Afghanistan still reigns on news shows

White House advisers will canvass the Sunday talk shows this weekend to advance the president's decision to deploy more than 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will appear together on ABC's "This Week," CBS's "Face the Nation" and NBC's "Meet the Press" to field questions about the president's new strategy, unveiled during a televised address on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Gen. Jim Jones, the White House's national security adviser, will sit down with CNN's "State of the Union" to offer his thoughts on the troop surge. Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, will stand in for the Obama administration on "Fox News Sunday."

This weekend caps off a tough few days for the White House's foreign policy team, which has fielded serious criticism from both political camps for its new Afghanistan war strategy.

A number of Democrats fret any escalation of the war effort, and some have pledged to use whatever means necessary to stall a bill to fund the surge. Among them is Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), who will air his objections to the surge on ABC.

Simultaneously, Republicans have lambasted the president since his speech on Tuesday for announcing a tentative July 2011 troop withdrawal date -- a deadline, GOPers claim, that suggests the United States is committing only lukewarmly to the war effort.

Chiefly representing that latter perspective this weekend will be Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Jon Kyl (Ariz.), who will join "Meet the Press" and "State of the Union," respectively.

McCain, in particular, has severely criticized the administration for announcing its July 2011 deadline. He pressed Gates on that call during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, and he reportedly challenged the president on the decision during a meeting with other lawmakers a day earlier.

Kyl, meanwhile, will square off against Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has previously signaled support for the president's new deployment.

The only guests likely to diverge from this weekend's focus on Afghanistan are Gov. Mitt Romney, who could field questions about the GOP's 2010 prospects on CNN, and Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and John Cornyn (R-Tx.), who will discuss the labor market on Fox.

The debate over how to create jobs reached a new intensity this week, following the announcement that unemployment fell from 10.2 percent in October to 10 percent in November.

Ultimately, those numbers have invigorated Democrats, who remain committed to introducing a "job stimulus" bill in the near future. Republicans, however, have contended that effort could add to the deficit and worsen the country's economic situation -- a signal another partisan showdown over economic recovery could be brewing.

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