President Obama's own military commanders said Thursday that his plan for a drawdown of troops went beyond what they had recommended but will still be able to achieve U.S. goals for a stable Afghanistan. Critics however say the drawdown risks reversing hard-won gains against the Taliban.
"The president's decisions are more aggressive and incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept," Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee.
"More force for more time is, without doubt, the safer course," he said. "But that does not necessarily make it the best course. Only the president … can really determine the acceptable level of risk we must take. "
Gen. David Petraeus, who leads allied forces in Afghanistan, also said Obama's plan was more aggressive than he recommended.
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STORY: Obama touts progress, orders drawdown
"The ultimate decision was a more aggressive formulation … in terms of the timeline than what we had recommended," Petraeus said in remarks at hearings to consider his nomination to head the CIA.
However, Petraeus said the military would "salute smartly" and "do everything humanly possible" to execute the plan.
Some military analysts said the pace of the reductions will put at risk a strategy that seeks to consolidate security gains in the south and shift the main effort to the east, a forbidding mountain region that has been a stronghold of the Haqqani network, an insurgent group linked to al-Qaeda.
The president proposed a faster drawdown than "most people expected," said Seth Jones, an analyst at RAND Corp. who has served in Afghanistan as a civilian adviser.
Obama's plan is to withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops this year and an additional 23,000 by September 2012, equal to the number of additional forces Obama ordered into Afghanistan in December 2009. That would leave about 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said military leaders wanted troops to remain through the end of 2012 to finish off the fighting season and give them the best chance to debilitate the Taliban. Some analysts are particularly troubled by that part of the plan.
"It's not the ideal time to take forces out," Jones said.
By choosing an option for a faster reduction, Obama is reversing the strategy he had earlier agreed to, said Danielle Pletka, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
The Pentagon has said Afghan security forces have been growing in size and quality and will increasingly take over operations from U.S. troops. The number of Afghan security forces is 290,000, and the Pentagon says they are better trained, organized and equipped than in the past. Jones said the strategy is a "risk."
John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, said the timing of the drawdown deadline in 2012, in the homestretch of the presidential campaign, is "another piece of evidence of how political the whole procedure was." The drawdown is to be completed two months before the November election.
Supporters of the plan point out that commanders are always pushing for more troops and the president must consider a range of factors in making a determination about force levels.
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