WASHINGTON — The death of Osama bin Laden has revived a debate over the pace of a planned US troop withdrawal in Afghanistan and the rationale for a war that has dragged on for nearly a decade.
The raid that killed Al-Qaeda's chief in Pakistan has supplied ammunition to those in and outside the White House who favor scaling back the massive US presence in Afghanistan, just as President Barack Obama reviews plans to begin pulling out some of the 100,000 troops there in July.
Skeptics have seized on Bin Laden's demise to argue that there is no reason to keep so many troops in Afghanistan in a war originally launched after the September 11 attacks to prevent Al-Qaeda from using the country as a sanctuary.
US intelligence officers poring through the data told the Associated Press the information underlines how proactive Bin Laden continued to be even when al-Qaida as a movement was on the defensive. Though he didn't appear to have the ability directly to co-ordinate specific attacks from his lair in Abbottabad, he did have input into every major al-Qaida plot, including those across Europe last year, the officials said.
He was also in touch with many of the most dangerous al-Qaida offshoots around the world that some had assumed were working independently, such as the branch in Yemen that has become a leading centre of al-Qaida activity.
Drawdown debate is likely to renew tensions between military leaders and the White House that played out in the press in 2009 over a proposed troop build up.
Obama ultimately approved the troop "surge" favored by the military -- sending in 30,000 reinforcements -- but the administration remains divided, with Vice President Joe Biden favoring a smaller force to counter Al-Qaeda and its allies.
"Clearly the last set of decisions for troop counts were bruising for both the military and the administration," Biddle said.
As chronicled in Bob Woodward's book "Obama's War," some White House officials suspected the military was "boxing in" the president, refusing to offer alternatives to an open-ended, large-scale troop deployment.
Senior military officers, however, have resented civilian advisers demanding unrealistic options that could guarantee success at a "low cost," Biddle said.
"That's a recipe for frustration," he said.
