News about Afghanistan--time to leave, majortiy agree

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News about Afghanistan--time to leave more agree

 

Just Foreign Policy News

May 11, 2011

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=NW6Q%2B3myMQVjJpeDQLvxBBXHj7AbA99i

 

U.S./Top News

1) With bin Laden dead, some escalate push for new Afghan strategy

Karen DeYoung and Scott Wilson, Washington Post, May 10

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/bin-ladens-killing- requires-new-look-at-afghanistan-strategy-kerry- says/2011/05/10/AFWylfiG_story.html

 

The death of Osama bin Laden and growing pressure from Congress to shrink the U.S. footprint and expense in Afghanistan have given new impetus to those within the Obama administration who favor a swift reduction of U.S. forces, according to senior administration officials and leading lawmakers.

 

These members of the administration initially pressed for an approach that emphasized the targeted killing of insurgent leaders, rather than the broader, troop-heavy counterinsurgency strategy that President Obama ultimately embraced. They intend to argue in upcoming debates that the al-Qaeda leader's demise is proof that counterterrorism is a more reliable and cost-effective tactic for the next phase of the nearly decade-old war.

 

Even before the death of bin Laden, the confluence of the national debt crisis, the 2012 election, and events on the ground had bolstered arguments that the administration's plans to remake Afghanistan's government and economy went too far beyond the goal of safeguarding U.S. security.

 

Current expenditures of $10 billion a month are "fundamentally unsustainable" and the administration urgently needs to clarify both its mission and exit plan, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said Tuesday.

 

A senior administration official involved in Afghanistan policy insisted that "there will be no re-litigation" of the strategy that has brought 30,000 more U.S. troops and hundreds of additional U.S. diplomats to the war zone since early last year. "We're on a clear path set by the president," the official said.

 

But the official said the killing of bin Laden "may have a significant effect going forward on the setting of milestones and the pace and slope" of the U.S. troop withdrawal scheduled to take place between July and the end of 2014.

 

Administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal thinking, emphasized that Obama and his national security team have not begun discussions on the withdrawal nor has the military made a recommendation.

 

At a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he chairs, Kerry said he did not advocate a "unilateral, precipitous withdrawal" of U.S. forces. But, he said, "I do think that we ought to be working towards achieving the smallest footprint possible."

 

Kerry is a longtime friend and former Senate colleague of Vice President Biden, who led the administration faction arguing that counterterrorism was a more reliable and cost-effective tactic against al-Qaeda. The senator from Massachusetts is often a leading indicator of administration thinking. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates - whose departments and personnel have carried out the counterinsurgency strategy - advised in favor of Obama's ultimate decision.

 

"One threshold really needs to be both stated and restated as we consider the options," Kerry said. "And that is that it is fundamentally unsustainable to continue spending $10 billion a month on a massive military operation with no end in sight."

 

Kerry has played an active role in supporting the administration's strategy and in helping keep Hamid Karzai, the often troublesome Afghanistan president, in line. But he questioned the administration's "lack of clarity" on reconciliation talks with the Taliban and the outline of a political solution that top administration policymakers have said are among the top U.S. priorities this year.

 

"Looming large in front of us is the pregnant question: What is the political solution? We need to make our ultimate goals absolutely clear for the sake of the American people, Afghans, Pakistanis and everyone else who has a stake in the outcome," Kerry said.

 

The senior administration official said that it was not clear whether bin Laden's death would cause the Taliban to separate from al- Qaeda. "But his death makes that more likely, which could give traction to reconciliation efforts between the Taliban and the Afghan government."

 

Lawmakers of both parties have expressed increasing impatience. "The question before us is whether Afghanistan is important enough to justify the lives and massive resources that are being spent there, especially given our nation's debt crisis," Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee said at the hearing.

 

"The president should not just withdraw an arbitrary number of troops," Lugar said. "Rather, he should put forward a new plan that includes a definition of success in Afghanistan based on the United States' vital interests and a sober analysis of what is possible to achieve," he said.

 

In the 10 days since bin Laden's death, many legislators have called for the United States to speed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, beginning with Obama's planned drawdown of an unspecified number of troops this summer.

[...]

"What has been the U.S. administration's primary argument for being in Afghanistan - the al-Qaeda threat - has now been diminished," said one Western diplomat in Kabul. "It will only strengthen the argument that you can now begin the military withdrawal."

 

2) After Bin Laden, U.S. Reassesses Afghan Strategy

Thom Shanker and Charlie Savage, New York Times, May 10, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/world/middleeast/11military.html

 

Washington - The killing of Osama bin Laden has set off a reassessment of the war in Afghanistan and the broader effort to combat terrorism, with Congress, the military and the Obama administration weighing the goals, strategies, costs and underlying authority for a conflict that is now almost a decade old.

 

Two influential senators - John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana - suggested Tuesday that it was time to rethink the Afghanistan war effort, forecasting the beginning of what promises to be a fierce debate about how quickly the United States should begin pulling troops out of the country.

 

"We should be working toward the smallest footprint necessary, a presence that puts Afghans in charge and presses them to step up to that task," Mr. Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said at a hearing. "Make no mistake, it is fundamentally unsustainable to continue spending $10 billion a month on a massive military operation with no end in sight."

 

Both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lugar, the committee's senior Republican, said they remained opposed to a precipitous withdrawal.

 

Still, "the broad scope of our activities suggests that we are trying to remake the economic, political and security culture of Afghanistan - but that ambitious goal is beyond our power," Mr. Lugar said. "A reassessment of our Afghanistan policy on the basis of whether our overall geostrategic interests are being served by spending roughly $10 billion a month in that country was needed before our troops took out Bin Laden."

