Obama Orders Rapid (?) Troop Cuts In Afghanistan

[CodeManBob]

From June 23 NYTimes:
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.
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.”
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