No Change in Afghanistan Withdrawal Timeline, President Obama Says
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — President Obama Wednesday emphasized that recent difficulties in the Afghanistan war would not result in a speedier withdrawal of U.S. troops.
“In terms of pace, I don’t anticipate at this stage that we’re going to be making any sudden additional changes to the plan that we currently have,” the president said at a joint appearance in the White House Rose Garden with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Noting that 10,000 U.S. troops have already left Afghanistan in the last year, with an additional 23,000 scheduled to withdraw by this summer, the president insisted that “a robust Coalition presence” would remain in the country during the summer fighting season “to make sure that the Taliban understand that they’re not going to be able to regain momentum. After the fighting season, in conjunction with all our allies, we will continue to look at how do we effectuate this transition in a way that doesn’t result in a steep cliff at the end of 2014 but rather is a gradual pace that accommodates the developing capacities of the Afghan national security forces.”
The two men Wednesday agreed to stick with “the transition plan that we agreed to with our coalition partners in Lisbon,” President Obama said. At the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago in May, they will announce the speed at which the U.S. will shift to a support role in 2013.
“This is a hard slog,” the president said when asked about polls indicating the public wants the war to end. “This is hard work….Why is it that poll numbers indicate people are interested in ending the war in Afghanistan? It’s because we’ve been there for 10 years, and people get weary. And they know friends and neighbors who have lost loved ones as a consequence of war. No one wants war. Anybody who answers a poll question about war saying enthusiastically, we want war, probably hasn’t been involved in a war. ”
In addition to Afghanistan, the president and prime minister told reporters Wednesday that they focused on Iran’s nuclear program, Syria, and economic recovery.
On Syria, Cameron begged off questions about imposing a no-fly zone, saying that the U.S./U.K. focus right now is “on trying to achieve transition, not trying to foment revolution. We think that the fastest way to end the killing, which is what we all want to see, is for Assad to go.” Asked if President Bashar al-Assad ought to be tried as a war criminal, Cameron broadened the question to “the issue of holding people responsible,” and on that he said, “I do.”
“People should always remember that international law has got a long reach and a long memory,” Cameron said, “and the people who are leading Syria at the moment and committing these crimes need to know that.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio