washington post
By David A. Fahrenthold, Published: June 24
The House on Friday voted to reject President Obama’s introduction of U.S. forces into the conflict in Libya, defeating a resolution that would have officially authorized that operation.
But the House then voted own an even more aggressive rebuke of Obama: a proposal to strip away out part of the funding for the Libyan campaign. The House’s surprising mixed decision could ease congressional pressure on Obama, at least for now.
The two votes highlighted the way that a decade of war has scrambled the politics of foreign policy, and left both parties deeply divided over the Libyan conflict and American warmaking in general.
Even after weeks of debate, on Friday an angry House could not speak with a certain voice.
“I think we sent a message to the president on the first vote,” said House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who is tasked with counting his party’s votes. He was downplaying the defeat of the second bill. “The first vote is the vote that matters the most at sending the message today.”
The Obama administration, by contrast, saw a lot to like in the second vote.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was “gratified that the House decisively rejected” the bill to cut funds. “We need to stand together across party lines and across both branches of government with the Libyan people and with our friends and allies and against Gadhafi,” Clinton said.
The bill to authorize the limited use of force in Libyan was defeated by a vote of 123 to 295. The other bill would have barred money going to offensive operations drone strikes or bombing runs.
But it would have still allowed U.S. forces to perform support duties for the NATO-led operation, like reconnaissance, aerial refueling and search and rescue. It was defeated by a vote of 180 to 238. The “no” votes included 89 Republicans, despite the bill’s endorsement by House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).
The next act in this drama will come next week, when a Senate committee considers its own bill to authorize the Libyan campaign--despite Obama’s assertion that he doesn’t need it.
Then, when the House resumes its session in July, legislators could consider a new measure to cut off all funds for the Libyan operation. That bill could attract considerable attention: several legislators said Friday that they had voted “no” on the bill to strip some funding only because it didn’t go far enough.
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) said that the rejected bill would still have allowed U.S. forces to play a major role in the operation.
“Let’s not enter a war through the back door,” he said on the House floor, “when we’ve already decided not to enter it through the front.”
But, in the meantime, Obama will be free to continue the operation. Legal experts said they saw history repeating here: Congresses, no matter how mad, have traditionally been very leery of cutting funds for U.S. forces that are already in action.
“It shows Congress’s tendency towards indecision on these kinds of questions,” said Peter Spiro, a law professor at Temple University. “The White House will look at this as business as usual.”
At the root of this debate is a 1973 law, the War Powers Resolution. It says presidents must obtain congressional authorization after sending U.S. forces into hostilities abroad. Obama says the law doesn’t apply to what’s happening in Libya.
By his logic, the situation in Libya--with U.S. forces mainly in supporting roles, and Gaddafi’s forces so battered they can barely shoot back--does not amount to “hostilities.”
In doing so, Obama managed to bring a surprising degree of unity to a bitterly divided Congress. Republicans and Democrats were outraged together.
“It’s a sad irony that, at the same time that we’re committing our sons and daughters to an armed conflict [in the name of democracy], we are also, here at home, trampling on the fundamental separation of powers,” said Rep. Steven F. Lynch (D-Mass.). “A lawful premise for this Libyan operation does not exist.”
But what to do about it? This question revealed a Congress that has been fractured by a weary decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The over Libya debate showed that some Republicans and Democrats were fixated on moral questions--what is the American responsibility to defend democracy? Others were preoccupied with fiscal ones. How should the national debt affect a foreign policy built on the idea of America “bearing any burden” for freedom?
On Friday, those supporting Obama included liberal stalwarts like Rep. James P. Moran (D-Va.), who said “to cut off funding for the NATO operation is to side with Gaddafi against those who are fighting for the values that define us.”
And they also included Republicans like Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who also worried about the message the House would send by cutting funds.
“The world is watching our actions today. The world is asking, what are we going to do?” Kinzinger said. “Now, will we today pull the rug out from under [Libyan rebels], simply because we have a dispute between the legislative and the executive branch?”
On the other side of the debate, a group of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans urged the House to confront Obama as sharply as it could. Otherwise, they said, Congress would be sidelined from decisions about very costly military operations.
Boehner (R-Ohio) said that the bill to cut funds, authored by Rep. Thomas J. Rooney (R-Fla.), would have sent a stern message to Obama--without actually removing U.S. troops from their supporting role in Libya.
“It would not undermine our NATO partners,” Boehner said. “It would, however, prevent the president from carrying out any further hostilities without Congress’s approval . . . I believe this is a responsible approach.”
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), on the far side of the ideological spectrum from Boehner, said he felt America needed to make a statement that it could not be everywhere, all the time, to defend democracy and fight dictators.
“I believe it is a good thing to get rid of Gaddafi,” Frank said. “But does America have to do everything?”
Showing posts with label afpak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label afpak. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Military brass cite risks in Obama's Afghan drawdown
Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: June 23, 2011 08:34:02 PM
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama rejected the U.S military's recommended timeline for pulling 33,000 U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, opting for a faster, more "aggressive" drawdown of "greater risk," the top U.S. military officer and the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Thursday.
While both Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, said they supported Obama's plan, their unusually blunt public comments revealed the fierce debate within the administration and among lawmakers of both parties over Obama's decision to withdraw the 33,000 troops by the end of next summer.
Some Republicans warned that Obama's plan would endanger hard-fought gains against the Taliban-led insurgency, while some joined Democrats in complaining that the pace of the drawdown, which begins with a 10,000-troop reduction this year, is too slow.
Obama denied during a visit to troops at Fort Drum, N.Y., that he was reducing forces "precipitously."
Speaking to soldiers and officers of the 10th Mountain Division, one of the most heavily deployed Army contingents in the nearly decade-long conflict, Obama said the drawdown would be made "in a steady way to make sure that all of the gains that all of you helped to bring about are going to be sustained."
The 33,000 troops were sent last year under a "surge" that Obama announced in a December 2009 war strategy speech in which he pledged to start withdrawing U.S. forces from the country's longest war next month. Their departure would still leave some 68,000 U.S. soldiers, most of whom would be gone by the end of 2014.
Mullen told the House Armed Services Committee that the pace and scale of the drawdown that Obama announced on Wednesday in a nationally televised address are "more aggressive and incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept."
Hours later, Petraeus echoed Mullen as he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee during his confirmation hearing be the new CIA director.
Obama decided "on a more aggressive formulation in terms of the timeline than what we had recommended," Petraeus replied to a question from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the panel's chairman.
He later elaborated, saying that "what that means, in, of course, soldier shorthand, commander shorthand, is . . . that we assess that there is a greater risk . . . to the accomplishment of the various objectives of the campaign plan. It doesn't mean they can't be achieved."
He said that he, Mullen and Marine Gen. James Mattis, the head of U.S. Central Command, recommended that the 33,000 troops, most of who deployed into Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan, remain until the end of 2012, he said.
Petraeus said he would return to Kabul on Friday to complete planning for the more rapid drawdown, including ensuring that there would be sufficient Afghan security forces to take over areas from which U.S. troops would be withdrawn.
Mullen and Petraeus separately stressed that Obama had to weigh other factors and viewpoints in making his decision — they declined to go into details — and both said they'd endorsed it.
"Only the president, in the end, can really determine the acceptable level of risk we must take. I believe he has done so," Mullen said. "Ultimately the decision has to be made and . . . ultimately I support it."
A U.S. defense official said that Obama's decision was a "compromise" brokered by retiring Defense Secretary Robert Gates between the military's recommendation and a proposal pushed by unnamed White House aides for all 33,000 troops to be out by next spring.
Vice President Joe Biden and some other administration officials reportedly pressed for a more rapid withdrawal, concerned about the strain of the war on the federal budget, the flagging domestic economy, growing popular opposition to the decade-old conflict and Obama's re-election prospects.
Pressure on Obama to disengage from Afghanistan also has risen significantly since U.S. Navy SEALs killed al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in a May 2 raid on his hideout near the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.
"I was hopeful that 33,000 could be more out this year," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan.
But some U.S. officials and commanders and other experts are deeply concerned that conditions in Afghanistan remain grave, with violence and casualties at record highs and Afghan security forces plagued by serious problems, including illiteracy and high desertion rates.
"Just when they are one year away from turning over a battered and broken enemy in both southern and eastern Afghanistan to our Afghan partners, the president has now decided to deny them the forces that our commanders believe they need to accomplish their objective," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., asserted in a Senate floor speech.
Moreover, experts note that the cooperation of Pakistan, where the leadership of the Taliban and allied groups are based, is essential in helping bring about negotiations on a political settlement to the war. But they also point out that relations are at an all-time low between the U.S. and Pakistan, which remains enraged and humiliated over being kept in the dark about the raid that killed bin Laden.
Even so, Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the administration thinks "a political solution" to the war "is possible."
She confirmed that U.S. officials have had "very preliminary outreach to members of the Taliban," which she said was "not a pleasant business." But, she added, insurgencies historically end through a combination of military pressure and political negotiations.
Clinton was apparently referring to at least three meetings that a senior U.S. diplomat has held with Tayyeb Agha, a former personal assistant to Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader who is believed to be living in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.
U.S. officials, however, have indicated that there has been no apparent progress toward convening negotiations on peace agreement, and serious questions remain about how much influence Agha still wields with Omar and his leadership council, known as the Quetta Shura.
"We're a long way from knowing what the realistic elements of such an agreement would be," Clinton acknowledged.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/06/23/v-print/116424/military-brass-cite-risks-in-obamas.html
last updated: June 23, 2011 08:34:02 PM
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama rejected the U.S military's recommended timeline for pulling 33,000 U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, opting for a faster, more "aggressive" drawdown of "greater risk," the top U.S. military officer and the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Thursday.
While both Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, said they supported Obama's plan, their unusually blunt public comments revealed the fierce debate within the administration and among lawmakers of both parties over Obama's decision to withdraw the 33,000 troops by the end of next summer.
Some Republicans warned that Obama's plan would endanger hard-fought gains against the Taliban-led insurgency, while some joined Democrats in complaining that the pace of the drawdown, which begins with a 10,000-troop reduction this year, is too slow.
Obama denied during a visit to troops at Fort Drum, N.Y., that he was reducing forces "precipitously."
Speaking to soldiers and officers of the 10th Mountain Division, one of the most heavily deployed Army contingents in the nearly decade-long conflict, Obama said the drawdown would be made "in a steady way to make sure that all of the gains that all of you helped to bring about are going to be sustained."
The 33,000 troops were sent last year under a "surge" that Obama announced in a December 2009 war strategy speech in which he pledged to start withdrawing U.S. forces from the country's longest war next month. Their departure would still leave some 68,000 U.S. soldiers, most of whom would be gone by the end of 2014.
Mullen told the House Armed Services Committee that the pace and scale of the drawdown that Obama announced on Wednesday in a nationally televised address are "more aggressive and incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept."
Hours later, Petraeus echoed Mullen as he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee during his confirmation hearing be the new CIA director.
Obama decided "on a more aggressive formulation in terms of the timeline than what we had recommended," Petraeus replied to a question from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the panel's chairman.
He later elaborated, saying that "what that means, in, of course, soldier shorthand, commander shorthand, is . . . that we assess that there is a greater risk . . . to the accomplishment of the various objectives of the campaign plan. It doesn't mean they can't be achieved."
He said that he, Mullen and Marine Gen. James Mattis, the head of U.S. Central Command, recommended that the 33,000 troops, most of who deployed into Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan, remain until the end of 2012, he said.
Petraeus said he would return to Kabul on Friday to complete planning for the more rapid drawdown, including ensuring that there would be sufficient Afghan security forces to take over areas from which U.S. troops would be withdrawn.
Mullen and Petraeus separately stressed that Obama had to weigh other factors and viewpoints in making his decision — they declined to go into details — and both said they'd endorsed it.
"Only the president, in the end, can really determine the acceptable level of risk we must take. I believe he has done so," Mullen said. "Ultimately the decision has to be made and . . . ultimately I support it."
A U.S. defense official said that Obama's decision was a "compromise" brokered by retiring Defense Secretary Robert Gates between the military's recommendation and a proposal pushed by unnamed White House aides for all 33,000 troops to be out by next spring.
Vice President Joe Biden and some other administration officials reportedly pressed for a more rapid withdrawal, concerned about the strain of the war on the federal budget, the flagging domestic economy, growing popular opposition to the decade-old conflict and Obama's re-election prospects.
Pressure on Obama to disengage from Afghanistan also has risen significantly since U.S. Navy SEALs killed al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in a May 2 raid on his hideout near the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.
"I was hopeful that 33,000 could be more out this year," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan.
But some U.S. officials and commanders and other experts are deeply concerned that conditions in Afghanistan remain grave, with violence and casualties at record highs and Afghan security forces plagued by serious problems, including illiteracy and high desertion rates.
"Just when they are one year away from turning over a battered and broken enemy in both southern and eastern Afghanistan to our Afghan partners, the president has now decided to deny them the forces that our commanders believe they need to accomplish their objective," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., asserted in a Senate floor speech.
Moreover, experts note that the cooperation of Pakistan, where the leadership of the Taliban and allied groups are based, is essential in helping bring about negotiations on a political settlement to the war. But they also point out that relations are at an all-time low between the U.S. and Pakistan, which remains enraged and humiliated over being kept in the dark about the raid that killed bin Laden.
Even so, Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the administration thinks "a political solution" to the war "is possible."
She confirmed that U.S. officials have had "very preliminary outreach to members of the Taliban," which she said was "not a pleasant business." But, she added, insurgencies historically end through a combination of military pressure and political negotiations.
Clinton was apparently referring to at least three meetings that a senior U.S. diplomat has held with Tayyeb Agha, a former personal assistant to Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader who is believed to be living in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.
U.S. officials, however, have indicated that there has been no apparent progress toward convening negotiations on peace agreement, and serious questions remain about how much influence Agha still wields with Omar and his leadership council, known as the Quetta Shura.
"We're a long way from knowing what the realistic elements of such an agreement would be," Clinton acknowledged.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/06/23/v-print/116424/military-brass-cite-risks-in-obamas.html
Obama Will Speed Pullout From War in Afghanistan
NYtimes
June 22, 2011
By MARK LANDLER and HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON — President Obama declared Wednesday that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion a substantial withdrawal of American troops in an acknowledgment of the shifting threat in the region and the fast-changing political and economic landscape in a war-weary America.
