Bloomberg
11/01/2009
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Abdullah Abdullah’s withdrawal from the Afghanistan presidential runoff election won’t complicate President Barack Obama’s decision-making about his war strategy in the country, said two of the president’s top advisers.

Abdullah made a “political decision” to withdraw and that “doesn’t markedly change the situation,” adviser David Axelrod said today on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He said he expects the president to make a decision “within weeks” on strategy in Afghanistan.

Valerie Jarrett, another adviser, said today on ABC’s “This Week” program that the White House doesn’t view Abdullah’s decision as “a complication.” The president is going through a “very rigorous process” on deciding whether to send more troops to the country, Jarrett said.

Abdullah withdrew from Afghanistan’s Nov. 7 presidential runoff election against Afghan President Hamid Karzai, saying a “free and fair” ballot wouldn’t have been possible. A United Nations-backed partial recount of the initial Aug. 20 vote found more than 1 million ballots, most of them for Karzai, were suspect, putting his tally below the 50 percent needed to win and triggering the runoff.

Obama is considering sending as many as 40,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, as recommended by the top U.S. and NATO commander there, General Stanley McChrystal. The U.S. is scheduled to have about 68,000 military personnel there by the end of the year.

‘Stop Beating Up’

Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, said on CBS that “it’s time for us to stop beating up on President Karzai and start building up President Karzai and his government to be the government we need, because they’re not the enemy. The enemy is the Taliban.”

Abdullah’s decision to withdraw “really says more about the fact that he knew he wasn’t going to win,” said House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “But that should not hamper our decision with regard to Afghanistan.”

The president should decide soon about how to proceed on Afghanistan, Boehner said.

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