KABUL — A bipartisan delegation of four U.S. senators, asserting that the U.S. counterinsurgency is making headway in Afghanistan, heightened pressure Wednesday on President Barack Obama to abandon his pledge that the U.S. would begin withdrawing troops in July 2011, a deadline that seems increasingly wobbly.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Obama was “wrong to set the date of July, mid-2011,” to begin a phased withdrawal of roughly 100,000 U.S. troops. He said the president should unequivocally state that any U.S. pullback would be based on conditions in the country.
Offering a different perspective, Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, told reporters that the 2011 date should not be a focal point.
“A better date to think about is 2014,” he said, when Afghan President Hamid Karzai has proposed that Afghanistan take control of its own security.
In an article that appeared in Wednesday’s Denver Post, McClatchy Newspapers reported that the White House plans to de-emphasize the July 2011 date as the beginning of a U.S. withdrawal in hopes, in part, of convincing Pakistan’s military that the U.S. will not soon abandon its fight against the Taliban.
The date for beginning the withdrawal has been controversial since Obama announced it a year ago, and McClatchy Newspapers reported that senior U.S. officials say the administration is now trying to focus attention on 2014.
A White House spokesman said Wednesday that there’s been no change in policy.
The senators’ assertion of progress in the Afghan war was based on briefings here with U.S. generals, including Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of allied forces in Afghanistan. Petraeus and the other commanders argue that a reinforced counterinsurgency strategy is working but needs more time than some in Washington are willing to give it.
The delegation also included Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.
Private analysts, and even some U.S. officials, question the extent to which an influx of U.S. troops in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces, intensified airstrikes and Special Forces raids have set back the Taliban-led insurgency.
