White House Defends Afghan War Strategy and July 2011 Drawdown Date

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 2009— -- Today, the Pentagon announced it has given orders to 16,000 troops to deploy to Afghanistan, as part of President Obama's new Afghan War strategy decision to send an additional 30,000 troops.

Yet, as the troop surge gets underway, the president's advisers are still answering doubts about the White House's new strategy of sending additional troops, while at the same time announcing a July 2011 date when the U.S. would begin withdrawing its troops.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday that the coupling of a troop surge and a July 2011 troop drawdown date was purposely designed to send a signal.

"I believe that there is an important element here of balancing, sending a signal of resolve, but also giving the Afghan government a sense of urgency that they need to get their young men recruited, trained and into the field, partnering with our forces and then on their own," Gates said.

Yet, ever since the president announced his decision last week, there has been much debate over what signals the 2011 drawdown date is really sending.

Critics of the plan say it encourages members of al Qaeda and the Taliban to wait out U.S. forces. They also argue setting a date for withdrawal sends a message to the Afghan and Pakistani leaders that the U.S. is not a reliable, long-term partner against al Qaeda and the Taliban. In addition, they say, setting a withdrawal date plays into the enemies' assertions that America and its Western allies are weak-willed war opponents.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a POW during the Vietnam War, said he supported the president's new strategy, but thought setting an "arbitrary" withdrawal date is a bad idea.

"To send the message that you are going to leave at a certain date is not the way to convince the enemy that you're there to beat them," McCain said Sunday.

But Gates said setting a date of July 2011 for U.S. troops to begin withdrawing was not an exit strategy.

"It's the beginning of a process. In July 2011, our generals are confident that they will know whether our strategy is working, and the plan is to begin transferring areas of responsibility for security over to the Afghan security forces with us remaining in a tactical and then strategic overwatch position, sort of the cavalry over the hill," Gates said.

"But we will begin to thin our forces and begin to bring them home. But the pace of that, of bringing them home, and where we will bring them home from will depend on the circumstances on the ground, and those judgments will be made by our commanders in the field."

Dem Critics Welcome July 2011 Drawdown Date

Illinois Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin, an opponent of the effort in Afghanistan, said he supports the idea of knowing when troops would come home. Durbin said he is skeptical whether 30,000 additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan will make an impact.

"I would like to believe by July of 2011 that we will be in a position where we're going to see our troops really coming home. That's important to me," Durbin said Sunday.

Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, who is calling for a "rational" withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, argued the July 2011 date "gives nobody anything they want."

"It doesn't give the Afghan people a belief that we're actually leaving. It doesn't given the American people any confidence that we have a plan to finally end this," he said.

Peter Baker, reporting in the New York Times, characterized Obama's three-month-long war strategy review as exhaustive, leaving no view at the Situation Room table unaccounted for. Nonetheless, the president still faces stiff opposition from some members of his own political party, who were opposed to a troop surge.

"We're already working with members of both parties in both houses to question whether this funding should be approved. We're going to fight any attempts to use sort of accounting gimmicks to allow it to be funded," Feingold said.

"What exactly is this strategy, given the fact that we have seen that there is a minimal presence of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but a significant presence in Pakistan? It just defies common sense that a huge-boots-on-the-ground presence in a place where these people are not is the right strategy," Feingold said.

But Gates maintains the Afghan-Pakistani border is the "epicenter of extremist jihad."

"Any success by the Taliban in either Afghanistan or Pakistan benefits al Qaeda," Gates said.

Doubts Over President's Afghan War Strategy Linger

Gates also addressed doubts that Pakistan was a reliable partner.

"The truth of the matter is that we have been very impressed by the Pakistani army's willingness to go into places like Swat in South Waziristan," Gates said. "They are bringing pressure to bear on the Taliban in Pakistan, and particularly those that are attacking the Pakistani government."

Gates also rejected any comparison between the current U.S. effort and the failed Soviet campaign to occupy Afghanistan 30 years ago.

"First of all, the Soviets were trying to impose an alien culture and a political system on Afghanistan. But more importantly, they were there terrorizing the Afghans. They killed a million Afghans. They made refugees out of 5 million Afghans. They were isolated internationally. All of those factors are different for us, completely different," Gates argued.

Still, critics argue that Afghan government corruption could undermine U.S. success in Afghanistan, regardless of the president's strategy.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that the issue of government corruption was "overplayed" by Afghanistan's international partners, some of whom he said were responsible for bringing corruption to Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, he is expected to unveil his new Cabinet, which could signal whether he has decided to crack down on government corruption meaningfully.

"I can't predict everything that is going to happen with President Karzai. I came away from my meeting with him around the inauguration heartened by a lot of what he was saying. But you know, the proof is in the pudding. We're going to have to wait and see how it unfolds," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

Gates and Clinton appeared on ABC's "This Week" and NBC's "Meet the Press"; McCain appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press"; Durbin spoke on "Fox News Sunday"; Feingold spoke on ABC's "This Week"; and Karzai appeared on CNN's "Amanpour."