President Bush visited today with wounded troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. It is one of his regular stops: visiting with those injured in Afghanistan and Iraq and, separately, with relatives of those killed in the wars.
He made the trip to the large hospital several hours after announcing that he was resuming the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, which he had put on hold several months ago, and that several units originally scheduled to go to Iraq would instead be sent to Afghanistan.
The hospital visit, he said, was "an interesting experience."
"On the one hand," he said, "you see the horrors of war. On the other hand, you see the courage of the people that have volunteered to serve."
In remarks prepared for an audience of military officers, President Bush is announcing on Tuesday a new draw-down of troops in Iraq and an increase of American forces in Afghanistan.
The president's speech outlines an anticipated shift in forces, reflecting what he is presenting as the success of the "surge" that he announced in January 2007, but also the ongoing violence in Afghanistan, where the U.S.-led coalition has met renewed resistance from the Taliban.
The result: When he leaves office, Bush will hand over to his successor an Iraq scenario in which the troop levels are headed downward, and, he says, if current trends on the ground continue, further reductions will be possible in 2009.
But Bush's plan to instead shift forces to Afghanistan may give ammunition to the argument of his critics: that while focusing on Iraq, the president paid too little attention to the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.
In remarks prepared for delivery at the National Defense University in Washington, Bush, according to a text of his speech made public this afternoon by the White House, is saying:
Here is the bottom line: While the enemy in Iraq is still dangerous, we have seized the offensive, and Iraqi forces are becoming increasingly capable of leading and winning the fight. As a result, we have been able to carry out a policy of return on success -- reducing American combat forces in Iraq as conditions on the ground continue to improve.
The president says that "over the next several months, we will bring home about 3,400 combat support forces." He said these include aviation personnel, explosive ordnance teams, combat and construction engineers, military police and logistical support forces.
More troops -- a Marine battalion in Anbar province -- are scheduled to be taken out in November, and an Army combat brigade is set to be removed in February 2009.
"This amounts to about 8,000 additional American troops returning home without replacement," Bush says.
As for the buildup in Afghanistan, the president says that a Marine battalion will be on its way there in November -- instead of going to Iraq. And an Army combat brigade will follow in January.
President Bush is mulling just how many U.S. troops will be in Iraq in the final months of his White House tenure.
Drawing to a halt the drawdown of five brigades at the start of the summer, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. ground commander in Iraq who is about to take over as chief of the U.S. Central Command, sought 45 days to assess the impact of the reductions.
That period is over, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino noted today, and the president's two top military advisors -- Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates -- have presented Petraeus' recommendations to Bush.
Gates and Mullen are scheduled to deliver congressional testimony next week -- but will not necessarily present the president's decision at that time, she said.
Bottom line: With pressure to increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan -- and Iraq the most likely place to find them -- the decision will have an impact on two wars.
For the 7 1/2 years of the Bush administration, Zalmay Khalilzad has been the golden boy of U.S. foreign policy.
He began life in the Bush White House as a special assistant to the president for South Asia, Near East and North African Affairs--in other words, chief of the hot spots--on the National Security Council. In short order he moved into three of the most important ambassadorial jobs: Iraq, Afghanistan, and now, the United Nations.
He was the guy to whom Bush turned when he needed someone he trusted in an extremely sensitive job.
Now, he's gone from the guy on the hot seat to bubbling in hot water.
The New York Times is reporting today that he is "facing angry questions" from his colleagues at the top of the administration over unauthorized contacts with the Pakistani political leader, Asif Ali Zardari, who is a contender to succeed Pervez Musharraf as Pakistan's president.
It turns out, according to the Times, that Khalilzad had been speaking several times a week with Zardari, the widower of the assassinated opposition leader and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. And he had planned the meet with Zardari next week while on vacation in Dubai, the paper reported, quoting administration officials.
Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, put an end to that plan after discovering through Zardari himself that the United States' U.N. ambassador was providing "advice and help." An angry e-mail from Boucher to Khalilzad ensued.
Such contacts would suggest an extreme violation of diplomatic protocol and U.S. policy; the administration has remained officially neutral in the contest to succeed Musharraf, and in any case diplomats are discouraged from such interference in any country's internal politics--the history of CIA involvement in instances around the world notwithstanding.
With the United States walking an extremely narrow line as it seeks to encourage a new Pakistani administration to fight the Taliban along the Afghan-Pakistan border--but not appear overly friendly with whomever takes over in Islamabad, for fear of complicating the security task--any signs of a U.S. official's meddling in Pakistani political affairs can only complicate the mission.
The Times notes an intriguing back story:
The conduct by Mr. Khalilzad, who is Afghan by birth has also raised hackles because of speculation that he might seek to succeed Hamid Karzi as president of Afghanistan.