Asserting that the country that served as a base for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks no longer represented a terrorist threat to the United States, Mr. Obama declared that the “tide of war is receding.” And in a blunt recognition of domestic economic strains, he said, “America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.”
Mr. Obama announced plans to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year. The remaining 20,000 troops from the 2009 “surge” of forces would leave by next summer, amounting to about a third of the 100,000 troops now in the country. He said the drawdown would continue “at a steady pace” until the United States handed over security to the Afghan authorities in 2014.
The troop reductions, which were decided after a short but fierce internal debate, will be both deeper and faster than the recommendations made by Mr. Obama’s military commanders, and they will come as the president faces relentless budget pressures, an increasingly restive American public and a re-election campaign next year.
Only hours after Mr. Obama spoke, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said on Thursday that he would also begin drawing down the 4,000-strong French contingent in Afghanistan.
”Given the progress we have seen, France will begin a gradual withdrawal of reinforcement troops sent to Afghanistan, in a proportional manner and in a calendar comparable to the withdrawal of American reinforcements,” Mr. Sarkozy said in a statement issued by his office, Reuters reported.
Mr. Obama, speaking in businesslike tones during a 15-minute address from the East Room of the White House, talked of ending America’s longest war and of the painful lessons he thought could be taken from it. While justifying the nation’s decade-long commitment, he talked of “ending the war responsibly” and warned of the perils of overextending the military by sending large numbers of soldiers into combat. He acknowledged that huge challenges remained before an end to the conflict that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and 1,500 American lives.
The withdrawals would begin winding down the military’s counterinsurgency strategy, which Mr. Obama adopted 18 months ago. Administration officials indicated that they now planned to place more emphasis on focused clandestine counterterrorism operations of the kind that killed Osama bin Laden, which the president cited as Exhibit A in the case for a substantial American troop reduction.
“We are starting this drawdown from a position of strength,” Mr. Obama said. “Al Qaeda is under more pressure than at any time since 9/11.” He said that 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 border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Of 30 top Qaeda leaders identified by American intelligence, 20 have been killed in the last year and a half, administration officials said.
But the withdrawal of the entire surge force by the end of next summer will significantly change the way that the United States wages war in Afghanistan, analysts said, suggesting that the administration may have concluded it can no longer achieve its loftiest ambitions there.
Mr. Obama acknowledged as much in his remarks. “We will not try to make Afghanistan a perfect place,” he said. “We will not police its streets or patrol its mountains indefinitely. That is the responsibility of the Afghan government.”
Mr. Obama’s decision is a victory for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has long argued for curtailing the military operation in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama indicated a willingness to move toward more focused covert operations of the type that the United States is conducting in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. “When threatened, we must respond with force,” he said. “But when that force can be targeted, we need not deploy large armies overseas.”
The pace of the withdrawal is a setback for the president’s top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who has been named director of the Central Intelligence Agency. General Petraeus did not endorse the decision, said another official. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates argued publicly against a too-hasty withdrawal of troops, but he said in a statement on Wednesday that he supported Mr. Obama’s decision.
During the internal debate, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also expressed reservations about the scale of the reductions, officials said.
General Petraeus had recommended limiting withdrawals to 5,000 troops this year and another 5,000 over the winter.
He and other military commanders argued that the 18 months since Mr. Obama announced the troop increase did not allow for enough time for the Americans to consolidate the fragile gains that they had made in Helmand and other provinces.
But troops have succeeded in clearing many towns and cities of insurgents, and then keeping them safe so that markets were able to reopen and girls could go to school, for example.
Military officials say the withdrawal of American troops will impose limits on which areas of the country can be pacified. In particular, plans to pivot extra American troops from south and southwestern Afghanistan to volatile areas in the east, along the Pakistan border, will be curtailed or even canceled, officials said.
The effort to transfer responsibility for security to Afghan forces remains elusive because the Afghan troops are proving unprepared for the job. Corruption in the government of President Hamid Karzai continues to be rampant, sapping the confidence of many Afghans.
Still, the growing disenchantment in the United States with the war, particularly given the ballooning national debt, the country’s slow economic recovery and the whopping $120 billion price tag of the Afghan conflict this year alone, were all considerations weighed by the president. “Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war at a time of rising debt and hard economic times,” Mr. Obama said. “Now, we must invest in America’s greatest resource: our people.”
Republican presidential candidates including Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr. are demanding a swift withdrawal from Afghanistan, while Democrats complain that the cost of the war is siphoning money away from efforts to create jobs in the United States. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, called on Mr. Obama to speed the withdrawal. “If we’re going to leave, we should leave,” he said in a statement. “The centralized system of government foisted upon the Afghan people is not going to hold after we leave. So let’s quit prolonging the agony and the inevitable.”
Highlighting the unusual political splits the war is causing, other Republicans criticized the president for pulling out too soon. Representative Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, suggested that Mr. Obama was playing politics with the troop reduction, saying, “The president is trying to find a political solution with a military component, when it needs to be the other way around.” He said the situation in Afghanistan was “very precarious,” and that the White House seemed to be panicking about the levels of violence.
Mr. Obama’s speech, delivered at dawn on Thursday, Kabul time, is expected to be the subject of a speech by Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, scheduled for later in the day. Senior figures in Mr. Karzai’s administration began signaling that they were comfortable with the withdrawal of 10,000 troops by year’s end.
Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said the Afghan National Army “has this capability and quantity to fill the gap of those places where the foreign troops withdraw and leave Afghanistan.”
“We are ready,” General Azimi said.
Muhammad Siddique Aziz, an adviser to Mr. Karzai on tribal affairs, said the withdrawal plan was acceptable, but he warned against a complete withdrawal of American troops before the Afghan government was strong enough to administer the country on its own. “I think they have to concentrate more on the Afghan government so when they leave, the government can stand up on its own,” Mr. Aziz said.
Thom Shanker and Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington, and Alissa J. Rubin from Kabul, Afghanistan.
June 22, 2011
By MARK LANDLER and HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON — President Obama declared Wednesday that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion a substantial withdrawal of American troops in an acknowledgment of the shifting threat in the region and the fast-changing political and economic landscape in a war-weary America.
Asserting that the country that served as a base for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks no longer represented a terrorist threat to the United States, Mr. Obama declared that the “tide of war is receding.” And in a blunt recognition of domestic economic strains, he said, “America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.”
Mr. Obama announced plans to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year. The remaining 20,000 troops from the 2009 “surge” of forces would leave by next summer, amounting to about a third of the 100,000 troops now in the country. He said the drawdown would continue “at a steady pace” until the United States handed over security to the Afghan authorities in 2014.
The troop reductions, which were decided after a short but fierce internal debate, will be both deeper and faster than the recommendations made by Mr. Obama’s military commanders, and they will come as the president faces relentless budget pressures, an increasingly restive American public and a re-election campaign next year.
Only hours after Mr. Obama spoke, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said on Thursday that he would also begin drawing down the 4,000-strong French contingent in Afghanistan.
”Given the progress we have seen, France will begin a gradual withdrawal of reinforcement troops sent to Afghanistan, in a proportional manner and in a calendar comparable to the withdrawal of American reinforcements,” Mr. Sarkozy said in a statement issued by his office, Reuters reported.
Mr. Obama, speaking in businesslike tones during a 15-minute address from the East Room of the White House, talked of ending America’s longest war and of the painful lessons he thought could be taken from it. While justifying the nation’s decade-long commitment, he talked of “ending the war responsibly” and warned of the perils of overextending the military by sending large numbers of soldiers into combat. He acknowledged that huge challenges remained before an end to the conflict that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and 1,500 American lives.
The withdrawals would begin winding down the military’s counterinsurgency strategy, which Mr. Obama adopted 18 months ago. Administration officials indicated that they now planned to place more emphasis on focused clandestine counterterrorism operations of the kind that killed Osama bin Laden, which the president cited as Exhibit A in the case for a substantial American troop reduction.
“We are starting this drawdown from a position of strength,” Mr. Obama said. “Al Qaeda is under more pressure than at any time since 9/11.” He said that 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 border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Of 30 top Qaeda leaders identified by American intelligence, 20 have been killed in the last year and a half, administration officials said.
But the withdrawal of the entire surge force by the end of next summer will significantly change the way that the United States wages war in Afghanistan, analysts said, suggesting that the administration may have concluded it can no longer achieve its loftiest ambitions there.
Mr. Obama acknowledged as much in his remarks. “We will not try to make Afghanistan a perfect place,” he said. “We will not police its streets or patrol its mountains indefinitely. That is the responsibility of the Afghan government.”
Mr. Obama’s decision is a victory for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has long argued for curtailing the military operation in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama indicated a willingness to move toward more focused covert operations of the type that the United States is conducting in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. “When threatened, we must respond with force,” he said. “But when that force can be targeted, we need not deploy large armies overseas.”
The pace of the withdrawal is a setback for the president’s top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who has been named director of the Central Intelligence Agency. General Petraeus did not endorse the decision, said another official. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates argued publicly against a too-hasty withdrawal of troops, but he said in a statement on Wednesday that he supported Mr. Obama’s decision.
During the internal debate, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also expressed reservations about the scale of the reductions, officials said.
General Petraeus had recommended limiting withdrawals to 5,000 troops this year and another 5,000 over the winter.
He and other military commanders argued that the 18 months since Mr. Obama announced the troop increase did not allow for enough time for the Americans to consolidate the fragile gains that they had made in Helmand and other provinces.
But troops have succeeded in clearing many towns and cities of insurgents, and then keeping them safe so that markets were able to reopen and girls could go to school, for example.
Military officials say the withdrawal of American troops will impose limits on which areas of the country can be pacified. In particular, plans to pivot extra American troops from south and southwestern Afghanistan to volatile areas in the east, along the Pakistan border, will be curtailed or even canceled, officials said.
The effort to transfer responsibility for security to Afghan forces remains elusive because the Afghan troops are proving unprepared for the job. Corruption in the government of President Hamid Karzai continues to be rampant, sapping the confidence of many Afghans.
Still, the growing disenchantment in the United States with the war, particularly given the ballooning national debt, the country’s slow economic recovery and the whopping $120 billion price tag of the Afghan conflict this year alone, were all considerations weighed by the president. “Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war at a time of rising debt and hard economic times,” Mr. Obama said. “Now, we must invest in America’s greatest resource: our people.”
Republican presidential candidates including Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr. are demanding a swift withdrawal from Afghanistan, while Democrats complain that the cost of the war is siphoning money away from efforts to create jobs in the United States. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, called on Mr. Obama to speed the withdrawal. “If we’re going to leave, we should leave,” he said in a statement. “The centralized system of government foisted upon the Afghan people is not going to hold after we leave. So let’s quit prolonging the agony and the inevitable.”
Highlighting the unusual political splits the war is causing, other Republicans criticized the president for pulling out too soon. Representative Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, suggested that Mr. Obama was playing politics with the troop reduction, saying, “The president is trying to find a political solution with a military component, when it needs to be the other way around.” He said the situation in Afghanistan was “very precarious,” and that the White House seemed to be panicking about the levels of violence.
Mr. Obama’s speech, delivered at dawn on Thursday, Kabul time, is expected to be the subject of a speech by Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, scheduled for later in the day. Senior figures in Mr. Karzai’s administration began signaling that they were comfortable with the withdrawal of 10,000 troops by year’s end.
Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said the Afghan National Army “has this capability and quantity to fill the gap of those places where the foreign troops withdraw and leave Afghanistan.”
“We are ready,” General Azimi said.
Muhammad Siddique Aziz, an adviser to Mr. Karzai on tribal affairs, said the withdrawal plan was acceptable, but he warned against a complete withdrawal of American troops before the Afghan government was strong enough to administer the country on its own. “I think they have to concentrate more on the Afghan government so when they leave, the government can stand up on its own,” Mr. Aziz said.
Thom Shanker and Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington, and Alissa J. Rubin from Kabul, Afghanistan.
With Afghan withdrawal, US focus turns to Pakistan
By SEBASTIAN ABBOT, Associated Press – 1 day ago
ISLAMABAD (AP) — As the U.S. looks ahead to its phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, even more attention is being directed toward Pakistan, where Obama administration officials say al-Qaida and its allies are still plotting attacks against the West.
They argue that threat has been effectively neutralized in Afghanistan, a key justification for President Barack Obama's announcement Wednesday that the U.S. will withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by next summer. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 because al-Qaida used it as the base to launch the 9/11 attacks.
Afghanistan could take on new significance for the U.S. as a base to launch unilateral strikes against militants inside neighboring Pakistan, an unstable nuclear-armed country that many analysts say is more strategically important than Afghanistan.
That future has become more likely as the relationship between Pakistan and the U.S. has deteriorated following the American raid that killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden not far from the Pakistani capital last month. The operation humiliated Pakistan, which cut back on counterterrorism cooperation with the U.S., a popular move in a country where anti-American sentiment is rife.
"We haven't seen a terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan for the past seven or eight years," said a senior administration official in a briefing given to reporters in Washington before Obama's speech. "The threat has come from Pakistan over the past half-dozen years or so, and longer."
One of the most high-profile attempted attacks against the U.S. homeland coming from Pakistan recently was by Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American who tried to set off a car bomb in New York's Times Square last year. He allegedly traveled to Pakistan's tribal areas and coordinated his attack with the Pakistani Taliban.
Since Pakistan effectively prohibits American troops inside the country and has been a reluctant ally in targeting militants the U.S. deems a threat, Washington has increasingly relied on covert CIA drone missile strikes to target al-Qaida and Taliban fighters holed up in Pakistan's mountainous border region with Afghanistan.
The U.S. refuses to acknowledge the drone program in Pakistan, but Obama alluded to its effectiveness in his speech, saying "together with the Pakistanis, we have taken out more than half of al-Qaida's leadership."
But the future of the drone program in Pakistan could be threatened by pervasive anti-American sentiment and anger over the U.S. commando raid that killed bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad on May 2.
The drones are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, and lawmakers took the opportunity to demand the government, which is widely believed to allow the drones to take off from bases inside the country, halt the program.
That demand found resonance with Pakistanis, nearly 70 percent of whom view the U.S. as an enemy despite billions of dollars in American aid, according to a recent poll conducted after the bin Laden raid by the Washington-based Pew Research Center. Only 12 percent of Pakistanis have a positive view of the U.S., according to the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
If Pakistan were to prevent drones from taking off from inside the country, the U.S. would have to launch them from Afghanistan, an act that would further increase tensions in the region, said Riffat Hussain, a defense professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.
