Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has been all over the map on Afghanistan. He’s gone from wanting to withdraw U.S. troops as quickly as possible to preferring to wait until he gets elected to come down on a position. Despite Romney’s consistent inconsistency on Afghanistan, his campaign website states that “[w]ithdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan under a Romney administration will be based on conditions on the ground as assessed by our military commanders” — what is essentially an open-ended commitment.

Last night on CNN, Republican congressman Dana Rohrbacher (CA) — who’s been in a tete-a-tete lately with Afghan President Hamid Karzai — criticized Romney’s position. “I totally disagree with the governor,” Rohrbacher said:

ROHRABACHER: We should be looking for ways to get our troops out of Afghanistan at a quicker pace, not at a slower pace. We shouldn’t be committing ourselves to another 10 years of military involvement in Afghanistan and we can do that if we worked with all of the Afghan leaders rather than just trying to put all of our eggs in the Karzai basket and trying to force everybody to accept his power.

BLITZER: What Governor Romney says there should be an open-ended U.S. military and financial commitment to Afghanistan. He doesn’t like the timelines, if you will, but he’s even more aggressive in making sure that U.S. troops stay there to bolster that Afghan government and make sure that there’s security there. … What I hear you saying is you disagree not only with President Obama, but with Governor Romney, as well.

ROHRABACHER: I totally — yes, I totally disagree with the governor. If that is indeed his position I would like to talk to him about it.

Watch the clip:

Republicans in Congress have long been at odds on Afghanistan and a poll out last month found that a majority of Republicans say the war there hasn’t been worth fighting. Perhaps that’s why Romney won’t take a firm position and instead wants to kick the can down the road.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) was refused a visa and prevented from boarding a flight in Dubai to Afghanistan on Friday, Afghan officials said. Rohrabacher has been critical of corruption in President Hamid Karzai’s government and has openly called for a more decentralized government in Afghanistan, which, according to the BBC, led Karzai to request that Rohrabacher be denied entry into the country:

Afghan officials told the BBC that in addition to his criticisms of the president, Mr Rohrabacher was being shunned because of meetings he had held in Berlin with Afghan politicians about the creation of a decentralised form of government.

According to our correspondent, Afghan officials view that as tantamount to interference in the country’s internal affairs.

“Anyone who speaks against the good of Afghanistan and tries to interfere in our internal affairs is ineligible for an Afghan visa,” one official told our correspondent.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton relayed Karzai’s message to Rohrabacher who, according to his spokesperson, obliged “out of respect.”

According to the Guardian, Rohrabacher “has been in discussion with Afghan leaders for several months about a less centralised form of government” and Afghan government officials in January criticized Rohrabacher for meeting with Afghan opposition leaders in Berlin.

According to a State Department cable released by Wikileaks, Rohrabacher as early as 2003 pushed Karzai to incorporate more warlords into his government, telling the Afghan president that he preferred “a federalist decentralization of power.” The Guardian reports that Rohrabacher “became personal friends with many of the commanders” fighting the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Last June, Iraqi government officials kicked Rohrabacher out of Iraq after the Californian Republican said Iraq should repay the United States for the war President Bush started there in 2003. While members of his own party criticized him for the remarks, Rohrabacher remained unapologetic. “There’s nothing wrong with suggesting that the people who have benefited from our benevolence should consider repaying us for what we have given them,” he said.

With the NATO summit coming up next month in Chicago largely focusing on Afghanistan, one senior diplomat in Kabul said of the newest Rohrabacher incident: “This doesn’t look great.”

On HBO’s Real Time Friday night, host Bill Maher said the Republicans “were such sour pusses” during President Obama’s State of the Union speech last week. “Just in your own self interest, wouldn’t it be good to fake it when he’s talking about American succeses?” Maher wondered. Panelist Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) told Maher why the Republicans were in such a foul mood:

ROHRABACHER: Here we have a president of the United States who is just profusely saying how wonderful he thinks of the military and we know, all of us who are sitting in the audience, he’s trying to gut the military!

Maher, co-panelists Kennedy from Reason TV, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir and even the audience joined in to collectively chastise the California Republican for his blatantly false claim. “That’s absolutely not true,” Kennedy said, later adding, “I love the military. I like my SEALs groomed and ready to go but you have to tell the truth.”

