pakistan.”