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War Opposition Grows As 102 House Dems, 12 Republicans Oppose Obama's Afghan Surge

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From The Nation

More than 100 Democratic House members and a dozen Republicans [1]voted against funding the Obama administration's Afghan war surge Tuesday, offering one of the strongest shows of opposition to presidential warmaking since the Vietnam War era.

President Obama still got the money for his expanded war in Afghanistan, as well as for his plan to continue the occupation of Iraq.

By a 308-114 vote [1], the House approved a $58.8 billion emergency funding bill--most of which will go to pay for the president's plan to surge tens of thousands of additional troops into Afghanistan. The measure parallels a Senate bill passed earlier this month and will now go to Obama's desk for a quick signature.

But the real story Tuesday was that so many members of the president's own party rejected his misguided approach to foreign policy.

Even in 1968, at the end of his tortured presidency, Lyndon Johnson never faced so high a level of opposition from fellow Democrats to his requests for Vietnam War funding as Obama was hit with Tuesday. And the votes against Obama's war were not just coming from the usual suspects; Democratic opposition to the president's policies surged from thirty-two votes against last year's supplemental spending bill for Afghanistan and Iraq to 102 against this year's bill.

"All of the puzzle has been put together and it is not a pretty picture; things are really ugly over there," Congressman Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts, said Tuesday [2] with regard to the House Democratic Caucus. "I think the White House continues to underestimate the depth of antiwar sentiment here."

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John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.

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