Dems campaign against Afghan surge

President Obama’s Afghanistan surge is proving to be good politics - if you’re a Democrat who’s against it.

In Massachusetts, all of the Democrats running in a special primary to fill Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s seat oppose the surge, as do the two top Democrats fighting for the nomination for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat in 2010.

“I think we all agree this is wrong,” said Rep. Michael E. Capuano, one of the four Massachusetts Democrats who squared off in a debate last week heading into Tuesday’s primary.

Even in conservative-leaning Kentucky, Jack Conway, the leading Democratic candidate for the 2010 Senate race, said Mr. Obama’s plans fall short.

“I do not feel President Obama has adequately explained how he will get Pakistan involved in the effort to combat al Qaeda,” Mr. Conway said.

Mr. Obama last week announced plans to deploy 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, with a hazy timetable for them to withdraw beginning 18 months from now. That is six months after the congressional elections.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration understands the differing views.

“The president would be the first to tell you that people can look at the situation and come to different conclusions on both the Democratic and Republican side,” he said. “I think that was in some ways obviously true for Iraq.”

Even before next year’s elections, the issue will come to a head when Congress takes up its next spending bills.

Top members of Congress say the White House will have to send up a special war-funding bill, though the White House was noncommittal on whether it will do that.

One irony is that President George W. Bush used war-spending bills to run circles around Democrats, including the one in 2004 that tripped up his campaign opponent, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who faltered with his famous campaign declaration that he “actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”

Mr. Obama was not yet in the Senate in 2004, but three years later he voted against the supplemental spending bill that paid for the Iraq troop surge. He was one of 14 senators to vote “no.” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, now secretary of state, also voted against that spending bill. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, now vice president, voted for it.

A curious case to watch over the next year will be Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Democrat. As a Republican in 2007, he voted to fund Mr. Bush’s surge. He is now an opponent of Mr. Obama’s surge and says the war in Afghanistan is not critical to the battle against al Qaeda.

“This venture is not worth so many American lives or the billions it will add to our deficit,” he said.

Opposing him on Afghanistan and for the 2010 Democratic Senate nomination is Rep. Joe Sestak, who served 31 years in the Navy and retired as a three-star admiral. He called Mr. Obama’s plan “necessary, achievable and justified.”

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