2012 Troop Pullback Worries Military Experts:
"Mr. O’Hanlon and General Barno said it was hard to fathom the military logic of setting a withdrawal deadline for the surge right in the middle of the fighting season. “This is a rushed ending to what has been a fairly effective surge,” Mr. O’Hanlon said.Early next summer? That's square in the middle of presidential campaign season. What a coincidence.
Even after the withdrawal of the surge forces — an initial 30,000 plus 3,000 other support troops — the American presence in Afghanistan will be a considerable force of 68,000. But there will be less opportunity for carrying out the full counterinsurgency campaign planned by commanders. Afghanistan’s own security forces will number 300,000 by the end of the year, although questions about their professional ability remain.
Administration and Pentagon officials said Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander in Afghanistan, had pressed for a less rapid withdrawal. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who visited Afghanistan in recent weeks, also had warned against risking the success of the surge with a speedy withdrawal. But the president’s new order was preferable to even more accelerated proposals to withdraw all of the surge forces by early next summer."
And, yet, that bastion of foreign policy wisdom, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Looney.), on Thursday knocked the Obama administration’s strategy for an Afghanistan withdrawal, but also suggested Congress could take steps to bring more troops home much sooner.
Other democrats parroted their legislative (minority) leader stating, "The whole premise of this war is wrong.”
SG at SL rightly reminds the world that "Afghanistan is the war the Democrats wanted. Afghanistan was what the Democrats called ‘the good war,’ in contrast to the evil and senseless war in Iraq."
Uh, oh. If Obama has lost seditious nutjob Cynthia McKinney...
PICKET: Anti-war left steps up against Obama.
Where have all the moonbeams and unicorn farts gone? Long time passing...
TY L