Russ Feingold, Obama Election Co-Chair: Against the Indefinite Occupation of Afghanistan

democracynow.org - One of the newly named co-chairs of President Obama's re-election campaign is openly criticizing the President's foreign policy in Afghanistan

Russ Feingold: I was the first member of the Senate to call for a timeline to get us out of Afghanistan. Even before Obama was elected, when it was between McCain and Obama, I said, "Why are we talking about a surge? It doesn’t make sense to be there anymore." Obviously, not only was bin Laden not in Afghanistan, he wasn’t even in Waziristan. He was in a suburb of Islamabad. And so, the notion of sending our troops over there, spending billions and billions of dollars in Afghanistan, makes no sense. And I think it was a mistake for the President to do the surge, and I think he’s beginning to realize we need to get out of there.
This is what I call in my book "the game of Risk approach," that somehow you handle these problems by invading a country, and then you have to leave your troops there basically forever. That’s the rule in the game. If you want to attack another country, you’ve got to keep your troops here. This is the foolishness that we fell into. And we need to have a much more non-militaristic, much more intelligent approach to those who want to do us harm.

excerpt from rush transcript: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/2/23/sen_russ_feingold_new_obama_election