Late last month, Congress defeated an amendment sponsored by Reps. Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Walter Jones (R-NC) that would have mandated an accelerated U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The measure failed 204-215, but the result is significant because it garnered 26 Republican votes.

At an event today sponsored by the Center for American Progress, McGovern and Jones said President Obama’s Afghanistan withdrawal plan he announced last night does not go far enough. “We need to get all the troops out of Afghanistan sooner than 2014, because 2014 will become 2015 and so on, and it will be a neverending exit date,” Jones said.

In an interview with ThinkProgress after the event, both lawmakers stressed that they’re not giving up their efforts in Congress. “I think the anti-war movement in Congress is going to continue to grow and intensify,” McGovern said. Jones said he’s optimistic that he can peel away more Republicans to their side:

JONES: Republicans are beginning to understand that trying to police the world, you can’t pay for it. That’s what Republicans are beginning to understand. [...] What I’m trying to do on our side is to get more Republicans to join on the bill. Because that in itself sends a signal. But I believe, as Jim said, we’re not going away. [...]

TP: Are there a lot more Republicans talking to you privately?

JONES: Oh yeah.

Watch the interview clip:

Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA), who is also part of a coalition of leaders in Congress pushing for an end to war in Afghanistan, has 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 said in a separate interview with ThinkProgress last week, “he’s [Obama] going to have a revolt in Congress. Congress has had it.”

Neoconservative pundits and members of Congress have wasted no time in criticizing President Obama’s decision to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year and 23,000 more by next summer. Many of these critics, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), have claimed that the White House’s decision on troop withdrawals showed a disregard for the concerns the military commanders in Afghanistan and could put U.S. gains against al Qaeda and the Taliban at risk.

But Gen. David Petraeus, while testifying at his Senate confirmation hearing to become the next CIA director, offered a far more nuanced explanation of how the White House consulted with military leadership before yesterday’s announcement and how a broader set of concerns have to be taken into account by the civilian leadership. He also emphasized the importance of military leadership respecting the orders of the president and executing his decision:

PETRAEUS: The risk being assessed in this case, from my perspective, the risk having to do with the ability to achieve objectives of the military campaign plan, acknowledging that at every level of the chain of command above me there are additional considerations, and each person above me, all the way up to and including the President has a broader purview and broader considerations that are brought to bear. [...]

And so that’s how I would layout the process that took place, the very good discussion, this was indeed vigorous. All voices were heard in the situation room. And ultimately the decision has been made. And with a decision made, obviously I support that.

Watch it:

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen offered a similar description of the decision making hierarchy in his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee this morning. He said:

“More force for more time is, without doubt, the safer course,” Mullen continued. “But that does not necessarily make it the best course. Only the president, in the end, can really determine the acceptable level of risk we must take. I believe he has done so.”

Petraeus and Mullen’s testimonies offer a useful review of how civilian control of the armed forces is central to our democracy and how military leadership see their role in the decision making process.

Full transcript of Petraeus’s answer on Obama’s decision: Read more

Over the past few months, a controversy erupted around Fox News and their employment of a bevy of potential Republican presidential candidates. Fox suspended Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum in March when they appeared to meet an as yet unspecified threshold for candidacy. The controversy kept rolling when Sarah Palin undertook a bus tour that looked a lot like the early stages of a presidential run, but was kept on Fox’s staff.

But what about another paid Fox contributor, former Bush administration ambassador to the U.N., AEI fellow, and über-hawk John Bolton? Bolton has indeed been flirting with a run since last September, and seems to be taking serious steps toward it that closely resemble those taken by Santorum and Gingrich.

Bolton, who said on Tuesday — on Fox’s air — that he will decide “by Labor Day,” gave a lengthy interview to National Review online, where he revealed some of the initial steps he has taken to explore a run at the nation’s highest office:

As George W. Bush’s U.N. ambassador, he gleefully tangled with fussy Europeans, Third World despots, and international bureaucrats. That experience, he reckons, is more than enough to make GOP primary voters, at the very least, curious.

