WASHINGTON The review of the administration's Afghanistan strategy released Thursday offered a strikingly mixed assessment of the two-pronged war effort: significant military progress against the Taliban, but lagging Afghan government capacity to capitalize on those gains.
President Barack Obama said Thursday that the war effort was "on track" to meet the goals he set a year ago disrupting and ultimately defeating al-Qaeda, halting Taliban momentum and strengthening Afghanistan's ability to fight the insurgents and to "start reducing our forces next July."
"This continues to be a difficult endeavor," Obama said. In many places, "the gains we've made are fragile and reversible," he said, making particular reference to an "urgent need for political and economic progress in Afghanistan" to match security successes.
In adopting a strategy last year that sent 30,000 additional U.S. troops and more than a thousand diplomats and aid experts to an unpopular war, Obama largely rejected a more focused counterterrorism option, centered on Special Operations Forces missions and drone attacks against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, put forward by Vice President Joe Biden and others.
Recalling a similar debate over U.S. operations in Iraq, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that those arguing for limits "were wrong in Iraq, and they are wrong here. ... I've seen this movie before an argument that you should just try to kill bad guys and use drones, then we can succeed. We can't succeed that way."
Obama, McCain said, "is very honest and forthright in the assessments he provides Congress and the American people. He has never said this is going to be easy."
In a prepared statement, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., described the review as "welcome evidence of progress in key parts of Afghanistan."
But he added that "our strategy and resources must match our objectives and our core mission, which is not building a perfect state, but defeating al-Qaeda and denying it and its partners a secure base from which to launch attacks on the United States and its allies."
The review concluded that significant gains have been made against al-Qaeda, with missile attacks by U.S. drones on their sanctuaries in Pakistan eliminating a number of insurgent leaders. But the Pakistani military, despite stepped-up efforts in tribal regions near its border with Afghanistan, has continued to resist U.S. entreaties to take more aggressive action.
"Progress has not come fast enough," Obama said, "so we will continue to insist to Pakistani leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders must be dealt with."
Administration officials said they planned to increase attacks on al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents across the Afghan border to help offset the Pakistani government's continued refusal to move against the al-Qaeda leadership and their extremist allies, especially the Haqqani network.
From havens in Pakistan's North Waziristan region, those groups have carried out deadly assaults against U.S. troops and have plotted attacks against the West, officials say.
Neither Obama nor a five-page written summary of the review distributed by the White House presented specifics or data to back up its conclusions that al-Qaeda has been significantly damaged and Taliban momentum had been "arrested" in much of Afghanistan "and reversed in some key areas." Nor did they indicate any specific policy changes to increase pressure on either the Afghan or Pakistani governments.
"A five-page document to deal with one of the most complex wars in history? It's not quite a fortune cookie, but it is not a strategic review either," said Anthony Cordesman, a national security expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Cordesman, who backs the U.S. war in Afghanistan, said a report so lacking in detail could fuel war skepticism.
"There is a risk here that is borne out in public opinion polls. We are not making a case for war," he said. "The message far too often is 'Trust me.' "
" Obama pledged a year ago to begin withdrawing U.S. troops in July 2011, a date that he and his aides appear determined to meet with at least token withdrawals.
But Thursday's assessment sheds no light on the size or pace of troop withdrawals.
The Washington Post, The New York Times, McClatchy Newspapers
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