Obama to give speech on Afghan pullout

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama will deliver a highly anticipated speech Wednesday evening about troop withdrawals from Afghanistan.

The address is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET.

On Tuesday, an administration official told CNN that Obama will announce this week that 30,000 U.S. "surge" forces will be fully withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2012.

Members of Congress are being informed that 10,000 troops will be withdrawn by the end of this year, followed by another 20,000 next year, a congressional source said.

The time frame would give U.S. commanders another two "fighting" seasons with the bulk of U.S. forces still available for combat operations.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates has pushed for additional time to roll back Taliban gains in the country before starting any significant withdrawal -- a position at odds with a majority of Americans, according to recent public opinion surveys.

Gates -- along with Afghan war commander Gen. David Petraeus -- had pushed for an initial drawdown of between 3,000 and 5,000 troops this year, the congressional source said. The secretary also urged the president to withdraw support troops only -- not combat troops.

Obama, however, ultimately decided to adopt a more aggressive withdrawal plan.

Gates acknowledged Tuesday that the president must take into account public opinion and congressional support for further military engagement.

"Sustainability here at home" is an important consideration, Gates said, noting that people are "tired of a decade of war."

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, repeated his call Tuesday for a withdrawal of 15,000 troops this year.

"The level of U.S. troop reductions in Afghanistan needs to be significant to achieve its purpose --- letting the Afghan government know we are determined to shift primary responsibility for their security to the Afghan security forces," Levin said in a written statement.

An estimated 100,000 U.S. troops are serving in Afghanistan, some 30,000 of which are part of the so-called surge ordered in 2009 in a bid to control the rising violence.

Obama has been mulling how many troops should be withdrawn this summer and by the end of the year.

The president is expected, in his remarks Wednesday, to stress the importance of preserving flexibility in force levels on the ground so commanders can adjust as conditions warrant, the official said.

The drawdown will be accomplished by troops returning home and not being replaced as well as canceling some proposed deployments.

So far, Obama has only said publicly that troops will begin coming home in July, and he recently indicated the number would be "significant."

The president has repeatedly said he is confident the United States can meet the self-imposed deadline to begin bringing troops back from Afghanistan without compromising Afghan security, though military commanders and government officials have raised concern about the readiness of Afghan security forces.

"We have made great strides toward achieving the objectives laid out in the mission that the president articulated in December of 2009," White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday.

Obama "will make his decision based on the need to succeed further in achieving those objectives and to transfer authority gradually, security authority, over to the Afghan national security forces, with an eye to the fact that, as agreed to by NATO in Lisbon, we will eventually transfer full security lead over to the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) in 2014," Carney said.

Nearly three-quarters of Americans polled this month said they support the United States pulling some or all of its forces from Afghanistan.

That figure jumped 10 percentage points since May, likely as a result of the death of Osama bin Laden, pollsters said.

The deployment of U.S. forces also hasn't been popular with many Afghan leaders, who openly criticize the presence of the Americans in their country.

It's a message that's not lost on U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry.

"When we hear ourselves being called occupiers and worse, our pride is offended and we begin to lose our inspiration to carry on," Eikenberry said during a Sunday speech at Herat University in western Afghanistan.

"At the point your leaders believe that we are doing more harm than good, when we reach a point that we feel our soldiers and civilians are being asked to sacrifice without a just cause ... the American people will ask for our forces to come home."

Republicans -- who have been the strongest supporters of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan -- appear to be shifting their opinion on the conflict. Forty-seven percent of Republicans said in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll in May that they favored a partial or full withdrawal of American troops. Sixty percent of Republicans favored a withdrawal when asked this month.

The most recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted June 3 through 7, with 1,015 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

CNN's Aliza Kassim, Barbara Starr, Ted Barrett and Alan Silverleib contributed to this report.

CNN

Obama to deliver speech on Afghanistan troop pullout

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama will deliver a highly anticipated speech Wednesday evening about troop withdrawals from Afghanistan.

The address is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET.

On Tuesday, an administration official told CNN that Obama will announce this week that 30,000 U.S. "surge" forces will be fully withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2012.

Members of Congress are being informed that 10,000 troops will be withdrawn by the end of this year, followed by another 20,000 next year, a congressional source said.

The time frame would give U.S. commanders another two "fighting" seasons with the bulk of U.S. forces still available for combat operations.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates has pushed for additional time to roll back Taliban gains in the country before starting any significant withdrawal -- a position at odds with a majority of Americans, according to recent public opinion surveys.

Gates -- along with Afghan war commander Gen. David Petraeus -- had pushed for an initial drawdown of between 3,000 and 5,000 troops this year, the congressional source said. The secretary also urged the president to withdraw support troops only -- not combat troops.

Obama, however, ultimately decided to adopt a more aggressive withdrawal plan.

Gates acknowledged Tuesday that the president must take into account public opinion and congressional support for further military engagement.

"Sustainability here at home" is an important consideration, Gates said, noting that people are "tired of a decade of war."

