Officer warns on Afghan training

WASHINGTON - The ability to train and advise the still green Afghan security forces will be constrained if the U.S. troop level is cut to 5,500 as President Obama has proposed, the senior American commander in Afghanistan said Thursday.

Army Gen. John F. Campbell told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "very little" training will be done with fewer American forces.

Campbell, who is expected to retire soon, sparred with the committee's chairman, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, and other senators over the wisdom of the troop reductions.

McCain, one of Obama's harshest critics on national security issues, wanted to know whether the troop number is adequate to perform the training mission as well as counterterrorism operations as Obama has said it would be.

Campbell said much will depend on how quickly the Afghan forces improve. If they don't, he said, the number of American troops will most likely need to increase.

But Campbell, who is planning to retire from military service, said he is preparing to go down to 5,500 "as I am ordered." He said the decision to announce the troop withdrawals was a policy decision and not a military one.

Campbell acknowledged that publicly revealing the troop cuts could allow the enemy to "wait us out." At the same time, he said, openly debating and disagreeing with the decision "hurts us as well."

McCain said it's unrealistic to expect a reduced force to handle the dual mission of training the Afghans and counterterrorism. "This smaller American force will inevitably be forced to shoulder a higher level of risk to themselves, to their mission and to the national security of the United States," McCain said.

Initially, Obama said he would trim the U.S. force in Afghanistan to 5,500 troops by the end of last year, and then down to 1,000 by the end of 2016. But Obama backtracked, saying the situation remained too fragile for such a rapid withdrawal.

The current U.S. force of about 9,800 would stay in place through most of 2016, Obama said in October 2015 during remarks from the Roosevelt Room in the White House. The reduction to 5,500 would occur "by the end of 2016," Obama said, although he didn't specify exactly when.