Administration sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan; war to end in 3 years

[Valigarmander]

Obama wants Afghan war over in 3 years, officials say - CNN.com

Washington (CNN) -- President Obama intends to conclude the Afghanistan war and withdraw most U.S. troops within three years, according to senior administration officials.

Obama is sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and ordering military officials to get the reinforcements there within six months, White House officials told CNN Tuesday.

Obama will travel to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, later Tuesday to officially announce his plans. It would to be his second escalation of U.S. forces in the war-torn Islamic country since he came to power in January.

The president also is seeking further troop commitments from NATO allies as part of a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at wiping out al Qaeda elements and stabilizing the country while training Afghan forces.

The expected new troop deployment would increase the total U.S. commitment to roughly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, bolstered by about 45,000 NATO forces.

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."

The officials also said the president in his speech Tuesday night will give the American people some sort of "time frame" for getting out of Afghanistan, even though White House aides said earlier this week there would not be a timetable in the speech.

"He will talk about specific dates" to withdraw from the war, according to the officials.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs recently said the president's speech also will explain why the United States is involved in Afghanistan, the new American mission in the war-torn country and the process that led to Obama's decision.

Obama also will emphasize the limit on U.S. resources in manpower and budget, Gibbs added.

He said Obama has been briefing top aides, military officials and foreign leaders about this decision. The president previously ordered more than 20,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.

The decision to send another 30,000 troops carries significant political risk for Obama, who will announce it nine days before he travels to Oslo, Norway, to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

His liberal base, which helped him win last year's presidential election, opposes another troop deployment to Afghanistan.

"I think he's made up his mind that there needs to be a troop increase, and I have to say I'm very skeptical about that as a solution," said Rep. Janice Schakowsky, D-Illinois, a longtime Obama ally who now worries Afghanistan will become what she calls another quagmire.

In addition, the deployment -- expected to cost $30 billion a year -- comes amid high unemployment as the economy emerges from a recession. That concerns Democrats and Republicans faced with competing domestic priorities such as health care reform and job creation.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wisconsin, recently proposed a special war surtax to finance the conflict.

Gibbs told reporters Monday that he had "not heard extensive discussion" at the White House about a possible surtax.

"I know the president will touch on costs" during Tuesday's address, he said, but "I don't expect to get overly detailed [about that issue] in the speech."

In Afghanistan, reaction to the possibility of more U.S. troops ranges from outright opposition to a willingness to see what happens.

"We welcome their arrival if they really expel the Taliban, terrorists, and al Qaeda from the borders of Afghanistan," said Mohammad Zia, 40, in Kabul, the capital. "But if they come and kill more civilians and destroy villages, then they shouldn't come."

Back home, Obama's allies said the president must convince the American public that sending more troops will help achieve the goals of the mission.

"The president needs to explain how more combat troops will speed up training of Afghan forces," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, said Sunday on the CBS program "Face the Nation."

The deployment won't work if the mission is for the United States to take on the Taliban on its own, Levin said.

As for why the president chose West Point as the venue, the White House officials noted the Army has borne an extremely heavy burden in the Afghan war, so the school is an important symbol.

The officials said West Point not only is where cadets train, but also where they study counterinsurgency principles at the heart of the new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

The decision to send 30,000 additional soldiers to Afghanistan could delay the Army's promise of ensuring all troops get at least two years home between deployments, a senior Army official told CNN.

The Army's goal was to implement such a policy by 2011, the official noted.

U.S.-led troops first invaded Afghanistan in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon by the al Qaeda terrorist network. The invasion overthrew the ruling Taliban, which had allowed al Qaeda to operate from its territory -- but most of the top al Qaeda and Taliban leadership escaped the onslaught.

Taliban fighters have since regrouped in the mountainous region along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, battling U.S. and Afghan government forces on one side and Pakistani troops on the other. Al Qaeda's top leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, remain at large and are suspected to be hiding in the same region.

The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 900 Americans and nearly 600 allied troops.

I can't wait for the day the news says "bin Laden captured" and we can just be through with this.

For more reading:

Will Obama's war become his Vietnam? - CNN.com

[Robotazy]

Just Carpet Bomb everything.

Especially the USA, we don't know how many terrorists could be hiding in those small buildings.

[Zharen]

End of the war in 3 years? Sorry if I'm very skeptical about that. 30,000 more troops is not enough to end that war for that time frame. Afghanistan is a very large and mountainous region, it would probably take 100,000 additional troops or more to effectively repel the Taliban forces. Much like in Iraq, everytime soldiers cleared out a town or area from insurgents, in a couple months the insurgents would just return because they didn't have enough troops to remain there and hold the area.

I'm indifferent to this latest news, but I do understand that Obama had always said he would commit more troops to Afghanistan during his campaign. I just would have figured the whole Karzai election mess could have given us a good reason to bring all the soldiers home and be done with the whole war. Hopefully, Obama knows something that we don't to risk more American lives in this conflict.

[Cosmonautical]

I was under the impression that they had intended to scale up the military presence over time, not all immediately. A 30k bump won't make the current infrastructure totally worthless, and an additional will probably slot into that as easily if not easier when the time comes.