The Hill News

When Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently announced that U.S. forces in Afghanistan would be transitioning from "combat operations" to an "advise and assist" role sometime in 2013, some applauded and others decried what they saw as a shift in U.S. policy.
 
Actually, there was no shift. Although Panetta did not explain it clearly, the plan all along has been to do something akin to what we did in Iraq, where we shifted to "advise and assist" late in 2010 in anticipation of exiting in December 2011. Similarly, in Afghanistan, U.S. forces will  shift to "advise and assist" in 2013 in anticipation of leaving in 2014.
 
Consistency notwithstanding, however, it’s still a terrible policy. In fact, our experience shifting to “advise and assist” in Iraq should serve as a cautionary tale. Once combat operations officially ended in Iraq, the new operating environment had deadly implications for U.S. troops.

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