President Barack Obama’s announcement of troop drawdowns in Afghanistan on a schedule reportedly faster than some in the Pentagon wished and clearly aimed at America’s political middle has not satisfied many on America’s right or left but it is being praised in Europe and by Afghanistan’s top leader:
America’s European allies welcomed President Obama’s announcement of troop reductions in Afghanistan with their own withdrawal promises Thursday, while the reaction of political leaders in Afghanistan ranged from enthusiasm to disdain.
President Hamid Karzai said Afghanistan would be ready to take responsibility for its own security by 2014, when the drawdown would be complete. The country will “always be thankful” to the international community for its help, he added.
“This soil can only by protected by the Afghan sons, and it has to be protected,” Karzai said at a news conference. “The people of Afghanistan, by help of their sons and youths, will protect their soil and people.”
But Abdullah Abdullah, a political opponent of Karzai’s and a former Afghan foreign minister, voiced concern over the ability of Karzai’s government to stave off extremist groups.
“The presence of a leader without a vision, without a sense of direction, without a sense of purpose … [has] prevented most of the goals of the Afghan people to be achieved,” Abdullah said. “Our concern is that in the coming few years, [with] less resources, less troops available, we might miss further opportunities.”
The Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan and provided sanctuary to al-Qaeda before the U.S.-led invasion, dismissed Obama’s speech as symbolic, and said “our armed struggle will increase from day to day” until the international coalition is gone.
…. In Europe, France and Germany announced that they, too, would reduce their deployments in Afghanistan, with France planning to accelerate its pullout from the country.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced in that France’s troops would engage in a “phased withdrawal” mirroring that of the United States. France has about 4,000 soldiers in Afghanistan.
The Daily Beast’s John Avlon notes that Obama’s speech was adjusted to international and domestic realities:
It is a limited multilateral approach, fitting a republic—not an empire—in an era of globalization. The fact that Libya is still in chaos months later speaks to the still undetermined success of that vision.
But in the end, the audience for this speech was domestic and it was written with an ear toward 2012, with unmistakable echoes of campaign themes past and present.
The speech’s clearly intended headline—“It is time to focus on nation-building here at home”—was given its own paragraph for emphasis in the prepared text. It is the umpteenth promise to focus on jobs and the economy, an acknowledgement that the cost of wars cannot be sustained if we intend to deal with our deficit and our debt. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s recent pointed criticism—“That we would build bridges in Baghdad and Kandahar and not Baltimore and Kansas City, absolutely boggles the mind.”—has been heard, loud and clear.
The close was also a return to the theme that propelled Obama to the presidency in 2008—a commitment to achieving national unity, now crystalized in the memory of those months after the attacks of September 11th when the overwhelming sense of purpose made partisanship seem small.
This was a presidential speech intended to frame the 2012 debate. President Obama has managed to depolarize the debate over Iraq and Afghanistan. This is no small feat. The extent to which he can inspire and unite Americans again on the home front will determine whether he is reelected.
Some want more troops pulled out of Afghanistan as soon as possible … some want fewer, at a slower place.
Instead, President Obama sought a middle course with his Afghanistan withdrawal plan, earning himself criticism from both the political left and the right — and hoping that he can bring the 10-year-old war to a gradual without seeing Afghanistan revert back to a haven for 9/11-style terrorists.
….Some lawmakers, including many of Obama’s fellow Democrats, point out that even after these withdrawals, there will still some 67,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, more than twice the number than when Obama took office.
“It has been the hope of many in Congress and across the country that the full drawdown of U.S. forces would happen sooner than the president laid out,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Cal. “And we will continue to press for a better outcome.”
ome Republicans pointed out that military leaders had sought a smaller and slower drawdown, saying that the gains of the troop surge that Obama ordered in 2009 could be reversed.
“This is not the `modest’ withdrawal that I and others had hoped for and advocated,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who lost the 2008 election to Obama.
Some analysts noted that the withdrawal plan Obama outlined last night ends by September of 2012 — the start of the final stage of the president’s re-election bid.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said, “it seems the president is trying to find a political solution with a military component to it, when it needs to be the other way around.”
Of course, by seeking to split the difference between fast withdrawers and slow withdrawers, Obama is aiming for the broad middle. Surveys indicate that more and more Americans want out of Afghanistan, especially amid economic problems in the United States.
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake and Chris Cillizza:
But even as Obama seeks the political middle ground on foreign policy, he’s getting tugged at from all sides.
The reactions from the political world after the speech were all over the map — but mostly out of sync with the White House’s decision.
Many Democrats lamente that the numbers were too small, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who said flatly that the drawdown of 10,000 troops this year is “not good enough.” Joining her, to differing degrees, were Demoratic Sens. Barbara Boxer (Calif.) and Patty Murray (Wash.) and even the much more conservative Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.). Even statements that were intended to be supportive of Obama’s remarks, from Sens. Jon Tester (Mont.) and Mark Begich (Alaska), struck hesitant tones, noting the desire for complete exit.
Republicans, meanwhile, criticized Obama for not making clearer his long-term plans and justifying the war at a time when public opinion has turned against it. And presidential candidate Jon Huntsman joined the more isolationist Republicans in calling for bigger drawdowns.
“Now it is time we move to a focused counter-terror effort, which requires significantly fewer boots on the ground than the president discussed tonight,” Huntsman said.
The question for the president is whether such a middle ground position is the politically smart position.
Being in the middle is generally seen as the safest course, but opinions about war tend to the extremes, and right now, Obama has relatively few strong allies for the course has has chosen. (At least when he called for the “surge” of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2009, he had lots of crossover support from Republicans.)
As the GOP presidential field does its best to appeal to those extremes — whether on the isolationist side or the hawkish side — they may actually find a more significant base of support than the president has right now in the middle.
Michael Brenner, writing on The Huffington Post, says three questions remain in the wake of Obama’s speech:
Three questions should be asked in the wake of President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan last night. What does it means for the United States’ strategy there — and in Pakistan? Does it represent a qualitative change in official American thinking about its stakes in the region and in the wider ‘war on terror’? What influences shaped the approach Obama outlined?
Here is a preliminary, and sketchy, attempt to answer them. First, Washington’s goals remain the same…..
This assessment points to an answer for the second question. Mr. Obama’s worldview has not undergone any modification. For all the rhetoric, he still is devoted to creating conditions of zero threat to American security emanating from the region…..
Finally, how do we explain the White House’s readiness commit to a schedule of force reductions that runs against the grain of Petraeus/Gates/Panetta? We have to look at American domestic politics to understand the dynamic within the administration that led to this outcome. Obama’s preoccupation is getting himself reelected. All else pales into relative insignificance. ……
There is reason to believe, nonetheless, that Obama hopes to have it both ways, i.e. a politically rewarding reformulation of America’s position in AfPak and a spinable measure of success in at least preventing an unraveling.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.