Britain's Defence Secretary Liam Fox speaks, with Danish Minister of Defence Gitte Lillelund Bech, right, and Estonian Minister of Defence Mart Laar, during a joint press conference in Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday, June 16, 2011. Any decision to drawdown international troops from Afghanistan should be based on security conditions on the ground, Britain's defence secretary said. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
Obama spokesman Jay Carney said Gen. David Petraeus, along with other members of the national security team, met with the president at the White House Wednesday. Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has long been expected to give Obama multiple options for how to begin bringing U.S. forces home and at what pace.
White House officials wouldn't say what options Obama is considering, though they did say he will inform the public of his decision soon. Carney said Thursday that Obama will consult further with his national security team, including Petraeus, in the coming days.
The war is now in its 10th year. The U.S. has roughly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, three times as many as when Obama took office. When the president sent an additional 30,000 U.S. forces to Afghanistan at the end of 2009, he did so with the caveat that some of those troops would start coming home in July 2011.
Obama has said the initial withdrawal will be "significant," but others in the administration, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have called for a more modest drawdown.
Administration officials say they are focused not only on how many troops will leave Afghanistan next month, but how the U.S. will meet its goal of giving Afghans
control of their own security by the end of 2014. To that extent, Obama's decision may clarify the broader path to ending the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan.As the president deliberates, he faces increasing calls for a substantial drawdown from lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
A bipartisan group of more than two dozen senators sent Obama a letter Wednesday saying it makes no sense to maintain a significant number of troops in Afghanistan. They cited the recent death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and CIA Director Leon Panetta's assessment that less than 100 al-Qaida members remain in Afghanistan.
"Given our successes, it is the right moment to initiate a sizable and sustained reduction in forces, with the goal of steadily redeploying all regular combat troops," the senators wrote. "The costs of prolonging the war far outweigh the benefits. It is time for the United States to shift course in Afghanistan."
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