The Hatching of Republican Doves

He may be better known to us American Conservative types as W. James Antle III, but for the benefit of Guardian readers, James Antle writes:

By sending more troops to Afghanistan but in smaller numbers than originally requested by General McChrystal and with strings attached, President Barack Obama may believe he has stumbled upon a formula that will please everybody. He may discover that he has pleased no one.

Most Republicans will back the president, as long as "victory" in Afghanistan, however defined, appears attainable. In fact, this will be the first major initiative of the Obama administration to garner more Republican than Democratic support. But GOP support will not be unanimous.

The most outspoken of the neoconservatives and Republican hawks are giving the president no quarter. Even before Obama spoke, former vice-president Dick Cheney was denouncing the new commander-in-chief for going wobbly in front of the world.

"Here's a guy without much experience, who campaigned against much of what we put in place … and who now travels around the world apologising," Cheney told Politico. "I think our adversaries – especially when that's preceded by a deep bow – see that as a sign of weakness." Our average Afghan friend, meanwhile, "sees talk about exit strategies and how soon we can get out, instead of talk about how we win."

Karl Rove was more interested in defending his old boss than cheering the continuity between Bush and Obama policies. "President Obama is in no position whatsoever to criticise what President Bush did, because in 2007, President Obama, then a member of the United States senate, voted against war funding for Iraq and Afghanistan," Rove said on NBC's Today show. "If this was so vital, then why did he not speak out?"

Other Republicans will find their war fever cools now that a Democrat is in office. Congressional Republicans adamantly opposed the Clinton administration's military interventions in the Balkans in the 1990s, even as neoconservative journalists were cheering them on. Republicans tend to rediscover conservatism's older non-interventionist tendencies when faced with what Bob Dole once bitterly described as "Democrat wars".

Representatives Ron Paul and Walter Jones, the most outspoken Republican opponents of the Afghan surge, are part of their party's small antiwar minority on Iraq. While they both defeated pro-war primary challengers and Paul took over a million votes as a Republican presidential candidate in 2008, they haven't gained much traction in their efforts to change the GOP's foreign policy.

But some Republicans who supported the Iraq war are having buyer's remorse when it comes to the Afghanistan escalation. Representative Dana Rohrabacher is no Ron Paul, but he has said he will vote against funding the president's request for additional troops. "Sending 30,000 more combat troops to Afghanistan will not make us any safer," Rohrabacher said. "Focusing a strategy around the central government in Kabul will not work, especially with a government as corrupt as the Karzai regime. Sending more American combat troops into Afghanistan just means more of those troops will be doing more of the fighting instead of the Afghans themselves, who are more than willing to defend themselves as long as they are given the resources to do so."

If the worst happens, unrepentant hawks will argue that Obama dithered and projected an image of uncertainty that undermined the fight. Antiwar Democrats and a growing number of their Republican fellow-travellers will chastise Obama for spending American blood and treasure in a land that has served a graveyard for empires in the past.

Afghanistan was the Good War, the one directly tied to paying back those who attacked America on 9/11 and making sure they were not in a position to do so again. But with al-Qaida having mostly relocated and the mission having crept into nation-building, the American people are beginning to view Afghanistan through the same lens as Iraq: with Osama bin Laden as elusive as Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, they do not understand why our troops are still there eight years later.

One thing is certain: if this becomes Obama's war, he shouldn't expect Republicans to rally behind him as they did George Bush. If conditions in Afghanistan do not improve or the US military's body count rises, expect more Republican doves to hatch.