NYT: "High-Level Talks Aim for an End to the Afghan War"

I really don't want to get into a re-hash of whether we should have went into Afghanistan in the first place other than to say, I think we had no choice but I think we handled it badly.

I really don't know a lot of about having strategic ground so I am going to leave the discussion of whether we should remove ourselves from most of our bases around the world to others who know what they are talking about.

I do think we should remove ourselves from the two war fronts, Iraq (which we shouldn't have gone into in the first place) and Afghanistan. We pretty well have to leave Iraq because of the security agreement which was signed during the previous administration. I think the signs are there more than ever that we going to drastically reduce the military presence in Afghanistan, I think we have worn out our welcome if we ever had any with both the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. From what I have reading, the ties between Pakistan and the US are weakening and the ties between China and Pakistan are getting stronger.

In any event, IMO, the money spent on those wars could be money spent here at home.

Reporting from Washington—
President Obama plans to announce a troop reduction in Afghanistan that Pentagon and other administration officials say is expected to bring home about 10,000 personnel by the end of the year.

In a speech to be delivered Wednesday, the president is expected to declare that successes in disrupting Al Qaeda's ability to stage attacks against the United States allow him to begin reducing troop levels, said the officials, who cautioned that Obama was still "finalizing" his decision.

In 2009 the president coupled his decision to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan with a pledge to begin removing some of those forces this summer. U.S. officials and outside experts familiar with recent deliberations said Obama was leaning toward withdrawing all the additional troops by the end of 2012 or early 2013. That would leave close to 70,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Withdrawing 10,000 or so troops this year represents a steeper drawdown than Gen. David H. Petraeus and senior Pentagon officials preferred. The Pentagon had been hoping to limit the initial withdrawal to 3,000 to 4,000.

But the killing of Osama bin Laden last month in Pakistan, budget pressures and the urging of some White House aides to make faster reductions have pushed Obama toward a steeper reduction, said officials familiar with the internal debate.

The main military effort in Afghanistan is expected to shift over the next year from Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the south, where U.S. and Afghan forces have helped achieve fragile security gains over the last year, to the east, where the Taliban insurgency remains potent. And Obama is planning to give leeway to military commanders about the pacing of the withdrawals and the types of forces to be pulled out, officials said.

But his strategy is unlikely to satisfy some critics — liberal Democrats as well as conservative Republicans — who have called for a quicker exit from Afghanistan. Congressional support for the war has been waning, and the skeptical mood has heightened attention on Obama's decision. The president plans to follow the speech with a visit to troops at Ft. Drum in upstate New York on Thursday.

Under the withdrawal schedule, the bulk of the additional forces would remain in Afghanistan through next spring and summer, when attacks usually jump, giving commanders more than a year to further degrade the insurgency and to train more Afghan forces to take a larger role in providing security, the officials said.

I really don't want to get into a re-hash of whether we should have went into Afghanistan in the first place other than to say, I think we had no choice but I think we handled it badly.

we should have went into Afghanistan