White House rebuts Cheney on Afghanistan

Democrats pushed back Thursday against former Vice President Dick Cheney's charge that President Obama is "dithering" on a troop decision on Afghanistan as they grappled with conflicting advice on what to do next in the eight-year-long war.

"I'm very skeptical of anyone who's not wrestling with it," said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, a Vietnam War veteran who is sending the president a letter urging him to avoid an open-ended military commitment. "He shouldn't rush. We did the rush thing in that part of the world already. We need to do this right."

Experts attached dire warnings to troop increases and troop shortfalls but agreed the Taliban insurgency is gaining ground fast and that billions of dollars in civilian aid have been squandered.

Differences among members of Congress, who appeared unusually attentive to the testimony in two House Armed Services subcommittee hearings, mirror the debates inside the White House. Some back the counterinsurgency strategy recommended by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, which calls for at least 40,000 more troops to provide security in addition to a major effort to build economic and civil institutions in the country.

Others are pressing for a much less ambitious counterterrorism strategy that relies more on targeted strikes on terrorists by air or by elite troops.

The 2007 troop surge in Iraq under President George W. Bush, widely condemned in Congress at the time, is now being viewed by many experts and members of Congress as a model that can be applied to Afghanistan, with some tinkering.

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey said McChrystal's request for 40,000 additional troops is probably "on the downside" of what would be needed to succeed, in addition to a major civilian investment in roads, agriculture and local government, in a country whose level of development he described as 14th century.

Nor is downsizing a viable option, despite a public that is focused on the recession and "not too keen about a decadelong effort in Afghanistan," McCaffrey said.

As lawmakers debated U.S. policy options in Afghanistan, the White House struck back at Cheney for a speech Wednesday in which he said the administration "must stop dithering while America's armed forces are in danger. It's time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity."

White House press secretaryRobert Gibbs responded: "What Vice President Cheney calls dithering, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform and to the American public. I think we've all seen what happens when somebody doesn't take that responsibility seriously."

Several academics argued that trying to rebuild Afghanistan after a long U.S. occupation, preceded by two decades of war, is futile in a country where mistrust of foreigners runs deep.

"The military and the Afghan government are caught in a mutually detrimental relationship in which both sides lose credibility - the military by association with a corrupt government and the government by association with a foreign military," said Matthew Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.