Taliban's 'First Revenge' for Bin Laden Killing Leaves 80 Dead in Pakistan

President Barack Obama, with Osama bin Laden dead and a fiscal crisis on his hands at home, looks set to announce an initial U.S. troop withdrawal from the costly Afghan war that could be larger than previously expected.

Some current and former officials say Obama could easily announce a pullout of at least 10,000 troops over the next year as the administration seeks to capitalize on gains against the Taliban in the south and the Navy SEAL raid last month that killed the al Qaeda leader in Pakistan.

At the start of this year, with violence raging after nearly a decade of war, a minimal pullout of less than 5,000 troops had been anticipated.

Obama has made no final decision and, as far as is known, has received no formal recommendations from the Pentagon about how many soldiers should be pulled starting in July from the 100,000-strong U.S. force in Afghanistan.

Obama, who sent 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan after a reassessment of the U.S. war strategy in late 2009, will confer with his inner circle and inform Americans in mid- to late June of how he plans to begin withdrawing U.S. forces. As the West looks to leave, Afghan forces are slated to slowly take over from foreign forces by the end of 2014.

Hostility is mounting in both parties toward the war, which now costs over $110 billion a year. Last week, the House of Representatives narrowly defeated an amendment that would have required Obama to intensify planning for a withdrawal.

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With surprising bluntness, the top House Democrat on defense and appropriations is warning that President Barack Obama can’t ignore the growing “war fatigue” in Congress and must consider steps to accelerate a U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Washington Rep. Norm Dicks, an early and enthusiastic supporter of Obama’s policy, told POLITICO staying in Afghanistan into 2014, as first outlined by the president, will be difficult now given the budget pressures at home and the erratic performance of the chief U.S. partners in the region: Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan.

“I think it’s like $113 billion on Afghanistan, and there’s Pakistan’s situation, where we know on the border, people are coming across into Afghanistan,” he said. “It’s a serious problem.” Dicks’ comments are important because of his long record of support for Obama and special standing in Congress as the ranking Democrat on both the House Appropriations Committee and its defense panel overseeing the Pentagon budget. On an issue like the war, his opinions then carry weight with a wide range of Democrats.

New 2012 war funding, chiefly for Afghanistan, began moving through Dicks’s subcommittee Wednesday. And the measure is due on the House floor late this month — just as Obama is scheduled to announce his first drawdown of forces July 1.

Within the Democratic Caucus, Dicks doesn’t yet enjoy the same gravitas as his defense predecessor, the late Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, a Marine veteran of Vietnam whose combat experience and anti-Iraq-war credentials helped him pull different factions together. But to lose Dicks’ support now would be a serious blow for the White House, and he is an important barometer for the party, given his daily exposure to domestic budget cuts as the top Democrat on appropriations — a post Murtha never held.

It was important last week when Dicks quietly sided with anti-war forces in backing an amendment demanding that Obama come up with plans this summer to accelerate the withdrawal and pursue a negotiated settlement with “all interested parties” in Afghanistan, including the Taliban.

The White House was largely dismissive, but the amendment only narrowly failed, 215-204, and came within a few votes of being an embarrassing rebuke for the administration.

Twenty-six Republicans joined the effort, and for the first time, Democrats appeared to have found some unity in their stance on the war, with only eight voting in opposition. Dicks’ shift was a big part of that picture.

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The hugely expensive U.S. attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan has had only limited success and may not survive an American withdrawal, according to the findings of a two-year congressional investigation to be released Wednesday.

The report calls on the administration to rethink urgently its assistance programs as President Obama prepares to begin drawing down the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan this summer.

The report, prepared by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Democratic majority staff, comes as Congress and the American public have grown increasingly restive about the human and economic cost of the decade-long war and reflects growing concerns about Obama’s war strategy even among supporters within his party.

The report describes the use of aid money to stabilize areas the military has cleared of Taliban fighters — a key component of the administration’s counterinsurgency strategy — as a short-term fix that provides politically pleasing results. But it says that the enormous cash flows can overwhelm and distort local culture and economies, and that there is little evidence the positive results are sustainable.

Because oversight is scanty, the report says, the fund encourages corruption. Although the U.S. plan is for the Afghan government to eventually take over this and other programs, it has neither the management capacity nor the funds to do so.

The report also warns that the Afghan economy could slide into a depression with the inevitable decline of the foreign military and development spending that now provides 97 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

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The Prof said:

yesterday:



Afghan nation-building programs not sustainable, report says - The Washington Post

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Lawmakers called for a reduced U.S. role in Afghanistan on Wednesday, piling pressure on the Obama administration to accelerate the end to a long, costly war as it debates an initial drawdown this summer.

Leading senators from both parties called the U.S. presence in Afghanistan excessive after nearly a decade of war as they considered President Barack Obama's nominee to lead the U.S. mission in Kabul.

"While the United States has genuine national security interests in Afghanistan, our current commitment in troops and dollars is neither proportional to our interests nor sustainable," said Democrat John Kerry, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee.

Lawmakers expressed concern about the durability of soldiers' successes in southern Afghanistan and noted that attacks had surged along the eastern border with Pakistan.

"Despite ten years of investment ... we remain in a cycle that produces relative progress but fails to deliver a secure political or military resolution," said Senator Richard Lugar, the committee's ranking Republican.

"The more important question is whether we have an efficient strategy for protecting our vital interests that does not involve massive open-ended expenditures and does not require us to have more faith than is justified in Afghan institutions."

After the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, congressional opposition has quickly grown to a war that now costs over $110 billion a year and has yet to yield decisive results on the battlefield or in marathon aid efforts.

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