General David Petraeus, the current commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said today that President Obama’s decision to withdraw over 30,000 troops from Afghanistan by September 2012 is a “more aggressive” plan than the one on which the president’s military commanders had advised.

“The responsibility of combat commander in that kind of situation is to provide options to the president to implement his stated policy,” said Petraeus. “And that’s what I did.”