Afstan: What the next US president will have to decide

This is a good sign, and indications are that McCain, Obama or Clinton will be helpful over Afstan (for some strange reason our media downplay severely the two Democrat's positions):

The United States will send more troops to Afghanistan next year, George W. Bush promised allied leaders at the NATO summit in Bucharest, even though he will no longer be president after January, 2009.

Those troops will be in addition to the 1,000 that will shift from eastern Afghanistan to the south to reinforce Canadian soldiers, a White House official said.

“The President indicated that he expected in 2009 that the United States would make a significant additional contribution,” Defence Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday, adding that he expects the promise will be kept no matter who replaces Mr. Bush in the Oval Office.

“This is one area where there is very broad bipartisan support in the United States for being successful and I think that no matter who is elected they will want to be successful in Afghanistan,” said Mr. Gates, who will also be gone next January...

Mr. Gates declined to provide any numbers for the increase he expects next year in Afghanistan, but suggested it might be less than the 10,000 additional soldiers – two full brigades – sought by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's current commander in Afghanistan, U.S. General Dan McNeil.

“I've been at this a long time. And with all due respect, I've never met a general who had enough forces,” Mr. Gates said.

More likely was one brigade and then only if Iraq remains sufficiently calm to permit continued reductions there.

“Should we be in a position where more troops are removed from Iraq, the possibility of sending additional troops [to Afghanistan] – where we need them, clearly it's a possibility,” Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week. “But it's really going to be based on the availability of troops. We don't have troops sitting on the shelf, ready to go.”..

U.S. soldiers, many of them on their third combat stint in Iraq or Afghanistan, are already enduring 15-month deployments, 21/2 times as long as Canadian troops [the Globe's Mr Koring might want to update that sentence--see the quote below].

The availability of more U.S. soldiers for Afghanistan will depend on who gets elected in November.

Both Democratic contenders, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barrack Obama, have pledged to pull out of Iraq [they haven't said when] and send more soldiers to Afghanistan.

But Republican nominee Senator John McCain maintains that winning in Iraq remains more important and has declined to commit to a drawdown there.

Only minor additional troop commitments were made at the NATO summit, despite tough-sounding pledges by leaders that they were committed to the long haul. France agreed to send 700 soldiers to eastern Afghanistan next winter. That will allow Washington to shift about 1,000 troops from the east to the south, thus meeting Prime Minister Stephen's Harper ultimatum that Canada would pull its troops out unless reinforcements were sent to Kandahar.

A similar Washington Post story is here. This report is also relevant:

The Bush administration plans to announce next week that U.S. soldiers' combat tours will be reduced from 15 months to 12 months in Iraq and Afghanistan beginning later this summer, The Associated Press has learned.

The decision, expected to get final, formal approval in the days ahead, comes as Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, prepares to deliver a progress report to Congress next week on the improved security situation there. He is also expected to make recommendations for future troop levels.

A senior administration official said Friday that plans are to deploy soldiers for 12months, then give them 12 months rest time at home. Exactly which units would be affected is not yet clear. The official spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement...

Petraeus is expected to lay out his proposal for a pause in troop cuts after July when the last of the five additional brigades ordered to Iraq last year have come home. And he will likely tell lawmakers how many more troops could be withdrawn this year, as long as conditions in Iraq remained stable...