Shootings further erode support for war

WASHINGTON -- The weekend massacre of 16 Afghan civilians being blamed on a U.S. soldier newly undermines the rationale for a war that most Americans already thought wasn't worth fighting.

But the Obama administration and its allies insisted yesterday that the horrific episode would not speed up plans to pull out their forces.

President Barack Obama called the episode "tragic," telling a television interviewer that the killings underscore the need to hand over responsibility for security to Afghans. But he said it won't lead to an early withdrawal of U.S. troops.

"I think it's important for us to make sure that we get out in a responsible way so that we don't end up having to go back in," Obama said. "It makes me more determined to make sure that we're getting our troops home. It's time."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters at the United Nations, "This terrible incident does not change our steadfast dedication to protecting the Afghan people and to doing everything we can to build a strong and stable Afghanistan."

Administration officials were reacting to the killing Sunday of the 16 Afghan civilians, which included nine children asleep in their beds. An unidentified Army staff sergeant is accused of slipping away from his base in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar and shooting the villagers in their homes.

Despite the deaths, "our strategic objectives have not changed and they will not change," White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

Still, the killing of Americans by their Afghan hosts and of Afghans by the Americans who are supposed to help them have forced an acute examination of a war strategy that calls for Afghans to assume greater responsibility for security through mentoring and "shoulder by shoulder" joint operations.

Obama expanded the Afghan war in the first year of his presidency, saying it was in keeping with U.S. national security interests, in contrast to the Iraq War he opposed.

But the war, now in its 11th year, remains a stalemate in much of the country, while the al-Qaida terror network that the war is supposed to deter has largely abandoned Afghanistan. U.S. commandos killed Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden last year.

"It's been a decade, and frankly now that we've gotten bin Laden and we've weakened al-Qaida, we're in a stronger position," to hand over security control to the Afghans, Obama said Monday.

The war is increasingly becoming a political headache for Obama, with American voters appearing frustrated and Republican rivals accusing him of mishandling it.

In results from a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted before the killings and released Sunday, 55 percent of respondents said they think most Afghans oppose what the United States is trying to do there. And 60 percent said the war in Afghanistan has been "not worth fighting."