US to withdraw 30,000 troops from Afghanistan
It was the decisive first step toward ending a decade-long war that is increasingly unpopular in the United States.
In a televised address, Obama announced a plan to pull out 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by year’s end, followed by 23,000 more by the end of next summer
The announcement capped weeks of speculation about the future of US involvement in Afghanistan, nearly 10 years after the September 11 attacks on the United States that triggered the war in which US and other Western forces have been unable to deal a decisive blow to the insurgent Taliban.
Obama received recommendations last week from General David Petraeus, the outgoing commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, with several options for drawing down some of the 100,000 US. soldiers there starting in July.
The president faces a host of contradictory pressures as he seeks to rein in government spending on the war and halt American casualties without endangering the gains his military commanders say they have made across southern Afghanistan.
The decision to withdraw 33,000 troops — all the additional troops Obama sent to Afghanistan in 2010 in a “surge” of US. forces — by the end of the summer in 2012 is unlikely to sit well with the Pentagon’s top brass.
Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates has warned against a precipitous departure. Removing too many troops before the United States can prove it has turned a corner, Gates said, would be “premature.
But some in the US Congress, impatient with a war that now costs more than $110 billion a year, have demanded a larger initial drawdown.
While the United States has embraced efforts to find a political settlement with the Taliban, officials acknowledge a peace deal may be far in the future even if one could be had.
Obama is mindful of the American public’s lack of support for the war as he looks to his 2012 re-election campaign.
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