Morning Bell: President Obama Plays Politics in Afghanistan

Ericka Andersen / June 27, 2011

The nation’s two highest-ranking military commanders have gone on record raising serious concerns about President Obama’s flawed plan to bring 33,000 troops home from Afghanistan by September 2012. The outgoing Commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, said during Senate hearings last week that the troop withdrawal was “a more aggressive formulation…than what we had recommended.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen echoed Petraeus when he noted the danger in moving U.S. troops out of Afghanistan too quickly, saying it will “incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept.”

While the President is Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, heeding wise counsel from his most senior military commanders is part of fulfilling that role. The President is under political pressure from his liberal base to withdraw troops and wind down the Afghan war as next year’s election inches closer. His announcement last week reveals he is basing the Afghan troop decision more on the domestic political calendar than the goal of achieving U.S. objectives there. (more…)