On Tuesday, President Barack Obama marked the biggest achievement of his young presidency by signing into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. With all the media buzz surrounding the signing of Obama’s stimulus package, little attention was paid to the president’s announcement that an additional 17,000 troops will be sent to fight in Afghanistan.
To make this announcement on the same day as the stimulus bill signing was political shrewdness at its finest. Both Republicans and Democrats have focused all their energy on the stimulus bill, even purchasing television ads for or against the measure. The American public is being constantly bombarded with government reports and figures that show how desperate our economic situation is. Hardly any attention is being paid to the conflict in Iraq, never mind in Afghanistan.
Yet the stakes have never been higher in Afghanistan. It looked like the United States was on its way to a quick victory back in 2001, but the situation has only grown more dire eight years later. The year 2008 was the deadliest on record for U.S. forces, with 151 casualties, up from 117 in 2007. The United Nations reported on Tuesday that civilian casualties in Afghanistan also took a dramatic turn for the worst in 2008, up 40 percent from 2007. The Obama administration needed to take some sort of action to address these alarming developments.
Obama has pledged to have unprecedented transparency during his presidency, but Tuesday’s revelation of troop increases leave many questions unanswered. For example, why are we adding thousands of troops in Afghanistan, yet preparing to withdraw thousands from Iraq? How was it determined that 17,000 was the right number of troops to stabilize the situation? On Feb. 10, Obama went on prime-time television to sell his economic stimulus plan to the American people. Why not devote an equal amount of face time to explain to the public how the conflict in Afghanistan will be dealt with in the coming years?
It isn’t a question of whether or not sending 17,000 more troops into Afghanistan is the right thing to do, but Obama cannot be let off the hook when he isn’t totally forthcoming with the American people. There should be no ‘honeymoon period,’ during which we accept anything Obama does simply because he is the new president. The decisions that Obama makes deserve just as much scrutiny as the policies of former President George W. Bush. Obama has been up front with us about the economic crisis we are facing at home, but it’s time for the president to show equal urgency and transparency when it comes to the dangers our soldiers face abroad.
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