Obama not rushing Afghan strategy despite election news, GOP critics

President Barack Obama will not speed up his decision on a new strategy for Afghanistan because of changes in that country’s presidential election.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Monday said Obama will be “looking at the next few weeks” before making a decision, and that the decision by Abdullah Abdullah to drop out of the race will not have an impact.

Abdullah finished second to Afghan President Hamid Karzai in the first round of balloting. Abdullah criticized the results as flawed, and said forces working for Karzai attempted to fix the election.

Obama has been debating the way forward on Afghanistan for weeks, and is under increasing political pressure to show his hand.

The president has held a series of meetings with his national security team to devise a new strategy, but had hinted that he would not announce his move until after the Nov. 7 runoff. Gibbs said he does not know if Obama will make or announce a decision before the president leaves for a 10-day trip to Asia on Nov. 11.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Monday that Obama needs to make a decision immediately on a strategy now that that country’s runoff election has been canceled.

“There are no more excuses,” Boehner said. “It’s time for the Obama administration to give our commander on the ground the resources he needs to protect our troops and achieve the goals the president has said he supports.”

Republicans have been pushing Obama to green-light a request from NATO and U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal for an additional 40,000 troops for Afghanistan.

Obama also faces pressure from the left. Many lawmakers in his party oppose putting more troops in Afghanistan, and Vice President Joe Biden has reportedly called for the U.S. to focus on anti-terrorism efforts that would necessitate fewer boots on the ground in that country.

Gibbs said Monday that the election was only one factor in Obama's decisionmaking process. “This decision was not dependent upon when a leader was determined,” Gibbs said.

Karzai was certified the winner of the Afghan election after Abdullah said over the weekend that he was not participating in the runoff because it was impossible to prevent the widespread fraud that tainted the first election in August.

The president told reporters in the Oval Office that he congratulated Karzai by phone Monday afternoon and pressed him to address issues of corruption in Afghanistan.

“He assured me that he understood the importance of this moment, but as I indicated to him, the proof is not going to be in words. It’s going to be in deeds,” Obama said.

Obama said the election process was “messy” but that he is happy there is a final outcome for the Afghan people.

“I did emphasize to President Karzai that the American people and the international community as a whole want to continue to partner with him and his government in achieving prosperity and security in Afghanistan,” Obama said. “But I emphasized that this has to be a point in time in which we begin to write a new chapter based on improved governance, a much more serious effort to eradicate corruption [and] joint efforts to accelerate the training of Afghan security forces so that the Afghan people can provide for their own security.”

The White House has long said that the eventual winner of the election had to be viewed as credible and legitimate by the Afghan people.

Boehner said that Obama no longer had any pretext for delaying the decision, and argued that in putting off his move, Obama was making it more likely that the mission in Afghanistan would fail.

“Delaying the decision puts our men and women fighting there in greater danger every single day,” Boehner said. “Gen. McChrystal has been clear: Without timely reinforcements, our efforts to deny al Qaeda and the Taliban a safe haven in Afghanistan may well end in failure.”

This story was updated at 4:51 p.m.