So, last week, if you listened to Obama's speech on Afghanistan, you might have thought we'd begin withdrawing troops from that war in July of 2011. But, this week, we learn that's not what Obama really meant according to his "war council":
The Obama administration sent a forceful public message Sunday that American military forces could remain in Afghanistan for a long time, seeking to blunt criticism that President Obama had sent the wrong signal in his war-strategy speech last week by projecting July 2011 as the start of a withdrawal.The Afghanistan speech had to be one of the most intensely vetted speeches of the Obama presidency. Yet, the issue of leaving Afghanistan, arguably one of the most important elements of the speech for most American people, somehow got misconstrued or misinterpreted. How did that happen?
In a flurry of coordinated television interviews, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other top administration officials said that any troop pullout beginning in July 2011 would be slow and that the Americans would only then be starting to transfer security responsibilities to Afghan forces under Mr. Obama’s new plan.
The television appearances by the senior members of Mr. Obama’s war council seemed to be part of a focused and determined effort to ease concerns about the president’s emphasis on setting a date for reducing America’s presence in Afghanistan after more than eight years of war.
If what we learned yesterday holds, then there really is no exit strategy.
