Senators disagree on strategy's prospects

THE OBAMA administration presented its new Afghan war strategy on Capitol Hill yesterday, following the president’s announcement on Tuesday night that he would send an additional 30,000 soldiers to Afghanistan by next summer, with a target date of July 2011 for troops to begin withdrawing.

Defence secretary Robert Gates, secretary of state Hillary Clinton and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, testified before the Senate armed services committee.

In his opening remarks, Mr Gates said the goal of “an extended surge of 18 to 24 months” is “not open-ended ‘nation-building’. It is neither necessary nor feasible to create a modern, centralised, western-style Afghan nation”. The US strategy has “a narrower focus tied more tightly to our core goal of disrupting, dismantling and eventually defeating al-Qaeda by building the capacity of the Afghans,” Mr Gates said.

He said he hoped there would be a willingness to maintain a longterm, non-combat presence in Afghanistan, for training and other purposes. Analysts envisage a relationship similar to that of the US with Pakistan, based on military aid and large numbers of CIA operatives.

Disagreement over the troop build-up was personified by the committee’s chairman, the Democratic Senator Carl Levin, and its ranking Republican member, Senator John McCain. “It seems to me the large influx of US combat troops will put more US marines on street corners in Afghan villages, with too few Afghan partners alongside them,” Senator Levin said on opening the hearing.

Senator McCain said he supported the build-up, but objected to Mr Obama’s timetable. “Success is the real exit strategy, and when conditions on the ground have decisively begun to change for the better. That is when our troops should start to return home with honour, not one minute longer, not one minute sooner, and certainly not on some arbitrary date in July 2011,” he said.

On Tuesday night, President Obama said the objective of the target date was to make it “clear to the Afghan government – and more importantly, to the Afghan people – that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country”.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham asked the three administration officials if they realised this was “the last chance to get it right” in Afghanistan. They quietly nodded Yes. Senator Graham said he couldn’t stomach “letting Afghanistan go back into the abyss again”.

Several Democrats said they were not convinced the surge would hasten an end to the war, and expressed fears it would divert funds from domestic reforms. Senator Russ Feingold called the strategy “an expensive gamble to undertake armed nation-building on behalf of a corrupt government of questionable legitimacy”.

In Afghanistan US commander, Gen Stanley McChrystal told his regional commanders in a video conference that strengthening the Afghan security forces would be “the most important thing we do in the future”. President Obama’s speech meant “we have a level of commitment that we’ve not had before and that will change everything”.

In his 35-minute speech at West Point military academy on Tuesday evening, Mr Obama said the Taliban and al-Qaeda would use Afghanistan to launch attacks on the US if they were not defeated. “If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow,” he said.

The president deplored the “rancour and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse”. The US was united when the war began, he recalled. He won the loudest applause from his military audience when he said: “I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot summon that unity again.”