Afghan cuts will be ‘real’

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will order a “real drawdown” of U.S. forces from Afghanistan starting in July, the White House insisted Monday, a milestone in a long war that is testing the patience of the American people and Congress particularly after the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Roughly 100,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, three times as many as when Obama took office, and U.S. forces are expected to remain there through 2014.

Sometime this month, Obama is likely to announce how many troops will start coming home. The commander in chief is on record as promising a “significant” withdrawal of forces in July after having sent in an additional 30,000 troops in December 2009 to turn around a troubled war that began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates said over the weekend that only a “modest” drawdown would be appropriate.

The White House sought to tamp down anticipation of Obama’s decision, suggesting there are no major policy decisions in debate and that the more important date is 2014, when NATO forces have pledged to turn over control of security to Afghan forces.

Presidential spokesman Jay Carney said Obama’s war strategy is set and that the coming drawdown is “a step along the way” to Afghanistan taking control of its own country.

Yet for a president heading into a re-election year, the pressure over Afghanistan is only mounting, particularly given the U.S. success in finding and killing bin Laden. As Gates traveled through Afghanistan the past week, the most frequent question he heard from soldiers was what does bin Laden’s death mean for the war. “We shouldn’t let up on the gas too much – at least for the next few months,” the secretary said.

A majority of Americans oppose the war, Afghan President Hamid Karzai bluntly wants a smaller U.S. presence and Congress is weary of the toll and cost of a war now nearly a decade old.

“I intend to follow through on that commitment that I made to the American people,” Obama said Monday in an interview with Hearst Television.

He said U.S. forces have killed bin Laden, knocked back al-Qaida and stabilized much of Afghanistan so that the Taliban cannot wrest back control, and “it’s now time for us to recognize that we’ve accomplished a big chunk of our mission and that it’s time for the Afghans to take more responsibility.”

Gates’ concern is that too fast a withdrawal could undermine the tenuous security gains in the fight against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, the al-Qaida training ground for the Sept. 11 attacks. Gates is also worried that a bold U.S. drawdown could influence the same action by allies at a time when Afghanistan remains unstable and its forces not fully ready.