Senate set to OK Petraeus

WASHINGTON — Gen. David Petraeus said Tuesday he would review restrictions on U.S. airstrikes and artillery in Afghanistan, which have cut down on civilian casualties but have been bitterly criticized by U.S. troops who say they have made the fight more dangerous.

Petraeus' statement, made in his Senate confirmation hearing to be the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, signaled what could be his first departure from the policies of the former top U.S. commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was fired last week by President Obama.

The Senate Armed Services Committee later voted to approve Petraeus and referred his nomination to the full Senate, which was to vote on his confirmation Wednesday. The general is expected in Kabul by Friday.

In his plans to review McChrystal's rules of engagement — which Petraeus oversaw as the head of U.S. Central Command and the overall manager of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — Petraeus acknowledged the tension between fighting a war and protecting and winning over the civilian population in a classic counterinsurgency campaign.

McChrystal, who embraced the counterinsurgency doctrine, had faced rising complaints in recent months from troops who said they felt "handcuffed" by the rules and that restrictions on airstrikes had prolonged battles and cost lives.

"If confirmed, I would continue the emphasis on reducing loss of civilian life in the course of operations to an absolute minimum, while also ensuring that we provide whatever assets are necessary to ensure the safety" of U.S., NATO and Afghan forces, Petraeus said in a written answer to a question asked in advance by the committee.

Despite the general's focus on rules of engagement, the dominant issue among the senators was the merits of a July 2011 White House-imposed deadline for the start of withdrawals of troops from Afghanistan.

As he has in the past, Petraeus carefully straddled in his answers, saying that he fully supported the deadline as a "message of urgency to compliment this message of enormous commitment" of nearly 100,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan, but that it was only "the beginning of a process" and that the U.S. commitment to the country was enduring.

At a national security meeting at the White House last week, Petraeus said, "The vice president grabbed me and said, 'You should know I am 100 percent supportive of this policy.' "