Afghanistan troop decision coming by Monday, November 30th?

obama-mohammad.jpgAccording to the AP, Obama may use an unusual evening war council session Monday to lock in his long-awaited decision on whether to commit tens of thousands of new U.S. forces to the war in Afghanistan. Military officials and others expect Obama to use his half ass-ed planned of deploying 32,000 to 35,000 U.S. forces to war, instead of the max 80,000 McChrystal suggested in his top plan, and below the “middle ground” plan of 40,000 troops proposed by McChrystal.

That rough figure has stood as the most likely option since before Obama’s last large war council meeting earlier this month, when he tasked military planners with rearranging the timing and makeup of some of the deployments.

The president has said with increasing frequency in recent days that a big piece of the rethinking of options that he ordered had to do with building an exit strategy into the announcement—in other words, revising the options presented to him to clarify when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government and under what conditions.

As White House press secretary Robert Gibbs put it to reporters on Monday, it’s “not just how we get people there, but what’s the strategy for getting them out.”

Obama was holding the 10th meeting of his Afghanistan strategy review since mid-September on Monday night, with a large cast of foreign policy advisers, to go over that revised information from war planners.

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November 23, 2009 · Filed Under Afghanistan


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