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, repeated his call Tuesday for a withdrawal of 15,000 troops this year.

"The level of U.S. troop reductions in Afghanistan needs to be significant to achieve its purpose --- letting the Afghan government know we are determined to shift primary responsibility for their security to the Afghan security forces," Levin said in a written statement.

An estimated 100,000 U.S. troops are serving in Afghanistan, some 30,000 of which are part of the so-called surge ordered in 2009 in a bid to control the rising violence.

Obama has been mulling how many troops should be withdrawn this summer and by the end of the year.

The president is expected, in his remarks Wednesday, to stress the importance of preserving flexibility in force levels on the ground so commanders can adjust as conditions warrant, the official said.

The drawdown will be accomplished by troops returning home and not being replaced as well as canceling some proposed deployments.

So far, Obama has only said publicly that troops will begin coming home in July, and he recently indicated the number would be "significant."

The president has repeatedly said he is confident the United States can meet the self-imposed deadline to begin bringing troops back from Afghanistan without compromising Afghan security, though military commanders and government officials have raised concern about the readiness of Afghan security forces.

"We have made great strides toward achieving the objectives laid out in the mission that the president articulated in December of 2009," White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday.

Obama "will make his decision based on the need to succeed further in achieving those objectives and to transfer authority gradually, security authority, over to the Afghan national security forces, with an eye to the fact that, as agreed to by NATO in Lisbon, we will eventually transfer full security lead over to the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) in 2014," Carney said.

Nearly three-quarters of Americans polled this month said they support the United States pulling some or all of its forces from Afghanistan.

That figure jumped 10 percentage points since May, likely as a result of the death of Osama bin Laden, pollsters said.

The deployment of U.S. forces also hasn't been popular with many Afghan leaders, who openly criticize the presence of the Americans in their country.

It's a message that's not lost on U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry.

"When we hear ourselves being called occupiers and worse, our pride is offended and we begin to lose our inspiration to carry on," Eikenberry said during a Sunday speech at Herat University in western Afghanistan.

"At the point your leaders believe that we are doing more harm than good, when we reach a point that we feel our soldiers and civilians are being asked to sacrifice without a just cause ... the American people will ask for our forces to come home."

Republicans -- who have been the strongest supporters of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan -- appear to be shifting their opinion on the conflict. Forty-seven percent of Republicans said in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll in May that they favored a partial or full withdrawal of American troops. Sixty percent of Republicans favored a withdrawal when asked this month.

The most recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted June 3 through 7, with 1,015 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

CNN's Aliza Kassim, Barbara Starr, Ted Barrett and Alan Silverleib contributed to this report.

CNN

Afghanistan Pullout: Could 30,000 Troops Head Home? (Time.com)

So the size of the U.S. troop pullout President Obama is slated to announce later this month now varies by an order of magnitude: those who want to preserve the gains earned over the past year are suggesting about 3,000 -- of the 100,000 U.S. troops now there -- would be about the right number to order home starting in July. But -- given American war weariness, the $100 billion annual cost of the war, and the recent killing of Osama bin Laden -- others in the Administration are advocating that up to 30,000 should head back to the U.S. That would return the number there to about 70,000, the total U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan before Obama ordered 30,000 reinforcements early last year.

While this decision is the President's alone to make, he is getting plenty of advice on what to do. Unfortunately, it conflicts. And, unspoken by Administration officials but always present -- kind of like gravity -- is the possibility it could affect his re-election chances next year. (See pictures of President Obama in Afghanistan.)

On one side, outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- now in Afghanistan -- publicly tilted to the 3,000 number on Saturday. "It seems to me that between the successes that we've already enjoyed and the increased capacity of the Afghan forces, we are a in a position - based on conditions on the ground...to consider some modest draw-downs beginning in July," he said in a press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. This counter-insurgency strategy -- which emphasizes winning over the people rather than killing the bad guys -- has had a pretty good year in Afghanistan. But it is boot-heavy.

Leon Panetta, Gates' successor -- who will be running the Pentagon in less than a month -- is now in charge of the CIA, and favors a stepped-up counter-terror campaign that would permit a bigger reduction. The increased use of special-operations forces and drone strikes that he and other counter-terror advocates support would allow more infantrymen and Marines to head for the exits. Vice President Joe Biden also supports this approach. (See the top 10 defining moments of the post-9/11 era.)

Of course, Panetta's successor come fall is going to be Army General Dave Petraeus, perhaps the Pentagon's leading counter-insurgency champion (he wrote the book, literally). So it's going to be interesting to watch how Petraeus, who will retire from the Army before taking the CIA post, threads the COIN-counter-terror needle.

But all this is mere tea leaf reading. Long-time Pentagon watchers found the most interesting thing over the weekend not the back-and-forth debate over U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, but the missile strikes next door in Pakistan. Despite Islamabad's repeated protests, those strikes continue. On Monday, three drone attacks in South Waziristan killed at least 18 people. In the not-too-distant future, they suggest, the Afghan war could look increasingly like that.

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