The Obama administration needs to rethink its timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan to preserve their hard-won successes, former officials said Wednesday, amid reports the White House is moving in that direction.
“Actual war is too dynamic to accommodate fixed models,” retired Adm. Eric Olson, former chief of U.S. Special Operations Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee, noting that the U.S.-trained Afghan forces, though courageous, need continuing support to keep the Taliban and other extremist threats at bay.
The U.S. effort in Afghanistan over the past 13 years has been a “relative bright spot” in the global war against Islamist extremist groups — a success that needs a continuing presence to be preserved, said Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
“In my view, we can’t simply declare victory and move on,” he said.
The administration’s current plan calls for cutting the 10,600 U.S. troops in Afghanistan now to 5,500 by the end of the year, with the rest to be pulled out by the time Obama leaves office in January 2017. There also are about 7,850 troops in Afghanistan from other NATO and allied nations.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the administration was considering slowing that timetable and was meeting with Army Gen. John Campbell, commander of U.S. and NATO forces there, to discuss the issue. Campbell is set to testify before the committee on Thursday.
Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., and many other Republicans in Congress favor such a move.
“The world walked away from Afghanistan once, and it descended into chaotic violence that became the platform for the worst terrorist attack in history against our homeland,” McCain said.
“If the president repeats his mistakes from Iraq, we can expect a similar disaster in Afghanistan: growing instability, terrorist safe havens, horrific human rights abuses, the rapid dissolution of the hard-won gains that our men and women in uniform purchased as such high cost, and ultimately, direct threats to the United States.”
Added Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the panel’s ranking Democrat: “The United States has devoted significant resources to the Afghanistan campaign…so it’s important that we get this mission right.”
