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Obama Opts for Faster Afghan Pullout
Of course he does. He doesn't dare alienate the Nutroots on this one.
Update: rolled over to Thursday. |
WASHINGTON -- President Obama plans to announce Wednesday evening that he will order the withdrawal of 10,000 American troops from Afghanistan this year, and another 20,000 troops, the remainder of the 2009 "surge," by the end of next summer, according to administration officials and diplomats briefed on the decision. These troop reductions are both deeper and faster than the recommendations made by Mr. Obama's military commanders, and they reflect mounting political and economic pressures at home, as the president faces relentless budget pressures and an increasingly restive Congress and American public.
| The mounting economic pressure has nothing to do with it: we've afforded Afghanistan all along, and in the context of a $1.7 trillion deficit this year Afghanistan is small potatoes. Political pressure, yes. |
The president is scheduled to speak about the Afghanistan war from the White House at 8 p.m. Eastern time.
| He does like the limelight, doesn't he. |
Mr. Obama's decision is a victory for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has long argued for curtailing the American military engagement in Afghanistan.
| Joe also argued that Iraq should be chopped into three. If you do the opposite of what Slow Joe recommended you'll usually be right. |
But it is a setback for his top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who helped write the Army's field book on counterinsurgency policy, and who is returning to Washington to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
| Wonder if he goes to CIA now that the Democrats have trashed him publicly, yet again. Imagine the heartburn Axelrod and Jarrett will have if he just resigns his commission and comes home. |
Two administration officials said General Petraeus did not endorse the decision, though both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is retiring, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reluctantly accepted it.
| If even Hilde sees that this is a mistake... |
General Petraeus had recommended limiting initial withdrawals and leaving in place as many combat forces for as long as possible, to hold on to fragile gains made in recent combat.
| To borrow from Michael Yon, we haven't yet finished stomping the monkey. |
In announcing the withdrawals, which represent about 30 percent of current American troop strength in the country, Mr. Obama will fulfill a pledge he made in December 2009. At that time, he coupled the deployment of 30,000 additional troops with a promise to begin winding down America's engagement by the middle of this year. Still, the speed and scope of this plan is striking.
| Again, he has to move fast or else the Nutroots will start to consider a primary challenge. Bambi can't afford the Left to think that he has feet of clay. |
It amounts to a broad rethinking of the military's troop-intensive counterinsurgency strategy that Mr. Obama adopted 18 months ago after a painstaking review. Officials have indicated that the administration now plans to place more emphasis on focused counterterrorism operations of the kind that killed Osama bin Laden -- which the president is expected to cite as Exhibit A for a substantial American drawdown.
| Yet that wasn't working before we started the current operation. It was what we were doing during the Bush administration; but George had the excuse that we were so involved with Iraq that we didn't have the people to spare for Afghanistan. Clear, hold and build requires sufficient troops to do the holding, or else you never get to build. |
About 68,000 American troops would be left in Afghanistan after the withdrawals, roughly twice the number who were there when Mr. Obama took office.
Administration officials have said an intense campaign of drone strikes and other covert operations in Pakistan had crippled Al Qaeda's original network in the region, leaving its leaders either dead or pinned down in the rugged region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Of 30 top Al Qaeda leaders indentified by American intelligence, 20 have been killed in the last year and a half, the officials said.
All true as far as it goes, and we at Rantburg applaud the drone-zaps. But while rooting out and killing al-Qaeda terrorists is important, doing that alone doesn't fix the problem in Afghanistan.
To wit: Afghanistan isn't strong enough to fight and win against the Taliban/ISI. They may never be, but pulling the troops now allows the Taliban/ISI to win for sure. Clear, hold and build would at least allow the non-Pashtun parts of Afghanistan to build to the point that they at least could stand up successfully against the Taliban/ISI. But they need more time, and it looks like Bambi is pulling the rug from under them. |
But the withdrawal of the entire surge force by the end of next summer -- before the fighting season ends in Afghanistan --
| and before the fall election, which is in the end what is driving this decision, no matter what gloss the White House puts on it |
would change the way the United States wages war in Afghanistan. Analysts said the administration may have concluded that it can no longer achieve its grandest ambitions for the nearly-decade-long military campaign in Afghanistan.
In 2009, speaking to an audience at the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., Mr. Obama laid out a broad range of goals that included defeating Al Qaeda and stopping the Taliban, but also giving Afghanistan the breathing space to build up its own security forces and a functioning government.
| A noble goal, and one that would re-pay us for decades. |
Even as the president eschewed the grand nation-building of the Bush administration, he authorized a "civilian surge" of diplomats and aid workers to help Afghans build local ministries and farmers to switch to healthier crops.
The decision also reflects the rapidly changing domestic political landscape. Mr. Obama faces a sagging economy, intense budget pressures and a war-weary Congress and public as he looks ahead to his reelection campaign.
| It's not that we're war-weary, we are -- much like the country was in the fall of 2006 -- not being well informed of what's happening and what successes we're having. With Iraq it was clear that the 2004-05 strategy wasn't working. In Afghanistan the American people simply don't get that the Petreaus strategy is working and that it takes time. If Bambi cared about this he would have used his limelight at a number of points this year to educate the public. |
Leading Republican hopefuls like Mitt Romney are demanding a swifter withdrawal from Afghanistan, while Democrats on Capitol Hill and elsewhere complain that the cost of the war -- $120 billion this year alone -- is siphoning money away from efforts to build roads and create jobs in the United States.
"From a fiscal standpoint, we're spending too much money on Iraq and Afghanistan," a senior administration official said. "There's a belief from a fiscal standpoint that this is cannibalizing too much of our spending."
| It's not like you're going to use the money to reduce the deficit... |
Posted by: Steve White 2011-06-23 |