"The staging area would then become Afghanistan, which would be totally anathema to Pakistan because then you are using another country's territory for attacks against Pakistan," Hussain said. "That will not only escalate tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but it means America has declared war on Pakistan."
The U.S. has also made it clear that if it obtains intelligence on future high-value terrorist targets inside Pakistan, it could stage special forces attacks from Afghanistan like the one that killed bin Laden.
The raid infuriated Pakistan because the government wasn't told of it beforehand. U.S. officials have said they kept the Pakistanis in the dark because they were worried that bin Laden would be tipped off by extremist sympathizers in the Pakistani military.
Pakistan responded to the raid by kicking out more than 100 U.S. troops training Pakistanis in counterterrorism operations and reduced the level of intelligence cooperation — something that could make it more difficult for the U.S. to target militants in the country.
One of the primary causes of U.S. frustration with Pakistan is its unwillingness to target Afghan Taliban militants and their allies in the country who launch cross-border attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan says its troops are stretched too thin by other operations, but many analysts believe the government is reluctant to attack groups with which it has historical ties and could be useful allies in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw.
Hussain, the defense professor, said the beginning of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and Obama's admission that the U.S. would support reconciliation talks with the Taliban made it even less likely that Pakistan would target militants deemed a threat by Washington.
"If you are talking to the Taliban, then you can't expect Pakistan to go after them," Hussain said.
Obama said he would press Pakistan to tackle the militant threat inside the country, but also implied the U.S. would not hesitate to go it alone when its security was endangered.
"For there should be no doubt that so long as I am president, the United States will never tolerate a safe-haven for those who aim to kill us," Obama said.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — As the U.S. looks ahead to its phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, even more attention is being directed toward Pakistan, where Obama administration officials say al-Qaida and its allies are still plotting attacks against the West.
They argue that threat has been effectively neutralized in Afghanistan, a key justification for President Barack Obama's announcement Wednesday that the U.S. will withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by next summer. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 because al-Qaida used it as the base to launch the 9/11 attacks.
Afghanistan could take on new significance for the U.S. as a base to launch unilateral strikes against militants inside neighboring Pakistan, an unstable nuclear-armed country that many analysts say is more strategically important than Afghanistan.
That future has become more likely as the relationship between Pakistan and the U.S. has deteriorated following the American raid that killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden not far from the Pakistani capital last month. The operation humiliated Pakistan, which cut back on counterterrorism cooperation with the U.S., a popular move in a country where anti-American sentiment is rife.
"We haven't seen a terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan for the past seven or eight years," said a senior administration official in a briefing given to reporters in Washington before Obama's speech. "The threat has come from Pakistan over the past half-dozen years or so, and longer."
One of the most high-profile attempted attacks against the U.S. homeland coming from Pakistan recently was by Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American who tried to set off a car bomb in New York's Times Square last year. He allegedly traveled to Pakistan's tribal areas and coordinated his attack with the Pakistani Taliban.
Since Pakistan effectively prohibits American troops inside the country and has been a reluctant ally in targeting militants the U.S. deems a threat, Washington has increasingly relied on covert CIA drone missile strikes to target al-Qaida and Taliban fighters holed up in Pakistan's mountainous border region with Afghanistan.
The U.S. refuses to acknowledge the drone program in Pakistan, but Obama alluded to its effectiveness in his speech, saying "together with the Pakistanis, we have taken out more than half of al-Qaida's leadership."
But the future of the drone program in Pakistan could be threatened by pervasive anti-American sentiment and anger over the U.S. commando raid that killed bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad on May 2.
The drones are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, and lawmakers took the opportunity to demand the government, which is widely believed to allow the drones to take off from bases inside the country, halt the program.
That demand found resonance with Pakistanis, nearly 70 percent of whom view the U.S. as an enemy despite billions of dollars in American aid, according to a recent poll conducted after the bin Laden raid by the Washington-based Pew Research Center. Only 12 percent of Pakistanis have a positive view of the U.S., according to the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
If Pakistan were to prevent drones from taking off from inside the country, the U.S. would have to launch them from Afghanistan, an act that would further increase tensions in the region, said Riffat Hussain, a defense professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.
"The staging area would then become Afghanistan, which would be totally anathema to Pakistan because then you are using another country's territory for attacks against Pakistan," Hussain said. "That will not only escalate tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but it means America has declared war on Pakistan."
The U.S. has also made it clear that if it obtains intelligence on future high-value terrorist targets inside Pakistan, it could stage special forces attacks from Afghanistan like the one that killed bin Laden.
The raid infuriated Pakistan because the government wasn't told of it beforehand. U.S. officials have said they kept the Pakistanis in the dark because they were worried that bin Laden would be tipped off by extremist sympathizers in the Pakistani military.
Pakistan responded to the raid by kicking out more than 100 U.S. troops training Pakistanis in counterterrorism operations and reduced the level of intelligence cooperation — something that could make it more difficult for the U.S. to target militants in the country.
One of the primary causes of U.S. frustration with Pakistan is its unwillingness to target Afghan Taliban militants and their allies in the country who launch cross-border attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan says its troops are stretched too thin by other operations, but many analysts believe the government is reluctant to attack groups with which it has historical ties and could be useful allies in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw.
Hussain, the defense professor, said the beginning of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and Obama's admission that the U.S. would support reconciliation talks with the Taliban made it even less likely that Pakistan would target militants deemed a threat by Washington.
"If you are talking to the Taliban, then you can't expect Pakistan to go after them," Hussain said.
Obama said he would press Pakistan to tackle the militant threat inside the country, but also implied the U.S. would not hesitate to go it alone when its security was endangered.
"For there should be no doubt that so long as I am president, the United States will never tolerate a safe-haven for those who aim to kill us," Obama said.
Mullen Sees Risk in Obama's Afghanistan Withdrawal
By MATTHEW LEE and ROBERT BURNS Associated Press
WASHINGTON June 23, 2011 (AP)
President Barack Obama delivers a televised address from the East Room of the White House in Washington on June 22, 2011 on his plan to withdraw U.S. troops in Afghanistan. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo)
The nation's top military officer and its top diplomat made clear Thursday that President Barack Obama rejected the advice of his generals in choosing a quicker path to winding down the war in Afghanistan.
The Obama troop withdrawal plan, widely interpreted as marking the beginning of the end of the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan, drew criticism from both sides of the political aisle on Capitol Hill. Some Republicans decried it as undercutting the military mission at a critical stage of the war, while many Democrats called it too timid.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., took a swipe at Obama from the Senate floor, questioning the timing of his troop pullout plan.
"Just when they are one year away from turning over a battered and broken enemy in both southern and eastern Afghanistan to our Afghan partners — the president has now decided to deny them the forces that our commanders believe they need to accomplish their objective," McCain said.
Obama announced Wednesday night that he will pull 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by December and another 23,000 by the end of next summer.
On Thursday, the president spoke at New York's Fort Drum to troops and commanders of the Army's 10th Mountain Division. Its headquarters staff is in southern Afghanistan and its soldiers have been among the most frequently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=13909935
WASHINGTON June 23, 2011 (AP)
President Barack Obama delivers a televised address from the East Room of the White House in Washington on June 22, 2011 on his plan to withdraw U.S. troops in Afghanistan. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo)
The nation's top military officer and its top diplomat made clear Thursday that President Barack Obama rejected the advice of his generals in choosing a quicker path to winding down the war in Afghanistan.
The Obama troop withdrawal plan, widely interpreted as marking the beginning of the end of the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan, drew criticism from both sides of the political aisle on Capitol Hill. Some Republicans decried it as undercutting the military mission at a critical stage of the war, while many Democrats called it too timid.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., took a swipe at Obama from the Senate floor, questioning the timing of his troop pullout plan.
"Just when they are one year away from turning over a battered and broken enemy in both southern and eastern Afghanistan to our Afghan partners — the president has now decided to deny them the forces that our commanders believe they need to accomplish their objective," McCain said.
Obama announced Wednesday night that he will pull 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by December and another 23,000 by the end of next summer.
On Thursday, the president spoke at New York's Fort Drum to troops and commanders of the Army's 10th Mountain Division. Its headquarters staff is in southern Afghanistan and its soldiers have been among the most frequently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=13909935
Petraeus Says Afghan Pullout Is Beyond What He Advised
Nytimes
June 23, 2011
By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON — Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, said Thursday that President Obama’s new schedule for drawing down forces there was “more aggressive” than he had recommended and increased the risk that the military would not meet all its goals.
But General Petraeus, pressed for his personal views at a Senate hearing on his nomination as director of central intelligence, said the president had to consider many factors beyond the battlefield and that he fully accepted Mr. Obama’s plan. It would bring home 33,000 troops by September 2012 and withdraw the remaining 68,000 by the end of 2014.
“There are broader considerations beyond those just of a military commander,” General Petraeus told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The commander in chief has decided, and it is then the responsibility, needless to say, of those in uniform to salute smartly and to do everything humanly possible to execute it.”
He said he had received some e-mails suggesting that he resign if he disagreed with the president’s decision, which would require troops to depart before the end of next year’s fighting season. “I’m not a quitter,” he said, noting that the troops under his command do not have the option of walking off the job, and that a general should take such a step only in a “dire” situation.
The general’s comments echoed those earlier in the day of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, about the military’s preference for a slower withdrawal. But Admiral Mullen added, “No commander ever wants to sacrifice fighting power in the middle of a war.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who other officials said had also expressed concern about the speed of the withdrawal, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Mr. Obama’s decision had followed “a very open, candid discussion within the national security team” in which “people forthrightly presented their own views.”
She said the United States was able to withdraw the troops from “a position of strength” because of the progress that had been made. She cited a large increase in school enrollment — from 900,000 boys under the Taliban to more than seven million children today, 40 percent of them girls — and a 22 percent decrease in infant mortality.
“Despite the many challenges that remain,” she said, “life is better for most Afghans.”
As his aides defended his decision in Washington, Mr. Obama traveled to Fort Drum, N.Y., to meet with about 200 members of the 10th Mountain Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, briefly addressing soldiers before posing for photographs and shaking hands.
“Now, last night, I gave a speech in which I said that we have turned a corner where we can begin to bring back some of our troops,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re not doing it precipitously. We’re going to do it in a steady way to make sure that the gains that all of you helped to bring about are going to be sustained.”
He added, “Because of you, we’re now taking the fight to the Taliban instead of the Taliban bringing the fight to us.”
As Mr. Obama’s nominee to take over the C.I.A., General Petraeus faced the Senate panel in an awkward position: he is the leading champion of a counterinsurgency strategy, which requires large numbers of troops, from which the White House is gradually turning away.
Yet in moving to the C.I.A., he will take command of the spy agency that has become central to the Obama administration’s counterterrorism efforts, carrying out hundreds of missile strikes from unmanned drone aircraft over Pakistan. Administration officials have hailed the drone program’s achievements in weakening Al Qaeda as part of the justification for drawing down troops in Afghanistan.
Because the drone program remains classified, it was barely discussed at the hearing. One of the few surprises in three hours of testimony came when Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said he wanted to discuss drones.
There was a hush as aides and senators whispered about the potential security breach. General Petraeus then answered by reference to the military’s drone strikes in Afghanistan, which are not classified.
General Petraeus, who is expected to win Senate confirmation easily, would take over the C.I.A. at a time of close collaboration between the spy agency and the Pentagon, so close that some have raised concerns about the blurring boundaries between soldiers and spies.
He pledged that he would maintain “relentless pressure” on Al Qaeda as C.I.A. director, continuing close collaboration between the agency and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, which carried out the raid last month that killed Osama bin Laden.
“Needless to say, support for ongoing efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as for missions in other locations such as Yemen, Iraq, and parts of Africa, will remain critical,” he said.
He addressed head-on concerns that have been raised about his move to the spy agency, including the worry that he will be in the position of “grading his own work” in shaping C.I.A. assessments of conditions in Afghanistan.
He conceded that twice in recent years he offered more optimistic assessments about Iraq and Afghanistan than those of the C.I.A., but he said that on two other occasions he had offered a bleaker view than those of civilian intelligence analysts. “My goal has been to speak truth to power,” he said.
Some experts have questioned whether his career ascending through the military’s rigid hierarchy makes him ill equipped to run a spy agency populated by eccentrics who resent authority and bristle at direct orders. His time at Princeton earning a doctorate, General Petraeus assured the senators, made him comfortable with “vigorous debate and discussion.”
He went out of his way to praise the “quiet professionals and unsung heroes” of the C.I.A. and said he would work to defuse any resentment of his military background. He said he would formally retire from the military before arriving at C.I.A. headquarters, would not bring his military aides to the agency and would make a point of eating lunch in the cafeteria and soliciting the opinions of rank-and-file analysts.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, praised General Petraeus’s letter to American forces in Iraq in 2007 directing them to uphold American values by treating prisoners humanely. At the time, the letter was interpreted by some as implicitly critical of the C.I.A.’s earlier use of waterboarding and other brutal interrogation methods, in a program now under criminal investigation by the Justice Department.
But General Petraeus said he wanted to be an “advocate” for the agency and that it was “time to take the rear-view mirrors off the bus” and stop rehashing the debate over torture, a position also taken by Leon Panetta, who is stepping down as C.I.A. director to become secretary of defense.
“I, as the potential leader of the agency, would like us to focus forward,” General Petraeus said.
Thom Shanker, Steven Lee Myers and Jackie Calmes contributed reporting.
June 23, 2011
By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON — Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, said Thursday that President Obama’s new schedule for drawing down forces there was “more aggressive” than he had recommended and increased the risk that the military would not meet all its goals.
But General Petraeus, pressed for his personal views at a Senate hearing on his nomination as director of central intelligence, said the president had to consider many factors beyond the battlefield and that he fully accepted Mr. Obama’s plan. It would bring home 33,000 troops by September 2012 and withdraw the remaining 68,000 by the end of 2014.
“There are broader considerations beyond those just of a military commander,” General Petraeus told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The commander in chief has decided, and it is then the responsibility, needless to say, of those in uniform to salute smartly and to do everything humanly possible to execute it.”
