Mr. Nobel Peace Prize poised to announce decision on Afghanistan

[¹²³]

Barack Obama said today that he intended to "finish the job" in Afghanistan, as it became clear that he is poised to announce early next week the deployment of up to 35,000 more troops to the troubled region in one of the most crucial decisions of his young presidency.

Obama told reporters at a White House press conference for his meeting with the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh that his prolonged review into the next phase of the Afghan war, which will end with an address to the nation probably next Tuesday, had been "comprehensive and extremely useful".

He said: "After eight years, some of those years in which we did not have either the resources or the strategy to get the job done, it is my intention to finish the job. I feel very confident that when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we're doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals, they will be supportive."

The president is expected to make a prime-time speech, possibly his first to be made in the symbolically weighty Oval Office. The contents of the announcement will be crucial not only to the next phase of the eight-year war in Afghanistan, but also to Obama's own sliding popularity figures with US voters.

Anonymous briefings with several American news outlets all placed the outcome of Obama's prolonged deliberations on what to do with Afghanistan in the same rough area.

If those reports prove correct, he has decided to send between 30,000 and 35,000 more troops to the war zone, focusing their firepower largely on the politically crucial regions of eastern and southern Afghanistan.

Significantly, though, he is also likely to build into the plan an exit strategy that will allow for a staged withdrawal of American troops if the prospects of the US-led military operation fails to improve.

The likely outcome brings the president's position closely in line with the views of Stanley McChrystal, the top US military commander in Afghanistan, who incurred White House criticism by going public with his preferred option of around 40,000 extra troops.

McChrystal will be among leading military and administration figures who will face questioning from the House of Representatives and Senate immediately after Obama's address.

Others who will answer for the new policy to congressional committees include the secretary of state Hillary Clinton; defence secretary Robert Gates; and Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador to Afghanistan who has put forward a contrasting opinion to McChrystal's, that there should be no more troops sent to Afghanistan unless the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai can show it is standing up to corruption.

The congressional hearings will be important in rallying political support behind the troop deployment. As the military operation against a resurgent Taliban has faced setbacks, and US casualties grown, popular backing for the war in Afghanistan has diminished as has been reflected in growing unease among Democratic politicians in Congress.

In a recent ABC News poll, confidence in the Obama administration's handling of Afghanistan had fallen by 10 percentage points in just a month, to 45%, while disapproval had risen to 47%.

The president will hope to assuage some of the anxieties on the Democratic side about the progress of the war by including a clear statement that he does not intend the military engagement to be bottomless and endless. His spokesman Robert Gibbs said that the strategy was "not just how we get people there, but what's the strategy for getting them out".

In his final meeting with the war council last night - the last of nine such meetings - Obama requested a briefing from military leaders on how an exit strategy might work.

To present the American people with a double-headed policy in which a surge in troop numbers is coupled with talk of exiting Afghanistan is likely to test Obama's political skills to the full. However, foreign policy experts said that if he delivered the announcement with confidence he would be able to get the message across.

"No war is intended to last forever, so it makes logical sense to put in enough troops to make sure we can get the job done and then get the hell out of there," said Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

O'Hanlon said that Obama would also be under pressure to clarify his attitude towards the widely discredited Afghan regime which was implicated in electoral fraud at last month's presidential elections. "It will be fascinating to see how he describes Karzai."

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[CelticKing]

Didn't he win the election on the premises of bringing the troops back home?

 

[¹²³]

Didn't he win the election on the premises of bringing the troops back home?

I honestly don't know the answer to your question.

 

[Colonel Ronan]

I honestly don't either.

 

[CelticKing]

If you don't let me tell you then.

He promised to bring back troops from Iraq and Afghanistan within year, and he was saying all of them, not just a percentage.

Now what we have is him turning around and sending even more troops there. Seems Bush wasn't wrong with the wars after all.

 

[¹²³]

If you don't let me tell you then.

He promised to bring back troops from Iraq and Afghanistan within year, and he was saying all of them, not just a percentage.

Now what we have is him turning around and sending even more troops there. Seems Bush wasn't wrong with the wars after all.

I am no expert, but according to this site his promisse was to "begin removing combat brigades from Iraq" and to "send two additional brigades to Afghanistan".

 

[CelticKing]

I am no expert, but according to this site his promisse was to "begin removing combat brigades from Iraq" and to "send two additional brigades to Afghanistan".

Here's a CNN article.

On the campaign trail in December 2007, he promised to bring troops home from Iraq in 16 months and to "finish the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan."

Those 16 months slipped to 19. As many as 50,000 troops may stay on the ground in Iraq, but the majority will be out next year. The president sent more than 20,000 more troops to Afghanistan and is considering sending more.

He has ordered the Guantanamo Bay prison closed, though he's likely to miss his self-imposed January deadline.

I also included Guantanamo Bay there, another promise made by Mr. Obama.

 

[¹²³]

Here's a CNN article.





I also included Guantanamo Bay there, another promise made by Mr. Obama.

I think you can argue that he is trying to "finish the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan", althought Obama seems pretty off regarding deadlines and timetable.

 

[CelticKing]

I think you can argue that he is trying to "finish the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan", althought Obama seems pretty off regarding deadlines and timetable.

But his whole point was that Bush made a mistake to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, now he seems to be changing with Afghanistan. (I say another 10 years we'll be there, maybe more)

 

[¹²³]

But his whole point was that Bush made a mistake to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, now he seems to be changing with Afghanistan. (I say another 10 years we'll be there, maybe more)

I never heard him saying it was a mistake to go to war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. In fact he used to repeat this almost like a mantra "Iraq was an error, USA must go back and finish the job in Afghanistan".

Here is one of the various clips you can find around the internet when he was still a candidate.

[video=youtube;3vpCBpTbEds]

Edit: In the video he also mentions sending two additional brigades to Afghanistan as part of his strategy.