Some in Congress worry that setting a timetable sends the wrong message

Even before President Obama delivered his speech this month on the way forward in Afghanistan, the hard work of selling the plan had begun. On Capitol Hill, there is little question that the funding for 30,000-plus new troops will come through. But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been careful to register their complaints about some of the more controversial components of the strategy. The president, in announcing a pared-down focus on eliminating al-Qaeda sanctuaries, made no mention of lofty aims like democracy, and "nation building" came up only in the context of activities in which America would not be partaking.

Most prominently at issue was the July 2011 date set by the president for beginning the withdrawal of U.S. forces. This point prompted a testy exchange between Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the all-star panel of witnesses assembled there. These included Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen.

Clinton began by noting that she was pleased to be testifying before the committee on which she had served as a senator. "I appreciate your statement," said McCain, who seemed not particularly interested in extending niceties to his former colleague. "But I'd like a lot more specifics."

Chief among them were details on the withdrawal. Will U.S. forces return home "based on conditions on the ground or an arbitrary date?" McCain wanted to know. "Which is it?" he pressed. "It's got to be one or the other."

Gates, who was initially skeptical of sending more U.S. troops to a country he feared would be quick to view them as an occupying power, took issue with the notion that setting a pullout date would encourage insurgents to lie low and simply wait out U.S. forces. Even if they did, all the better, he said, adding that it would provide breathing room for U.S. troops to get quite a bit of work done.

Gates did concede, however, that July 2011 was merely a beginning and that the president had "at least" two principal audiences in mind when he announced it. The first is the American public, Gates said, which is "wary after eight years of war." The other is the Afghan government. "They must accept responsibility," he added. Widespread corruption among bureaucrats prompted the current U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry (who was also a top military commander there from 2006 to 2007), to lobby hard to withhold U.S. troops until the Afghan government began making a dent in corruption. America also needs to make it clear to Afghans, Gates told the committee, that the war "is not just going to be fought by a foreigner on their behalf."

But there is no doubt that U.S. forces will be doing the bulk of the heavy lifting. The Pentagon was pleased with the 30,000 troop figure, which could go as high as 35,000 after U.S. military support staff is factored in. The NATO secretary general has pledged 7,000 additional troops. But the Pentagon has concerns about how quickly troops will be able to flow into Afghanistan. Gen. David Petraeus, who runs the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has emphasized that moving supplies and soldiers into the latter will be far more difficult than it has been for the former. In the meantime, some 1,000 marines launched an offensive last week in the Taliban-controlled south, vowing to "reverse" the insurgent group's momentum in Now Zad, a city that Taliban and British forces have fought over for more than four years.

There remain questions, too, about how to measure the progress of the troops once they arrive. There was little discussion of these so-called benchmarks in the president's speech or in the early testimony on Capitol Hill. Quantifying success is a difficult task, senior military officials note, and is in "a constant process" of being refined. Clinton named a few possible metrics, as the military likes to call them: the number of children enrolled in school (currently, there are 7 million, 40 percent of them girls), recruiting and retention rates for the Afghan Army and police, and the number of shadow governments throughout the country. This last figure is woefully large. Thirty-three out of Afghanistan's 34 provinces now have shadow administrations in which Taliban-led insurgent groups dispense justice, according to senior U.S. military officials.

Corruption is rampant within the Afghan government, and U.S. officials have made a number of requests of President Hamid Karzai, Clinton said, including "who's put into the cabinet" and "who are chosen as governors." Such picks will be "key to everything going forward," she said. U.S. officials are also in the process of certifying Afghan government ministries. "There are some that are functioning well enough now that we can provide funding," Clinton said, and others that "we're not going to touch until they're cleaned out."

Still, U.S. officials were clear that they will now place more emphasis on local governance. "I've believed ever since I got this job that we've been too focused on the central government in Kabul," Gates said. The U.S. military plans to support local tribes to do local security. He warned that the trick, however, is making sure they do not become local militias for local warlords.

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