He said he had received some e-mails suggesting that he resign if he disagreed with the president’s decision, which would require troops to depart before the end of next year’s fighting season. “I’m not a quitter,” he said, noting that the troops under his command do not have the option of walking off the job, and that a general should take such a step only in a “dire” situation.
The general’s comments echoed those earlier in the day of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, about the military’s preference for a slower withdrawal. But Admiral Mullen added, “No commander ever wants to sacrifice fighting power in the middle of a war.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who other officials said had also expressed concern about the speed of the withdrawal, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Mr. Obama’s decision had followed “a very open, candid discussion within the national security team” in which “people forthrightly presented their own views.”
She said the United States was able to withdraw the troops from “a position of strength” because of the progress that had been made. She cited a large increase in school enrollment — from 900,000 boys under the Taliban to more than seven million children today, 40 percent of them girls — and a 22 percent decrease in infant mortality.
“Despite the many challenges that remain,” she said, “life is better for most Afghans.”
As his aides defended his decision in Washington, Mr. Obama traveled to Fort Drum, N.Y., to meet with about 200 members of the 10th Mountain Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, briefly addressing soldiers before posing for photographs and shaking hands.
“Now, last night, I gave a speech in which I said that we have turned a corner where we can begin to bring back some of our troops,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re not doing it precipitously. We’re going to do it in a steady way to make sure that the gains that all of you helped to bring about are going to be sustained.”
He added, “Because of you, we’re now taking the fight to the Taliban instead of the Taliban bringing the fight to us.”
As Mr. Obama’s nominee to take over the C.I.A., General Petraeus faced the Senate panel in an awkward position: he is the leading champion of a counterinsurgency strategy, which requires large numbers of troops, from which the White House is gradually turning away.
Yet in moving to the C.I.A., he will take command of the spy agency that has become central to the Obama administration’s counterterrorism efforts, carrying out hundreds of missile strikes from unmanned drone aircraft over Pakistan. Administration officials have hailed the drone program’s achievements in weakening Al Qaeda as part of the justification for drawing down troops in Afghanistan.
Because the drone program remains classified, it was barely discussed at the hearing. One of the few surprises in three hours of testimony came when Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said he wanted to discuss drones.
There was a hush as aides and senators whispered about the potential security breach. General Petraeus then answered by reference to the military’s drone strikes in Afghanistan, which are not classified.
General Petraeus, who is expected to win Senate confirmation easily, would take over the C.I.A. at a time of close collaboration between the spy agency and the Pentagon, so close that some have raised concerns about the blurring boundaries between soldiers and spies.
He pledged that he would maintain “relentless pressure” on Al Qaeda as C.I.A. director, continuing close collaboration between the agency and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, which carried out the raid last month that killed Osama bin Laden.
“Needless to say, support for ongoing efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as for missions in other locations such as Yemen, Iraq, and parts of Africa, will remain critical,” he said.
He addressed head-on concerns that have been raised about his move to the spy agency, including the worry that he will be in the position of “grading his own work” in shaping C.I.A. assessments of conditions in Afghanistan.
He conceded that twice in recent years he offered more optimistic assessments about Iraq and Afghanistan than those of the C.I.A., but he said that on two other occasions he had offered a bleaker view than those of civilian intelligence analysts. “My goal has been to speak truth to power,” he said.
Some experts have questioned whether his career ascending through the military’s rigid hierarchy makes him ill equipped to run a spy agency populated by eccentrics who resent authority and bristle at direct orders. His time at Princeton earning a doctorate, General Petraeus assured the senators, made him comfortable with “vigorous debate and discussion.”
He went out of his way to praise the “quiet professionals and unsung heroes” of the C.I.A. and said he would work to defuse any resentment of his military background. He said he would formally retire from the military before arriving at C.I.A. headquarters, would not bring his military aides to the agency and would make a point of eating lunch in the cafeteria and soliciting the opinions of rank-and-file analysts.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, praised General Petraeus’s letter to American forces in Iraq in 2007 directing them to uphold American values by treating prisoners humanely. At the time, the letter was interpreted by some as implicitly critical of the C.I.A.’s earlier use of waterboarding and other brutal interrogation methods, in a program now under criminal investigation by the Justice Department.
But General Petraeus said he wanted to be an “advocate” for the agency and that it was “time to take the rear-view mirrors off the bus” and stop rehashing the debate over torture, a position also taken by Leon Panetta, who is stepping down as C.I.A. director to become secretary of defense.
“I, as the potential leader of the agency, would like us to focus forward,” General Petraeus said.
Thom Shanker, Steven Lee Myers and Jackie Calmes contributed reporting.
Gates sees shifts in Afghanistan strategy
By Jim Michaels - USA Today
Posted : Monday Jun 27, 2011 5:38:35 EDT
WASHINGTON — The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan will gradually shift in the direction of counterterrorism, which is limited primarily to targeting militant leaders, as force levels are reduced, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview.
But Gates said the strategy would still remain a combination of both counterinsurgency, a labor intensive mission that requires protecting the civilian population, and counterterrorism, even as the balance begins shifting.
"When you get into late 2012, 2013, it's clear that the balance, as we turn more and more responsibility over to the Afghans ... that our role will increasingly be kind of an overwatch role and a higher weighting on the counterterrorism," Gates said.
President Obama announced last week a plan to reduce U.S. troop levels by 10,000 this year and another 23,000 by the end of the summer of 2012.
Some in the administration, including Vice President Biden, had argued for a more abrupt shift toward counterterrorism when the administration first began debating its Afghanistan strategy.
Instead, Obama in 2009 had decided on a plan to surge 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan in an effort to seize the initiative from the Taliban. Since then, the Pentagon said it has made remarkable progress in driving insurgents from strongholds in the south.
Much of that progress was a result of thousands of U.S. troops pouring into southern Afghanistan, at times engaging in pitched battles with Taliban militants.
"Al-Qaeda is on their heels, and the Taliban's momentum in the south has been checked," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress last week after Obama announced his plan.
The Pentagon has been planning on a diminished military presence for some time. Gates said the president had committed to leaving the surge forces in place between 18 and 24 months. All U.S. combat forces are expected to leave Afghanistan by 2014.
"The shift was inevitable regardless," Gates said. "The question is whether it's accelerated by coming out at the end of September instead of December. It's only four months. My suspicion is that in that time frame it probably does not require significant change."
Critics such as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have said that drawing down forces in September will remove combat power in the middle of the fighting season and could jeopardize the progress already made. Taliban fighters generally retreat to sanctuaries to rest when snows and cold weather make movement difficult.
Jeffrey Dressler, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said in an interview last week that the military situation in Afghanistan is too precarious to warrant a drawdown.
Gates said the strategy and tactics will remain "fluid," as forces are reduced. Tactics will vary depending on the region and security conditions, he said.
Gates described it as "a gradual shift that will really depend on what part of the country you're in.
"There may be one part of the country where we are in an overwatch position and not much engaged in fighting, another part where we are heavily engaged in counterterrorism and another part where we're still in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency," said Gates, who is stepping down as Defense secretary Thursday.
Counterinsurgency tactics are aimed at protecting the population, a job that increasingly will fall to Afghan police and soldiers. When villages and towns are secured, militants grow isolated and have no support among the population. The number of Afghan security forces has grown to 290,000.
"The nature of the mission by 2013 will clearly be shifting as we transfer more and more responsibility to the Afghans," Gates said.
http://militarytimes.com/news/2011/06/gannett-gates-sees-shift-in-afghanistan-strategy-062711/
Posted : Monday Jun 27, 2011 5:38:35 EDT
WASHINGTON — The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan will gradually shift in the direction of counterterrorism, which is limited primarily to targeting militant leaders, as force levels are reduced, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview.
But Gates said the strategy would still remain a combination of both counterinsurgency, a labor intensive mission that requires protecting the civilian population, and counterterrorism, even as the balance begins shifting.
"When you get into late 2012, 2013, it's clear that the balance, as we turn more and more responsibility over to the Afghans ... that our role will increasingly be kind of an overwatch role and a higher weighting on the counterterrorism," Gates said.
President Obama announced last week a plan to reduce U.S. troop levels by 10,000 this year and another 23,000 by the end of the summer of 2012.
Some in the administration, including Vice President Biden, had argued for a more abrupt shift toward counterterrorism when the administration first began debating its Afghanistan strategy.
Instead, Obama in 2009 had decided on a plan to surge 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan in an effort to seize the initiative from the Taliban. Since then, the Pentagon said it has made remarkable progress in driving insurgents from strongholds in the south.
Much of that progress was a result of thousands of U.S. troops pouring into southern Afghanistan, at times engaging in pitched battles with Taliban militants.
"Al-Qaeda is on their heels, and the Taliban's momentum in the south has been checked," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress last week after Obama announced his plan.
The Pentagon has been planning on a diminished military presence for some time. Gates said the president had committed to leaving the surge forces in place between 18 and 24 months. All U.S. combat forces are expected to leave Afghanistan by 2014.
"The shift was inevitable regardless," Gates said. "The question is whether it's accelerated by coming out at the end of September instead of December. It's only four months. My suspicion is that in that time frame it probably does not require significant change."
Critics such as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have said that drawing down forces in September will remove combat power in the middle of the fighting season and could jeopardize the progress already made. Taliban fighters generally retreat to sanctuaries to rest when snows and cold weather make movement difficult.
Jeffrey Dressler, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said in an interview last week that the military situation in Afghanistan is too precarious to warrant a drawdown.
Gates said the strategy and tactics will remain "fluid," as forces are reduced. Tactics will vary depending on the region and security conditions, he said.
Gates described it as "a gradual shift that will really depend on what part of the country you're in.
"There may be one part of the country where we are in an overwatch position and not much engaged in fighting, another part where we are heavily engaged in counterterrorism and another part where we're still in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency," said Gates, who is stepping down as Defense secretary Thursday.
Counterinsurgency tactics are aimed at protecting the population, a job that increasingly will fall to Afghan police and soldiers. When villages and towns are secured, militants grow isolated and have no support among the population. The number of Afghan security forces has grown to 290,000.
"The nature of the mission by 2013 will clearly be shifting as we transfer more and more responsibility to the Afghans," Gates said.
http://militarytimes.com/news/2011/06/gannett-gates-sees-shift-in-afghanistan-strategy-062711/
Obama’s Growing Trust in Biden Is Reflected in His Call on Troops
NYtimes
June 24, 2011
By MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — As President Obama began mulling his next big decision on troop levels in Afghanistan last January, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. quietly flew to Kabul to meet with President Hamid Karzai and tour the battlefield with the top American commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus.
At a military base in Wardak Province, where the Taliban continue to pose a security threat, Mr. Biden listened with bewilderment as an American civilian told him about plans to dig a well in a nearby village. “Why do they need a well?” he asked, according to a person who was there.
Convinced he was seeing mission creep, Mr. Biden came home and pressed the president on a point he had making since the first troop debate in 2009: the United States needed to stop nation-building in Afghanistan. The military, he argued, was going beyond Mr. Obama’s goals of defeating Al Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from toppling the Afghan government and improving security.
In ordering the withdrawal of 30,000 troops by next summer, Mr. Obama finally sided with Mr. Biden. While the decision has drawn criticism from those who say it is a rush for the exits, it shows the growing trust the president has placed in his vice president — an outcome many would not have predicted when Mr. Obama chose the garrulous senator, now 68, as his running mate.
“They began as friendly rivals,” said David Axelrod, a longtime adviser to Mr. Obama, recalling the primary. “But the relationship has been forged in the fires of many tests. There’s a real bond between them.”
The two men often spend several hours a day together when both are in town, in addition to a weekly one-on-one lunch, and officials say Mr. Biden is almost always the last person in the room with the president.
Mr. Biden’s decision not to ask for a dedicated portfolio of issues, as Vice President Al Gore did under President Bill Clinton, prompted skeptics to predict he would lack influence. But Mr. Biden has become the president’s chief troubleshooter, shepherding a stalled arms-reduction treaty with Russia through the Senate, for example. He has also been his point person on issues ranging from Iraq to budget negotiations with Congress, which collapsed this week over disagreements about taxes and spending cuts.
As the budget impasse shows, Mr. Biden’s role has limits. After Republican negotiators pulled out of the talks, party leaders suggested that Mr. Biden could no longer function as Mr. Obama’s proxy. On Friday, the White House announced that the president would join him in discussions with Congressional leaders next week.
While Mr. Biden has overcome his reputation for gaffes and administration officials no longer roll their eyes at his loquaciousness, his public statements still go further than those of his buttoned-down boss.
The vice president declined to be interviewed for this article. But some officials worried that the perception of a Biden victory on the Afghanistan strategy could worsen tensions in an administration that prefers to present a united front.
Both Pentagon and State Department officials had warned that a swift troop reduction could jeopardize gains in stabilizing parts of the country and prevent the military from securing other volatile regions. And the plan has already prompted NATO allies to hasten their own exit.
Moreover, some question the viability of Mr. Biden’s ultimate vision for Afghanistan, in which the United States would leave behind only a force large enough to secure American bases for counterterrorism operations there and in Pakistan.
“Biden is calling for a clear transition to Fortress Kabul,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who led the administration’s initial Afghan review in early 2009. “But that perspective has never gotten any traction with the Pentagon. They view it as an unending mission with no chance of success.”
The last time Mr. Obama deliberated over troop levels, in late 2009, the vice president argued just as vociferously for a minimalist approach. The president, though, sided with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, both of whom favored sending at least 30,000 additional troops.
Mr. Obama, however, attached a deadline of 18 to 24 months, and Mr. Biden paid close watch. “He’s an aggressive enforcer of the president’s goals and vision,” said Tom Donilon, the national security adviser.
While the vice president energetically promoted the administration’s policy, he also privately kept voicing his deep skepticism of attempts to transform Afghanistan, several officials said. During recent debates over the withdrawal timetable, he pushed to bring back the troops at the earliest possible date, next April, according to officials, and countered arguments by Mr. Gates and Mrs. Clinton to leave a large part of the additional troops in place until the end of 2012.
Mr. Biden’s hand was strengthened by other factors, including chronic tensions with the government of President Karzai and the Navy Seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden, which lent support to his argument that the United States could combat Al Qaeda with focused covert operations rather than a major troop deployment.
A devout Catholic, Mr. Biden fingered a rosary ring in the White House Situation Room during the raid. When he tucked it away in his wallet, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, jokingly suggested that might be premature, gesturing to the rosary ring that he had pulled out of his own pocket, according to an aide.
