View Single Post
Old 12-06-2009, 06:48 PM   #28 (permalink)
Slims
Eccentric insomniac
 
Slims's Avatar
 
Location: North Carolina
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/wo.../07afghan.html

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: December 6, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration sent a forceful public message Sunday that American military forces could remain in Afghanistan for a long time, seeking to blunt criticism that President Obama had sent the wrong signal in his war-strategy speech last week by projecting July 2011 as the start of a withdrawal.

In a flurry of coordinated television interviews by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other top administration officials, they said that any troop pullout beginning in July 2011 would be slow and that the Americans would only then be starting to transfer security responsibilities to Afghan forces under Mr. Obama’s new plan.

The television appearances by the senior members of Mr. Obama’s war council appeared to be part of a focused and determined effort to ease concerns about the president’s emphasis on setting a date for reducing America’s presence in Afghanistan after more than eight years of war.

“We have strategic interests in South Asia that should not be measured in terms of finite times,” said Gen. James L. Jones, the president’s national security adviser, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’re going to be in the region for a long time.”

Echoing General Jones, Mr. Gates played down the significance of the July 2011 target date and indicated that the United States might withdraw only a small number of troops at that time.

“There isn’t a deadline,” Mr. Gates said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “What we have is a specific date on which we will begin transferring responsibility for security district by district, province by province in Afghanistan, to the Afghans.”

In an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Gates said that under the plan, there would be 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan in July 2011, and “some handful, or some small number, or whatever the conditions permit, will begin to withdraw at that time.”

In his prime-time address at West Point on Tuesday, Mr. Obama said that even as he planned to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, his administration would “begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.”

The president’s speech set off alarms inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, as some officials worried about an American pullout before Afghan troops were ready to fight the Taliban on their own. It also set off a barrage of criticism from Republicans that the president was setting an arbitrary withdrawal date that would embolden Taliban insurgents to wait the Americans out.

On Sunday, the administration’s top civilian and military officials marched in lockstep in insisting that July 2011 was just the beginning, not the end, of a lengthy process. That date, General Jones said, is a “ramp” rather than a “cliff.”

As they seek to explain the new war strategy, administration officials face the task of calibrating the message about America’s commitments in Afghanistan to different audiences, foreign and domestic, each of whom wants to hear different things.

During weeks of wrenching internal debate, administration officials decided on the July 2011 benchmark in part to send a signal to Afghanistan’s government that the clock was ticking for Afghan troops to take a greater role against the Taliban. The message was intended equally for domestic consumption: assuring skeptical Democratic lawmakers and many Americans that America’s military presence in Afghanistan was not open-ended.

But the White House has also faced sharp criticism from Republicans, who said it made little military sense to set a withdrawal date 18 months in the future because it handed the American strategy to the enemy.

The announcement of the July 2011 benchmark was also greeted with concern during private conversations among American officials and their counterparts in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and administration officials in recent days have acknowledged that they were surprised by the intensity of the anxiety among Afghan and Pakistani officials that the United States would beat a hasty retreat from the region.

In public statements since the White House strategy was announced, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has pledged to work with the United States to bolster Afghan forces. But he asked for patience and indicated that his country’s military might not be ready in 18 months to take responsibility from American troops.

During his recent inaugural address, Mr. Karzai said that Afghan forces would be able to take charge of securing Afghan cities within three years, and could take responsibility for the rest of the country within five years.

So officials attempt a balancing act as they sell the Afghan strategy. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of United States Central Command, said Sunday that there was a natural “tension” between a message of resolve and the message of impatience after eight years of war. But he said the twin messages were not mutually exclusive.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” General Petraeus said that the Obama administration was not planning a “rush to the exits” in Afghanistan, and that depending on the security conditions there could be tens of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan for several years.

Both Mr. Gates and General Petraeus also have the job of easing concerns among military commanders about rigid withdrawal timetables. Mr. Gates has said in public that he opposed firm timelines, and during the administration’s Afghanistan strategy review he insisted that any decisions about troop withdrawals be based on security conditions inside the country.

Administration officials on Sunday were also asked about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Gates said it had been “years” since the United States had had reliable intelligence about Mr. bin Laden, but he said it was still the assumption of American intelligence agencies that he was hiding in North Waziristan, in Pakistan. General Jones said that Mr. bin Laden was believed to cross the border into Afghanistan occasionally, but he gave no further details.










Personally I think the plan is solid, but the timetable is extremely optimistic and we will end up having to extend it. In many of the provinces in Afghanistan the Police won't go out and about without a Coalition unit out with them...they will get exterminated. To assume that in two years the threat will have changed is naive, and no matter how well we are able to train the Afghan Government, you can't make them bulletproof.
__________________
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence

Last edited by Slims; 12-06-2009 at 06:51 PM..
Slims is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360