President Obama’s methodical review of Afghanistan war strategy has made him the target of criticism from Republicans and intensified lobbying from advocates and opponents of more U.S. troops.
Obama held the fifth in a series of White House Situation Room meetings with advisers on Afghanistan, and plans another next week. The president, a former law instructor, poses rigorous questions and encourages robust arguments at the sessions, senior adviser David Axelrod said.
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“This is a ferociously difficult issue, and it bears a lot of thought and reflection and review,” Axelrod said in an interview. “Every assumption needs to be tested.”
The measured approach holds advantages and risks. Obama’s advisers say it will help convince a war-weary public to support his ultimate decision.
At the same time, it has subjected him to mounting pressure from different sides of the debate over force levels — and complaints from Republicans who had supported Obama when he added troops in March.
“It is unfair to our forces in theater to fight a war while the strategy remains in limbo,” Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon of California, the House Armed Services Committee’s top Republican, said at a hearing. “I’m concerned about the continued drift of our Afghanistan strategy.”
Republicans, such as Arizona Sen. John McCain, are pushing for a decision to send the troops that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, has said he needs.
McCain has been joined by Democrats such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who heads the Select Committee on Intelligence, and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri.
Other Democrats, including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin of Michigan, say sending more U.S. combat troops would be a mistake. They favor building up Afghan security forces as an alternative.
Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, said an American public that has grown “exhausted from this war” will appreciate Obama’s approach to the “significant decisions that need to be made.”
A “comprehensive meeting” at the White House this week included discussions about U.S. civilian cooperation with the Afghan government and training of Afghan security forces, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. The spokesman dismissed as “not true” a British Broadcasting Corp. report that the United States plans to announce the addition of as many as 45,000 troops.
Obama is weighing several options. One is to keep pursuing the approach he adopted in March, which is focused on combating the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan through a troop-intensive strategy of protecting the population from insurgent attacks. McChrystal says that would require about 40,000 more troops.
An alternative would be to narrow the U.S. military involvement by focusing on attacking al Qaeda fighters in the region along the Afghan-Pakistani border, while building up Afghan soldiers and police and relying on them to contain the Taliban. A middle course is a third possibility; a pullout isn’t under consideration, according to Axelrod. “Nobody’s advocating that,” he said.