In internal debates, officials said, Mr. Biden has consistently expressed doubts about the public’s appetite for an endless war. “The vice president always does a good job of bringing America into the room,” said David Plouffe, a senior political adviser.
With Americans struggling in a still-weak economy, Congress worried about the huge deficit and the president facing a re-election campaign, Mr. Biden is being tapped to reassure the country that the military commitment is limited.
On Thursday, the White House released a video in which he talked about the need to shift to the home front.
“By winding down these wars and bringing home these troops, we will free up significant resources — resources we can reinvest at home,” he declared.
With 68,000 troops remaining in Afghanistan, even after next year, Mr. Biden dismisses the argument that the United States is rushing for the exits, officials familiar with his thinking said. He also believes that American troops can conduct counterterrorism operations from there “indefinitely.”
Such a calculation is risky. Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s former chief of staff, recalling the vice president’s recommendation to push for the passage of an arms treaty through a hostile Senate, against the advice of other White House officials, said: “He has this quality where he is willing to take chances.”
June 24, 2011
By MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — As President Obama began mulling his next big decision on troop levels in Afghanistan last January, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. quietly flew to Kabul to meet with President Hamid Karzai and tour the battlefield with the top American commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus.
At a military base in Wardak Province, where the Taliban continue to pose a security threat, Mr. Biden listened with bewilderment as an American civilian told him about plans to dig a well in a nearby village. “Why do they need a well?” he asked, according to a person who was there.
Convinced he was seeing mission creep, Mr. Biden came home and pressed the president on a point he had making since the first troop debate in 2009: the United States needed to stop nation-building in Afghanistan. The military, he argued, was going beyond Mr. Obama’s goals of defeating Al Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from toppling the Afghan government and improving security.
In ordering the withdrawal of 30,000 troops by next summer, Mr. Obama finally sided with Mr. Biden. While the decision has drawn criticism from those who say it is a rush for the exits, it shows the growing trust the president has placed in his vice president — an outcome many would not have predicted when Mr. Obama chose the garrulous senator, now 68, as his running mate.
“They began as friendly rivals,” said David Axelrod, a longtime adviser to Mr. Obama, recalling the primary. “But the relationship has been forged in the fires of many tests. There’s a real bond between them.”
The two men often spend several hours a day together when both are in town, in addition to a weekly one-on-one lunch, and officials say Mr. Biden is almost always the last person in the room with the president.
Mr. Biden’s decision not to ask for a dedicated portfolio of issues, as Vice President Al Gore did under President Bill Clinton, prompted skeptics to predict he would lack influence. But Mr. Biden has become the president’s chief troubleshooter, shepherding a stalled arms-reduction treaty with Russia through the Senate, for example. He has also been his point person on issues ranging from Iraq to budget negotiations with Congress, which collapsed this week over disagreements about taxes and spending cuts.
As the budget impasse shows, Mr. Biden’s role has limits. After Republican negotiators pulled out of the talks, party leaders suggested that Mr. Biden could no longer function as Mr. Obama’s proxy. On Friday, the White House announced that the president would join him in discussions with Congressional leaders next week.
While Mr. Biden has overcome his reputation for gaffes and administration officials no longer roll their eyes at his loquaciousness, his public statements still go further than those of his buttoned-down boss.
The vice president declined to be interviewed for this article. But some officials worried that the perception of a Biden victory on the Afghanistan strategy could worsen tensions in an administration that prefers to present a united front.
Both Pentagon and State Department officials had warned that a swift troop reduction could jeopardize gains in stabilizing parts of the country and prevent the military from securing other volatile regions. And the plan has already prompted NATO allies to hasten their own exit.
Moreover, some question the viability of Mr. Biden’s ultimate vision for Afghanistan, in which the United States would leave behind only a force large enough to secure American bases for counterterrorism operations there and in Pakistan.
“Biden is calling for a clear transition to Fortress Kabul,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who led the administration’s initial Afghan review in early 2009. “But that perspective has never gotten any traction with the Pentagon. They view it as an unending mission with no chance of success.”
The last time Mr. Obama deliberated over troop levels, in late 2009, the vice president argued just as vociferously for a minimalist approach. The president, though, sided with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, both of whom favored sending at least 30,000 additional troops.
Mr. Obama, however, attached a deadline of 18 to 24 months, and Mr. Biden paid close watch. “He’s an aggressive enforcer of the president’s goals and vision,” said Tom Donilon, the national security adviser.
While the vice president energetically promoted the administration’s policy, he also privately kept voicing his deep skepticism of attempts to transform Afghanistan, several officials said. During recent debates over the withdrawal timetable, he pushed to bring back the troops at the earliest possible date, next April, according to officials, and countered arguments by Mr. Gates and Mrs. Clinton to leave a large part of the additional troops in place until the end of 2012.
Mr. Biden’s hand was strengthened by other factors, including chronic tensions with the government of President Karzai and the Navy Seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden, which lent support to his argument that the United States could combat Al Qaeda with focused covert operations rather than a major troop deployment.
A devout Catholic, Mr. Biden fingered a rosary ring in the White House Situation Room during the raid. When he tucked it away in his wallet, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, jokingly suggested that might be premature, gesturing to the rosary ring that he had pulled out of his own pocket, according to an aide.
In internal debates, officials said, Mr. Biden has consistently expressed doubts about the public’s appetite for an endless war. “The vice president always does a good job of bringing America into the room,” said David Plouffe, a senior political adviser.
With Americans struggling in a still-weak economy, Congress worried about the huge deficit and the president facing a re-election campaign, Mr. Biden is being tapped to reassure the country that the military commitment is limited.
On Thursday, the White House released a video in which he talked about the need to shift to the home front.
“By winding down these wars and bringing home these troops, we will free up significant resources — resources we can reinvest at home,” he declared.
With 68,000 troops remaining in Afghanistan, even after next year, Mr. Biden dismisses the argument that the United States is rushing for the exits, officials familiar with his thinking said. He also believes that American troops can conduct counterterrorism operations from there “indefinitely.”
Such a calculation is risky. Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s former chief of staff, recalling the vice president’s recommendation to push for the passage of an arms treaty through a hostile Senate, against the advice of other White House officials, said: “He has this quality where he is willing to take chances.”
Obama gave commanders leeway on July pullout
Military Times
By Robert Burns - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Jun 26, 2011 14:45:58 EDT
WASHINGTON — In promising a U.S. military pullout from Afghanistan will begin in July, President Obama is permitting his commanders to decide critical details, including the number of troops to depart first and whether any of those will be combat forces, administration and military officials said Sunday.
Providing that leeway is important to Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. It allows him to pace this year’s phase of the withdrawal in a way that preserves combat power through the end of the traditional fighting season in October or November.
Obama said in a national address Wednesday that he was ordering 10,000 troops home by year’s end; as many as 23,000 more are to leave by September 2012.
The 33,000 total is the number that Obama sent as reinforcements in December 2009 as part of an effort to reverse the moment of the Taliban and hasten an eventual political settlement of the conflict. The U.S. and its allies plan a full combat withdrawal by the end of 2014.
“Starting next month, we will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year,” Obama told the nation last week.
He did not say how many would leave in July.
In congressional testimony Thursday, neither Petraeus nor Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided details on what the July pullout would look like.
Petraeus, who is leaving his post this summer, said he was returning to Kabul to work out details of how he will fulfill the order to reduce by 10,000 by year’s end and by an additional 23,000 next year.
There currently are about 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Mullen indicated that Obama was giving commanders wide latitude to shape the withdrawal, so long as they meet the president’s broad timelines.
Petraeus and his designated successor, Marine Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, “will be given the flexibility — inside these deadlines — to determine the pace of this withdrawal and the rearrangement of remaining forces inside the country,” Mullen told the House Armed Services Committee.
Allen’s Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.
Other administration and military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Obama has left it to Petraeus to determine exactly how big a reduction to make in July and whether they include combat forces, so long as the drawdown reaches 10,000 by year’s end. Those officials said it was agreed that no reductions in July was not an option.
Through his spokesman in Kabul, Petraeus on Sunday declined to discuss the subject of how the July phase of the withdrawal will be executed.
Petraeus, in line to be CIA director, told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday that Obama chose a faster-paced troop withdrawal than Petraeus had recommended. But Petraeus said it was understandable that Obama had weighed more than strictly military factors, and that Petraeus supported the decision.
Obama’s troop withdrawal plan came under first Sunday from the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.
Rogers said he thinks the president shaped his plan mainly to fit the needs of his 2012 re-election campaign rather than the needs of commanders in Afghanistan.
“Unfortunately I think this was more written by the political shop than by the Pentagon,” Rogers said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
In an interview on the same program, the top House Democrat, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, acknowledged that domestic presidential politics played a role. She said he had hoped that Democrats who comprise Obama’s base of political support would have some influence over his Afghan war decision.
“And I think they have,” she said. “The president has taken out more troops than some others wanted him to.”
One element of the July troop drawdown is set in motion.
Petraeus decided this month that two battalions of an Oklahoma Army National Guard infantry brigade that had been scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in July to perform security duties would go to Kuwait instead. When the two battalions that those 800 soldiers would have replaced in Afghanistan go home in July, the total U.S. presence will drop by that amount.
It’s not known whether Petraeus intends to make other July reductions.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said while visiting Afghanistan in early June that he expected the first withdrawals to include a mix of combat and support troops.
By Robert Burns - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Jun 26, 2011 14:45:58 EDT
WASHINGTON — In promising a U.S. military pullout from Afghanistan will begin in July, President Obama is permitting his commanders to decide critical details, including the number of troops to depart first and whether any of those will be combat forces, administration and military officials said Sunday.
Providing that leeway is important to Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. It allows him to pace this year’s phase of the withdrawal in a way that preserves combat power through the end of the traditional fighting season in October or November.
Obama said in a national address Wednesday that he was ordering 10,000 troops home by year’s end; as many as 23,000 more are to leave by September 2012.
The 33,000 total is the number that Obama sent as reinforcements in December 2009 as part of an effort to reverse the moment of the Taliban and hasten an eventual political settlement of the conflict. The U.S. and its allies plan a full combat withdrawal by the end of 2014.
“Starting next month, we will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year,” Obama told the nation last week.
He did not say how many would leave in July.
In congressional testimony Thursday, neither Petraeus nor Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided details on what the July pullout would look like.
Petraeus, who is leaving his post this summer, said he was returning to Kabul to work out details of how he will fulfill the order to reduce by 10,000 by year’s end and by an additional 23,000 next year.
There currently are about 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Mullen indicated that Obama was giving commanders wide latitude to shape the withdrawal, so long as they meet the president’s broad timelines.
Petraeus and his designated successor, Marine Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, “will be given the flexibility — inside these deadlines — to determine the pace of this withdrawal and the rearrangement of remaining forces inside the country,” Mullen told the House Armed Services Committee.
Allen’s Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.
Other administration and military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Obama has left it to Petraeus to determine exactly how big a reduction to make in July and whether they include combat forces, so long as the drawdown reaches 10,000 by year’s end. Those officials said it was agreed that no reductions in July was not an option.
Through his spokesman in Kabul, Petraeus on Sunday declined to discuss the subject of how the July phase of the withdrawal will be executed.
Petraeus, in line to be CIA director, told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday that Obama chose a faster-paced troop withdrawal than Petraeus had recommended. But Petraeus said it was understandable that Obama had weighed more than strictly military factors, and that Petraeus supported the decision.
Obama’s troop withdrawal plan came under first Sunday from the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.
Rogers said he thinks the president shaped his plan mainly to fit the needs of his 2012 re-election campaign rather than the needs of commanders in Afghanistan.
“Unfortunately I think this was more written by the political shop than by the Pentagon,” Rogers said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
In an interview on the same program, the top House Democrat, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, acknowledged that domestic presidential politics played a role. She said he had hoped that Democrats who comprise Obama’s base of political support would have some influence over his Afghan war decision.
“And I think they have,” she said. “The president has taken out more troops than some others wanted him to.”
One element of the July troop drawdown is set in motion.
Petraeus decided this month that two battalions of an Oklahoma Army National Guard infantry brigade that had been scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in July to perform security duties would go to Kuwait instead. When the two battalions that those 800 soldiers would have replaced in Afghanistan go home in July, the total U.S. presence will drop by that amount.
It’s not known whether Petraeus intends to make other July reductions.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said while visiting Afghanistan in early June that he expected the first withdrawals to include a mix of combat and support troops.
War game shows how attacking Iran could backfire
War game shows how attacking Iran could backfire
By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Here's a war game involving Iran, Israel and the U.S. that shows how unintended consequences can spin out of control:
With diplomacy failing and precious intelligence just received about two new secret Iranian nuclear facilities, Israel launches a pre-emptive strike against Tehran's nuclear complex. The strike is successful, wiping out six of Iran's key sites and setting back its suspected quest for a bomb by years.
But what happens next isn't pretty.
The U.S. president and his National Security Council try to keep the crisis from escalating. That sours U.S.-Israeli relations, already stressed by the fact that Israel didn't inform Washington in advance of the strike. The White House tries to open a channel for talks with Iran, but is rejected.
Instead, Iran attacks Israel, both directly and through its proxies in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It misinterprets U.S. actions as weakness and mines the Straits of Hormuz, the world's chief oil artery. That sparks a clash and a massive U.S. military reinforcement in the Persian Gulf.
This recent war game conducted at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, part of the Washington-based Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, appears to dampen hopes for a simple solution to Iran's real-world nuclear challenge.
The lesson is "once you start this, it's really hard to stop it," said Kenneth Pollack, a former White House and CIA official who oversaw the simulation.
Pollack and others who participated in the day-long exercise late last year are quick to point out that war games are imperfect mirrors of reality. How Iran's notoriously opaque and fractious leadership would react in a real crisis is particularly hard to divine.
But the outcome underscores what diplomats, military officers and analysts have long said: even a "successful" airstrike on Iran's nuclear facilities — setting the program back by two to four years — could come at a tremendous, unpredictable cost.
"It's ... an option that has to be looked at very, very, very carefully," a senior European diplomat said Friday. "Because we know what the results could be, and they could be disastrous." He requested anonymity to speak more frankly on the sensitive issue.
