Editorial: Focus on Afghanistan

Sunday, Dec. 23, 2007 | 6:54 a.m.

Congressional Democrats can point to a lot of victories since they became the majority party in January, but the one they strove for the most - a phased-in withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq - eluded them.

They understood their majority was razor thin, but in the early weeks of their leadership they believed many Republicans would honor the country's majority opinion on Iraq, as expressed by the November 2006 elections.

Instead, most Republicans rallied around President Bush on the war and joined to thwart Democratic efforts to attach conditions to Iraq spending bills.

Democrats will almost certainly use Iraq spending bills again in 2008 to pressure the White House into producing a plan for ending the war. We support this effort - at least the Republicans are forced to show their hands.

But the Democrats should add a new dimension to this effort to end the Iraq war - a war entered for reasons that turned out to be false.

In our view, the Democrats would be wise to turn the public's attention to "the forgotten war," the one being waged in Afghanistan against our enemies who were actually responsible for 9/11 - the Taliban and al-Qaida. Ideally, in a bipartisan stand against the president's baffling diversion into Iraq, all members of Congress would begin refocusing on Afghanistan.

The Washington Post reported last week that Bush is facing new pressure from the U.S. military to withdraw troops from Iraq and bulk up force levels in unstable Afghanistan, which poses the greater threat over the long term. Also last week, CNN reported in a special segment that U.S. forces in Afghanistan are finding themselves outnumbered as they engage a resurgent enemy.

It is time that Congress began documenting the downhill slide in the Afghanistan war. And it should emphasize the day the slide began, the day that Bush began focusing almost exclusively on Iraq - a country with no connection to 9/11.