I think this is a terrible decision:
In a room full of young Army cadets on the campus of the country’s oldest military academy Tuesday night, President Barack Obama took ownership of the Afghanistan war.
Obama announced to Americans in a primetime nationally televised address that he has ordered the deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, and he promised to begin to draw down U.S. forces there in July 2011.
He sought to portray the buildup as the beginning of the end of an eight-year long war, a temporary jolt to rectify a deteriorating situation that threatens Americans’ safety at home and abroad.
“I do not make this decision lightly. I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Obama said. “This is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak.”
“This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat,” Obama said, referring six times to the attacks on the homeland on Sept. 11, 2001.
Sending 30,000 more American soldiers into Afghanistan strikes me as an absolutely terrible idea, and I’ll remember yesterday as the day that the war in Afghanistan became one hundred percent President Barack Obama’s war.
Shortly after President Obama announced his plans, Sen. Russ Feingold issued a statement criticizing the president’s decision:
U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Middleton, fired a broadside at Barack Obama’s Afghanistan policy, announcing forcefully Tuesday that he opposes the president’s decision to send 30,000 additional troops to the embattled Middle Eastern country.
Feingold, flanked by four members of the House of Representatives who share his views, told reporters during a news conference on Capitol Hill that he disagrees with Obama’s policy — set to officially be revealed to the nation this evening during a televised prime time address — even though he knows the president is doing what he thinks is right.
“This is a mistake, to move in the direction of a huge troop build-up,” Feingold said. Obama, the senator added, “is doing what he thinks is right. We just disagree.”
Feingold said he would consider pushing for several measures to stop Obama from fully implementing his new Afghanistan strategy. However, he said the Senate should not delay other matters, including the health care reform bill, to focus on the war.
“As far as I’m concerned, everything would be on the table to prevent this error from occurring,” he said.
No one knows the war in Afghanistan better than the troops on the ground in Afghanistan. According to President Obama, US commanders in Afghanistan “repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.” He further stated that the current US Afghanistan commander reported the situation to be more serious than previosuly anticipated, and that it is “not sustainable”, without reinforcements.
It was more glamorous for George Bush to invade Iraq than to finish what he started in Afghanistan, but I think it’s time we focus on the real terrorist threats in their own yard and provide the resources needed to get that job done.
Those cadets and any enlistee, for that matter, know what they’re signing up for, bless their brave hearts.
Jay, I see your point, and I understand why President Obama felt he needed to do what he did; I just disagree with his decision.
Didn’t the military request a minimum of 40,000 troops to get the job done? It seems both Bush and Obama are repeating the mistake made in Vietnam by doing it half-assed. Instead of sending what is needed at once, they will do half now and half two years from now.
And I really don’t understand the 18 month timetable. It seems so arbitrary. Who can forsee what it will be like on that certain date? Or are we just saying that we are done at that point no matter what. Imagine what little hope that gives to our allies there and encouragement to our enemies, knowing they only have to hold out until July 2011.
how r u going to take all of the soldiers to afghanistan?
on what day of july 2011 are the soldiers going to go afghanistan?