Tensions over Iran's nuclear program rose again this week after the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog reported that the country could be secretly developing a nuclear warhead to be placed atop a ballistic missile. Additionally, Iran has begun enriching uranium closer to the purity level needed for use in a nuclear weapon.
Israel, which sees Iran as a direct threat, has refused to rule out military force, although officials there say they are counting for now on diplomatic pressure. There have even been hints from Sunni Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia, that they would look the other way in the event of a strike on Shiite Iran, a historic adversary.
Yet one of the Brookings war game's major conclusions is that Israel could pay dearly for an attack on Iran.
By the end of the simulation, eight days after the fictitious Israeli strike, Israel's prime minister, under heavy domestic pressure, is forced to launch a 48-hour air blitz in southern Lebanon to halt rocket attacks from Hezbollah, the militant group sponsored by Iran. Israeli officials know the blitz is unlikely to achieve its objectives, and prepare a larger, costlier operation in Lebanon, including ground forces.
Israel's relations with the United States, its most important ally, are damaged. To avoid damaging them further, Israel bows to intense U.S. pressure and absorbs occasional missile strikes from Iran without retaliating.
Some members of the "Israeli" team nonetheless felt that setting back Iran's nuclear program "was worth it, even given what was a pretty robust response," said one participant. He asked that his name not be used, because under the game's ground rules, participants are supposed to remain anonymous.
Jonathan Peled, an Israeli embassy spokesman, declined comment on the war game or its outcome.
"All we can say is that Iran constitutes a threat not only to Israel but to the region, to the US and to the world at large, and therefore should be addressed without delay by the international community, first and foremost through effective sanctions," he said.
The Brookings war game was one of three simulations regarding Iran's nuclear program conducted in December. The other two, at Harvard University and Tel Aviv University, reportedly found that neither sanctions nor threats dissuaded Tehran from its suspected nuclear weapons ambitions.
In the Brookings game, three teams of experts, including former senior U.S. officials, played the Israeli, Iranian and American leadership. They assembled in separate rooms at the think tank's Washington headquarters. Israeli and U.S. "officials" communicated with each other, but not with the Iranians.
One of the simulation's major findings was how aggressively the Iranians responded to the attack — more aggressively, some participants felt, than they would in real life — and how Washington and Tehran, lacking direct communication, misunderstood each other.
Iran did not retaliate directly against the United States or U.S. troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. But it struck back at Israel, then attacked Dharan in eastern Saudi Arabia, then began mining the Straits of Hormuz.
"There would be almost no incentive for Iran not to respond" with force, said another participant, a member of the Iranian team. "It was interesting to see how useful it was for Tehran to push the limits."
Without knowing it, Iran's last two actions crossed U.S. "red lines," prompting an American military response.
"No one came out on top — (but) arguably the Iranians," the Iran team member said.
The Tehran regime was also able to crush its domestic political opposition.
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/02/21/87061/war-game-shows-how-attacking-iran.html#ixzz1Qf0DfyIl
By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Here's a war game involving Iran, Israel and the U.S. that shows how unintended consequences can spin out of control:
With diplomacy failing and precious intelligence just received about two new secret Iranian nuclear facilities, Israel launches a pre-emptive strike against Tehran's nuclear complex. The strike is successful, wiping out six of Iran's key sites and setting back its suspected quest for a bomb by years.
But what happens next isn't pretty.
The U.S. president and his National Security Council try to keep the crisis from escalating. That sours U.S.-Israeli relations, already stressed by the fact that Israel didn't inform Washington in advance of the strike. The White House tries to open a channel for talks with Iran, but is rejected.
Instead, Iran attacks Israel, both directly and through its proxies in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It misinterprets U.S. actions as weakness and mines the Straits of Hormuz, the world's chief oil artery. That sparks a clash and a massive U.S. military reinforcement in the Persian Gulf.
This recent war game conducted at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, part of the Washington-based Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, appears to dampen hopes for a simple solution to Iran's real-world nuclear challenge.
The lesson is "once you start this, it's really hard to stop it," said Kenneth Pollack, a former White House and CIA official who oversaw the simulation.
Pollack and others who participated in the day-long exercise late last year are quick to point out that war games are imperfect mirrors of reality. How Iran's notoriously opaque and fractious leadership would react in a real crisis is particularly hard to divine.
But the outcome underscores what diplomats, military officers and analysts have long said: even a "successful" airstrike on Iran's nuclear facilities — setting the program back by two to four years — could come at a tremendous, unpredictable cost.
"It's ... an option that has to be looked at very, very, very carefully," a senior European diplomat said Friday. "Because we know what the results could be, and they could be disastrous." He requested anonymity to speak more frankly on the sensitive issue.
Tensions over Iran's nuclear program rose again this week after the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog reported that the country could be secretly developing a nuclear warhead to be placed atop a ballistic missile. Additionally, Iran has begun enriching uranium closer to the purity level needed for use in a nuclear weapon.
Israel, which sees Iran as a direct threat, has refused to rule out military force, although officials there say they are counting for now on diplomatic pressure. There have even been hints from Sunni Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia, that they would look the other way in the event of a strike on Shiite Iran, a historic adversary.
Yet one of the Brookings war game's major conclusions is that Israel could pay dearly for an attack on Iran.
By the end of the simulation, eight days after the fictitious Israeli strike, Israel's prime minister, under heavy domestic pressure, is forced to launch a 48-hour air blitz in southern Lebanon to halt rocket attacks from Hezbollah, the militant group sponsored by Iran. Israeli officials know the blitz is unlikely to achieve its objectives, and prepare a larger, costlier operation in Lebanon, including ground forces.
Israel's relations with the United States, its most important ally, are damaged. To avoid damaging them further, Israel bows to intense U.S. pressure and absorbs occasional missile strikes from Iran without retaliating.
Some members of the "Israeli" team nonetheless felt that setting back Iran's nuclear program "was worth it, even given what was a pretty robust response," said one participant. He asked that his name not be used, because under the game's ground rules, participants are supposed to remain anonymous.
Jonathan Peled, an Israeli embassy spokesman, declined comment on the war game or its outcome.
"All we can say is that Iran constitutes a threat not only to Israel but to the region, to the US and to the world at large, and therefore should be addressed without delay by the international community, first and foremost through effective sanctions," he said.
The Brookings war game was one of three simulations regarding Iran's nuclear program conducted in December. The other two, at Harvard University and Tel Aviv University, reportedly found that neither sanctions nor threats dissuaded Tehran from its suspected nuclear weapons ambitions.
In the Brookings game, three teams of experts, including former senior U.S. officials, played the Israeli, Iranian and American leadership. They assembled in separate rooms at the think tank's Washington headquarters. Israeli and U.S. "officials" communicated with each other, but not with the Iranians.
One of the simulation's major findings was how aggressively the Iranians responded to the attack — more aggressively, some participants felt, than they would in real life — and how Washington and Tehran, lacking direct communication, misunderstood each other.
Iran did not retaliate directly against the United States or U.S. troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. But it struck back at Israel, then attacked Dharan in eastern Saudi Arabia, then began mining the Straits of Hormuz.
"There would be almost no incentive for Iran not to respond" with force, said another participant, a member of the Iranian team. "It was interesting to see how useful it was for Tehran to push the limits."
Without knowing it, Iran's last two actions crossed U.S. "red lines," prompting an American military response.
"No one came out on top — (but) arguably the Iranians," the Iran team member said.
The Tehran regime was also able to crush its domestic political opposition.
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/02/21/87061/war-game-shows-how-attacking-iran.html#ixzz1Qf0DfyIl
Obama’s Afghanistan plan gets mixed reviews from grunts at Fort Campbell
Wasgington Post
By Kevin Sieff, Monday, June 27, 3:31 AM
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — Pfc. Rob Nunez was gulping Miller Lite from a plastic cup when the subject of President Obama’s plan for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan came up: 10,000 troops were being pulled out this year, said a friend at a roadside bar on the fringes of the Fort Campbell Army base. The rest of the 33,000 “surge” troops would leave in 2012.
Nunez swallowed his beer, let out a stream of profanity before landing on a sentence that he repeats a lot these days. “It’s worthless, and it’s never going to end.”
He had just returned from one of the war’s most terrifying corners to a base that has shouldered much of the U.S. troop surge. In the past 18 months, more than 20,000 Fort Campbell soldiers have cycled through Afghanistan; 131 have been killed.
Nunez, 21, who spent about a year in Konar province near the Pakistani border, cared little that the commander in chief had declared Wednesday night that the “tide of war is receding.” He and his friends, some of the country’s youngest war veterans, have little interest in military policy anymore. Not after Konar.
The last mission is what did it. Nunez’s regiment fought for days in early April to win control of a remote valley called Barawala Kalay. Six U.S. soldiers died, and Nunez still can’t figure out why he wasn’t one of them. Bullets came from nowhere, hitting everything but his flesh.
“It was like fighting ghosts,” he said.
When Obama outlined the beginning of the end of America’s longest war — a phased withdrawal, a handoff to Afghan security forces, negotiations with the Taliban — television screens lit up at the base. In the strip of towns orbiting Fort Campbell, the 100,000-acre base straddling the Kentucky-Tennessee border, reactions came quickly. The withdrawal was too slow, or too fast, or right on the money, depending on the soldier.
Nunez, and many of the men he fought with in Konar, had no interest in joining that debate. When Obama stood in the White House’s East Room, they played video games, watched the College World Series or slept. Nunez, a broad-shouldered, square-jawed soldier from Southern California, went to the gym.
He had joined the Army in 2008, ready to see what war was like after talking to friends who had returned from Iraq. But when he enlisted, resources began shifting. Fort Campbell found itself at the crossroads of two wars, and not much later, Nunez found himself in Konar.
When Obama announced that he was adding 30,000 troops to the effort in Afghanistan — the surge ended up deploying 33,000 — U.S. commanders chose not to send any of them to Konar, a remote and violent area. Instead, commanders focused on pacifying larger population centers in the south.
But as insurgents flourished in valleys near Pakistan, brigades from Fort Campbell’s 101st Airborne Division, which saw its first combat during the invasion of Normandy in World War II, fought some of the Afghanistan war’s bloodiest battles along the hostile eastern spine, in places they never planned to hold.
Days after Nunez’s regiment fought in the battle for Barawala Kalay, U.S. troops emptied out of the valley. The mission was to disrupt a Taliban haven, not to maintain a presence there. Nunez’s tour was up. He flew back to Fort Campbell puzzling over the strategy.
Now, 2 1 / 2 months later, when he hears the word “withdrawal,” Nunez thinks of Barawala Kalay — what he came to see as a painful fight of uncertain value, hastily planned and quietly abandoned.
He and his friends keep their posed photos from a visit by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates crumpled in glove compartments and stuffed in desk drawers. When al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed, their celebration was muted. They were unfazed when Obama came to Fort Campbell in May to congratulate the troops, including the Navy SEALs who killed bin Laden, on a job well done.
“We hear pep talks all the time,” Nunez said. “Doesn’t make the fight any easier.”
More than 10,000 Fort Campbell soldiers, most with the 101st Airborne Division, have returned to the base in recent months, repopulating an entire city with veterans of Afghan provinces and valleys whose names they still can’t pronounce.
Drawing on their personal experience, and often little else, some have come to vastly different conclusions about Obama’s announced withdrawal.
“We could win this thing if we flooded the country. Instead, we’re pulling out. Afghans want to know if we can provide them security. We’re basically telling them that we can’t,” said Staff Sgt. Jimmy Schumacher, 29, who fought in the Wotapur district of Konar.
“The whole time I didn’t know why we were there. And now we’re leaving — after I’ve been shot in the leg,” said Pfc. Stephen Palu, who was also in Konar. He has since recovered from his leg wound.
Seven thousand Fort Campbell soldiers are still in Afghanistan, and more trickle back to base each month, greeted in a decorated airplane hangar and set free to navigate the bars, tattoo parlors and barbershops that pepper the base’s periphery.
Local stores and restaurants, some nearly driven out of business during the surge, are starting to fill up again. Family Readiness Groups of military spouses are waiting for husbands and wives to move back into neat subdivisions. Many know that the pace of withdrawal means that thousands will return to Afghanistan before the combat mission ends in 2014.
When the war is discussed here, it’s often among men who call themselves grunts, who discreetly, or not so discreetly, criticize high-ranking officers and policymakers.
Officers chide these soldiers for talking too much, for letting their narrow experiences inform opinions about the war’s prospects.
“I was the same way when I was an infantry guy in Iraq. You grow out of it,” said Warrant Officer Jeremy Meyer, a medical evacuation pilot, who spent Saturday afternoon playing darts with a group of officers at the American Legion.
Nunez and his friends spend much of their time at O’Connor’s Irish Pub & Grill, where volleyball games and beanbag tosses are punctuated by harrowing stories about a war some have left forever and some expect to see again.
Nunez has two months left in the Army. As it has for many others, the war has shaken his marriage and haunts him in quiet moments.
At O’Connor’s last week, he asked his friends sheepishly, “Are any of you guys having trouble sleeping?” And then later, quietly, “It’s like the images keep playing over in my head.”
This week, men from his company will have their first mandatory meetings with mental health workers.
Through it all, Nunez is trying to adjust to life as an observer of military engagements rather than a participant. He says he’ll try to dismiss big announcements and shifts in policy — messages “from guys who have no idea what it looks like over there.”
But on the night he heard about Obama’s withdrawal, he tried his best to reconcile the Afghanistan of the president’s speech with the hills and valleys he grew to know. He couldn’t do it.
“There’s this gap between what I hear now and what I saw,” he said. “And it feels like it’s growing every day.”
Staff writer Greg Jaffe and staff researcher Magda Jean-Louis in Washington contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/obamas-afghanistan-plan-gets-mixed-reviews-from-grunts-at-fort-campbell/2011/06/25/AGZyaWmH_print.html
By Kevin Sieff, Monday, June 27, 3:31 AM
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — Pfc. Rob Nunez was gulping Miller Lite from a plastic cup when the subject of President Obama’s plan for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan came up: 10,000 troops were being pulled out this year, said a friend at a roadside bar on the fringes of the Fort Campbell Army base. The rest of the 33,000 “surge” troops would leave in 2012.
Nunez swallowed his beer, let out a stream of profanity before landing on a sentence that he repeats a lot these days. “It’s worthless, and it’s never going to end.”
