US will boost its Afghan force

Move tied to pullout of 8,000 from Iraq; Troop strength will equal pre-surge level

President Bush spoke yesterday at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. Bush announced his plans to withdraw 8,000 troops from Iraq by February and to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. (Kevin Dietsch/Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON - President Bush announced plans yesterday to beef up American forces in Afghanistan while simultaneously withdrawing 8,000 of the roughly 146,000 US troops now in Iraq. The move means that the president will leave office in January with the level of combat forces in Iraq about where they were in 2007 when he announced a surge of 30,000 troops to deal with rampant violence.

Speaking at the National Defense University, Bush said that "we have seized the offensive" and made security gains in Iraq, allowing for the modest shift in forces from Iraq to Afghanistan. If progress continues in Iraq, he said, "additional reductions will be possible in the first half of 2009."

In Afghanistan - where US and coalition casualties have skyrocketed in recent months - the number of American forces will grow to nearly 40,000, not including about 20,000 NATO and coalition troops serving there.

"Huge challenges in Afghanistan remain," Bush said yesterday. "For all the good work we've done in that country, it is clear, we must do even more."

On the presidential campaign trail, the news reignited the clash over Iraq policy between Democratic candidate Barack Obama, whose opposition to the Iraq war is a cornerstone of his campaign, and John McCain, his Republican rival, who believes that Iraq is the "central front" in the war on terrorism.

In Dayton, Ohio, yesterday, Obama criticized Bush's plans as too little, too late.

"What President Bush and Senator McCain don't understand is that the central front in the war on terror is not in Iraq, and it never was - the central front is in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the terrorists who hit us on 9/11 are still plotting attacks seven years later," Obama said.

"Today, the Taliban is on the offensive, Al Qaeda has a new sanctuary, and its leaders are putting out videotapes," Obama added. "Yet under President Bush's plan, we still have nearly four times more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan, and we have no comprehensive plan to deal with the Al Qaeda sanctuary in northwest Pakistan."

Meanwhile, McCain issued a statement yesterday backing the president's plan and taking a swipe at Obama. The Arizona senator said Obama's proposal "to withdraw forces based on a political timetable, no matter the consequences for Iraq or American national security . . . is profoundly irresponsible."

Seeking to characterize what he believes is Obama's misunderstanding of the security situation, McCain said the Illinois senator "believes we must lose in Iraq to win in Afghanistan. I want to win in Iraq and in Afghanistan."

The plan to shift a relatively small number of forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, recommended by General David Petraeus, the top US commander in the Middle East, will begin in November. That's when 3,400 combat support troops - including aviation personnel, bomb squads, combat engineers, military police, and logistics corps - will be withdrawn and not be replaced as planned.

A Marine battalion serving in Iraq's western Anbar Province is scheduled to leave next, followed by an additional Army brigade set to depart in February, Bush said. The reductions are slated to occur after Iraq holds provincial elections, now scheduled to take place in either December or January.

Several military specialists applauded the American effort to refocus combat operations in Afghanistan and begin to extricate its forces from Iraq, which they see as a diversion from the main battle against the Al Qaeda-Taliban alliance that attacked the United States seven years ago this week.

"It is an acknowledgment of what a lot of people have been saying and the [Bush] administration has been slow to recognize," said Rick Barton, a senior adviser at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies and former adviser to the congressional commission known as the Iraq Study Group. "If you want to send more troops to Afghanistan, which almost everyone has been calling for, the only way we could do it is to find some [troop] capacity in Iraq."

One of Obama's campaign cornerstones has been his call for a timetable to withdraw most US troops from Iraq and adding more forces to Afghanistan. He continued to hammer home that message yesterday.

"I am glad that the president is moving in the direction of the policy that I have advocated for years," Obama said. "But the most substantial increase [in Afghanistan] will come when an additional Army brigade is deployed five months from now - in February, after the president has left office. His plan comes up short - it is not enough troops, and not enough resources, with not enough urgency."

Indeed, James Dobbins, the Bush administration's former special envoy for Afghanistan, called the Bush plan "a more modest version" of Obama's.

"In a sense, we are playing catch-up," Dobbins, director of the RAND Corporation's international security and defense policy division, said in an interview. "It is too bad that we didn't do it a lot earlier before the [Afghanistan] insurgency reemerged."

Still, Dobbins called it "a good sign" that the Bush administration continues to draw down troops in Iraq, albeit slowly.

"I think it sends the right signal," Dobbins said. "There is a clear consensus that more is needed in Afghanistan."

Another key Bush administration adviser, however, said the troop reductions in Iraq may not happen as quickly as Bush outlined if the security gains in Iraq do not hold.

Retired Army General Jack Keane, a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee who served as a key advisor to Bush on the 2007 troop surge, said yesterday that if problems develop and elections in Iraq don't take place as planned, military units still slated to go to Iraq next year could be sent earlier than planned.

"The US military presence has been decisive in improving the security situation but also improving the entire political landscape," Keane said in an interview. "We have to keep the US forces present to cement the gains."

Moreover, Keane expressed doubt that additional American forces will make a decisive difference in Afghanistan, where he believes the real problem is terrorist sanctuaries inside Pakistan currently out of their reach.

"More troops will not solve that basic problem," Keane said. "Success in Afghanistan must lead through Pakistan and the elimination of those sanctuaries. That is not a military problem as much as political and diplomatic."

Farah Stockman of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.