Never-Ending War: Obama Makes the Afghanistan War His Own
Source: Mother Jones
President Barack Obama is surging a war to end it.
That’s how he’s selling his decision to expand the mess in Afghanistan he inherited from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. In a much-anticipated speech Tuesday night that followed weeks of high-level deliberations, Obama announced what had already been purposefully leaked by the White House: that he has ordered another 30,000 American soldiers to Afghanistan. This deployment-in keeping with the request put to him by General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO troops-will raise the total number of US troops to nearly 100,000 by next summer, ten times the force level in 2003. But speaking before an auditorium of cadets at West Point, Obama contended that the boost in troops will be temporary, a means to "create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans" for securing their own country and, most important, keeping the Taliban and al Qaeda at bay.