Coffman, other lawmakers, skeptical of troop increase in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON - The week before a major presidential speech on Afghanistan strategy, Gen. Stanley McChrystal told lawmakers touring the combat zone that it could take until almost 2013 to stabilize the country and allow the drawdown of U.S. forces.

The top coalition commander in Afghanistan gave the estimate to a delegation of six lawmakers - including U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, a Republican from Aurora - this week in Kabul during a private assessment of military conditions in the country.

It foreshadows some of the difficulties of the case President Barack Obama will have to make to the American public from West Point on Tuesday, when he is expected to call for a significant new troop commitment and outline an exit strategy in the 8-year-old war.

By 2013, the United States military will have been in Afghanistan for as long as American soldiers fought in Vietnam.

"I asked (McChrystal), 'Where's the tipping point here? If you get the troops that you're asking for here, at what point will we begin to phase down that presence?'" Coffman said. "He said sometime before 2013."

Coffman said he pressed McChrystal and others on the possibility of more aggressively arming local militias that could fight the Taliban, especially in the country's rural areas.

"They said the Karzai government isn't excited about us giving weapons to some of these tribal militias," said Coffman, who noted that such a strategy proved a turning point in Iraq. "But I said the Maliki government wasn't excited when (Gen. David) Petraeus did that to the Sunni Arab insurgents."

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