Via ABC's Rick Klein, the powerful grassroots liberal group is coming out against Obama's proposed Afghanistan escalation:
After talking to MoveOn members about this possibility for months, it's become clear what most of us think: This is wrong. Everyone knows that George W. Bush left a mess in Afghanistan, but escalation only deepens our involvement in a quagmire.
It'll cost the lives of thousands of American troops and Afghan civilians, and it won't make us safer. And with urgent priorities like health care, the climate crisis, and a struggling economy to tackle here at home, it simply does not make sense to divert billions more dollars to this war.
More and more foreign policy experts are coming to the conclusion that military escalation is not going to solve the problem in Afghanistan. And the majority of Americans already oppose the war. So today the President needs to hear from those of us who disagree with his decision.
Reactions like this one are why the White House will be eager to play up their reported three-year time line [Update: which the White House now denies]. But that, of course, will rile the pro-war Republicans whom Obama may need to ensure passage of war funding. One source put the conundrum well to me in an email:
The danger right now is if they’ve written a speech that ends up being the perfect storm in which the President alienates every possible constituency – left, right, and center – because it tries to offer a sop to every possible constituency.