He had just returned from one of the war’s most terrifying corners to a base that has shouldered much of the U.S. troop surge. In the past 18 months, more than 20,000 Fort Campbell soldiers have cycled through Afghanistan; 131 have been killed.
Nunez, 21, who spent about a year in Konar province near the Pakistani border, cared little that the commander in chief had declared Wednesday night that the “tide of war is receding.” He and his friends, some of the country’s youngest war veterans, have little interest in military policy anymore. Not after Konar.
The last mission is what did it. Nunez’s regiment fought for days in early April to win control of a remote valley called Barawala Kalay. Six U.S. soldiers died, and Nunez still can’t figure out why he wasn’t one of them. Bullets came from nowhere, hitting everything but his flesh.
“It was like fighting ghosts,” he said.
When Obama outlined the beginning of the end of America’s longest war — a phased withdrawal, a handoff to Afghan security forces, negotiations with the Taliban — television screens lit up at the base. In the strip of towns orbiting Fort Campbell, the 100,000-acre base straddling the Kentucky-Tennessee border, reactions came quickly. The withdrawal was too slow, or too fast, or right on the money, depending on the soldier.
Nunez, and many of the men he fought with in Konar, had no interest in joining that debate. When Obama stood in the White House’s East Room, they played video games, watched the College World Series or slept. Nunez, a broad-shouldered, square-jawed soldier from Southern California, went to the gym.
He had joined the Army in 2008, ready to see what war was like after talking to friends who had returned from Iraq. But when he enlisted, resources began shifting. Fort Campbell found itself at the crossroads of two wars, and not much later, Nunez found himself in Konar.
When Obama announced that he was adding 30,000 troops to the effort in Afghanistan — the surge ended up deploying 33,000 — U.S. commanders chose not to send any of them to Konar, a remote and violent area. Instead, commanders focused on pacifying larger population centers in the south.
But as insurgents flourished in valleys near Pakistan, brigades from Fort Campbell’s 101st Airborne Division, which saw its first combat during the invasion of Normandy in World War II, fought some of the Afghanistan war’s bloodiest battles along the hostile eastern spine, in places they never planned to hold.
Days after Nunez’s regiment fought in the battle for Barawala Kalay, U.S. troops emptied out of the valley. The mission was to disrupt a Taliban haven, not to maintain a presence there. Nunez’s tour was up. He flew back to Fort Campbell puzzling over the strategy.
Now, 2 1 / 2 months later, when he hears the word “withdrawal,” Nunez thinks of Barawala Kalay — what he came to see as a painful fight of uncertain value, hastily planned and quietly abandoned.
He and his friends keep their posed photos from a visit by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates crumpled in glove compartments and stuffed in desk drawers. When al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed, their celebration was muted. They were unfazed when Obama came to Fort Campbell in May to congratulate the troops, including the Navy SEALs who killed bin Laden, on a job well done.
“We hear pep talks all the time,” Nunez said. “Doesn’t make the fight any easier.”
More than 10,000 Fort Campbell soldiers, most with the 101st Airborne Division, have returned to the base in recent months, repopulating an entire city with veterans of Afghan provinces and valleys whose names they still can’t pronounce.
Drawing on their personal experience, and often little else, some have come to vastly different conclusions about Obama’s announced withdrawal.
“We could win this thing if we flooded the country. Instead, we’re pulling out. Afghans want to know if we can provide them security. We’re basically telling them that we can’t,” said Staff Sgt. Jimmy Schumacher, 29, who fought in the Wotapur district of Konar.
“The whole time I didn’t know why we were there. And now we’re leaving — after I’ve been shot in the leg,” said Pfc. Stephen Palu, who was also in Konar. He has since recovered from his leg wound.
Seven thousand Fort Campbell soldiers are still in Afghanistan, and more trickle back to base each month, greeted in a decorated airplane hangar and set free to navigate the bars, tattoo parlors and barbershops that pepper the base’s periphery.
Local stores and restaurants, some nearly driven out of business during the surge, are starting to fill up again. Family Readiness Groups of military spouses are waiting for husbands and wives to move back into neat subdivisions. Many know that the pace of withdrawal means that thousands will return to Afghanistan before the combat mission ends in 2014.
When the war is discussed here, it’s often among men who call themselves grunts, who discreetly, or not so discreetly, criticize high-ranking officers and policymakers.
Officers chide these soldiers for talking too much, for letting their narrow experiences inform opinions about the war’s prospects.
“I was the same way when I was an infantry guy in Iraq. You grow out of it,” said Warrant Officer Jeremy Meyer, a medical evacuation pilot, who spent Saturday afternoon playing darts with a group of officers at the American Legion.
Nunez and his friends spend much of their time at O’Connor’s Irish Pub & Grill, where volleyball games and beanbag tosses are punctuated by harrowing stories about a war some have left forever and some expect to see again.
Nunez has two months left in the Army. As it has for many others, the war has shaken his marriage and haunts him in quiet moments.
At O’Connor’s last week, he asked his friends sheepishly, “Are any of you guys having trouble sleeping?” And then later, quietly, “It’s like the images keep playing over in my head.”
This week, men from his company will have their first mandatory meetings with mental health workers.
Through it all, Nunez is trying to adjust to life as an observer of military engagements rather than a participant. He says he’ll try to dismiss big announcements and shifts in policy — messages “from guys who have no idea what it looks like over there.”
But on the night he heard about Obama’s withdrawal, he tried his best to reconcile the Afghanistan of the president’s speech with the hills and valleys he grew to know. He couldn’t do it.
“There’s this gap between what I hear now and what I saw,” he said. “And it feels like it’s growing every day.”
Staff writer Greg Jaffe and staff researcher Magda Jean-Louis in Washington contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/obamas-afghanistan-plan-gets-mixed-reviews-from-grunts-at-fort-campbell/2011/06/25/AGZyaWmH_print.html
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Gates Says U.S. Is in Position to Start Afghan Pullout
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
KABUL, Afghanistan — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Monday that the United States was “well positioned” to begin withdrawing some American troops from Afghanistan in July, but he said that a substantial force would remain and that the United States was starting talks with the Afghans about keeping a security presence in the country beyond 2014.At a joint news conference in the Afghan capital with President Hamid Karzai, Mr. Gates said that no decisions had been made about the number of troops to go home. His remarks were tempered with enough caveats, however, to suggest that the July drawdown promised by President Obama could be minor.
“As I have said time and again, we are not leaving Afghanistan this summer,” Mr. Gates said.
Currently about 100,000 American troops are in the country.
Mr. Gates also used the news conference to offer an extended apology to Mr. Karzai for the killings by mistake last week of nine Afghan boys. Mr. Karzai accepted the apology.
On Sunday, Mr. Karzai had rejected an apology for the killings from Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan.
“This breaks our heart,” Mr. Gates said as he stood beside Mr. Karzai in the Afghan presidential palace. “Not only is their loss a tragedy for their families, it is a setback for our relationship with the Afghan people.”
One boy who was wounded but survived described a helicopter gunship that hunted down the children as they gathered wood outside their village. The gunners apparently mistook the children for insurgents who hours earlier had fired on an American base. The boys were 9 to 15 years old.
Mr. Karzai, after responding that civilian casualties were at the heart of tensions between the United States and Afghanistan, said of Mr. Gates that “I trust him fully when he says he’s sorry.”
Mr. Gates, who was on an unannounced two-day trip to Afghanistan, spoke more positively than he had in recent months about what he cited as progress in the nearly decade-old war.
“The gains we are seeing across the country are significant,” he said, citing improvements in security in Helmand and Kandahar Provinces in the south, as well as some progress on Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan.
Mr. Gates made similar remarks to American troops at Bagram Air Base earlier in the day, when he told them that “you’re having success, there’s just no question about it.”
He added, “I know you’ve had a tough winter, it’s going to be a tougher spring and summer, but you’ve made a lot of headway, and I think you’ve proven with your Afghan partners that this thing is going to work.”
Despite the optimism in Mr. Gates’s remarks, American commanders in the east and north have seen continued violence in 2011 and two of the most lethal suicide bomb attacks in nearly two years occurred in the last four weeks. One in the eastern city of Jalalabad killed 40 people and another in Kunduz Province in the north killed 32.
On Monday, a bomb blast in Jalalabad killed two more people and injured 19.
Although fewer American troops are dying this year than last, commanders say it is hard to tell whether that is because of a weakening in the Taliban offensive or the traditional winter hiatus in fighting. But if Afghan troops prove able to keep the violence under control, that could signal a growing ability to protect difficult patches on their own.
Training Afghan troops well enough to defend their own country is the long-term goal of the United States and Mr. Obama’s strategy for ending the war.
Maj. Gen. John F. Campbell, the top American commander in eastern Afghanistan, told reporters traveling with Mr. Gates that violence in his region on the border with Pakistan was up from a year ago and that it had also increased in the last 30 days.
“I think the enemy is trying to get an early start on what they call their spring campaign,” General Campbell said.
In recent weeks American forces have withdrawn from remote parts of the Pech Valley, which is part of General Campbell’s command, to concentrate more forces in the border area.
General Campbell refused to call the thinning of forces in the valley, once deemed vital to American interests, a retreat, although the fighting there had dragged on for years with no clear result. “When somebody says you’ve abandoned the Pech, that’s absolutely false,” he said.
Despite the rise in violence in the east, the general said the attacks by insurgents were less effective than a year ago. His office produced statistics stating that American and coalition forces had killed 2,448 insurgents in his region between June 2010 and February 2011 and had captured 2,870 in the same time period.
As for an American military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014, Mr. Gates said an American team would be in Kabul next week to begin negotiations on what he called a security partnership, which he predicted would require a “small fraction” of the American forces in Afghanistan today.
Friday, January 7, 2011
More Than 1,000 Extra Marines To Be Deployed in Afghanistan
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: January 6, 2011
The majority of the forces will be sent to Helmand Province, where 20,000 Marines have made gains against the Taliban but where fighting remains intense in insurgent strongholds like Sangin. American commanders are under pressure to quell the violence and sustain their gains in the first six months of 2011, when the White House will assess whether a troop increase for the nearly decade-old war is working.
Officials at the Florida-based United States Central Command, which has responsibility for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said that the Marines were being sent to take advantage of what is traditionally a winter hiatus for the Taliban and to try to set conditions for the fighting season that begins in the spring.
Maj. Gen. Richard P. Mills, the commander of the 20,000 Marines in Helmand, said in a statement that the intent was to overwhelm the enemy “with an increased operational tempo that he’ll be unable to match.”
The 1,000-plus Marines are part of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a reserve force currently deployed in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Central Command officials said the Marines would go to Afghanistan for about three months. The rest of the expeditionary unit will remain aboard ship for other contingencies, military officials said.
Currently there are about 100,000 United States troops in Afghanistan. In December 2009, President Obama announced that he was sending 30,000 additional troops there and at the same time said the United States would begin to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in July 2011.
Since then, the Obama administration has tried to shift focus away from the July 2011 date — military commanders said the deadline was encouraging insurgents to bide their time until the United States withdrew — to a new date of 2014 as the end of American combat operations in Afghanistan.
It is unclear what effect, if any, the additional Marines will have on the debate on the number of forces to be withdrawn in July.
“The coming debate is bigger than this,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a military analyst and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The issue will be, do we reduce in the second half of the year by 1,000, 5,000 or 20,000?”
During a visit to Afghanistan last month, Mr. Obama told American troops that they were “making important progress” and breaking the Taliban’s momentum, but others in Washington and Kabul have been more skeptical about the gains and whether they can be sustained once the Americans leave.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
How Petraeus has changed the Afghanistan war
When Gen. David Petraeus took over as head of US forces in Afghanistan earlier this year, there was some speculation about the extent to which he would run the war differently from his predecessor.
The general consensus was that there wouldn’t be much difference between Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was forced to resign in June after he made impolitic comments about members of the Obama administration. Both were known as staunch adherents of counterinsurgency warfare, which tends to emphasize protecting the population over, say, body counts as a measure of success.
In many ways, this conventional wisdom has been borne out. But as the year draws to a close, there are, say senior US military officials, some clear differences emerging in the way Petraeus is now handling the Afghanistan war. Chief among the changes is one that represents something of a gamble to some in the Pentagon.
Specifically, Petraeus has chosen to emphasize the violence that the Taliban and other insurgent groups have inflicted on the general Afghan population. This may seem like an obvious approach. Why not highlight the harm that your enemy is doing to the civilians you’re trying to win over?
But it’s not so simple, says a senior military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he has not been authorized to speak to the press on this issue. “If you draw attention to the enemies’ impact on Afghan civilians, does that make them feel less secure” – and consequently, less willing to support NATO forces?
“That is the debate: Do they perceive a greater insecurity or do they perceive the enemy in a more negative way?” adds the official. “There are arguments on both sides.”
In most respects, Petraeus and McChrystal have run the war similarly. “You’re talking about vanilla versus French vanilla," says Andrew Krepinevich, Pentagon adviser and president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis, a Washington think tank. "At the end of the day it takes a very sophisticated palate to discern the differences between the two.”
But McChyrstal chose not to emphasize Taliban violence against the population for fear of making Afghans wary of a war that was not going well, and of a NATO force that was failing to protect them, says the official. “With M-4” – the military’s nickname for four-star general McChrystal – “there was a lot of discussion among his staff on the impact on the population.”
The focus of the generals is a product of their experiences. “Both officers come from very different operational backgrounds,” says Andrew Exum, a former Army Ranger and fellow with the Center for a New American Security in Washington. “General Petraeus – his experience in the Army has been such that he spent a lot of time at a young age doing strategic assignments and thinking about the big implications of operations.”
While “General McChrystal brought operational art to a new level, General Petraeus is more experienced dealing with larger strategic issues,” he adds.
The decision to emphasize or de-emphasize Taliban violence has also hinged on the audience that the generals have wanted to reach. For Petraeus, that audience is international – he recognizes the importance of keeping the NATO coalition together in the face of home populations that are increasingly skeptical of the war, says the official.
“The thinking is that if he can draw more attention to Taliban atrocities, it will garner more support for among European partners who are sympathetic to human rights appeals," the official says.
But this comes with risks as well. “What Petraeus is emphasizing a bit more than McChrystal is winning hearts: Can you convince the population that you’re the side that should remain victorious?” says Mr. Krepinevich. “Part of doing this is also to show people that the Taliban don’t respect human rights and human dignity.”
