WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama plans to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan over six months, an accelerated timetable — with an endgame built in — that would have the first Marines there as early as Christmas, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.
With the full complement of new troops expected to be in Afghanistan by next summer, the heightened pace of Obama’s military deployment in the 8-year-old war appears to mimic the 2007 troop surge in Iraq, a 20,000-strong force addition under former President George W. Bush. Similar in strategy to that mission, Obama’s Afghan surge aims to reverse gains by Taliban insurgents and to secure population centers in the volatile south and east parts of the country.
In a prime-time speech to the nation Tuesday night from West Point that ends a 92-day review, Obama will seek to help sell his much bigger, costlier war plan by tying the escalation to an exit strategy, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. 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 30,000 new U.S. troops will bring the total in Afghanistan to more than 100,000 U.S. forces by next summer. New infusions of U.S. Marines will begin moving into Afghanistan almost as soon as Obama announces a redrawn battle strategy.
59. Dan
I guess you & I must have just missed that one in the newspaper headlines.
The rest reveals you better have good reason before sending a nation to war, not that Lee Harvey Oswald faked landing on the moon after being abducted by aliens or whatever wishful conspiracy you’re trying to suggest.
RBG
RBG- Uh, no. Dan got it right, you missed it. Here is a little article from the NYT.
http://nytimes.com/2002/05/16/us/bush-was-warned-bin-laden-wanted-to-hijack-planes.html
New York times not high profile enough for you? There’s much more….. maybe you can use The Google? Anyway, I’m done, come back if you like, otherwise…..you’re dismissed.
#58, I was in Beirut on October 23, 1983 when 241 of my brothers made the ultimate sacrifice.
I believe that if anybody on this board can claim the status of veteran, I can certainly be counted amongst them.
And I’ve never played Call of Duty.
So, I stand by my statement: I’m a Conservative. And I don’t want to pay it. I don’t want to be over there. And I’m a veteran.
#63 – LibertyLover
It doesn’t make you more veteran than any other person who has served in the armed forces.
#62 McCullough
From your article:”The White House said tonight that President Bush had been warned by American intelligence agencies in early August that Osama bin Laden was seeking to hijack aircraft but that the warnings did not contemplate the possibility that the hijackers would turn the planes into guided missiles for a terrorist attack.” And with that information Bush should have done what? He should have waved a magic wand and had Sudan offer to capture and extradite him but then refuse to act like Clinton? washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A61251-2001Oct2 What a rathole of an argument all the way around.
Tonight Obama and hence the Democrats bought a war and even scheduled a timeline for payment. Not the brightest thing to do, but he did, live with it or vote him out.
Oh and if you really want to know the events leading up to 9-11 you should read The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright or maybe watch his lecture at Princeton (youtube.com/watch?v=rRppZ_rco-s). At least then you would be educated by something other than searching conspiratorial rantings on The Google.
Everyone here is trying to be a cool analysts. You all suck. Bleh!
I totally support Prez Obama. A tough decision but as he stated in the elections, this is the right place to complete the Cheney administration shit hole created.
It’s all about trust in the administration. During the Cheney regime, it was shrouded in secrecy and lies to Congress and terror alerts to Americans (mostly the sheeple)
# 17
Guess what happened?
We let the leadership escape (Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi went to Yale, not hard to hunt down) and proceeded to kill the others who had no control over whether BIn Laden was handed over or not, we put in an oil company puppet and the heroin is rolling once more. A complete success (if you are a global crime gang). Oh, and some of our cannon fodder died too.
LibertyLover you remind me of Cheney
I’m sure Cheney had 3 speeches ready
One to chastise Obama for pulling out troops and letting the terrorist have Afghanistan
One to rebuke Obama for adding any troops and escalating an unpopular war.
…unpopular to Doves because its a war unpopular to Cheney because its not the kind of war that stimulates the economy or makes boo-koo dollars for his kind of corporations
One to say he is not doing anything and has no answers, If leaves the troop numbers where they are.
