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Obama's War BeginsBut where does it end?

By Fred KaplanPosted Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009, at 11:58 PM ET

Barack ObamaThe war that President Barack Obama laid out at West Point Tuesday night—its rationale, strategy, tactics, and resources—is different, in ways large and small, from the war that George W. Bush fought (and didn't fight) in Afghanistan.

Obama is sending 30,000 additional U.S. troops (beyond the 21,000 extra he sent in March, more than doubling our commitment overall). He is shifting their approach from strictly shooting and shelling bad guys to protecting the population and building up Afghan forces. And he is declaring a finite limit to our involvement.

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Some of his policies he explained well. On others, he left many questions open and raised a few new doubts.

The issue that has caused the most controversy is his statement that our troops will begin to come home in July 2011.

Critics say that this sends the wrong signal to the Afghan people; that if they think we're leaving in less than two years, they won't trust us to protect them in the first place; and that, in any case, the Taliban will simply lie low and "wait us out."

This complaint misreads the policy. The key word in Obama's speech was that in July 2011, the United States will "begin" to transfer responsibility for security to the Afghan forces. The pace of this transfer—how quickly we will continue to withdraw and at what point we'll get out altogether—will be determined by "conditions on the ground." (Obama may not have underscored this phrase, but in a background press briefing earlier in the day, "senior officials" emphasized it strongly; one predicted that it would be the most misunderstood and misreported part of the speech.)

In a telephone briefing after the speech for online journalists, Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, director of the Joint Staff's Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell, said that this determination of whether it's safe to withdraw further will be made district-by-district, province-by-province, and in coordination with the Afghans. He also said that the Afghan officers want this assurance that we'll leave when they're ready.

Nonetheless, the critics do have a point. Why announce a date for when this process will begin? And why put it at July 2011, barely a year after the extra 30,000 troops are scheduled to arrive in the country? Is a year enough time to make the new strategy work? Won't there be pressure to declare that all is well, even if it isn't? Or if Obama decides to stay longer because things haven't gone as well as expected, won't impatience intensify among his party base, especially if the war hasn't picked up popular support?

Clearly, the president was in a tight spot when writing this speech. He had to assure the American people that the war is not an "open-ended" commitment; yet at the same time, he had to assure the Afghans and Pakistanis that he'll be with them for as long as necessary. He handled the tension as agilely as anyone might have; but the resulting suspicions, on both sides, suggest that there may be no real way to resolve the contradiction. The politics of this war will be a balancing act from start to finish.

Obama said that without such a deadline (or "transition date," as one official called it), nobody—neither the United States, the NATO allies, the Afghans, nor the Pakistanis—would feel any sense of urgency about getting this mission accomplished. He's right about that. But given his hedging of the date—that July 2011 will mark only the beginning of a withdrawal and that whether it continues is an open question—some of these parties may treat it as a bluff.

There is also good reason to doubt Obama's assurances that this is an international war and that the NATO allies, as well as some of the other nations supporting this effort, will be adding 5,000 more troops as well.