The official State Department biography of Khalilzad makes no reference to his Afghan heritage.
As if they didn't have enough trouble as they scrambled to clear up confusion over just how President Bush feels about deadlines for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, the president's aides now have to deal with their ally in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who says a deadline is fine with him: the one set by Barack Obama.
White House officials were saying Friday that Bush had agreed to a "general time horizon" for further troop withdrawals.
Then along came Maliki, who said in an interview that went online today that the deadline set by the Democratic presidential nominee-apparent works for him. That would be 16 months after inauguration day, Jan. 20. (We'll overlook for now the occasional squishiness that surrounds Obama's pronouncements on the exact time frame.)
Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, reported:
When asked in an interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks U.S. troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded "as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned." He then continued: "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."
The magazine added that "Maliki was careful to back away from outright support for Obama."
The prime minister told Der Spiegel: "Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans' business."
But he made it clear that he didn't care for the approach taken by Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee-apparent, saying:
Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of U.S. troops in Iraq would cause problems.
The United States is fighting in two wars. No question about that. But does that make the United States a country at war? And does it make George W. Bush a wartime president?
Those are the questions being asked by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek. The debate goes to the heart of the nearly eight years of the Bush presidency.
To be sure, as Zakaria notes, Bush regularly describes himself as a "war president." He is updated regularly -- daily or more often -- on conditions and situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He holds video teleconferences with his commanders there, generally at least once a week.
But, Zakaria notes, by the standards of World War II -- and when Bush presents himself as a "war president," the model of Franklin D. Roosevelt comes to mind -- "we are not at war." He notes:
Consider as evidence the behavior our our "war president." Bush recently explained that for the last few years he has given up golf, because "to play the sport in a time of war" would send the wrong signal. Compare Bush's "sacrifice" to those made by Americans during World War II, when most able-bodied men were drafted, food was rationed and industries were commandeered to produce military equipment. For example, there were no civilian cars manufactured in the United States from 1941 to 1945.
Concluding that the United States has "a unique and extraordinary set of strengths," Zakaria writes that
the United States' position can only be eroded "by its own actions and overreactions -- by unwise and imprudent leadership. A good way to start correcting the errors of the past would be to recognize that we are not at war."
--James Gerstenzang
Photo: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, 1945; credit: Associated Press
Photo of Bush: James Gerstenzang/Los Angeles Times
Maybe he's been rehearsing his lines, anticipating the push-back he might get from other world leaders at this weekend's Group of Eight summit in Japan. Maybe he was aiming his argument at domestic critics, like a certain antiwar Democrat running for president. Or perhaps he was making the case for his legacy as a stalwart defender of U.S. security interests against extremists.
Whatever the motive, at a press conference this morning in the Rose Garden, Bush sounded a bit weary of the repeated necessity to keep selling the war on terrorism. Noting that the G-8 crowd will talk about "the struggle against violent extremists," Bush said:
The temptation is to kind of say, "Well, maybe this isn't really a war, maybe this is just a bunch of disgruntled folks that occasionally come and hurt us." You know that's not the way I feel about it. This is an ongoing, constant struggle to defend our own security and at the same time help people realize the blessings of liberty.
Since 9/11, Bush has probably given thousands of speeches, hundreds of radio addresses and dozens of press conferences. And few have been without a mention of the war against extremists. As he said again today, "Our troops are taking the fight to a tough enemy, an enemy who doesn't like our presence there because ... America is pressing an ideology that's opposite of theirs."
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush are cheered by soldiers at Fort Campell, Ky., on Nov. 21, 2001.
At what is likely to be one of his final NATO conferences unless he sticks around the Pentagon in the next administration, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates tried today to shake up the alliance's stale diplomacy – and kick start stronger support for the Afghanistan war.
NATO conferences are usually mind-numbing affairs. Defense ministers turn into bland diplomats and mire the meetings in bureaucratic details.
Gates has told aides that he has been deeply frustrated that rare real dialogue occurs at the NATO meetings. Trying an end run around the usual platitudes, Gates tore up his notes.
“The boss was on fire tonight,” said a senior administration official, offering a somewhat breathless description of the defense secretary's comments after Gates spoke at the closed-door dinner meeting on the war in Afghanistan.
Gates told the ministers he was “speaking from the heart” and was impassioned because in May, for the first time since 2003, monthly U.S. casualties in Afghanistan exceeded those in Iraq, the official said. (In Iraq, 14 U.S. service members and two allied troops were killed; in Afghanistan, 13 U.S. troops and five allied service members were killed, according to the Pentagon.)
He then renewed his call for the alliance to send more troops to Afghanistan and allow them to do more things.
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
