Gates Beats Out Petraeus in Fight Over Afghanistan Withdrawal

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/gates-beats-out-petraeus-in-fight-over-afghanistan-withdrawal/240919/

Petraeus had sold then-President George W. Bush on the Iraq surge and helped persuade Obama to overrule some of his closest advisers--including Vice President Joe Biden--and deploy 33,000 new troops to Afghanistan in December 2009. When it came time to decide when those troops would come home, however, Petraeus suffered a rare defeat. Obama rejected the general's proposal to shift large numbers of troops to eastern Afghanistan in order to mount an expansive counterinsurgency campaign there. And the president was ultimately unwilling to budge from his belief that the surge troops needed to fully withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of next year.