United States Sticking to the Iraq Withdrawal Timetable

Jules Witcover

While President Obama grapples with his proper role in dealing with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, his administration is pressing on with the fight against terrorism, seeking to pivot from seven years in Iraq to the growing challenge in Afghanistan and new threats at home.

For the first time since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, there are more American military troops serving in Afghanistan (94,000) than in Iraq (92,000). The shift promised by presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 is well underway.

The numbers reflect President Obama's commitment to end the U.S. involvement in Iraq and to intensify the war against al-Qaida and other terrorist elements, declared last year when he decided on the surge of 30,000 additional forces into Afghanistan.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Vice President Joe Biden, who has been overseeing the drawdown of American forces in Iraq, reiterated the administration's intention to reduce them to 50,000 troops this summer.

Despite continuing squabbles in Baghdad over the leadership of the newly elected government, Biden said, "I do think the end result is going to be that we're going to be able to keep our commitment" and that the leadership dispute will be resolved by the end of August.

Obama, in his recent speech at West Point, said however that after the all U.S. forces leave, scheduled for the end of 2011, "a strong American civilian presence will help Iraqis forge political and economic progress."

Meanwhile, Obama's assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, John Brennan, spelled out the refocus against terrorism Wednesday in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We are at war against al-Qaida and its terrorist affiliates," he reiterated. "That is why the President is responsibly ending the war in Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, and why he has refocused our efforts on Afghanistan, where al-Qaida continues to plot from the tribal regions along the border with Pakistan and inside of Pakistan."

Brennan continued: "We have a clear mission. We will not simply degrade al-Qaida's capabilities or simply prevent terrorist attacks against our country or citizens. We will not merely respond after the fact -- after an attack has been attempted. Instead, the United States will disrupt, dismantle and ensure a lasting defeat of al-Qaida and violent extremist affiliates."

At the same time, Brennan said the Obama administration will be employing a more discriminating strategy against changing terrorist tactics that have moved from large-scale model of the 9/11 attacks to individual acts seen in the Christmas Day and more recent Times Square incidents.

"As our enemy adapts and evolves their tactics," he said, "so must we constantly adapt and evolve ours, not in a mad rush driven by fear but in a thoughtful and reasoned way that enhances our security and further delegitimizes the actions of our enemy."

The reference to fear as a motivation for American action could be taken as a rebuke of the previous Republican administration, which after 9/11 used the attacks to stoke domestic support for the war in Iraq. However, Obama himself has rejected liberal calls for inquiries into the decisions to invade Iraq and its aftermath.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration's pivot from former President George W. Bush's emphasis on bringing democracy to the Middle East to a return to the anti-terrorism justification for the U.S. military presence there was clear in Brennan's remarks.

Obama in his earlier West Point speech told graduating cadets that American military strength must and will be maintained, but that administration embraces a return to multilateralism in dealing with foreign-policy challenges of all kinds. America, he said then, "has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation" with international allies.

That theme was struck again Thursday in an annual White House report to Congress on national security strategy, a summary of which called military power "a cornerstone of our national defense and an anchor of global security" but linked to new non-military partnerships on a range of other challenges.

Still, the presence of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan remains troublesome unfinished business for Obama as more unanticipated woes pile up on his desk.

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Sticking to the Iraq Withdrawal Timetable