One day after settling on a troop-withdrawal plan for Afghanistan, President Obama is slated to tell the nation tonight that it’s time to start pulling out.
Obama wants the 30,000 troops he sent to the Taliban-plagued region in 2009 as an Afghan “surge” to be back home by the end of 2012 — just in time for his re-election bid in November 2012, observers say.
His timetable plays to the war-weary American public but diverges sharply from advice from top military leaders.
The controversial vision he’s expected to outline would start with small reductions this year but would fly home a larger chunk next year. Under one likely scenario, the United States would withdraw 5,000 troops this summer — a number and timing the Pentagon supports — then withdraw another 5,000 this winter, and 20,000 by the fall of 2012.
Obama could also decide to:
- Withdraw 10,000 troops now, and the remaining 20,000 by the end of 2012.
- Withdraw 15,000 troops by the end of 2011, and another 15,000 by the end of 2012.
- Withdraw all 30,000 troops by the end of 2012, with the timing to be determined by the military command.
There are roughly 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan now, three times as many as when Obama took office. By removing the 30,000 surge forces, Obama would still leave 70,000 troops there. The United States and its allies have said they hope to end their combat mission in Afghanistan on Dec. 31, 2014.
The president’s announcement, at 8 p.m. Eastern, will be his sixth prime-time address since he took office.
As he weighed options over the past week, military advisers reportedly told Obama that it isn’t smart to bring troops home before 2013. But he discarded their opinion, observers say.
Obama met with Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of the Afghanistan operation and Obama’s nominee for CIA director, last week to discuss risks for each draw-down strategy. Petreaus and other top generals, including outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, reportedly had hoped to limit the number of troops brought home immediately, especially as the typically violent summer begins.
Yet Gates acknowledged Congress’ reservations about Afghanistan yesterday as well as “concerns among the American people who are tired of a decade of war.”
Vice President Joe Biden is believed to be among the strongest advocates of a dramatic troop pullback soon. CNN reported that he would like to see 15,000 troops come home this year.
A sooner-rather-than-later tack certainly blows with the political winds.
During a debate last week, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the presumed front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, called for troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan “as soon as possible.”
“I want those troops to come home based on not politics, not based upon economics, but instead based upon the conditions on the ground determined by the generals,” Romney said. “But I also think we’ve learned, that our troops shouldn’t go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation.”
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama made his final decision at some point yesterday morning.
Meanwhile, some experts say, the public focus on numbers and timing may actually be detracting from actual political progress happening in Afghanistan, including recently disclosed high-level dialogues with the Taliban.
“There are ways to get out, but a lot of it has to do with the political strategy,” Michael Wahid Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation who recently helped direct a task force on the impasse in Afghanistan, told The Daily.
“It’s too much focused on the numbers, and that’s been a bit frustrating,” he said.
Obama wants the 30,000 troops he sent to the Taliban-plagued region in 2009 as an Afghan “surge” to be back home by the end of 2012 — just in time for his re-election bid in November 2012, observers say.
His timetable plays to the war-weary American public but diverges sharply from advice from top military leaders.
The controversial vision he’s expected to outline would start with small reductions this year but would fly home a larger chunk next year. Under one likely scenario, the United States would withdraw 5,000 troops this summer — a number and timing the Pentagon supports — then withdraw another 5,000 this winter, and 20,000 by the fall of 2012.
Obama could also decide to:
- Withdraw 10,000 troops now, and the remaining 20,000 by the end of 2012.
- Withdraw 15,000 troops by the end of 2011, and another 15,000 by the end of 2012.
- Withdraw all 30,000 troops by the end of 2012, with the timing to be determined by the military command.
There are roughly 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan now, three times as many as when Obama took office. By removing the 30,000 surge forces, Obama would still leave 70,000 troops there. The United States and its allies have said they hope to end their combat mission in Afghanistan on Dec. 31, 2014.
The president’s announcement, at 8 p.m. Eastern, will be his sixth prime-time address since he took office.
As he weighed options over the past week, military advisers reportedly told Obama that it isn’t smart to bring troops home before 2013. But he discarded their opinion, observers say.
Obama met with Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of the Afghanistan operation and Obama’s nominee for CIA director, last week to discuss risks for each draw-down strategy. Petreaus and other top generals, including outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, reportedly had hoped to limit the number of troops brought home immediately, especially as the typically violent summer begins.
Yet Gates acknowledged Congress’ reservations about Afghanistan yesterday as well as “concerns among the American people who are tired of a decade of war.”
Vice President Joe Biden is believed to be among the strongest advocates of a dramatic troop pullback soon. CNN reported that he would like to see 15,000 troops come home this year.
A sooner-rather-than-later tack certainly blows with the political winds.
During a debate last week, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the presumed front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, called for troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan “as soon as possible.”
“I want those troops to come home based on not politics, not based upon economics, but instead based upon the conditions on the ground determined by the generals,” Romney said. “But I also think we’ve learned, that our troops shouldn’t go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation.”
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama made his final decision at some point yesterday morning.
Meanwhile, some experts say, the public focus on numbers and timing may actually be detracting from actual political progress happening in Afghanistan, including recently disclosed high-level dialogues with the Taliban.
“There are ways to get out, but a lot of it has to do with the political strategy,” Michael Wahid Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation who recently helped direct a task force on the impasse in Afghanistan, told The Daily.
“It’s too much focused on the numbers, and that’s been a bit frustrating,” he said.
