President Barack Obama will take several weeks to review U.S. strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the White House said on Wednesday after a meeting between top U.S. officials about the region.
"When it comes to decisions as important as keeping this country safe and putting our troops into harm's way, the president has made it clear that he will rigorously assess our progress," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement.
"That is why he held this meeting today and will take the next several weeks to review our strategy."
When he installed McChrystal as commander in Afghanistan this year, Obama ordered him to write an assessment of the conflict. The dire answer came back in September, declaring the United States would fail to meet its objectives of causing irreparable damage to Taliban militants and their al-Qaida allies if the administration did not increase American forces significantly.
Go-slow approachObama has taken a go-slow approach on the McChrystal report. White House officials say it may take weeks before the president decides whether to overhaul the U.S. strategy or send more troops.
One faction in the administration, which includes the top three military commanders overseeing the war, wants to accept McChrystal's recommendations. Others favor a new strategy of using Special Forces and unmanned drone aircraft for tactical strikes on the Taliban and al-Qaida leaders, which would require much more U.S. action in Pakistan but fewer troops.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates "has clearly been a strong proponent of counterinsurgency" organized by McChrystal, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said on Wednesday. "But he wants to have a thorough discussion with the president and the rest of the national security team" about whether that remains the best strategy for crushing the militant forces.
While the Pentagon has so far locked away specifics of McChrystal's troop request, he is widely believed to want to add between 30,000 and 40,000 to the current force of 68,000. Specific troop levels were not expected to be a focus of Wednesday's meeting.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the hours-long meeting Wednesday was the second in a series of five in which officials were thrashing out U.S. strategy. Details of the meeting were not released.
Gibbs said the administration wanted to "poke and prod" potential new strategies to "ensure that we've done it the right way, then implement tactics to achieve that strategy."
Moving deliberatelyObama is moving with extreme deliberation on the McChrystal report and troop request, even though he said during the presidential campaign that defeating Taliban militants and their al-Qaida allies was essential to U.S. security. He moved swiftly on that pledge in the early days of his 8-month-old term, ordering an additional 21,000 forces into the country and raising the total U.S. deployment to 68,000.
In combination with NATO forces, the allies have about 100,000 personnel in Afghanistan's rugged terrain.
Top Democrats in Congress have begun expressing worries about the U.S.-led effort, however, questioning whether a further commitment of blood and treasure is wise or necessary. The most vocal support for continuing or even expanding the conflict comes from Republicans.
Support for the war has fallen off sharply among Americans, with just more than half now saying the conflict is not worth the fight.
Republican Sen. John McCain, Obama's opponent in last year's election, said in a television interview Wednesday that the president cannot give up on Afghanistan. The senator argued that the entire region would be destabilized if the U.S. and NATO pulled back.
Urging Obama to quickly accept McChrystal's recommendations, McCain said: "Time is not on our side. So we need a decision pretty quickly. I think history is pretty clear that when the Taliban took over, it became a base for attacks on the United States and our allies."
Republican Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican, said that Obama was endangering U.S. troops in Afghanistan by spending time weighing his next move in Afghanistan. "As long as they are delaying, that puts in jeopardy, I believe, our men and women," he said.
The White House called the lawmaker’s comment a “bunch of game playing.”
Resurgent Taliban
The U.S. went to war in Afghanistan in late 2001 with a mission to remove the Taliban from power and to capture or kill al-Qaida boss Osama bin Laden, the sponsor of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The Taliban fell quickly, but bin Laden escaped across the border into the towering mountains in Pakistan and has eluded American forces ever since.
In the meantime, the Taliban has staged a resurgence and now has taken control of more than half the country. The insurgents have regained so much strength that August became the deadliest month of the war so far for U.S. troops. Fifty-one died.
Wednesday's White House session was believed to have been the most high-powered gathering so far.
It was to have included Vice President Joe Biden; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Defense Secretary Robert Gates; Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan; Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command; McChrystal; Admiral Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence; CIA Director Leon Panetta; Karl Eikenberry, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan; Anne Patterson, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan; and national security adviser Gen. James Jones.