President Barack Obama will address the nation tonight and formally announce his plans to send a surge of up to 35,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. This figure represents about 1 percent of the population of the United States ‘- a staggering amount, considering how many troops have already come and gone to Afghanistan and how many are there right now. Add to that the massive amount of men and women involved with the war in Iraq, and it would seem that the last thing the U.S. needs is to exhaust yet more of its soldiers by sending them to fight seemingly endless wars. But even the most vehement war protesters should realize the unfortunate truth that the Afghanistan war is too far gone to be abandoned, and that Obama is right to keep his campaign promise to finish the job.
Obama’s planned surge may recall the nightmares caused by former President George W. Bush’s order to send 20,000 additional troops to Iraq in 2007. Bush met the same kind of flak Obama is sure to meet, but skeptics might consider the notable differences between the two initiatives. Obama has been discussing this vein of action since well-before he was elected ‘- those who voted for him, if they were at all knowledgeable about his platform, voted, essentially, for a surge. Also, Obama has been sure to make it well-known that he will set boundaries and limits to America’s commitment in Afghanistan, and he will stick to those parameters. This makes his plan seem like it has a light at the end of the tunnel, where Bush’s plan continues to fester to this very day, nearly a year after he left office, and with no end in sight. Obama has also explained that part of the purpose of this surge is not to fight the Afghan people but to continue fostering a teaching and learning partnership with them ‘-‘- markedly antithetical to Bush’s very defensive 2007 initiative.
The bottom line is that Obama is acting out a promise he made, and doing so with good intentions, while Bush did not carry things out quite so cleanly. Obama will find he can rally support from Americans if he holds true to the parameters he set for the remainder of the Afghanistan tour. If he can manage to do what Bush couldn’t ‘- and to finish what Bush started ‘- he may be able to rectify one of the most detrimental factors ailing U.S. morale and economy. Hopefully, the end will justify the 35,000-troop means.
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I have numerous problems with this editorial. First of all, 35,000 is NOT 1% of the United States population, but I will just attribute that to a typo. More importantly, I think this piece is utterly lacking in not only thoughtful analysis, but also in any sort of impartiality. I understand that the Freep’s editorial position is relatively far to the left, and I often sympathize and agree with the editorials that I read. This one, however, reads like a press brief from the Democratic National Committee. When deciding whether a war is worth fighting, two things must be defined. What are our goals, and can we achieve them? This article praises Obama’s “timeline”, but the president is covering all his bases here at the expense of smart policy. He has clearly decided that we CAN accomplish our strategic goals in Afghanistan, which at this point I assume is the stability of the state. However, he is saying that we only have three years to accomplish that goal, and if it isn’t accomplished, we are leaving anyway. Logically, this does not make any sense. If it is indeed the right decision as decided by our president, should we not do everything in our power to accomplish the goal? All this time table does is send our soldiers overseas to die while constantly under the scrutiny of the deadline. Shockingly, the deadline for withdrawing from Afghanistan magically coincides with election season. Obama knows he might face a challenge from a far-left anti war candidate, so he has covered his bases here. To clarify, I am not saying that time guidelines in this conflict are a bad thing, but these should be kept internally, not announced to the world for political purposes. For the president that was elected to be above “politics as usual”, Obama has shown himself to be (remarkably) the same as every other politician. I hope the Freep can analyze his policy decisions more carefully in the future, rather than take everything he says as gospel.