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So Mark Berman is now sorry he campaigned and voted for President Obama because of the president's Afghanistan strategy ["Where Mr. Obama's Afghanistan strategy might lead," letters, Dec. 5]? Perhaps Mr. Berman has a short or selective memory. During the campaign, Mr. Obama repeatedly pledged to exit Iraq and shift our military resources to Afghanistan in almost exactly the manner he announced last week.

“We have strategic interests in South Asia that should not be measured in terms of finite times,” said Gen. James L. Jones, the president’s national security adviser, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’re going to be in the region for a long time.”

This is not such an unusual view in Pakistan, even if the tone was particularly harsh. At 62 years old, Pakistan is something of a teenager among nations, even in its frame of mind — self-conscious, emotional, quick to blame others for its troubles.

Eight hours later on the House side, Mr. Gates was still answering the same question when he said: “I have adamantly opposed deadlines. I opposed them in Iraq, and I oppose deadlines in Afghanistan.” In Afghanistan, he said, “This will be a gradual process.”

The American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, made the same point while speaking to reporters in Kabul, the Afghan capital. He said he was “absolutely supportive of the timeline” laid out by Mr. Obama, but he also cautioned that the timeline was flexible and “is not an absolute.”

“It’s not, ‘At 18 months, everybody leaves,’ ” the general said.

Gen. McChrystal's plan set out a time frame of three to five years. Under Mr. Obama's plan, a senior administration official told us, "in five years there will be [American] troops in Afghanistan."

Senior administration officials suggested, however, that any initial withdrawal starting in mid-2011 could be very limited, depending on the military situation at that point.

“The pace, the nature and the duration of that transition are to be determined down the road by the president based on the conditions on the ground,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, under secretary of defense for policy.

In recent months, in addition to providing White House officials with classified assessments about Afghanistan, the C.I.A. delivered a plan for widening the campaign of strikes against militants by drone aircraft in Pakistan, sending additional spies there and securing a White House commitment to bulk up the C.I.A.’s budget for operations inside the country.

And yet, Mr. Obama at times sounded like Mr. Bush in justifying this war. He celebrated the United States as a nation “founded in resistance to oppression” and talked about its long record of sacrifice in “advancing frontiers of human liberty.”

He also warned of the perils on an unchecked Qaeda. “This danger will only grow if the region slides backwards, and Al Qaeda can operate with impunity. We must keep the pressure on Al Qaeda,” he said.

The accounts could not be independently substantiated. But in successive, on-the-record interviews, the teenagers presented a detailed, consistent portrait suggesting that the abusive treatment of suspected insurgents has in some cases continued under the Obama administration, despite steps that President Obama has said would put an end to the harsh interrogation practices authorized by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The percentage of soldiers who rated their unit's morale as high or very high fell from 10.2 percent in 2007 to 5.7 percent in 2009, according to the survey. Individual morale rates remained steady, with about 16 percent saying their morale was high or very high.