It is also why, even in mid-June, Bolton continues to make calls to close friends, pollsters, and political consultants, mulling his options.

Bolton — in the article, titled “Bolton 2012? The former U.N. ambassador weighs a presidential run” — goes on to explain that, if he does enter the race late, he’s already worked out a strategy of which states he needs to hit the hardest:

He will decide by Labor Day, a self-imposed deadline. Until then, Bolton is drafting a multifaceted strategy, one that would enable him to enter late. [...]

“I would focus first on New Hampshire, followed by South Carolina, Florida, and Nevada,” he says. “I think that is a very understandable path to the nomination.” Iowa, however, is probably out of the equation. He is against ethanol subsidies, for one, and it may be a bit too late to build a base there, “where the 99 counties are like the 99 names of God.”

Fox News did not reply to ThinkProgress’s inquiries to its media relations department, but compare Bolton’s activities to those portrayed in an LA Times description of what Gingrich was up to in March when his $1 million-a-year contract with Fox was suspended:

While Gingrich is not expected to announce that he is forming a federal exploratory committee this week, he is expected to say in Georgia on Thursday that he is meeting with advisors to explore seeking the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, a Gingrich aide said.

It’s pretty tough to see a distinction between these meetings and discussions with advisers and campaign experts Bolton is holding. The trigger for suspension, a Fox lawyer told the Times, was “serious intention to form an exploratory committee.” That’s pretty vague, but Bolton’s phone calls would seem to fit into nearly any understanding of the phrase.

The situation leaves one wondering how long Bolton can keep up his gig on Fox, raising his profile (he’s appeared twice in the last two days) and cashing his paychecks while taking serious steps — right down to speaking to advisers and devising a state-by-state strategy — toward running for the presidency.

The NATO-led air campaign in Libya is causing a significant rift within the GOP. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), and House Republicans have said the U.S. involvement violates the War Powers Act and are moving forward with a vote to cut off funding for “hostilities” in Libya this week as a “rebuke of President Obama’s handling of the mission.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member John McCain (R-AZ), however, warned that cutting off funds would “be a lifeline to a weakened” Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi and introduced a bipartisan resolution this week to give Obama authority to conduct the campaign for one year. McCain warned Republicans to “think long and hard about challenging a Democratic president’s authority, saying it could haunt a future president who might be a Republican.”

Speaking with reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) acknowledged that there are “clearly divisions” in the GOP over the “constitutionality” and “cost” of the Libyan campaign. However, in a moment of rare candor, McConnell noted that his colleagues might not be so quick to denounce the president if he were a Republican. Asked if he was concerned about “the isolationist streak of some in the Republican Party,” McConnell said, “There is more of a tendency to pull together when the guy in the White House is on your side”:

MCCONNELL: The only thing I can tell you at this point is that there are differences. I’m not sure that these kind of differences might not have been there in a more latent form when you had a Republican president. But I do think there is more of a tendency to pull together when the guy in the White House is on your side. So I think some of these views were probably held by some of my members even in the previous administration, but party loyalty tended to mute them. So yeah, I think there are clearly differences and I think a lot of our members, not having a Republican in the White House, feel more free to express their reservations which might have been somewhat muted during the previous administration.

Watch it:

TPM’s Brian Beutler notes that “McConnell’s likely trying to send a signal to dissident members to simmer down.” As for his own opinion, McConnell is deferring to McCain’s view of the Libyan effort, saying he’s “paying attention to one of my senior members who knows a whole lot about the subject.”

House Republicans are showing no signs of simmering and are likely to vote on the resolution to cut off funds, as well as another resolution to authorize the intervention, as soon as tomorrow. House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL) says this vote will “send the message to future presidents that you’re not just going to have carte blanche ability to pick fights all over the world without the Congress weighing in on it.”