SPEAKING on February 1st shortly before a meeting of NATO ministers in Brussels, Leon Panetta, America’s defence secretary, dropped a bombshell. He said that he now hoped American troops in Afghanistan would be able to withdraw from a combat to an “enabling” role soon after the middle of next year—ie, about 18 months earlier than an existing plan agreed on in late 2010 at a NATO summit in Lisbon. The timing of Mr Panetta’s remarks about accelerating the pace of the transition to Afghan national security forces (ANSF) owes more to the Obama administration’s electoral calculations than to the situation in Afghanistan. There, everything argues against a rush for the exit.
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