WASHINGTON -- Again last Saturday, U.S. Rep. Walter Jones slipped into his office for the penance he has served nearly each weekend since 2005.
Jones, a Republican representing one of the nation's most military-heavy congressional districts, signed two dozen letters of condolences. He has signed 9,505 in all, not only for the deceased Marines from Camp Lejeune in his district, but for the fallen throughout the country who died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Jones may be one of the anti-war crowd's unlikeliest voices. A conservative and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, he is a strong supporter of the military and voted to authorize force in Iraq in 2002.
But in 2005, Jones came out against the war, saying he was guided largely by his faith. He pledged then to write his weekly letters and started his crusade to get U.S. troops out of Iraq and, now that the war in Iraq is winding down, out of Afghanistan. Since then he has been shunned by fellow Republicans and targeted in GOP primaries. But still he goes on.
On Thursday he was at it again. For two hours, 30 members debated a resolution co-sponsored by Jones that would invoke the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and would require President Barack Obama to leave Afghanistan entirely by the end of this year.
The resolution, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat, has been debated and soundly defeated in past Congresses. Last year, it failed 65-356.
The latest debate comes in the same week that Gen. David Petraeus updates Congress on progress in the conflict, and as a new Washington Post poll shows that two-thirds of Americans want to bring the troops home before the anticipated end date of 2014.
At the same time, Congress remains embroiled in a larger debate about how to cut the federal budget, and so Jones hoped that Thursday, he could bring a few fiscal conservatives to his way of thinking. The war in Afghanistan costs $100 billion a year, the same amount GOP leadership pledged to remove from the current fiscal year budget.
He thinks fiscal conservatives are just beginning to see it's going to be costly to stay through 2014, the date anticipated by Pentagon leaders.
"If you can't explain to a soldier or a Marine, 'What is the endpoint? What is the definition of victory?' then you're in a black hole," Jones said in an interview. "And you're never going to have that."
Al-Qaida is gone, he said, with just a couple of dozen members left in the country. "If that was our goal, that's victory. They're gone."
Making his case
Obama has promised to begin removing troops in July, but Petraeus would not say this week how many he would recommend to pull out. He has said that it will be 2014 before the country is likely to be stabilized.
On Wednesday, Jones told Petraeus he thought troops would be there years longer.
The vote on the War Powers resolution would come Thursday afternoon. Jones hoped for 15, maybe 20, Republican supporters.
"It doesn't sound like a lot of people," he said beforehand, "but when we had three or four - just think of the percentage increase."
Just after 10 a.m. Thursday, Jones gathered up three posters - of a happy family portrait, of a military casket, of a small boy clutching a folded flag - and headed to the House floor.
Just before noon, Jones went to the well of the chamber and held his three posters, one by one, over his head.
He talked of the 6-year-old boy, named Tyler, holding the flag at his father's funeral in Ohio. He showed a casket being carried off a military plane at Dover Air Force Base. And he held up a photo of Marine Sgt. Thomas Bagosy, his wife, Katie, and their young son. Sgt. Bagosy died in May at Camp Lejeune.
"He pulls his car over in the middle of the day, and he puts his gun to his head and he shoots himself," Jones said. "How many more?"
As Jones spoke, Katie Bagosy was in South Carolina.
"I don't think anything's getting accomplished over there," she said in a phone interview. "We're losing more lives, and they're coming back messed up. I don't see any positive results on their end, Afghanistan, or our end, in America."
Back on the House floor, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, strongly opposed the resolution.
"To leave Afghanistan before we finish the job is to pave the way for the next 9/11," warned Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Some experts say that the United States has strong national security interests in ensuring a sustainable government there.
Daniel Serwer, a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said Afghanistan runs the risk of seeing al-Qaida moving back into its borders for cover. That would put neighboring Pakistan - and its nuclear arsenal - at risk as well.
That was the same message from Petraeus during hours of testimony this week.
"I can understand the frustration," Petraeus said Tuesday. "We have been at this for 10 years. We have spent an enormous amount of money. We have sustained very tough losses and difficult, life-changing wounds."
'In a sea of Republicans'
Democrats who supported Thursday's resolution are numerous. Kucinich brought up a dozen members in support of it. Many praised Jones as a leader across the aisle.
Standing alongside Jones on the GOP side were just a few: U.S. Reps. Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee, Ron Paul of Texas, Dana Rohrabacher of California and Jason Chaffetz of Utah.
Chaffetz didn't buy the financial argument or believe he should be guided by polls, but his voice caught as he listed the service members from his district who have been killed in Afghanistan.
"This is an emotional issue," he said later. "[Jones] and I have found real common ground in a sea of Republicans who think a different way."
The bells rang just before 3 p.m. throughout the Capitol, calling lawmakers to the House floor for votes. They scrambled into the chamber.
House Concurrent Resolution 28 failed, 93-321.
Eight Republicans voted yes.
"You know, it's an uphill climb," Jones said afterward.
But he has more ideas planned to get out of Afghanistan; he has co-sponsored another bill on the conflict and is in talks on yet another. Jones said he anticipates maybe four more House floor votes on the issue this year.
"This isn't the end of it," Jones said.
