Join the " Brown Bag Lunch Vigils!
Join the "Healthcare NOT Warfare" campaign!
Click here for the Congressional Schedule
Published by The New York Times.
In the fear-filled, nationalistic fervor after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001, Congress rushed to approve President George W. Bush’s decision to attack Afghanistan, the country where the terrorist leaders had trained for their suicide voyage.
A resolution giving Mr. Bush the authority to act raced through Congress just three days after the attack. Nearly every member of the House of Representatives and the Senate voted for it. Only one member rose to oppose the measure: Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of Oakland.
Ms. Lee said she worried that the United States, like so many other world powers before, would become hopelessly entangled in a war it could never win. And she thought the resolution for which she was being asked to vote would give too much power to the president to wage a dead-end war without an official declaration from Congress.
Eight years later, at least in her eyes, many of Ms. Lee’s worst fears have come to pass. The United States remains mired in a war in which victory seems ill-defined and ever more difficult to achieve.
But now a president Ms. Lee deeply admires has replaced one she almost always opposed. And Barack Obama is doubling down on Mr. Bush’s gambit, pushing to escalate the military presence in Afghanistan.
Ms. Lee said in an interview this month that she was not surprised by Mr. Obama’s decision, but that she was disappointed. She was an early supporter of his, even though as a candidate he said he supported the war in Afghanistan.
“He said during the campaign that he was going to get out of Iraq and go into Afghanistan,” said Ms. Lee, who is chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “I agree with him 90 percent of the time. But you can’t agree all the time.”
Ms. Lee has a lot more company on this issue than she used to. A resolution she introduced in October to block any financing for an expanded military presence in Afghanistan has picked up 23 co-sponsors. Among them are Representatives Pete Stark, Michael M. Honda and Lynn Woolsey, all Democrats from the Bay Area who voted for the war resolution in 2001.
Ms. Woolsey, who is from Petaluma and sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is taking a lead role on the issue and has said she believes that a majority of House Democrats will oppose Mr. Obama’s plan. Even Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, another early supporter of the war and a stalwart supporter of Mr. Obama, is expressing concern about the mounting cost of the war and has said her Democratic colleagues are eager to vote on a resolution to limit or end the engagement.
The shift toward Ms. Lee’s position among her Bay Area colleagues mirrors a broader shift in the electorate. Although no independent local polling was done on the Afghanistan issue in 2001, a Field Poll in the spring of 2002, about six months after the invasion, found that 59 percent of Bay Area voters thought Mr. Bush was doing a good job in the fight against terrorism. But in a Field Poll this October, more than half of Bay Area voters said they thought the troop levels in Afghanistan should be kept at current levels or cut back, not expanded.
“I am calling for a timeline and an exit strategy,” Ms. Lee said, “and no additional funding for increased troop levels. I am going to lead the fight to deny the funding. Congress holds the purse strings. I think we can do this differently.”
To those who say the United States must stay in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, Ms. Lee counters that the United States presence builds support for Muslim extremists as Afghanis turn to them to help fight the occupation. And to those who argue that the United States must support the country’s fledgling democratic government, Lee says the corruption in that regime only hurts America’s relationship with the people of Afghanistan.
“I respect the commander in chief and his position,” Ms. Lee said. “I just don’t believe there is a military solution in Afghanistan.”
Daniel Weintraub has reported on California politics and policy for more than 20 years.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
PDA CPC and Other Allies News RSS Feed