Obama: Romney has no timetable to end Afghan war

BOULDER, Colo. — President Barack
Obama warned young voters on
Sunday that Mitt Romney has no plan
to end the war in Afghanistan.
Obama has been hitting his
Republican rival on the issue ever
since Romney failed to mention the
war in his nomination acceptance
speech.
"This November, you get to decide
the future of the Afghanistan war,"
Obama told some 13,000 people at a
rally on the campus of the University
of Colorado Boulder.
"We are bringing our troops home
from Afghanistan. And I've set a
timetable. We will have them all out
of there by 2014. Gov. Romney
doesn't have a timetable. I think he's
wrong," the president said.
The Romney campaign disputed
Obama's charge, calling it "another
attempt to politicize the war" and
said Romney embraces the 2014
timetable.
"President Obama dishonestly argues
that anyone who disagrees with his
politicized decision making in
Afghanistan is arguing for endless
war," spokeswoman Amanda
Henneberg told Yahoo News by
email.
"As president, Gov. Romney's goal
will be to complete a successful
transition to Afghan security forces by
the end of 2014 by evaluating
conditions on the ground and
soliciting the best advice of our
military commanders, not ignoring
them," she said.
The Afghanistan/Pakistan section of
Romney's website doesn't mention
the Obama-championed, NATO-
endorsed withdrawal timetable that
calls for pulling most of the alliance's
combat forces out by the end of
2014. Under that plan, an as-yet
unspecified number of troops would
remain, notably to train their Afghan
counterparts.
"Withdrawal of U.S. forces from
Afghanistan under a Romney
administration will be based on
conditions on the ground as
assessed by our military
commanders," the candidate's
website says. It promises that, if
elected, Romney will undertake a
review of current policy.
But the candidate himself has
endorsed the 2014 date.
"The timetable, by the end of 2014, is
the right timetable for us to be
completely withdrawn from
Afghanistan, other than a small
footprint of support forces," he said
at a Republican primary debate in
November 2011 .
Romney has also accused Obama of
withdrawing 33,000 "surge" forces by
the end of September for political
purposes—the Democratic base
didn't much like the president's
decision to escalate what is now
America's longest war, and
Americans in general have soured on
the conflict. But the former
Massachusetts governor, in the
words of the Council on Foreign
Relations think tank, "has not given
specific details on how his plans
would differ from current policy"
when it comes to transferring security
responsibilities to the Afghans.
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