President Obama is expected to confer with his war council in the next few days and is closer to a decision on Afghanistan — but pressure from lawmakers and the calendar are increasingly boxing him in.
“I’ve described the process as coming to a conclusion,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said late last week of Obama’s review of Afghanistan war policy.
Obama on Wednesday is set to depart on a 10-day trip to Asia, and will likely announce his decision before then.
Before he goes his schedule tentatively includes an event with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington and a trip to Texas to for a memorial service at Ford Hood. On Saturday he visited Congress to make a personal appeal to Democrats to pass a health care bill.
The president, known to bristle at outside pressure, has received extensive briefings on the matter and no shortage of often conflicting advice from advisers, lawmakers, the Pentagon and other experts. He has resisted being pinned down on a deadline for making a decision.
Accused by some of slow-walking the process, the administration has repeatedly pushed back, noting the longer decision-making timetable of the previous administration and saying Obama wants to be deliberate.
By taking his time, however, Obama has allowed the issue to become increasingly politicized. At a speech last week in Michigan, former Vice President Cheney blasted the Democratic administration for dallying.
“Our adversaries take heart from our hesitation and vacillation,” Cheney said, “because it underlies their basic strategy: If you kill enough Americans, you can change their policy.”
At issue is a request by Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal to significantly increase troop levels in Afghanistan in order to mount an extensive counterinsurgency plan. One option the White House is considering is having Obama announce his final decision in a televised address to the nation.
With President Hamid Karzai’s re-election recently concluded, the White House is largely out of excuses for further delay.
“I’m disappointed that we haven’t made the decision,” said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of the few Republicans outspoken on the issue who has been generally supportive of the president.
“The fact is that we already have men and women over there, and the longer we delay in sending them the needed resources they need, the greater danger they are in and that’s just a fundamental fact of warfare,” McCain told Fox News.
“So I’m past being a bit angry. I’m just very disappointed and I hope the president will make the right decision soon.”
Further complicating the scenario for Obama are a burst of renewed violence in Afghanistan, a decision by Canada to pull its troops out of the country by 2011 and a decision last week by the United Nations to pull staffers out of the country.