But winning minds is a key part of counterinsurgency warfare too, Krepinevich adds. “That has to do with convincing the population that not only should they want you to win, but they have confidence that you will.”
The problem is that, “No matter how much he may want you to win, if he thinks your adversary is going to win he’s going to remain aloof, and he’s going to withhold his support.” And that, military officials add, is the challenge that Petraeus will continue to face in the months to come.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
U.S. efforts fail to convince Pakistan's top general to target Taliban
By Karin Brulliard and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post
Friday, December 31, 2010
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Countless U.S. officials in recent years have lectured and listened to Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the man many view as the most powerful in Pakistan. They have drunk tea and played golf with him, feted him and flown with him in helicopters.
But they have yet to persuade him to undertake what the Obama administration's recent strategy review concluded is a key to success in the Afghan war - the elimination of havens inside Pakistan where the Taliban plots and stages attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan.
Kayani, who as Pakistan's army chief has more direct say over the country's security strategy than its president or prime minister, has resisted personal appeals from President Obama, U.S. military commanders and senior diplomats. Recent U.S. intelligence estimates have concluded that he is unlikely to change his mind anytime soon. Despite the entreaties, officials say, Kayani doesn't trust U.S. motivations and is hedging his bets in case the American strategy for Afghanistan fails.
In many ways, Kayani is the personification of the vexing problem posed by Pakistan. Like the influential military establishment he represents, he views Afghanistan on a timeline stretching far beyond the U.S. withdrawal, which is slated to begin this summer. While the Obama administration sees the insurgents as an enemy force to be defeated as quickly and directly as possible, Pakistan has long regarded them as useful proxies in protecting its western flank from inroads by India, its historical adversary.
"Kayani wants to talk about the end state in South Asia," said one of several Obama administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive relationship. U.S. generals, the official said, "want to talk about the next drone attacks."
The administration has praised Kayani for operations in 2009 and 2010 against domestic militants in the Swat Valley and in South Waziristan, and has dramatically increased its military and economic assistance to Pakistan. But it has grown frustrated that the general has not launched a ground assault against Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries in North Waziristan.
Kayani has promised action when he has enough troops available, although he has given no indication of when that might be. Most of Pakistan's half-million-man army remains facing east, toward India.
In recent months, Kayani has sometimes become defiant. When U.S.-Pakistani tensions spiked in September, after two Pakistani soldiers were killed by an Afghanistan-based American helicopter gunship pursuing insurgents on the wrong side of the border, he personally ordered the closure of the main frontier crossing for U.S. military supplies into Afghanistan, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.
In October, administration officials choreographed a White House meeting for Kayani at which Obama could directly deliver his message of urgency. The army chief heard him out, then provided a 13-page document updating Pakistan's strategic perspective and noting the gap between short-term U.S. concerns and Pakistan's long-term interests, according to U.S. officials.
Kayani reportedly was infuriated by the recent WikiLeaks release of U.S. diplomatic cables, some of which depicted him as far chummier with the Americans and more deeply involved in Pakistani politics than his carefully crafted domestic persona would suggest. In one cable, sent to Washington by the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad last year, he was quoted as discussing with U.S. officials a possible removal of Pakistan's president and his preferred replacement.
On the eve of the cable's publication in November, the normally aloof and soft-spoken general ranted for hours on the subject of irreconcilable U.S.-Pakistan differences in a session with a group of Pakistani journalists.
The two countries' "frames of reference" regarding regional security "can never be the same," he said, according to news accounts. Calling Pakistan America's "most bullied ally," Kayani said that the "real aim of U.S. strategy is to de-nuclearize Pakistan."
The general's suspicions
Kayani was a star student at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., in 1988, writing his master's thesis on "Strengths and Weaknesses of the Afghan Resistance Movement." He was among the last Pakistanis to graduate from the college before the United States cut off military assistance to Islamabad in 1990 in response to Pakistan's suspected nuclear weapons program. Eight years later, both Pakistan and India conducted tests of nuclear devices. The estrangement lasted until President George W. Bush lifted the sanctions in 2001, less than two weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Kayani is far from alone in the Pakistani military in suspecting that the United States will abandon Pakistan once it has achieved its goals in Afghanistan, and that its goal remains to leave Pakistan defenseless against nuclear-armed India.
Kayani "is one of the most anti-India chiefs Pakistan has ever had," one U.S. official said.
The son of a noncommissioned army officer, Kayani was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1971. He was chief of military operations during the 2001-2002 Pakistan-India crisis. As head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency from 2004 to 2007, he served as a point man for back-channel talks with India initiated by then-President Pervez Musharraf. When Musharraf resigned in 2008, the talks abruptly ended.
The Pakistani military has long been involved in politics, but few believe that the general seeks to lead the nation. "He has stated from the beginning that he has no desire to involve the military in running the country," said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. But that does not mean Kayani would stand by "if there was a failure of civilian institutions," Nawaz said. "The army would step in."
Kayani remains an enigmatic figure, chiefly known in Pakistan for his passion for golf and chain-smoking. According to Jehangir Karamat, a retired general who once held Kayani's job, he is an avid reader and a fan of Lebanese American poet Khalil Gibran.
'Mind-boggling'
Even some Pakistanis see Kayani's India-centric view as dated, self-serving and potentially disastrous as the insurgents the country has harbored increasingly turn on Pakistan itself.
"Nine years into the Afghanistan war, we're fighting various strands of militancy, and we still have an army chief who considers India the major threat," said Cyril Almeida, an editor and columnist at the English-language newspaper Dawn. "That's mind-boggling."
Kayani has cultivated the approval of a strongly anti-American public that opinion polls indicate now holds the military in far higher esteem than it does the weak civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari. Pakistani officials say the need for public support is a key reason for rebuffing U.S. pleas for an offensive in North Waziristan. In addition to necessitating the transfer of troops from the Indian border, Pakistani military and intelligence officials say such a campaign would incite domestic terrorism and uproot local communities. Residents who left their homes during the South Waziristan offensive more than a year ago have only recently been allowed to begin returning to their villages.
Several U.S. officials described Kayani as straightforward in his explanations of why the time is not right for an offensive in North Waziristan: a combination of too few available troops and too little public support.
The real power broker
Pakistani democracy activists fault the United States for professing to support Pakistan's civilian government while at the same time bolstering Kayani with frequent high-level visits and giving him a prominent role in strategic talks with Islamabad.
Obama administration officials said in response that while they voice support for Pakistan's weak civilian government at every opportunity, the reality is that the army chief is the one who can produce results.
"We have this policy objective, so who do we talk to?" one official said. "It's increasingly clear that we have to talk to Kayani."
Most of the talking is done by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In more than 30 face-to-face meetings with Kayani, including 21 visits to Pakistan since late 2007, Mullen has sought to reverse what both sides call a "trust deficit" between the two militaries.
But the patience of other U.S. officials has worn thin. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, has adopted a much tougher attitude toward Kayani than his predecessor, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, had, according to several U.S. officials.
For his part, Kayani complains that he is "always asking Petraeus what is the strategic objective" in Afghanistan, according to a friend, retired air marshal Shahzad Chaudhry.
As the Obama administration struggles to assess the fruits of its investment in Pakistan, some officials said the United States now accepts that pleas and military assistance will not change Kayani's thinking. Mullen and Richard C. Holbrooke, who served as the administration's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan until his death last month, thought that "getting Kayani to trust us enough" to be honest constituted progress, one official said.
But what Kayani has honestly told them, the official said, is: "I don't trust you."
Washington Post
Friday, December 31, 2010
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Countless U.S. officials in recent years have lectured and listened to Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the man many view as the most powerful in Pakistan. They have drunk tea and played golf with him, feted him and flown with him in helicopters.
But they have yet to persuade him to undertake what the Obama administration's recent strategy review concluded is a key to success in the Afghan war - the elimination of havens inside Pakistan where the Taliban plots and stages attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan.
Kayani, who as Pakistan's army chief has more direct say over the country's security strategy than its president or prime minister, has resisted personal appeals from President Obama, U.S. military commanders and senior diplomats. Recent U.S. intelligence estimates have concluded that he is unlikely to change his mind anytime soon. Despite the entreaties, officials say, Kayani doesn't trust U.S. motivations and is hedging his bets in case the American strategy for Afghanistan fails.
In many ways, Kayani is the personification of the vexing problem posed by Pakistan. Like the influential military establishment he represents, he views Afghanistan on a timeline stretching far beyond the U.S. withdrawal, which is slated to begin this summer. While the Obama administration sees the insurgents as an enemy force to be defeated as quickly and directly as possible, Pakistan has long regarded them as useful proxies in protecting its western flank from inroads by India, its historical adversary.
"Kayani wants to talk about the end state in South Asia," said one of several Obama administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive relationship. U.S. generals, the official said, "want to talk about the next drone attacks."
The administration has praised Kayani for operations in 2009 and 2010 against domestic militants in the Swat Valley and in South Waziristan, and has dramatically increased its military and economic assistance to Pakistan. But it has grown frustrated that the general has not launched a ground assault against Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries in North Waziristan.
Kayani has promised action when he has enough troops available, although he has given no indication of when that might be. Most of Pakistan's half-million-man army remains facing east, toward India.
In recent months, Kayani has sometimes become defiant. When U.S.-Pakistani tensions spiked in September, after two Pakistani soldiers were killed by an Afghanistan-based American helicopter gunship pursuing insurgents on the wrong side of the border, he personally ordered the closure of the main frontier crossing for U.S. military supplies into Afghanistan, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.
In October, administration officials choreographed a White House meeting for Kayani at which Obama could directly deliver his message of urgency. The army chief heard him out, then provided a 13-page document updating Pakistan's strategic perspective and noting the gap between short-term U.S. concerns and Pakistan's long-term interests, according to U.S. officials.
Kayani reportedly was infuriated by the recent WikiLeaks release of U.S. diplomatic cables, some of which depicted him as far chummier with the Americans and more deeply involved in Pakistani politics than his carefully crafted domestic persona would suggest. In one cable, sent to Washington by the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad last year, he was quoted as discussing with U.S. officials a possible removal of Pakistan's president and his preferred replacement.
On the eve of the cable's publication in November, the normally aloof and soft-spoken general ranted for hours on the subject of irreconcilable U.S.-Pakistan differences in a session with a group of Pakistani journalists.
The two countries' "frames of reference" regarding regional security "can never be the same," he said, according to news accounts. Calling Pakistan America's "most bullied ally," Kayani said that the "real aim of U.S. strategy is to de-nuclearize Pakistan."
The general's suspicions
Kayani was a star student at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., in 1988, writing his master's thesis on "Strengths and Weaknesses of the Afghan Resistance Movement." He was among the last Pakistanis to graduate from the college before the United States cut off military assistance to Islamabad in 1990 in response to Pakistan's suspected nuclear weapons program. Eight years later, both Pakistan and India conducted tests of nuclear devices. The estrangement lasted until President George W. Bush lifted the sanctions in 2001, less than two weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Kayani is far from alone in the Pakistani military in suspecting that the United States will abandon Pakistan once it has achieved its goals in Afghanistan, and that its goal remains to leave Pakistan defenseless against nuclear-armed India.
Kayani "is one of the most anti-India chiefs Pakistan has ever had," one U.S. official said.
The son of a noncommissioned army officer, Kayani was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1971. He was chief of military operations during the 2001-2002 Pakistan-India crisis. As head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency from 2004 to 2007, he served as a point man for back-channel talks with India initiated by then-President Pervez Musharraf. When Musharraf resigned in 2008, the talks abruptly ended.
The Pakistani military has long been involved in politics, but few believe that the general seeks to lead the nation. "He has stated from the beginning that he has no desire to involve the military in running the country," said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. But that does not mean Kayani would stand by "if there was a failure of civilian institutions," Nawaz said. "The army would step in."
Kayani remains an enigmatic figure, chiefly known in Pakistan for his passion for golf and chain-smoking. According to Jehangir Karamat, a retired general who once held Kayani's job, he is an avid reader and a fan of Lebanese American poet Khalil Gibran.
'Mind-boggling'
Even some Pakistanis see Kayani's India-centric view as dated, self-serving and potentially disastrous as the insurgents the country has harbored increasingly turn on Pakistan itself.
"Nine years into the Afghanistan war, we're fighting various strands of militancy, and we still have an army chief who considers India the major threat," said Cyril Almeida, an editor and columnist at the English-language newspaper Dawn. "That's mind-boggling."
Kayani has cultivated the approval of a strongly anti-American public that opinion polls indicate now holds the military in far higher esteem than it does the weak civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari. Pakistani officials say the need for public support is a key reason for rebuffing U.S. pleas for an offensive in North Waziristan. In addition to necessitating the transfer of troops from the Indian border, Pakistani military and intelligence officials say such a campaign would incite domestic terrorism and uproot local communities. Residents who left their homes during the South Waziristan offensive more than a year ago have only recently been allowed to begin returning to their villages.
Several U.S. officials described Kayani as straightforward in his explanations of why the time is not right for an offensive in North Waziristan: a combination of too few available troops and too little public support.
The real power broker
Pakistani democracy activists fault the United States for professing to support Pakistan's civilian government while at the same time bolstering Kayani with frequent high-level visits and giving him a prominent role in strategic talks with Islamabad.
Obama administration officials said in response that while they voice support for Pakistan's weak civilian government at every opportunity, the reality is that the army chief is the one who can produce results.
"We have this policy objective, so who do we talk to?" one official said. "It's increasingly clear that we have to talk to Kayani."
Most of the talking is done by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In more than 30 face-to-face meetings with Kayani, including 21 visits to Pakistan since late 2007, Mullen has sought to reverse what both sides call a "trust deficit" between the two militaries.
But the patience of other U.S. officials has worn thin. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, has adopted a much tougher attitude toward Kayani than his predecessor, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, had, according to several U.S. officials.
For his part, Kayani complains that he is "always asking Petraeus what is the strategic objective" in Afghanistan, according to a friend, retired air marshal Shahzad Chaudhry.
As the Obama administration struggles to assess the fruits of its investment in Pakistan, some officials said the United States now accepts that pleas and military assistance will not change Kayani's thinking. Mullen and Richard C. Holbrooke, who served as the administration's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan until his death last month, thought that "getting Kayani to trust us enough" to be honest constituted progress, one official said.
But what Kayani has honestly told them, the official said, is: "I don't trust you."
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