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Updated Wednesday, July 28, 2010 11:07 am TWN, By Sue Pleming, Reuters

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WikiLeaks fuels negative war debate

Fighting in the Kandahar region — the Taliban's stronghold — has been tougher than expected, casualties are on the rise and the White House is still reeling from the fallout from the firing of war commander General Stanley McChrystal last month.

U.S. lawmakers also have been raising more questions about the war effort and its goals. Obama is under pressure to show progress in time for a planned policy review in December that will look at whether additional troops have made a difference.

This sour mood has not been helped by comments from experts such as Richard Haass, a former State Department official and current Council on Foreign Relations president who suggested last week that the war is not worthwhile.

'Stirings of Opposition'

“This administration has not yet clarified its core goals and the end state. Many Americans, particularly congressmen, are asking: how does this end?” said Brian Katulis with the Center for American Progress think tank.

“You are seeing some stirrings of opposition, but as yet I don't see the architecture shaping up for a concerted anti-war effort,” Katulis said.

The White House is also sensitive ahead of the November U.S. congressional elections in which Obama's fellow Democrats are trying to prevent the opposition Republicans from regaining control of Congress.

So far, the Afghanistan war has drawn little interest on the campaign trail, with most of the focus on U.S. unemployment and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Katulis and others said it was unlikely that fallout from the WikiLeaks disclosures will provoke the same anti-war mood that undercut President George W. Bush's Republican Party in 2006 congressional elections when the Iraq war was going very badly.

But analysts suggested that Obama talk more often about his reasons for being in Afghanistan and seek to reassure Americans that the war is worthwhile, especially during an economic downturn.

“The president has chosen to speak very rarely about this issue. As it gets more contentious, he will have to come out and articulate why he is doing what he does,” Riedel said.

“It remains a mystery to me why the White House does not have a better strategy of articulating what our goals and objectives are.

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