From AFP:
The White House said Monday that July 2011 was a “non-negotiable” deadline for starting a US withdrawal from Afghanistan, while insisting that President Barack Obama and his top general in Kabul were on the same page.
The White House was quizzed about a seeming disconnect between the two after General David Petraeus said in an interview aired Sunday that he could seek a delay in the troop drawdown if conditions on the ground required it…
The switch to General Petraeus gave the White House an excellent opportunity to mute the 2011 time table and thus add an element of uncertainty in to al Qaeda and Taliban plans. They are banking on us leaving, and thus their strategy is merely to remain viable until we start to leave – and then they’ll move in. Additionally, it is hard for us to gain local support from people we’ll leave to the Taliban’s tender mercies. This White House statement just blows Petraeus out of the water and provides security for the enemy.
I hope that better thinking people in the White House will prevail – the campaign in Afghanistan is proving very difficult and our troops are extending full effort to win…they need to be given the tools to do so, which includes time. And keep in mind that if we take away the time limit, we may even be able to start drawing down sooner – we are looking for some sort of replay of the “Anbar awakening” in Iraq…some shift in popular opinion which will bring the Afghans down on our side, thus taking away the “sea” the terrorist “fish” swim in. As we saw in Iraq, once that is done it become only a matter of a relatively short time before most of the terrorists are picked off or picked up.
Holding to an absurd, artificial time line at the behest of the Democrat left is just plain and simple stupid – we must go for victory in Afghanistan, and you can’t set a date for that.
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