Woodward: Obama Committed to Afghan Timetable
Politico reports:
For the past year, many in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill assumed that President Barack Obama’s commitment to begin U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan by July 2011 was a soft deadline, a fig leaf concealing an open-ended military commitment.
But the president’s timetable to begin a real drawdown — portrayed in Bob Woodward’s soon-to-be-released “Obama’s Wars” — is considerably more concrete than once thought. The book, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO, has Obama warning the Pentagon that he won’t tolerate a 10-year war that sacrifices American troops, bleeds the treasury or drains his own popularity with the Democratic base.
The open question, however, is whether Obama’s middle course was prudent — or if it represents the tepid pursuit of a policy that must be forcefully embraced to succeed.
Earlier this year, the administration and military disputed author Jonathan Alter’s report in his book “The Promise” that Vice President Joe Biden had retorted, “Bet on it,” when Alter asked if a significant number of American soldiers would leave Afghanistan next summer.
This time, officials emphasized that the initial withdrawal, announced in December 2009, was non-negotiable while the pace — or “slope” of the drawdown, as Obama calls it in Woodward’s book — will be determined by conditions on the ground, they say.
“This book certainly gives lie to the suggestion that the July 2011 date isn’t a real deadline — it is,” said a senior administration official, who had just finished one of the rare advance copies of Woodward’s book circulating the White House.
