The US continues to pay for historical mistakes with Pakistan, such as the decision to walk away from the region after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 and imposing sanctions on Pakistan in response to its nuclear ambitions, outgoing US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Reuters on Thursday. While Gates said the Obama administration had “bent over backward” to improve ties with Pakistan, the relationship remains tense. Islamabad has terminated a US military training mission here. “We all wish it were in a better place, but on the same token this relationship has ebbed and flowed for decades,” Gates, who steps down today (Thursday) after four and a half years as the US defense chief said.
US President Barack Obama’s plan for pulling US troops from Afghanistan will intensify risks in the thick of next year’s fighting season, but gates said Obama was right to factor in waning support at home for the war. He said Obama’s advisers had put forward different options for gradually shrinking the 100,000-strong US force in Afghanistan, where after almost a decade of war the Taliban remains a deadly, resilient enemy.
While the Pentagon’s top brass argued for keeping the extra 33,000 troops Obama sent to Afghanistan until the end of 2012, Gates said, other advisers wanted them out as early as April, as patience wears thin for a war that now costs more than $110 billion a year.
Obama ultimately decided, in a move announced last week, to remove 10,000 troops this year and the remaining 23,000 troops of the surge force by September 2012. “The president had a real tight-wire to walk in terms of balancing military risk and political risk,” Gates said in an interview on the eve of his departure from the Pentagon. “It wouldn’t make any difference if the president said keep them there another two years if the Congress wouldn’t vote the money … Even some Republicans are beginning to talk about coming out sooner,” Gates said.