“Can I give you the facts?” Maher asked Rohrabacher. “So far every budget Obama has had has increased military spending,” he said. “This year they’re asking a reduction from $531 billion to $525 billion, 1.6 percent. You mean our freedom is in trouble because of that 1.6 percent?” Maher later added, “How paranoid do you have to be to say that this guy is gutting our military?” Watch the clip:

Of course, Maher, Kennedy, Bashir (and the audience) are right, Obama is not gutting the military, not even close. And while the Obama administration has outlined a plan to reduce military spending by nearly $500 billion over the next 10 years, that figure is taken from levels of projected spending. As the New York Times noted this week, “over the next four years, the Pentagon budget would rise each year, reaching $567 billion by 2017.” The Times adds that “adjusted for inflation, the increases are small enough that they will amount to a slight cut of 1.6 percent of the Pentagon’s base budget over the next five years.”

When President Obama announced last week that the U.S. troop presence in Iraq would end as scheduled on Dec. 31 — after nearly nine years, thousands of U.S. troops casualties, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent — right-wing criticisms started pouring in. A neoconservative architect of the Iraq war twisted his benchmarks (yet again) to call Obama’s scheduled withdrawal a “retreat.” And GOP presidential candidates came out in opposition to the withdrawal, ignoring altogether any Iraqi say in the matter and Americans’ opposition to the war.

But now, underscoring fractures in the Republican Party on foreign policy, a right-wing member of Congress is voicing consternation with his party about opposition to the pullout. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) tweeted on Sunday that he didn’t understand the position from his party and its presidential candidates:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry both blasted Obama last week for the withdrawal announcement, and other candidates followed suit until the entire field found itself in universal opposition to the drawdown.

The critiques from the GOP field have ignored two key points in the withdrawal. The first is that the agreement that is ushering out U.S. troops was signed in 2008 by the Bush administration (PDF), amid concerns that the pact would tie the next president’s hands.

The second is Iraqi agency in the pullout. Iraqis were eager to see U.S. troops leave. Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill wrote this weekend that “Prime Minister Maliki got very little support from any other Iraqi political [bloc].” The government also opposed immunity from Iraqi law for remaining U.S. troops. Al-Maliki said this weekend that it was “impossible to grant immunity to a single American soldier.” The Pentagon had insisted on such immunity for troops to remain, and the U.S. policy changed as a result of Iraq’s decision.

Over at Democracy Arsenal, Michael Cohen takes down the Republican attacks on Obama’s Iraq decision:

What is perhaps so maddening about this entire line of argument from the GOP that Obama has “failed” in Iraq is that it was Republicans…who were the loudest advocates of the 2007 surge on the grounds that escalation would help a sovereign, democratic government (as well as political reconciliation) take root in Iraq. [...] Republicans can’t have this both ways: they can’t on the one hand extol the virtues of democracy in Iraq and then get indignant when that country’s democratically-elected government tells the United States they need to leave.

“If there was ever any question that the GOP’s fundamental critique of President Obama’s foreign policy is basically ‘whatever he does we will argue the opposite,’” Cohen adds, “this past week should erase any doubts.”

At last night’s GOP presidential debate, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said Iraq and Libya should repay the U.S. for its war efforts in those two countries. When asked by CNN’s debate moderator Anderson Cooper whether she would cut aid to Israel, Bachmann responded that she would not. Then she went on to suggest that there were other ways the U.S. could spend less money on foreign affairs: by getting countries where the U.S. goes to war to repay the U.S. for its war expenditures. To raucous applause, Bachmann said:

Cutting back on foreign aid is one thing. Being reimbursed by nations that we have liberated is another. We should look to Iraq and Libya to reimburse us for part of what we have done to liberate these nations.

Watch the video:

There have been more than 100,000 documented civilian deaths in the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which, after a botched occupation, embroiled the country in a bloody sectarian civil war.

The idea of getting compensation from Iraq for the U.S. war effort there has been raised before by right-wing Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who said Iraq should repay “some of the mega-dollars that we have spent here in the last eight years.” Rohrabacher went on to say: “There’s nothing wrong with suggesting that the people who have benefited from our benevolence should consider repaying us for what we have given them.”

At the time, ThinkProgress’s Scott Keyes asked Bachmann’s now-fellow candidate former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) what he thought about the idea. “I think that would send every possible wrong signal that America went to war for oil and we didn’t go to war for oil,” Santorum told Keyes (though he was mum on the subject last night).

