With the open secret that President Obama will escalate in Afghanistan with anywhere between 25,000 and 34,000 additional troops, foes of the policy are zeroing in on the cost of the operation, adding that to their normal arguments against the war.

Nancy Pelosi articulated this on a conference call yesterday, saying that, in a time of mass joblessness and economic stress, “I think we have to look at that war with a green eyeshade on… there is unrest in our caucus about: Can we afford this war?” She said that the war should be held to the same standard as everything else in the federal budget, with the need to account for its cost.

Dennis Kucinich, a fierce critic of Afghanistan policy, also brought up the cost issue, and in fact foregrounded it during an appearance yesterday on MSNBC’s Hardball. While making arguments about the limits of US power and how our presence in Afghanistan fuels the insurgency, Kucinich repeatedly returned to bread-and-butter issues of cost and unemployment:

And when the President’s talking about ‘finish the job,’ the President should be aware that the job that people are worried about in the United States, is getting people back to work. We have 15 million people out of work. Our priorities are skewed here, we’ve got things to take care of at home. Why in the world are we escalating in Afghanistan? [...]

We’ve gotta get out of there, we can’t afford it, we cannot risk what’s happening, with the destruction of our economy. Because frankly Chris, we can’t afford this war. How are we going to pay for it. We’re being told we don’t have money to put the highway program on an accelerated course. We’re being told that we have to accept cutbacks in order to have health care for all Americans. What are we doing in this country? We’ve gotta start focusing on things that matter to people here. And what matters to people in this country is not expanding a war in Afghanistan [...]

I’m hopeful that they’ll listen to what people are saying back home. Because back home, people are, where I’m from in Cleveland, they’re worried about jobs, they’re worried about saving their homes, they’re worried about their retirement security, their investments, they’re worried about their pensions, they’re worried about whether they’re going to have health care or not. They’re not, this war at a point starts to seem like a grand distraction, almost an excess. And we have to ask if our leaders are really in touch with the people, when there’s a separation between a finance economy and a real economy, between Wall Street and Main Street, and meanwhile we’re talking about a war, expanding it? Are you kidding me?

This comes on the heels of top Democrats, led by Rep. Dave Obey (D-WI), inserting cost into the debate by calling for a war surtax to pay for the escalation, which the Office of Management and Budget has determined would cost up to $1 million dollars per additional troop. This is not the first time that Obey has forced his political opponents to face up to the real costs of their actions:

There’s no doubt in my mind that Obey is serious about proposing some type of Afghanistan tax and forcing House Republicans to deal with some very difficult political issues in the process.

In fact, I watched in awe as Obey used this same strategy about 30 years ago when I was a congressional staffer working for a member of the House Budget Committee.

The issue at the time was a balanced budget and the Republican demand that the Democratic majority agree to policy changes that would make it happen. They said they would vote against the budget unless it was balanced.

In response, Obey proposed a balanced budget and forced his colleagues to debate and vote on it. I don’t remember all the details of what he proposed, but I’m pretty sure it included the specific program-by-program, across-the-board spending cuts needed to eliminate the deficit.

I have a vivid memory of Obey opening the debate on his balanced budget plan by saying that he was proposing it not because he wanted it to pass but rather because he didn’t. He wanted to call everyone’s bluff. And he did. The Obey plan got only a handful of votes — including only one or two Republicans — and was overwhelmingly defeated.

The war surtax, known as The Share Our Sacrifice Act of 2010, is part of a strategy, defensible on its own but designed to put people in a box, to make them live up to their past rhetoric. The fact that Joe Biden and John Kerry supported a war surtax back in 2003 to pay for a supplemental war bill in Iraq makes it harder for them to argue against it now. Republicans inclined to support escalation but petrified of taxes will not like to get their vote recorded on this. Obey is walking the entire Congress into a trap – and there could be no better time to use cost as an antiwar strategy than this tricky post-recessionary period.

There are plenty of reasons not to escalate in Afghanistan, the corrupt government, the perception of occupation, the lack of national security interest, an Afghan security force with an incredibly high turnover rate, and on and on. The financial cost of the war sits among those reasons, but on Capitol Hill, it has become prominent because sadly, Congress often cares more about dollar signs than the human cost of war.

UPDATE: Robert Gibbs confirmed today that the President will address the nation about Afghanistan policy, from West Point Military Academy, at 8pm next Tuesday night, Dec. 1.