{"id":20688,"date":"2010-10-01T15:12:29","date_gmt":"2010-10-01T19:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=20688"},"modified":"2010-10-01T15:12:29","modified_gmt":"2010-10-01T19:12:29","slug":"levin-obama-shouldnt-be-flexible-on-the-withdrawal-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=20688","title":{"rendered":"Levin: Obama shouldn’t be flexible on the withdrawal date"},"content":{"rendered":"

Armed services chairman Carl Levin, who has never spent a day of his life in the military, is pressuring the president to stand fast on the withdrawal date for Afghanistan set for July irrespective of the conditions on the ground<\/a>;<\/p>\n

“The president is now under pressure from inside and outside the military to build flexibility into that July 2011 date,” Levin said in prepared remarks he’s set to deliver to the Council on Foreign Relations. “I want to tell you why I believe sticking to that date is essential to success, and why President Obama should not, and I believe will not, modify the July 2011 date.”<\/p>\n

Levin, an opponent of the original surge of troops into Afghanistan that Obama ordered last fall, said that sticking to the date was critical to “strengthen Afghan resolve” to build its own internal military and policing systems to fend off Taliban-led insurgents once the U.S. leaves the country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course we’ve all seen the deterioration of the relationship we’ve had with the Pakistan government in the last few years – burning of 27 fuel trucks yesterday<\/a> and another deadly attack today<\/a> is a good example. The withdrawal won’t happen overnight, so some troops will be left behind and vulnerable if the Afghanis don’t have enough “resolve” as Levin hopes.<\/p>\n

Odds are that Levin’s statement will only strengthen the resolve of the Taliban and improve their recruiting efforts – especially if they institute a delayed entry program. Everything has a political solution to these people. They stopped us from finishing the job in Iraq in 1991, they stopped us from finishing what they started in Somalia, the future of Iraq is in question. Haven’t they learned the lessons of the last generation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed services chairman Carl Levin, who has never spent a day of his life in the … Levin: Obama shouldn’t be flexible on the withdrawal date<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,89,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-congress-sucks","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}