Rep. Mike Honda (D-San Jose), who represents California’s 15th Congressional District, has gotten out in front on the effort to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Declaring with colleagues that “funding of a war that costs over $2 billion a week [is] unsustainable,” Honda, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s Taskforce on Peace and Security, went public with a series of statements following Gen. David Petraeus’s Wednesday testimony to the House Armed Services Committee.

In his testimony, the general stated, “I am still formulating the options.” Petraeus, who is the top American commander in Afghanistan, declined to provide numbers for an anticipated summer troop reduction.

Honda was a signatory to a statement by the House’s “Out of Afghanistan Caucus,”  which said, in part, “As we approach the planned drawdown of military forces beginning in July 2011, it is clear that large majorities of the American people have endorsed a new way forward in Afghanistan.”

“According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans now say the war is no longer worth fighting and three-quarters of Americans believe that the President should withdraw a ’substantial number‘ of combat troops this summer,” the statement continued. In addition to Honda, the group includes John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), Ron Paul (R-TX), Pete “Fortney” Stark (D-Alameda County) and Lynn Woolsey (D-Santa Rosa). 

The following column by was first published by Politico. It appeared on the front page of the Huffington Post as well yesterday, and received play on the Wall Street Journal, NPR and USA Today web sites, among others.

“Today, we will spend roughly $325 million fighting in Afghanistan. Twenty million dollars was spent just during Gen. David Petraeus’s testimony to Congress this morning.

“This month, we are on track to spend more than $10 billion in Afghanistan. This year, we expect to spend $120 billion fighting the war there.

“And for what?

“In the last year, we had the highest number of U.S. casualties, the biggest single-year spike in insurgent attacks, the most devastating of Afghan civilian deaths (an air strike on nine kids gathering wood), an Afghan majority that says their basic security and basic services have worsened substantially and majority populations in the United States and Afghanistan that want the troops to leave.

“Ten years into this war, what do we have to show it? Every two or three years, the Pentagon comes up with a new strategy to justify another round of funding and forces.

“Their latest strategy arms local villagers with cash and weapons. We are calling it the “Afghan Local Police.” But it’s nothing more than a U.S. commander handing out guns and cash at his or her discretion. We’re rolling this out nationally there, with potentially disastrous consequences—pitting tribe against tribe and filling the coffers of some former, existing and future warlords with more ways to fight each other and us.

“It is a recipe for disaster, not success.

“Is it a surprise, then, to learn that psychological operations were used on U.S. senators during their visits to Afghanistan, as revealed by Rolling Stone magazine? Was the Pentagon’s war strategy so ineffectual that a propaganda war was required?

”The Defense Department is likely to counter by saying that we are finally finding the right strategy, we finally have the right general in charge and we finally have more troops on the ground. Petraeus is likely to suggest that now is the critical moment where we can tip the balance in our favor; that we are winning the locals hearts and minds, and we need time to give the latest strategy a chance to work.

“Others in Washington chime in with commitments to keep troops in Afghanistan long after 2014.My Republican colleagues on the Senate side are likely to offer plans for permanent bases.

“Amid this absolute ambiguity of goals and objectives, there is remarkably little oversight and evaluation of war strategy and war spending that justifies any of this. This is particularly appalling at a time when the Republicans are cutting every possibly dollar of domestic spending and killing critical education, health care and workforce programs that cost pennies compared to the billions wasted in Afghanistan. This double standard is indefensible.

“The way forward, for those who are serious about tackling U.S. security threats—by actors who are increasingly agile, mobile and amorphous—must include some reflection of best practices (what’s working, what’s not) and some recognition of limited financial and human resources.

“In doing so, we must come to realize that a heavy military, air and navy footprint is ineffective in dealing with guerrilla-like warfare and financially unsustainable if we want address threats in more than two countries—which is likely, given the unrest in North Africa and the Middle East.

“We must come to realize, as the Rand Corporation has pointed out that policing, intelligence and negotiations—all critically underfunded and underdeveloped in Afghanistan—is what works best in undermining and dismantling threats of this nature. But this is just the sort of move discouraged by the defense industry—which prefers big-ticket military equipment, like the Joint Strike Fighter.

“We must recognize that to protect vulnerable populations from further instability we should address their basic human needs. The fact that Iraqis are protesting the lack of basic services, corrupt political leadership and non-inclusive government, shows how little priority we gave to this in the last eight years.

“Adm. Mike Mullen, chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was right: The biggest threat to our national security is our debt. Now if the Pentagon would just be willing to do something about it, we might actually see a different defense strategy abroad and a different defense budget here at home.