A growing debate has emerged in recent weeks within Republican Party leadership over the future of American involvement in Afghanistan. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said last week that “it’s time for us to bring our troops home as soon as we possibly can,” even though he couched it by adding that he would listen primarily to the generals on the ground. Former Gov. Jon Huntsman (R-UT) told Esquire, “If you can’t define a winning exit strategy for the American people where we somehow come out ahead, then…I don’t think that serves our strategic interests.” Huntsman and Romney joined fellow GOP presidential candidates Ron Paul (R-TX) and Gary Johnson (R-NM) in pushing the GOP toward supporting a draw-down in Afghanistan.

These comments prompted a backlash from hawkish Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) over the weekend. Graham said on NBC’s Meet the Press, “If you think the pathway to the GOP nomination in 2012 is to get to Barack Obama’s left on Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, you’re gonna meet a lot of headwinds.” Similarly, ABC’s This Week, McCain criticized Romney’s drift toward a withdrawal position.

But the infighting within the Republican Party on Afghanistan doesn’t stop there. When asked about the leadership divide on Fox News this morning, RNC chairman Reince Priebus refused to take sides and wouldn’t even say whether or not he thinks the U.S. should begin a significant drawdown. “I’m not going get into the weeds on this issue,” he said. Yet over on MSNBC today, Priebus’s predecessor Michael Steele acknowledged that Americans are war weary and said that many Republicans have told him privately that the U.S. needs an endgame:

STEELE: Even at that time when I was getting slammed by the neocons in the party on this issue, I had a number of senators and congressman say “we agree with you but we can’t say anything because the republicans have hitched their wagons to this particular policy.” [...] I’m not an isolationist … particularly when it comes to protecting the interests of the American people but what is that interest we are protecting here? What is the upside for the cost that’s being expended right now? That is a legitimate question.

Watch it:

Nearly half of the GOP presidential candidates have called for some sort of with withdrawal, joining a growing chorus of Republicans in the Senate and the House who are calling for a winding down of the war. Given the diminishing support for continuing the conflict within the Democratic caucus, President Obama may have a tough time resisting pressure to draw down American involvement and maintain similar troops levels in the country as some military leaders have recommended.

– Sean Savett

 

Much has been made of a growing split between Israel’s security elite and government politicians following retired Mossad Chief Meir Dagan’s comments that an Israeli attack on Iran is “the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.” But those factions in the Israeli government who favor keeping a military strike “on the table” hit back today with two high-profile warnings about the Iranian threat and a denouncement of Dagan’s comments.

The Jerusalem Post reported on comments made by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to the World Jewish Congress’s Board of Governors:

The international community has forgotten about the Iranian issue and their desire to achieve nuclear capability. It is clear they are no longer trying to conceal and doing everything they can to achieve the capability.”

And former IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi – currently a visiting fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings – responded to Dagan’s comments, telling Israeli Army Radio:

I am confident the new IDF general chief of staff, new Mossad head and entering Shin Bet chief know how to express their opinions to our leaders and won’t cave to pressure.

The Jerusalem Post interpreted Ashkenazi’s as a warning to Dagan: “Keep opinions about Iran attack to yourself.”

Both Ashkenazi and Lieberman appeared to support Netanyahu’s position that Iran’s nuclear program represents an “existential” threat to Israel and ignored recent reports that Iran hasn’t yet decided to build a nuclear weapon. But they weren’t completely in agreement on all matters of Israeli policy.

Ashkenazi broke with Lieberman and Netanyahu on how to move forward with peace talks. The Jerusalem Post reports:

The former IDF chief insisted that Israel would have a bigger impact on the final outcome if it were achieved “with coordination rather than in conflict,” and that the government would have a greater likelihood in producing two states under conditions suitable both to Palestinians and Israelis.

While disagreements over how Netanyahu should move forward on peace talks appears to be accepted in the Israeli public discourse, questioning the wisdom of the “military option” against Iran is still a touchy subject despite the growing number of ex-Mossad chiefs publicly voicing concern over Netanyahu’s confrontational rhetoric toward Tehran.

The latest backlash against Dagan goes to show that public disagreement over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program remains a taboo among the upper echelons of Israel’s decision-making apparatus.

The military has been reportedly pushing back on the idea that President Obama withdraw any substantial numbers of U.S. troops as he deliberates the military’s next move in Afghanistan. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that military leaders are asking the president to “hold off on ending the Afghanistan troop surge until the fall of 2012, in a proposal that would keep a large portion of the 33,000 extra forces in the country through the next two warm-weather fighting seasons.”

At the Netroots Nation conference in Minneapolis last Friday, ThinkProgress asked Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA), who is part of a coalition of leaders in Congress pushing for an end to war in Afghanistan, to respond to the Journal’s report. Garamendi called on the president to reduce forces there to 20,000 by the end of 2012 and to around 10,000 by the end of 2013. “Anything short of that, he’s going to have a revolt in Congress. Congress has had it,” he said. Garamendi added that Obama will lose Congress if he doesn’t announce a significant drawdown:

TP: If he does accept this recommendation or something that’s not even close to where Congress is, particularly the progressives in Congress. What do you think the reaction is going to be in Congress?

GARAMENDI: It’s not just the progressives, the conservatives, even some Tea Party folks, share the view that this war is, has the wrong goal. And I think the president has not come out with a very clear, definitive, rapid drawdown with a different goal and that is pivot from counterinsurgency to counterterrorism and define that very clearly. He’ll lose the support of Congress and it may very well be that he’ll lose money. Congress is not in the mood to spend $120 billion a year in Afghanistan any longer.

The California Democrat also said he and others in Congress are lobbying members to support their postion. “The defense appropriations bill is up, and I tell you there will be amendments to defund the war,” he said, adding, “There will be Republican and Democratic sponsors on that.” Watch it: