At a White House war council meeting Wednesday, Obama rejected the four Afghan war options put before him and asked for revisions that combine the best elements of the proposals, Gates said. The changes could alter how many troops are sent to Afghanistan and how long they stay.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters traveling with Obama yesterday on the first leg of his Asia trip that the president wanted more study of the options to ensure there’s a real exit strategy, including benchmarks for success. “It’s important to fully examine not just how we’re going to get folks in, but how we’re going to get folks out,’’ Gibbs said.
Obama, who is not expected to decide the Afghan matter until after he returns from Asia late next week, is considering options that include adding 30,000 or more US troops to take on the Taliban and associated insurgent groups in key areas of Afghanistan - and to buy time for the Afghan government’s inadequate and ill-equipped fighting forces to prepare to take over defense of their country. The other three options are ranges of troop increases, from a relatively small addition to the roughly 40,000 preferred by the top US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, according to officials.
In contrast to the McChrystal approach, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry in Kabul has argued against sending large numbers of additional troops. Eikenberry, himself a former US military commander in Afghanistan, harbors strong doubts about the viability of the government there.
James Dobbins, who served as special envoy to Afghanistan during the Bush administration, said the Obama review “has gone on long enough and it is starting to create fissures’’ among his advisers, as evidenced by the apparent split between Eikenberry and McChrystal.
