There’s a lot to consider in today’s article about the United States military’s plans to withdraw from Afghanistan, and we’ll have more to say about it on our editorial page soon (here’s our last editorial on the issue).

But there was something in the article that jumped out at me. We now know how long the military thinks it would take to safely remove approximately 66,000 American troops from Afghanistan: about a year.

The article also said the military wants to withdraw as slowly as possible (no surprise) and keep as many troops in Afghanistan for as long as possible (even less of a surprise), so they want to end 2013 with about 60,000 troops, and then presumably pull them all out before the end of 2014.

It seems unlikely that President Obama will go for that kind of back-loaded withdrawal schedule, if only for political reasons. But why not just start now? If all it takes is a year, then the United States could plausibly be out of Afghanistan by this time next year (though the debate would remain over whether there should be a residual force left behind for intelligence gathering, counter-terrorism and training Afghan troops, but at least the major combat forces would start leaving).

That way, the United States would not be tempted to hang around in 2014 to provide security for Afghanistan’s next presidential election – at best a thankless task and at worst an operation that risks giving the stamp of approval to what could be yet another crooked vote. And it would mean one less year of American casualties on the battlefield – and one less year spent trying to make the Afghan army into a real fighting force (that targets the Taliban and al Qaeda, and not American and other NATO forces).

It’s not clear when the military is supposed to give Mr. Obama all the withdrawal options that today’s article reports he has requested. In fact, it’s not at all clear why that has not happened before now.