WASHINGTON — The leading Senate Democrat on military matters said Sunday that President Barack Obama’s anticipated plan for expanding U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan must show how those reinforcements will increase the size of Afghan security forces.
Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that more Afghan army and police are key to success in the war and that more U.S. trainers and equipment can help meet that goal.
But it’s unclear, Levin said, what role tens of thousands of additional combat troops will play, and Obama has to make a compelling case during an address he’ll give Tuesday night from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
“The key here is an Afghan surge, not an American surge,” said Levin, D-Mich. “We cannot, by ourselves, win (the) war.”
At West Point, Obama is expected to announce an increase of up to 35,000 U.S. forces to defeat the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize a weak Afghan government.
The escalation would put more than 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan at an annual cost of about $75 billion.
Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, has introduced legislation to impose a war surtax beginning in 2011.
“If this war is important enough to engage in the long term, it’s important enough to pay for,” Obey said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“I’ve got a real problem about expanding this war where the rest of the world is sitting around and saying, ‘Isn’t it a nice thing that the taxpayers of the United States and the U.S. military are doing the work that the rest of the world should be doing?’ ” Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, said on ABC’s “This Week.”
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said several allied nations will offer a total of 5,000 more troops.
Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said on CNN: “We may wish to discuss higher taxes to pay for it.” But he added, “I would suggest we put aside the health care debate until next year . . . and talk now about the essentials: the war and money.”
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said on CNN that passing health care legislation is too important to the economy and American businesses.
“We have to go ahead and conclude this debate,” he said.