No matter what he decided the decision would either have come to quickly or slowly for his taste.
So Liberty Mr. Vet.( thanks for your service) what is your solution
please give one that would avoid any of the mentioned criticisms.
This should be good, I bet someone will tweet it to the White House! Your conservative friends will be mad at you for holding out and not giving this wonderful solution to Bush.
we are all waiting please share. oh please do
RBG ditto 2u
I wonder how consistent people are going to be. Are those who supported Bush’s “surge” going to also support Obama “surge”? (and visa versa.)
As it ended up, the most effective Bush strategy was to give American tax dollars to our enemies as a bribe not to shoot our soldiers.
As perverse as this was, it seemed to be the best solution to the gigantic mess the conservatives created with their bungling of the war. Probably something like that is planned for Afghanistan — pay the Taliban not to shoot our guys.
Pointless.
-s
Greg #70
giving dollars to your enemies as a bribe not to shoot your soldiers is as old a tactic as war itself, well documented just not well reported
62.
McCullough. So this is your 2002 after-the-fact Times item that warns us all of impending 9-11 attack and requiring a war footing, huh?
“It is widely known that we had information that bin Laden wanted to attack the United States or United States interests abroad” (How is this possible? -RBG) “The president was also provided information about bin Laden wanting to engage in hijacking in the traditional pre-9/11 sense, not for the use of suicide bombing, not for the use of an airplane as a missile.”
That and all the other past and expected international hijacks will buy you a cup of coffee. Not war readiness. Not Homeland Security.
Bin Laden as threat is old news going back into the Clinton years. Have him stand in line.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4540958/
RBG
This is good. I’m not worried too much about a timetable, because Obama breaks all his promises anyway. The key thing is that troop deployments are not based on arbitrary benchmarks. The President is giving the generals a chance to win. I doubt that this would have been the decision without the success of the Iraq surge to serve as an example.
69 Howard Beale.
Not RBG ditto 2U.
Praise Obama for his Bush surge and his valid Bush SoD Afghanistan war efforts but rebuke Obama for his massive pre-election peace pretense that got him elected. Obama knew what he was going to do from the beginning.
RBG
#75″but rebuke Obama for his massive pre-election peace pretense that got him elected”
RBG did you miss his campaign where he said many times that Afghanistan required more troops and attention?
If last year was to long ago check out my post #22 where I reminded you of this. This post of yours seems to be lacking in facts.
The invasions of Japan and Germany worked out well for us. So did the occupation of Spanish Florida and the take over of Texas and the Southwest.
Of course the counter invasions of the US by Latin Americans seems to be paying off well for them.
The best answer I can give is I don’t know how many of them paid off in the long run for the invaders or even how many invasions have taken place but a heck of a lot of them paid of very well for a very long time.
Getting invaded on the other hand is a real bummer.
“I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank. ”
–Barack Obama
76 Howard Beale
Angry’s accurate quote is a funny way to say that, don’t you think?
But let me help you out. What Obama really meant was “The first thing I will do is bring the troops home even if it means I have to send far more over there and keep them there for 3 years. What’s the interest on a 3 year bank loan anyway?” Something like that?
RBG
77. deowll.
The invasions of Japan and Germany worked out pretty well for them too, especially considering they lost. But this only works if you lose after a US invasion. There’s no consolation prize if you win or it’s a tie.
RBG
#79 RBG
-lol…perfect clarity.
-s
He’s not my president. If he tried to send me over there I’d tell him to blow me!
RBG: “All reasons why not to wait on the outside but actually make some needed changes economic & otherwise from within like those now happening in Iraq.”
I wouldn’t go calling Iraq a success. Remember that its oil revenues would finance reconstruction. Wait until we leave. Once we stop bribing the various combatants not to fight it might look a bit different.
RBG: “How has taking out Somalia’s scumbag pirate infrastructure worked so far?”
So do you suggest invading Somalia too? Let me turn your premise on its head. Over a thousand bases, and troops in over 170 countries didn’t prevent 9/11. Why should we assume that placing troops in every country on earth makes us safer?
#64, It doesn’t make you more veteran than any other person who has served in the armed forces.
I didn’t say it did. I said I could be counted amongst them. Are you new to the English language or something?
#69, One thing I learned in Beirut — they don’t want us there. You cannot, repeat cannot, take one side without pissing off 20 other sides. And you can’t be friends with them all.
As for what I would do: I would pull all our troops home from all 135 countries (other than those needed for the direct protection of our embassies, which I would only keep open in the civilized countries). Period. Not in six months. Now.
To give you an idea of how many 135 is, here is the list of the countries where we have troops stationed, in bases:
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Cote D’lvoire, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Use them to beef up our borders. Return the power to declare war back to the Congress — currently they don’t like that power because they have to explain to their constituents whey they voted to bomb someone — they give the President the power to “conduct military operations” at his discretion instead.
Use Letters of Marque to hunt down terrorists. Blackwater doesn’t make a good army. They would make a great bounty hunter, though. This has the added advantage of we only have to pay for them if they succeed in their mission, not have them on permanent payroll.
Etc, etc, etc. My stance on this is well documented in this blog under number different articles.
Any other questions?
If I had a computer and understood how blogs work I would digitally wipe out the ‘PE’ from the face of that JPG and then post it online for everyone to comment on, but that’s just me.
# 60
RBG,
I simplified my explanation for the cheap seats. You are correct that once in the sh*t any president will have to take care in extrication, but being right in that doesn’t make Bush a seer.
The Romans thought they lived in a republic long after it was a dictatorship because they could still vote for their senators. Hooray for Democracy and Freedom!
The Daily Mash, has a totally British spin on the deal…
The Daily Mash – http://bit.ly/51Hrqb
#84
“Any other questions?”
Nope.
I see anarchy and economic stagnation in your total isolationist attitude, but I’m happy for you that you are so comforted with your black and white answers to questions of grays.
Letters of Marque by many other countries will be seen as an Act of War so I’m sure you would want the the President to have to have Congress approve these government sanctioned mercenaries.
Sounds like Ron Paul is your man, I don’t often agree with him but I have a lot more respect for him than most Congressmen.
#89, anarchy
Was America an anarchy before the founding of the Fed? No, it was not. It rose to become the most powerful nation on Earth with the most industrial might, the most new ideas, the most respected nation, the final destination for millions seeking a better way of life.
isolationist attitude
That’s crazy talk and using that phrase to describe these ideas is the same thing as Bush II proclaiming to be a friend of the Free Market and then passing trillions of dollars of social programs or Greenspan stating the Free Market failed us when in the charge of the single most destructive force of the Free Market in existence.
Isolationism is not letting in new ideas and not interacting with foreign powers. China was isolated. Tariffs are isolationist.
What I don’t believe in is spending our money to protect countries that are more than capable of handling things themselves. See, I believe in letting people take care of themselves. I don’t have this misguided attitude that only the collective knows what it best for you.
black and white
Things are only gray if you are willing to compromise your ethics or don’t know the difference between right and wrong.
When you compromise with evil, evil wins.
Letters of Marque by many other countries will be seen as an Act of War so I’m sure you would want the the President to have to have Congress approve these government sanctioned mercenaries.
Not necessarily. Anybody can claim the prize — individuals or nations. If a nation wishes to capture a terrorist and hand him over to the U.S. for the prize, there is no reason not to pay them.
We put bounties on people’s heads now and other countries don’t consider it an Act of War. Didn’t Dog just get in trouble in Mexico for bringing someone in? Did Mexico punish the U.S.? No, they punished him (or tried to).
Sounds like Ron Paul is your man
Yep 🙂