From the Guardian:
Barack Obama is set to reject the advice of the Pentagon by announcing on Wednesday night the withdrawal of up to 30,000 troops from Afghanistan by November next year, in time for the US presidential election.
The move comes despite warnings from his military commanders that recent security gains are fragile. They have been urging him to keep troop numbers high until 2013.
The accelerated drawdown will dismay American and British commanders in Kabul, who have privately expressed concern that the White House is now being driven by political rather than military imperatives.
“This is not something we feel entirely comfortable with,” a Whitehall official told the Guardian…
From what I’ve been reading, we have been gaining ground in Afghanistan but it is, indeed, fragile at the moment – that we’re just turning the corner and there is still very much to do before we can secure a peace which leaves in place some sort of decent regime which poses no threat to the United States. It could be that even after a draw down that our military forces will be able to keep up the momentum – but there is always the risk that we’ll lack sufficient forces to deal with the situation and the enemy will gain the upper hand.
But Obama needs to throw a bone to his anti-war left – they voted for him because he was supposed to end all of the Bush Administration efforts; thus far, Obama has batted zero in this. In order to keep the anti-war people from following some third party effort, Obama needs to show them that he’s still with them…a serious draw down of forces in Afghanistan would help Obama in this area. And what this means is that for personal, political motives, Obama might be getting ready to throw away everything we’ve fought for in Afghanistan.
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