Washington: The July 2011 deadline for
troop withdrawal from Afghanistan is "unrealistic" and
"harmful," Republican Senator John McCain said on Tuesday at Gen
David Petraeus` confirmation hearing which was marked by
bickering over the Afghan war policy.
McCain said the people of Afghanistan will be far less
willing to support the administration when they know that the
forces will withdraw as early as July 11.
"What we`re trying to do in Afghanistan, as in any
counterinsurgency, is to win the loyalty of the population,
convince people who may dislike the insurgency, but who may
also distrust their government, that they should line up with
us against the Taliban and al Qaida," McCain, a ranking member
of the Senate Armed Services Committee said, in his remarks at
the confirmation hearing of Gen Petraeus.
"We`re asking them to take a huge risk, and they will
be far less willing to run it if they think we will begin
leaving in a year," he said.
Obama last December set the deadline for the American
troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and administration officials
said this was vital to bring out results.
But Republicans have not been happy with such a
decision.
McCain said a US Marine has put the situation in this
way: "They (the people) say you`ll leave in 2011, and the
Taliban will chop their heads off".
The same goes for the Afghan government, he argued.
"We`re told that setting a date to begin withdrawing
would be an incentive for the Karzai administration to make
better decisions and to make them more quickly. I would argue
it`s having the opposite effect. It`s causing Afghan leaders
to hedge their bets on us," he said.
The Republican Presidential candidate in the 2008
American election said this was not only making the war
harder, but longer.
"If the president would say that success in
Afghanistan is our only withdrawal plan, whether we reach it
before July 2011 or afterwards, he would make the war more
winnable and hasten the day when our troops can come home with
honour, which is what we all want," he said.
He said in addition to being "harmful", the July 2011
withdrawal date increasingly looks "unrealistic".
"That date was based on assumptions made back in
December about how much progress we could achieve in
Afghanistan and how quickly we could achieve it," he said
adding that war never works out the way one assumes.
McCain said the performance of the Afghan government
over the past seven months was not as rapid as was hoped.
"None of this is to say that we are failing or that we
will fail in Afghanistan. It just means that we need to give
our strategy the necessary time to succeed.
"We cannot afford to have a stay the course approach
to starting our withdrawal in July 2011, when the facts on the
ground are suggesting that we need more time," he said.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin,
D-Michigan, meanwhile said the date was importance, as it
"imparts a sense of urgency to Afghan leaders" and is an
important method of "spurring action."
Supporting the deadline, Petraeus, who will replace
Gen Stanley McChrystal as US` top commander in Afghanistan
said: "I saw (the establishment of the date) most importantly
as the message of urgency to accompany the message of enormous
(increased US) commitment".
PTI
