Reporting from Washington —
President Obama built his Afghanistan strategy around the bet that he could quickly turn around a “must win” war by narrowing his goals and sending more troops. This weekend he will make his clearest acknowledgement yet that doing so will actually take years.
At a summit in Lisbon this weekend, Obama and other NATO leaders will endorse a plan to gradually turn combat responsibility over to the Afghan army and police by 2014, a timetable that will keep tens of thousands of U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan well beyond the end of Obama’s first term.
U.S. and Afghan officials previously have made it clear that Afghanistan will need U.S. help against the insurgency for many years, but the transition plan being presented in Lisbon will be the first time Obama publicly backs such a time frame.
Full Story: U.S. appears ready to acknowledge a long haul in Afghanistan – latimes.com