With Friends Like These

Pete Souza, The White House via Getty Images As Obama decides his next move in Afghanistan, he’s getting the greatest pushback from some of the leading foreign-affairs lights in the Democratic Party.

As President Barack Obama plays an agonized Hamlet over Afghanistan, the ice is cracking beneath his feet on Capitol Hill. In the House, but especially in the Senate, major figures are already distancing themselves from any commitment he may make to boost U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan—even before he makes it. On Tuesday, the congressional leadership trouped to the White House for a briefing and pep talk on the president’s Afghanistan policy. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada declared afterward, “There was a general discussion there. I hope people aren't talking in the abstract saying, ‘Whatever decision you make we'll support.’ That came from the minority.” He added that Obama “didn't lay out a strategy.” This was an “abstract” endorsement, if it was that. Already under fire for a stimulus package that has run out of steam and a health-care reform plan that was shaped in Congress and not in the executive branch, Obama is discovering that it is the figures of greatest stature in his own party on international affairs who are signaling their hesitance to follow him unconditionally into the high mountain passes of Afghanistan.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, veteran chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, this year celebrated his 30th anniversary in the Senate and is serving his sixth term. So when Levin chose CBS’ Face the Nation last Sunday to voice his opposition to approving a new troop surge to Afghanistan, it did not go unnoticed. “I would not commit to more combat troops at this time. There are a lot of other things that need to be done to show resolve. What we need a surge of is Afghan troops,” Levin said. “When I was in Helmand Province just a month ago, we were told by the local folks what they want is their Afghan army to be strengthened. And the ratio of Marines to Afghan soldiers when we were down in Helmand Province was five Marines for one Afghan soldier. That is exactly the wrong ratio. It ought to be reversed from that.”

It is virtually unprecedented for leading Democratic barons to signal their refusal to approve a commitment of U.S. forces overseas by their commander-in-chief—before he even asked for it.

The leading figure of the Democratic Party in the Senate on military issues, with a quarter-century more national experience in national politics than the sitting president, was flat-out breaking ranks with his commander-in-chief on an issue of war and peace without even waiting for Obama to make up his mind first.

Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania went Levin one better. On Sept. 14, Murtha, chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, uttered the taboo “V” word, comparing the new surge Gen. Stanley McChrystal is seeking to the dispatch of the half-million troops Gen. William Westmoreland demanded in Vietnam 44 years ago.

“In Vietnam it took 500,000 troops and that didn't solve the problem. So we have to take a different approach," Murtha told Foreign Policy magazine in an interview. "I think that's what [Gen. McChrystal] is trying to do."

"Look how long it took us to get 22,000 more troops, it took 18 months! Jesus Christ!" Murtha said. "When they talk about more troops they act as if you can send them in immediately."

• Peter Beinart: Bury the Vietnam AnalogyLevin and Murtha are of central importance because in the overwhelmingly domestic-policy-oriented and war-averse Democratic Party of the past 37 years—a pattern dating back to the 1972 presidential candidacy of Sen. George McGovern—only a handful of the party’s members have had the nerve and the desire to immerse themselves in military issues. Their reward from their party colleagues has been to serve as the wise men (they are almost never women, except for former Sen. Hillary Clinton) to whom almost all of their colleagues defer without question. Such figures almost always serve as party loyalists, rallying the faithful to support presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton on their national security policies. It is virtually unprecedented for leading Democratic barons to signal their refusal to approve a commitment of U.S. forces overseas by their commander-in-chief—before he even asked for it.

Levin and Murtha may be far more outspoken than many of their colleagues, but the unease is widespread.