The case of Libya is, of course, slightly different. The war there has only lasted some eight months, thus far, and is slowly winding down. In Libya, the opposition national council made an ask for international help, whereas in Iraq the George W. Bush administration simply banded together with exiled Iraqis who were sympathetic and could deliver splashy albeit faulty intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs.

Bachmann’s thoughts on Libya are not entirely dissimilar from a bill that made it out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this fall, but never came to a full vote before the whole body. That bill, a non-binding “sense of the Senate” resolution, said: “[F]unds of the Qaddafi regime that have been frozen by the United States should be used to reimburse the United States, as a NATO member, for expenses incurred in connection with” U.S. participation in the Libya war.

Last week, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) insulted the Iraqi government on a visit to Baghdad when he asked Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki to repay the United States for the cost of the now 8 year war. The Iraqi government called Rohrabacher’s comment “inappropriate” and subsequently kicked the California Republican and his congressional delegation out of Iraq.

Even some of his Republican colleagues are criticizing him or his remark but Rohrabacher isn’t showing any remorse. He refused to apologize in a statement last weekend and now he’s coming out on the attack. On CNN last night, contributor E.D. Hill, the former Fox News host of the “terrorist fist jab” fame, talked with Rohrabacher about the incident and appeared equally credulous at the Iraqis’ gall. “Did that kind of shock you? she asked, adding, “after all we have done?” Rohrabacher agreed and then critized the Iraqis for not being grateful for starting a war in their country:

ROHRABACHER: We spent a trillion dollars trying to free those people from the Saddam Hussein dictatorship and help them build a more democratic society. Yet now it seems there is no gratitude on the part of the people who now are in charge of the Iraqi government. And that should give us pause if we’re thinking about spending any more money or leaving our troops over there any longer. They just aren’t grateful for what we’ve done. … American people gave their lives, their children, and we expended billions of dollars, which now we’re — is hurting our economy.

Watch the segment:

Rohrabacher’s point is well taken. Americans have sacrificed much in both blood and treasure in Iraq and no one on either side of the coin should forget that. But it’s also important to remember that President Bush’s justification for launching a war in Iraq was to rid Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction, not to liberate Iraqis. And what Rohrabacher seems to leave out is that the Iraqis, both civilians and soldiers, have sacrificed too.

But Rohrabacher is right about one thing, that the financial cost of the war – which is still ongoing — is a huge strain on the U.S. economy and should serve as a reminder when U.S. officials consider having U.S. troops stay in Iraq past the Dec. 31 deadline to withdraw.

ThinkProgress filed this report from Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum scoffed at Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)’s proposal that Iraq repay the United States following the first New Hampshire presidential debate Monday.

During a visit to Iraq last week, Rohrabacher, a leading conservative voice on foreign affairs, called on the Iraqi government to repay the United States for the “mega-dollars that we have spent here in the last eight years.” After a backlash ensued and the Iraqi government asked Rohrabacher to leave the country, the California Republican still refused to back down, saying, “There’s nothing wrong with suggesting that the people who have benefited from our benevolence should consider repaying us for what we have given them.”

Following Monday’s presidential debate, ThinkProgress asked Santorum whether he agreed with Rohrabacher’s idea that Iraq ought to repay the United States for the war. Santorum, who is positioning himself as a foreign affairs expert in the GOP presidential primary, adamantly disagreed with the Congressman’s proposal, saying that it “would send every possible wrong signal that America went to war for oil”:

KEYES: Senator, Dana Rohrabacher, a leading conservative on the House Armed Services Committee* came out this week and said that Iraq ought to repay the United States for the Iraq War. Do you think that’s something you would…?

SANTORUM: I disagree with that. I think that would send every possible wrong signal that America went to war for oil and we didn’t go to war for oil. We went to war because it was in the national security interests of our country and that is a good expenditure of resources. If Iraq wants to continue, going forward, have some sort of security arrangements going forward, that’s another story. But as far as paying for what was in our interest, no.

Watch it:

Santorum is certainly no dove when it comes to foreign affairs. He strongly advocated invading Iraq and Afghanistan during his time in the U.S. Senate, and recently found himself embroiled in controversy after accusing Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), an ardent opponent of torture who was himself tortured for years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, of not understanding how torture works.

When an idea is too far to the right for even Rick Santorum, it’s time for Rohrabacher to reevaluate the wisdom of his comments.

*- Editor’s note: Rohrabacher sits on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, not the House Armed Services Committee.