House Dems want Obama to come up with plans to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. forces. | REUTERS House Dems unite on Afghan exit

It’s more angst than outright anger, but House Democrats are showing real unity for the first time in pressuring President Barack Obama on Afghanistan — with influential moderates now expressing their impatience alongside the anti-war left that drove the early Iraq war debate.

There’s no immediate threat to war funding, but the shift in the president’s party can’t be ignored by the White House going into the 2012 elections.


This was dramatized last week when all but eight Democrats endorsed demands that Obama come up with plans this summer to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. forces and pursue a negotiated settlement with “all interested parties” in Afghanistan, including the Taliban.

The amendment — offered to the annual defense authorization bill — narrowly failed, 215-204, with 26 Republicans joining in the effort and capturing the most attention. But the far greater dynamic was inside the Democratic caucus, where the lead sponsor, Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern opened the door for his colleagues by taking out any fixed timetable for withdrawal.

“I think people are uncomfortable with micromanaging how we get out,” McGovern told POLITICO. “But having said that, they still want us to get out, and that’s what this vote is about. It’s about, ‘We need to find a way to bring our troops home.’”

Last July 1 — almost a year ago — McGovern had lost badly, with 98 Democrats opposing him. This time, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland spoke for the revised amendment and was joined by an important set of opinion makers on national security issues and in Democratic leadership circles.

“I saw it as a vote to manifest my growing impatience,” California Rep. Howard Berman, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told POLITICO. “I just don’t know how long, if it’s not working with Pakistan, how we’re ever going to be successful in Afghanistan.”

“I made a conscious shift. This was the first time I had done that.”

Inside the Appropriations Committee, both Reps. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) and Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), who oversee the Pentagon and foreign operations bills so important to Obama’s policy, voted in support — after opposing McGovern in the past. In leadership circles, Rep. Rob Andrews of New Jersey and Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn of South Carolina, perhaps Obama’s strongest ally in the House, joined as well.

“I think it means that we’re very concerned, that we have to get a plan together, we have to be serious about our agenda, our time line,” Lowey said in an interview. “But we’re not saying by such and such a date.”

Hoyer set the tone in his floor remarks, which bridged some of the divide between him and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, who backed the tougher McGovern anti-war amendment last year.

“The death of Osama bin Laden was a landmark moment in our ongoing struggle to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat the terrorist networks that intend to do Americans harm, and that struggle has not ended with bin Laden’s death,” Hoyer said. “But his death is a moment for reflection on that struggle, and how we can best equip ourselves to win it.”

“Many of the terrorists against whom we are fighting are no longer located in Afghanistan but are in disparate locations, from Yemen to Somalia to Southeast Asia. And bin Laden was found in Pakistan,” Hoyer said. “I support this amendment because it focuses us on adjusting to a world of changing threats. It is essential that we fight the smartest war possible against terrorists — but it is fair to ask how a massive troop presence in Afghanistan continues to help us accomplish that goal.”

As crafted by McGovern and his chief co-sponsor, Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), the amendment asked for three separate reports:

* Within 60 days, a plan for accelerated withdrawal of U.S. forces.

* Within 60 days, a plan to pursue accelerated talks with the Kabul government, Taliban and Pakistan toward “reconciliation of the internal conflict in Afghanistan.”

* Within 90 days, a new national intelligence estimate from the administration on the leadership, locations and capabilities of Al Qaeda and its affiliated networks after bin Laden's death.

Given the absence of any fixed withdrawal target, the White House dismissed the House vote as a non-factor for the president, who is already committed to begin some drawdown of forces July 1. Indeed, when the House Appropriations Committee unveils its $530 billion Pentagon budget bill Tuesday, it’s expected to include an additional $118.7 billion in contingency funds, chiefly for the war in Afghanistan as well as counterinsurgency aid for Pakistan.

“The vote does not add pressure,” said a senior administration official. “After nearly 10 years of remarkable effort by our troops and investments by our taxpayers, we know there is eagerness to see concrete progress. We have made progress,” he said — referring to the killing of bin Laden. “But the president has and will continue to demand more as we continue this important year of transition.”

In the Senate, Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) expressed his own reservations. The U.S. is making genuine progress on the ground militarily, he told POLITICO, and to show any sign of pulling back at this stage, he argued, would be ill-timed.

“I don’t criticize the motives of those for this resolution,” Inouye said. “I’m for it because I want to rid ourselves of this war, but to do it at this point may be asking for trouble.”

Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) — a member of the House Armed Services Committee — made a similar argument in last week’s floor debate. “There are better ways to elicit these kinds of forward-looking plans than this amendment,” he said.

“The narrative we have in place today is better than at any point in time since I’ve been going to Afghanistan, and I’ve been going since 2005,” Conaway said. “We have hard work to do. I understand the emotions. I understand the heartfelt tug that the previous speaker has brought to us ... but decisions can’t be made just simply on those emotions.”

Yet in Conaway’s own party the most telling defections may have been a handful of veteran Midwest Republican moderates who backed the amendment: Reps. Tom Petri of Wisconsin, Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri, and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan. And there was a certain irony in Conaway citing 2005 — the same year that the late Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) came out so forcefully against what was then the bigger war before Congress: Iraq.

In the case of Afghanistan policy now, no one has yet emerged in Democratic anti-war forces with the same standing as Murtha, a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War and a close ally of the Pentagon. But last week’s vote suggests the pieces are beginning to fall in place. And with all the pressure to cut spending — including defense — there is a breaking point for the Pentagon as well.

Much as bin Laden’s death is cited by some as a turning point, Berman takes issue with the notion that this in itself ought to be a reason for a change in U.S. policy. Instead, as a primary architect of U.S. expanded aid to Pakistan, he believes the focus has to be on Afghanistan’s neighbor and the continued safe harbor enjoyed by Taliban forces and their top leadership.

“If it’s not going to work in Pakistan, how is our policy going to work in Afghanistan?” he said, coming back to his core concern.

And what of the size of the House Democratic vote on the McGovern-Jones amendment?

“I was surprised,” he said.