Washington: Two influential US senators John Kerry and Richard G. Lugar have said that it was time to rethink the Afghanistan war efforts.
According to an American newspaper the senators’ suggestion after the killing of al-Qeada chief Osama bin Laden could lead to the beginning of a fierce debate about how quickly the United States should begin pulling troops out of the country.
The military and the Obama administration have been weighing the goals, strategies, costs and underlying authority for a conflict that is now almost a decade old.
“We should be working toward the smallest footprint necessary, a presence that puts Afghans in charge and presses them to step up to that task,” Mr. Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the newspaper quoted him as saying.
“Make no mistake, it is fundamentally unsustainable to continue spending $10 billion a month on a massive military operation with no end in sight.” He added.
Both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lugar, the committee’s senior Republican, said they remained opposed to a precipitous withdrawal.
Still, “the broad scope of our activities suggests that we are trying to remake the economic, political and security culture of Afghanistan — but that ambitious goal is beyond our power,” Mr. Lugar said. “A reassessment of our Afghanistan policy on the basis of whether our overall geostrategic interests are being served by spending roughly $10 billion a month in that country was needed before our troops took out Bin Laden.”
Inside the Pentagon, however, officials make the case that rather than using Bin Laden’s death as a justification for withdrawal, the United States should continue the current strategy in Afghanistan to secure additional gains and to further pressure the Taliban to come to the bargaining table for negotiations on political reconciliation.
And in Congress, a debate is getting under way over the underlying authority used by two successive administrations to wage the post-Sept. 11 fight against terrorist organizations and their supporters.
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