Obama: Afghanistan plan not 'an open-ended commitment'

President Barack Obama’s plan for bringing the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan under control involves an additional 17,000 combat troops, 4,000 further troops to train the Afghan army and police, and increased aid to both Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

He emphasized, however, in an appearance Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, that "it’s not going to be an open-ended commitment of infinite resources."      What I will not do is to simply assume that more troops always results in an improved situation," Obama told CBS host Bob Schieffer. "Just because we needed to ramp up from the greatly under-resourced levels that we had doesn’t automatically mean that if this strategy doesn’t work, that what’s needed is even more troops."

Schieffer had begun the discussion by suggesting to Obama, "This has really now become your war, hasn’t it?"

"I think it’s America’s war," Obama responded. "And it’s the same war that we initiated after 9/11 as a consequence of those attacks on 3,000 Americans who were just going about their daily round — and the focus, over the last seven years, I think has been lost. … What we want to do is to refocus attention on al-Qaeda."

"Some people say, the more troops you put in, it’s just going to inflame the situation," Schieffer noted.

"I’m very mindful of that," Obama answered. "[Afghanistan] has not been very favorably disposed towards foreign intervention. That’s why a central part of our strategy is to train the Afghan Natonal Army, so that they are taking the lead, increasingly, to deal with extremists in their area."

"The Afghan National Army actually has great credibility," Obama added. "They are effective fighters. We need to grow that. … We have seen a deterioration over the last several years, and unless we get a handle on it now, we’re going to be in trouble."

Obama’s plan has already been criticized for its lack of a clear exit strategy. Former New York Times correspondent Leslie H. Gelb wrote skeptically on Friday that Obama "looked sternly into the cameras and said that Pakistanis and Afghans alike would be held accountable for their performances. He even said that we would hold ourselves accountable for our own performance there. But nowhere did he drop the other shoe. What would we do if Afghans and Pakistanis failed to meet our benchmarks? Would we merely scold them? Would we stop helping them? And what would we do about our own performance, if it turned out to be wanting?"

"In the private deliberations leading up to today’s speech, Obama repeatedly told his principal advisers that they needed ‘an exit strategy,’" Gelb concluded. "We can only hope that there is substance behind this phrase and that he and his aides have actually concocted an exit strategy. Of course, I don’t expect him to share that exit strategy with us; it would be unsettling to our friends in South Asia. But I hope he actually has one – unlike the yet-to-come benchmarks."
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Sunday March 29, 2009