A surprising (and little discussed) effort by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D – NY) to defund the Afghan War was brought before the House of Representatives yesterday, and unfortunately fell well short of its goal, with a 98-331 failure. The vote is still interesting on a number of fronts, however.
The vote would have attached an amendment to the budget which would reduce the Afghan War spending from the $100+ billion it currently costs annually to a level of $10 billion, which is the amount the Pentagon insists it would cost to withdraw the troops from the nation.
Notably, however, the vote was surprisingly close amongst Democratic Congressmen, with 91 voting in favor of ending the occupation to 99 voting against. It was the Republican side which saw overwhelming rejection, with only 7 GOP Congressmen voting to end the war (Reps. Campbell, Coble, Duncan, Johnson, Jones, Paul and Rohrabacher).
Perhaps the biggest disappointment was that the freshmen “Tea Party” Congressmen, who were reportedly so keen on reducing the budget deficit, voted unanimously in favor of continuing the occupation, despite the clear and dramatic savings that ending the war would have provided.
