Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Obama Intends to End Afghanistan War in Three Years

Hurrah! This is such good news.
Republican war mongers won't like this one bit. What's the downside to setting a time limit? Republicans will say it tells Afghanistan that we're not willing to stay the course. From the average warmonger:
But Cheney said the average Afghan citizen “sees talk about exit strategies and how soon we can get out, instead of talk about how we win.

“Those folks ... begin to look for ways to accommodate their enemies,” Cheney said. “They’re worried the United States isn’t going to be there much longer and the bad guys are.” Politico
Well, WE'RE NOT willing to stay forever, especially while Hamid Karzai uses the U.S. to feather his nest. Afghanistan needs to get it together. The Karzai government acts as though it's our duty to support them. Sure, the U.S. made their lives more difficult but our being there isn't going to make it better.
We need to do what we have to do and get out.
We have to set goals so that they can be reached. This will signal to Karzai that it's up to his government to get it right. Karzai needs to start doing for his people, not himself and his cronies. I think Afghani citizens will be glad to know we'll be leaving some day.
President Obama is sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan but plans to conclude the war and withdraw most U.S. soldiers within three years, senior administration officials told CNN Tuesday.
The president is ordering military officials to get the reinforcements to Afghanistan within six months, White House officials said. CNN
I bet the troops will appreciate a deadline. Imagine fighting a horrible war and never knowing when or if it will ever end. As a non supporter of this war, this strategy is sounding decent, especially the timeline. Obama is pushing for a speedy deployment:
Obama, whom Republicans had accused of "dithering" over the decision, came to the conclusion that the deployment needs to be accelerated to knock back the Taliban, the officials said.
The push for a speedy deployment surprised some observers, because White House officials who defended Obama's slow pace of coming to a decision had said the Pentagon wouldn't be able to get new troops to Afghanistan that quickly.
Asked to explain that seeming contradiction, a White House official told CNN: "The president is saying this has to happen, so the military will make it happen."
A Pentagon official acknowledged Obama's six-month timeline for sending the new troops is "very aggressive" and will be challenging for the military to fulfill. The official expressed confidence, however, that the military would successfully carry out the order.
The official noted that, under the new strategy, Obama is "trying to do it faster" than the 12-month timeline initially requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. CNN
The town of Highland Falls, near West Point, talk about Obama's plan: