Obama sets date for Afghan strategy announcement

[somedeafdudefromPNW]

Source: BBC News - Obama sets date for Afghan strategy announcement

US President Barack Obama is to make his long-awaited announcement on US strategy in Afghanistan next Tuesday, the White House has said.
During a visit to the West Point military academy, he will reveal how many extra troops he has decided to send to fight Taliban militants.
An exit strategy is expected to be a key part of the Obama announcement.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Wednesday that the US would be out of Afghanistan within eight years.
Meanwhile Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has again rejected the idea of peace talks with Kabul.
Training plans
The BBC's Paul Adams, in Washington, says President Obama's address on Tuesday will be one of the key moments of his first year in office.
It is thought the president will commit between 30,000 and 35,000 extra US troops to the campaign - fewer than the 40,000 sought by the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal.

President Karzai urged the Taliban to rejoin the political process

President Obama vowed on Tuesday to "finish the job" in Afghanistan.
On Wednesday, Mr Gibbs said: "We are in year nine of our efforts in Afghanistan. We are not going to be there another eight or nine years."
He added: "Throughout this process, the president has repeatedly pushed and prodded, not simply for how we are going to get a certain number of troops in, but what is the strategy, what has to be implemented ultimately to get them out."
Mr Gibbs said speeding up the training for Afghan security forces was a key element of the exit plan.
The US currently has about 68,000 troops in Afghanistan while its NATO allies have about 42,000.
Nato chiefs are due to discuss sending more troops to Afghanistan in early December.
Meanwhile in a statement posted on a website used by the Taliban, Mullah Omar dismissed a call from President Hamid Karzai for negotiations.
"The people of Afghanistan will not agree to a negotiation which prolongs and legitimises the invader's military presence in our beloved country. Afghanistan is our home," the statement quoted Mullah Omar as saying.
President Karzai was inaugurated last week after winning a controversial election tainted by fraud.

 

[Jiro]

Marines to be first wave in new Afghanistan plan

WASHINGTON – New infusions of U.S. Marines will begin moving into Afghanistan almost as soon as President Barack Obama announces a redrawn battle strategy, a plan widely expected to include more than 30,000 additional U.S. forces.

Obama will try to sell a skeptical public on his bigger, costlier war plan Tuesday by coupling the large new troop infusion with an emphasis on stepped-up training for Afghan forces that he says will allow the U.S. to leave.

Obama formally ends a 92-day review of the war in Afghanistan Tuesday night with a nationally broadcast address in which he will lay out his revamped strategy from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He began rolling out his decision Sunday night, informing key administration officials, military advisers and foreign allies in a series of private meetings and phone calls that stretched into Monday.

Military officials said at least one group of Marines is expected to deploy within two or three weeks of Obama's announcement, and would be in Afghanistan by Christmas. Larger deployments wouldn't be able to follow until early in 2010.

The initial infusion is a recognition by the administration that something tangible needs to happen quickly, officials said. The quick addition of Marines would provide badly needed reinforcements to those fighting against Taliban gains in the southern Helmand province, and could lend reassurance to both Afghans and a war-weary U.S. public.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in remarks Monday to business executives in New York, stressed that the administration's strategy is to go after not just the al-Qaida terror network but also the Taliban militants allied with it in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"As long as Afghanistan and Pakistan struggle to control their borders and extend their sovereignty to all their territory, the door is open to bad actors, and the result can be an environment in which terrorist groups thrive," she said.

The war escalation includes sending 30,000 to 35,000 more American forces into Afghanistan in a graduated deployment over the next year, on top of the 71,000 already there. Obama's announcement is the culmination of more than three months of debate over whether and how to expand U.S. military involvement in a war that has turned worse this year despite Obama's previous infusion of 21,000 forces.

Obama also will deliver a deeper explanation of why the U.S. must continue to fight more than eight years after the war's start, emphasizing that Afghan security forces need more time, more schooling and more U.S. combat backup to be up to the job on their own. He will make tougher demands on the governments of Pakistan and, especially, Afghanistan, and will provide a fresh path toward disengagement.

"This is not an open-ended commitment," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday. "We are there to partner with the Afghans, to train the Afghan national security forces, the army and the police, so that they can provide security for their country and wage a battle against an unpopular insurgency."

With U.S. casualties in Afghanistan sharply increasing and little sign of progress, the war Obama once liked to call one "of necessity," not choice, has grown less popular with the public and within his own Democratic party. In recent days, leading Democrats have talked of setting tough conditions on deeper U.S. involvement, or even staging outright opposition.

The displeasure on both sides of the aisle was likely to be on display when congressional hearings on Obama's strategy get under way later in the week on Capitol Hill.

Obama was spending much of Monday and Tuesday on the phone, outlining his plan — minus many specifics — for the leaders of France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China, India, Denmark, Poland and others. He also met in person at the White House with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

A briefing for dozens of key lawmakers was planned for Tuesday afternoon, just before Obama was set to leave the White House for the speech against a military backdrop at West Point.

The Afghan government said Tuesday that President Hamid Karzai and Obama had an hourlong video conference. Obama was also going to speak with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

In Afghanistan, rampant government corruption and inefficiency have made U.S. success much harder. Obama was expected to place tough conditions on Karzai's government, along with endorsing a stepped-up training program for the Afghan armed forces along the outline recommended this fall by U.S. trainers.

That schedule would expand the Afghan army to 134,000 troops by next fall, three years earlier than once envisioned.

Military officials said the speech is expected to include several references to Iraq, where the United States still has more than 100,000 forces. The strain of maintaining that overseas war machine has stretched the Army and Marine Corps and limited Obama's options.

oh finally! Now Obama will do the job that GWB/Rumsfeld avoided initially that let Osama bin Laden slipped thru - more troops.

 

[kokonut]

Sounds like he wants it both ways. To be able to assure everyone we’re getting out while assuring everyone we’re not going anywhere. If that’s the case, this promises to be a tour de force of Obamian rhetorical gymnastics, possibly topping even that wretched speech where he was hailed as the second coming of Martin Luther King Jr. for lame excuses for his bigot of a pastor.

Meanwhile, I was just listening to NPR kvetching about how he sells this to an American public that is increasingly blah blah blah.

Here’s how you do it. You tell them you are in it to win. That it isn’t over till it’s over. That we have a volunteer military that knows what it is doing, is highly experienced, and highly motivated, which is why we’re willing to give them what they need for the job. And by the way, remind them that in time of war, the best, most useful and noblest thing any American can do is join them. The next best thing is unreservedly supporting what they are doing.

Jules Crittenden Strategic Vision

Get in there and win one for the flipper. Otherwise just decide and get the hell out. No sense in trying to eat your own cake and have it which is exactly what he's doing. He's so afraid to use the "w" word when it comes to troops in Afghanistan and that is to "Win."

 

[somedeafdudefromPNW]

Thanks for keeping the threads updated.

I wish I could go over there a few years ago, but eh... since Canada don't allow deafies in the military...

 

[rockin'robin]

30,000 More Troops Headed for Afghanistan

Troops To Be Deployed Over Six Months, Official Says

A senior administration official tells The Associated Press that President Barack Obama is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan to be deployed over six months.

In his speech to the nation Tuesday night, Obama also will lay out a rough timeframe, including some dates, for when the main U.S. military mission will end. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the details had not yet been announced.

The 30,000 new troops will bring the total in Afghanistan to more than 100,000 U.S. forces. The main mission of the new troops will be to reverse Taliban gains and secure population centers in the volatile south and east parts of the country.

Official: 30,000 More Troops For Afghanistan - Jacksonville News Story - WJXT Jacksonville

 

[Calvin]

Mod note:

Thread merged.