Grayson rails on Afghan surge, will vote against funding

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fl.) signaled Tuesday he would vote against a resolution to fund the troop surge in Afghanistan because the strategy itself is "fundamentally wrong."

According to the congressman, the war has already "cost us much too much in both lives and money. Any escalation of that effort would only exacerbate those unnecessary losses and distract the country's resources from more important tasks like healthcare reform, he explained.

"There is no nation in Afghanistan, there is not likely to be one in the near future," Grayson said alongside activists who similarly oppose the troop increase.

"There is simply nothing to work for there, nothing to work from there," he added, describing the new strategy as a "18th century strategy vs. a 14th century enemy."

Funding for the president's troop escalation is likely to clear Congress, as it will be part of the must-pass defense appropriations bill lawmakers will soon take up.

But that is unlikely to stop some of the war's fiercest opponents, including Grayson, from mounting a tough fight. While the congressman did not say he had formally launched an effort to block funding, he suggested many others in the House shared his objections.

By Grayson's measure, Afghanistan and the Taliban, specifically, no longer pose the grave threat to domestic security that they once did. He said that made Afghanistan no different than the many other humanitarian crises propagated around the world, none of which the White House would think committing thousands of troops.

"We already won it," Grayson said of the fight following 9/11, "we can't win the same war twice."

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