Taking a play from President George W. Bush’s Iraq War playbook, President Barack Obama has decided to sharply increase the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

On Tuesday night, Obama revealed his plan to deploy 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan over the next several months, bringing the troop level there to 100,000 personnel. It is the largest expansion of that front of the twin wars in the eight years since the United States brought down the Taliban government after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Obama’s decision came more than two months after Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said in a confidential report that without additional forces, the war against insurgents in Afghanistan would end in failure.

The decision to expand the war created some odd alliances in Washington. Republicans who have opposed Obama at nearly every turn have suddenly become critical allies. And some of Obama’s most ardent supporters in Congress — liberal Democrats — are grumbling their disenchantment with his decision, but most appear resigned to the fact that it will happen.

Obama will need the GOP support to get the $30-$40 billion that will be needed to fund the surge, since many anti-war Democrats are expected to vote against the funding regardless of the cost. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who oversees House military spending and opposes the war as he did during the Bush administration, predicted Congress would pass next year a spending bill to fund the $40 billion pricetag and admitted that he and other anti-war Democrats don’t have enough votes to stop it.

“It’s not likely that there would be any circumstances where the president would lose this battle (in Congress) this year,” Murtha said.
A survey at albanyherald.com late Tuesday and Wednesday showed local support for Obama’s plan, with 55.4 percent of 184 online voters supporting his decision to increase the troop strength. Of those who responded, 38.6 opposed the plan and 6 percent had no opinion.

In hearings Wednesday, Obama administration officials tried to impress on skeptical members of Congress the importance of the Afghanistan fight. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said a U.S. loss in Afghanistan would have severe consequences for our nation and the world. He noted that there is a deadly “symbiotic” relationship between al-Qaida and the Taliban — which has seen a resurgence while the United States focused on Iraq. Reports say that the Taliban has gained dominance in 11 of the country’s 34 provinces, though Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argue that could be neutralized with enough resources and time.

And that latter condition may be something that comes back to haunt Obama.

In his speech Tuesday, Obama said he would start bringing troops home from Afghanistan in July 2011. That timeframe was of keen interest to congressional members on Wednesday. Republicans noted that the president would have to rethink that deadline if security problems crop up as it nears, with Obama’s 2008 presidential opponent Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., opining, “We don’t want to sound an uncertain trumpet to our friends in the region.”

On the Hill Wednesday, Clinton and Gates attempted to move away from Obama’s timeline as being seen as anything hard and fast, something that is sure to irritate anti-war Democrats even more. “I do not believe we have locked ourselves into leaving. But what we have done ... is to signal very clearly to all audiences that the United States is not interested in occupying Afghanistan,” Clinton said.

All in all, Obama probably ended up with the best response he could have expected from Congress. His response from Americans voters, meanwhile, may depend on how the battlefront looks a year and a half from now.