With polls showing the Afghan War more and more unpopular at home, several Senators are publicly expressing their reservations about the Obama Administration’s escalation of the conflict.
Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) joined last week’s comments by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) that the administration should send more American civilians to Afghanistan “to help build up institutions,” and that they need to dramatically increase the size of Afghanistan’s own military rather than committing increased US troops to the conflict.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) went even further, saying the administration hadn’t outlined its goals in the war and calling for a timeline for accomplishing those goals, noting “I think the Congress is entitled to know, after Iraq, exactly how long are we going to be in Afghanistan.”
Officials have recently suggested that President Obama is actually going out of his way to avoid defining objectives right now so as to avoid commiting America to any long-term strategy, and military officials have suggested they couldn’t even provide an estimate for how long the conflict is going to take for another few years. But in the near term, he keeps throwing more troops and money at a failing war, and after eight years that plan is starting to get old.