US to send more troops to Afghanistan
MUSCAT, Oman (AP) - April 4, 2008 It is the first time the Bush administration has made such a
commitment for 2009.
Gates told reporters while flying to this Persian Gulf nation
from a NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, that President Bush had
made the pledge to other allied leaders at the summit on Thursday.
Bush was not specific about the number of additional troops that
would go to Afghanistan in 2009, Gates said. The United States now
has about 31,000 troops there - the most since the war began in
October 2001 - and has been pressing the allies to contribute more.
Until now, the heavy commitment of U.S. forces in Iraq has been
a constraint on the ability to increase U.S. troop levels in
Afghanistan. But Gates said he did not believe that would be the
case in 2009.
Gates also said he expected a Bush decision "fairly soon" on a
proposal to reduce soldiers' combat tours from 15 months to 12
months, a move the Army deems urgent in order to relieve stress on
troops and their families. Gates indicated for the first time
publicly that there are drawbacks to doing it.
"It really is whether we're prepared - and ultimately the
president - to sign up to something that clearly imposes some
limits on what we could do in the future," Gates said. He was
referring to the fact that 15-month tours enabled the Army to build
up in Iraq in 2007 - a cornerstone of Bush's revised Iraq strategy
known as the "surge" - with the limited number of ground combat
brigades in its ranks.
"So the bottom line is, we're all still looking at that," he
added.
His comment suggested a link between reducing tour lengths and
the prospect of substantially expanding the U.S. troop presence in
Afghanistan next year. Such an expansion could make it difficult,
if not impossible, for the Army to maintain troop rotations for
both wars in 2009 and beyond if it is unable to substantially cut
forces in Iraq in the near term, while tour lengths are shortened
by three months.
Regarding the pledge to send more combat troops to Afghanistan
in 2009, Gates said he advised Bush to make the statement to allied
leaders in Bucharest even though the movement of the unspecified
additional troops would ultimately be a decision for the next
president, who will take office in January.
"The question arises, how can we say that about 2009?" Gates
said. "All I would say is, I believe ... this is one area where
there is very broad bipartisan support in the United States for
being successful" in Afghanistan, where by many accounts progress
against the Taliban resistance has stalled.
"I think that no matter who is elected president, they would
want to be successful in Afghanistan. So I think this was a very
safe thing for him to say," the Pentagon chief added.
Gates said he believed it was too early to decide how many
additional combat forces the United States should plan on sending
in 2009. He said it would depend on several things, including the
extent of U.S. and NATO success on the battlefield this year, as
well as the impact of a new senior U.S. commander taking over in
coming months. Gen. David McKiernan is due to replace Gen. Dan
McNeill this spring as the top overall commander in Afghanistan.
McNeill has said he believes he needs another three brigades -
two for combat and one for training. That translates to roughly
7,500 to 10,000 additional troops. The Bush administration has no
realistic hope of getting the NATO allies to send such large
numbers.
McKiernan on Thursday told Congress that while he can't yet say
how many more troops he would want there, he believes he needs
additional combat and aviation forces, intelligence and
surveillance capabilities, and training and mentoring teams.
In remarks to reporters after Bush made the statement at the
summit Thursday, the president's national security adviser, Stephen
Hadley, said any extra U.S. combat troop deployments would be in
southern Afghanistan, where fighting is heaviest.
Gates said he believed that was a logical possibility but that
it was too early to say they would go to the south.
"I put this in front of the president as a possibility, as
something that I thought we ought to be willing to say and do,"
Gates said. He added that part of his reasoning was that such a
pledge by Bush would have extra effect at a summit meeting where
France announced that it will send several hundred combat troops to
Afghanistan this year - a decision that Bush explicitly praised.
It is widely agreed within the administration and between the
United States and its key allies in Afghanistan that they have too
few troops on the ground to both effectively fight the Taliban
resistance - especially in the volatile south - and accelerate the
training of Afghan soldiers and police.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said
this week there are not enough forces in Afghanistan to hold onto
any security gains that troops make there. Troop commitments in
Iraq, he said, make it impossible for the U.S. to meet requirements
for at least two additional combat brigades.
"We've had significant impact there, but we don't have enough
forces there to hold in what is a classic counterinsurgency," he
said.
The question that has been contemplated for many months is how
to find additional troops.
The administration initially pushed hard for other NATO
countries to fill the gap. Having largely failed in that effort,
the U.S. military now seems convinced that it will have to bear
more of the load.
The U.S. currently has about 158,000 troops in Iraq. But that
number is expected to dip to about 140,000 after July, when the
last of the additional forces ordered to Baghdad last year return
home.
That will reduce the number of combat brigades there from 20 to
15. And military leaders have expressed hope that after a pause in
troop cuts for as much as two months, the Pentagon could continue
to reduce troop levels in Iraq later this year.
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Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this
report.
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