Bin Laden’s death revives US debate on Afghan war
Bin Laden’s death revives US debate on Afghan war
The death of Osama bin Laden has revived a debate over the pace of a planned US troop withdrawal in Afghanistan and the rationale for a war that has dragged on for nearly a decade.
The raid that killed Al-Qaeda’s chief in Pakistan has supplied ammunition to those in and outside the White House who favor scaling back the massive US presence in Afghanistan, just as President Barack Obama reviews plans to begin pulling out some of the 100,000 troops there in July.
Skeptics have seized on Bin Laden’s demise to argue that there is no reason to keep so many troops in Afghanistan in a war originally launched after the September 11 attacks to prevent Al-Qaeda from using the country as a sanctuary.
“Herve Leger Bandage DressAfghanistan is no longer a war about vital American security interests,” wrote Leslie Gelb, a former American diplomat.
Gelb and others cite military estimates that only about 200 Al-Qaeda operatives are left in the country, while a NATO-led force has swelled to more than 140,000.
“It is about the failure of America’s political elites to face two plain facts: The al Qaeda terrorist threat is no longer centered in that ancient battleground, and the battle against the Taliban is mainly for Afghans themselves,” Gelb wrote in a Wall Street Journal commentary.
The removal of Bin Laden “surely will intensify the debate about how steep the off-ramp should be” in Afghanistan, said Robert Lamb, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
But Lamb argues that it is too risky to contemplate a dramatic withdrawal, and that the large NATO-led force needs to stay in place to push the Taliban to the negotiating table and allow more time for Afghan security forces to grow.
“Hard and unpalatable as it might be for the president, this course alone offers a solution that will protect the recent gains in Afghanistan and advance American interests over the long term,” Lamb wrote.
Amid rising concern about the mushrooming budget deficit, White House officials and lawmakers also worry about the price tag of the war, which now costs roughly $10 billion a month.
A growing number of Americans oppose the war but the issue has remained in the background, hardly registering on voters’ radar.
With Obama facing no intense public pressure to pull the plug on the mission, most analysts predict the president will take a cautious approach and approve a modest troop withdrawal of several thousand troops.
Although the commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, has yet to issue his recommendation to the White House, speculation has begun about what he plans to propose.
The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday reported a preliminary plan would withdraw 5,000 troops in July and up to 5,000 more by the end of the year.
Since taking office, Obama has fully backed the counter-insurgency campaign despite misgivings in his party and only tentative signs of progress in the fight against Taliban insurgents.
“The president has had a number of decision-making opportunities to change course on Afghanistan and he’s been remarkably consistent,” Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told AFP.
The drawdown debate is likely to renew tensions between military leaders and the White House that played out in the press in 2009 over a proposed troop build up.
Obama ultimately approved the troop “surge” favored by the military — sending in 30,000 reinforcements — but the administration remains divided, with Vice President Joe Biden favoring a smaller force to counter Al-Qaeda and its allies.
“Clearly the last set of decisions for troop counts were bruising for both the military and the administration,” Biddle said.
As chronicled in Bob Woodward’s book “Obama’s War,” some White House officials suspected the military was “boxing in” the president, refusing to offer alternatives to an open-ended, large-scale troop deployment.
Senior military officers, however, have resented civilian advisers demanding unrealistic options that could guarantee success at a “low cost,” Biddle said.
“That’s a recipe for frustration,” he said.
Categorised as: Regional News