Obama administration backtracks on Afghanistan withdrawal date


by Patrick Martin
WSWS
2009-12-03


The July 2011 date for beginning a withdrawal of US forces in Afghanistan, announced by President Obama in his speech to West Point military cadets Tuesday night, is neither irreversible nor even a deadline, top US national security officials said Wednesday.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before Senate and House committees throughout the day, defending Obama’s decision to send an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan.

Gates revealed that some of these new troops would arrive in Afghanistan before Christmas, and that most would be in place in time to join in the spring fighting after the winter snows melt in Afghanistan’s rugged mountain regions.

During the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday morning, every Republican senator and most Democrats voiced support for the escalation of the war, but several of the Republicans pressed the trio of witnesses on Obama’s one-sentence reference to July 2011 as the beginning of a drawdown of US forces.

In response, Gates, Clinton and Mullen each made statements effectively declaring the July 2011 deadline meaningless, and emphasizing that the Obama administration was committed to a long-term military presence in Central Asia.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, Obama’s opponent in the presidential election, declared his support for the dispatch of 30,000 more troops, and then asked: “How we can say, as the president did last night, that our withdrawal will begin in July 2011, no matter what, but that this arbitrary date will also take into account of conditions on the ground? That seems logically incoherent to me.â€