 

Inside the Pentagon, however, officials make the case that rather than using Bin Laden's death as a justification for withdrawal, the United States should continue the current strategy in Afghanistan to secure additional gains and to further pressure the Taliban to come to the bargaining table for negotiations on political reconciliation.

 

And in Congress, a debate is getting under way over the underlying authority used by two successive administrations to wage the post- Sept. 11 fight against terrorist organizations and their supporters.

 

The House Armed Services Committee is expected to take up a defense authorization bill on Wednesday that includes a new authorization for the government to use military force in the war on terrorism. The provision has set off an argument over whether it is a mere update - or a sweeping, open-ended expansion - of the power Congress granted to the executive branch in 2001.

 

The new authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda was unveiled by the committee chairman, Representative Howard P. McKeon, Republican of California. The committee is scheduled to vote Wednesday on amendments to the bill.

 

The provision states that Congress "affirms" that "the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces," and that the president is authorized to use military force - including detention without trial - of members and substantial supporters of those forces.

 

That language, which would codify into federal law a definition of the enemy that the Obama administration has adopted in defending against lawsuits filed by Guantánamo Bay detainees, would supplant the existing military force authorization that Congress passed overwhelmingly on Sept. 14, 2001. It instead named the enemy as the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.

 

Critics of Mr. McKeon's provision have reacted with alarm to what they see as an effort to entrench in a federal statute unambiguous authority for the executive branch to wage war against terrorists who are deemed associates of Al Qaeda but who lack a clear tie to the Sept. 11 attacks.

 

In a joint letter to Congress, about two dozen groups - including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights - contended that the proposal amounted to an open-ended grant of authority to the executive branch, legitimizing an unending war from Yemen to Somalia and beyond.

 

"This monumental legislation - with a large-scale and practically irrevocable delegation of war power from Congress to the president - could commit the United States to a worldwide war without clear enemies, without any geographical boundaries" and "without any boundary relating to time or specific objective to be achieved," the letter warned.

 

But Mr. McKeon argued in a statement that the provision did nothing more than codify the Obama administration's interpretation of its legal authority to address the threat of Al Qaeda in light of its splintering and evolution over the past decade.

 

"This bill does not expand the war effort," he said. "Instead, the legislation better aligns the old legal authorities used to detain and prosecute those intent on attacking America with the threats our country faces today."

[...]

 

3) Poll: With bin Laden dead, is it time to end war?

Susan Page, USA Today, May 10, 2011

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-05-10-Afghanistan- mission-bin-Laden-troops-poll_n.htm

 

Washington - Osama bin Laden's demise may have shifted not only the military prospects for al-Qaeda abroad, but also the political landscape for President Obama at home.

 

The death of the terror network's leader and an intensified debate about how to cut federal spending are fueling calls to accelerate the promised troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, declare victory and get out.

 

So with bin Laden finally gone, is it time for America's longest war to end?

 

Nearly six in 10 Americans think so, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken over the weekend. Assessments of how the decade-long war is going have improved a bit, compared with six weeks ago, and a broad swath of Americans now agrees with the statement that the United States "has accomplished its mission in Afghanistan and should bring its troops home."

 

Just over one-third say instead that the USA "still has important work to do in Afghanistan and should maintain its troops there."

 

"I kind of feel like Osama was a reason we had gone there in the first place," says Liz Calhoun, 35, a stay-at-home mom from Lakeville, Minn., who was called in one of two USA TODAY polls on the subject during the past 10 days. "Now that he's dead, it's an end."

[...]

"I don't think we should just leave them hanging," Calhoun, a Republican and the mother of two, says of the Afghans. Her timetable for a measured U.S. pullout? "Realistically, probably three to six months."

[...]

 

4) Bipartisan House group to Obama: Pull troops from Afghanistan now

Mike Lillis, The Hill, 05/09/11 07:44 PM ET

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/159927-bipartisan-house-group- to-obama-withdraw-troops-in-afghanistan-now

 

Congressional calls for a quick end to military operations in Afghanistan grew louder Monday when a bipartisan group in the House urged President Obama to immediately withdraw U.S. troops.

 

Lawmakers said the raid in Pakistan that netted Osama bin Laden proves that a focused approach to rooting out terrorists is more effective than a large military presence, and they urged Obama to shift the mission in Afghanistan from nation-building to counterintelligence.

 

They said the U.S. can't justify the extensive cost of maintaining tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan given the death of the al Qaeda leader.

 

"The success of this mission does not change the reality that America still faces a determined and violent adversary. It does, however, require us to re-examine our policy of nation-building in Afghanistan," the lawmakers wrote to Obama in a Monday letter spearheaded by Reps. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Jason Chaffetz (R- Utah).

 

"We believe it is no longer the best way to defend America against terror attacks, and we urge you to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan that are not crucial to the immediate national-security objective of combating al Qaeda."

 

Also endorsing the letter were GOP Reps. Walter Jones (N.C.), John Campbell (Calif.) and John Duncan Jr. (Tenn.), and Democratic Reps. John Garamendi (Calif.), Rush Holt (N.J.) and John Tierney (Mass.).

 

The push is the latest salvo from an unusual alliance of anti-war Democrats and fiscally conservative Republicans who have united behind an expedited withdrawal from Afghanistan following bin Laden's death. After a global manhunt spanning more than a decade, the infamous 9/11 mastermind was killed last week by U.S. special forces in a covert raid north of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

 

In a telephone interview Monday, Welch said bin Laden's demise has allowed lawmakers skeptical of the nation-building approach "some space ... to step back and be more open to a change in direction."

[...]

 

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