WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates indicated Thursday that he is open to increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, voicing a shift in his position as the administration ponders a military assessment expected to lead to a formal request for additional forces.
Gates, in a briefing at the Pentagon, also defended the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, rebutting suggestions that it is time to pull out. His remarks came just hours before the Army announced that it will extend the tours of about 3,000 soldiers in Afghanistan for between two weeks and two months amid an intensifying Taliban insurgency.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, submitted a key assessment of the war this week. Gates said the assessment, which President Barack Obama and top military officers are reviewing, altered his long-standing concern about creating an oversized U.S. “footprint” in Afghanistan.
“I take seriously General McChrystal’s point that the size … of the footprint depends … in significant measure … on the nature of the footprint and the behavior of those troops and their attitudes and their interactions with the Afghans,” Gates said. “If they interact with the Afghans in a way that gives confidence to the Afghans that we’re their partners and their allies, then the risks that I have been concerned about the footprint becoming too big … is mitigated.”
In particular, Gates cited efforts by McChrystal to distribute U.S. troops to better protect the population and reduce civilian casualties.
Gates also rebuffed as “unrealistic” arguments that the administration should narrow the mission to one of counterterrorism in Afghanistan and along the Pakistani border. Instead, he said that uprooting terrorist groups requires a more holistic campaign to shore up internal security — the type of effort McChrystal and other top U.S. military leaders envision.
