Obama plans to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan
Jack Linthicum
pretty good ties into White House thinking lately.
Posted on Mon, Nov. 23, 2009
Obama plans to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan
Jonathan S. Landay, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy
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last updated: November 23, 2009 11:32:55 PM
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama met Monday evening with his
national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000
additional U.S. troops over the next year to what he's called "a war
of necessity" in Afghanistan, U.S. officials told McClatchy.
Obama is expected to announce his long-awaited decision on Dec. 1,
followed by meetings on Capitol Hill aimed at winning congressional
support amid opposition by some Democrats who are worried about the
strain on the U.S. Treasury and whether Afghanistan has become a
quagmire, the officials said.
The U.S. officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they
weren't authorized to discuss the issue publicly and because, one
official said, the White House is incensed by leaks on its Afghanistan
policy that didn't originate in the White House.
They said the commander of the U.S.-led international force in
Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, could arrive in Washington
as early as Sunday to participate in the rollout of the new plan,
including testifying before Congress toward the end of next week.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl
Eikenberry also are expected to appear before congressional
committees.
As it now stands, the plan calls for the deployment over a nine-month
period beginning in March of three Army brigades from the 101st
Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 10th Mountain
Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., and a Marine brigade from Camp Lejeune,
N.C., for as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.
In addition, a 7,000-strong division headquarters would be sent to
take command of U.S.-led NATO forces in southern Afghanistan — to
which the U.S. has long been committed — and 4,000 U.S. military
trainers would be dispatched to help accelerate an expansion of the
Afghan army and police.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to brief America's NATO
allies after next week's announcement, and the allies are to meet
again on Dec. 7 in Belgium to discuss whether some other nations might
contribute additional troops.
The Monday evening meeting was the ninth that Obama has held on the
crisis in Afghanistan, where the worsening war entered its ninth year
last month. This year has seen violence reach unprecedented levels as
the Taliban and allied groups have gained strength and expanded their
reach.
A U.S. military official used the term "decisional" to describe Monday
evening's meeting among Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Gates,
Clinton, National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Eikenberry and senior
U.S. military commanders.
The administration's plan contains "off-ramps," points starting next
June at which Obama could decide to continue the flow of troops, halt
the deployments and adopt a more limited strategy or "begin looking
very quickly at exiting" the country, depending on political and
military progress, one defense official said.
"We have to start showing progress within six months on the political
side or military side or that's it," the U.S. defense official said.
It's "not just how we get people there, but what's the strategy for
getting them out," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said
Monday.
The approach is driven in part by concerns that Afghan President Hamid
Karzai won't keep his promises to root out corruption and support
political reforms, and in part by growing domestic opposition to the
war, the U.S. officials said.
As McClatchy reported last month, the Obama administration has been
quietly working with U.S. allies and Afghan officials on an
"Afghanistan Compact," a package of political reforms and anti-
corruption measures that it hopes will boost popular support for
Karzai and erase the doubts about his legitimacy raised by his fraud-
tainted re-election.
The British government is offering to host a conference early next
year to win international support for the compact.
Last week, Clinton suddenly adopted a more conciliatory tone toward
Karzai, whom she and other administration officials had been pressing
to clean up the rampant corruption and cut his ties to local warlords,
some of whom traffic in opium.
In an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, she said that
Karzai had demonstrated "good faith" and added: "Well, there are
warlords and there are warlords."
As part of its new plan, the administration, which remains skeptical
of Karzai, will "work around him" by working directly with provincial
and district leaders, a senior U.S. defense official told McClatchy.
The plan adopted by Obama would fall well short of the 80,000 troops
McChrystal suggested in August as a "low-risk option" that would offer
the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize
Afghanistan.
It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a "high-
risk" approach that called for 20,000 additional troops and a "medium-
risk" option that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.
There are 68,000 U.S. troops and 42,000 from other countries in
Afghanistan. The U.S. Army's recently revised counterinsurgency manual
estimates that an all-out counterinsurgency campaign in a country with
Afghanistan's population would require about 600,000 troops.
The administration's plan is expected to encounter opposition on
Capitol Hill, where some senior Democrats have suggested that the
administration may need to raise taxes in order to pay for the
additional troops.
Obama campaigned saying that he'd fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
from the defense budget, but Mullen has said that the Afghan war —
which some administration officials privately concede could cost $700
billion to $1 trillion over 10 years — might require a supplemental
funding bill next year.
The administration's protracted deliberations have escalated into open
warfare between McChrystal and his supporters and advocates of a more
limited strategy led by Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm
Emanuel that often played out in dueling leaks to news organizations.