Petraeus Demurs on Afghan Pullout

President Obama may have marked 2011 on his calendar to begin pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, but his commander there, Gen. David Petraeus, isn’t so sure. Withdrawal, Petraeus said in an interview with NBC, must be “conditions-based.”

And check out this choice quote from an article in The New York Times last Wednesday:

“Their argument,” said one senior administration official, who would not speak for attribution about the internal policy discussions, “is that while we’ve been in Afghanistan for nine years, only in the past 12 months or so have we started doing this right, and we need to give it some time and think about what our long-term presence in Afghanistan should look like.”

–JCL

The BBC:

The new commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, Gen David Petraeus, says he will not be bound by a 2011 target date to start withdrawing US troops.

Speaking on NBC television, Gen Petraeus said he reserved the right to tell President Obama whether the pull-out date was too early.

He was speaking after US forces endured their deadliest month in July since the Afghan conflict began in 2001.

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