Obama will announce 34,000 additional troops for Afghanistan, officials say

[tekisui]

Source: Washington Post

Obama will announce 34,000 additional troops for Afghanistan, officials say

President Obama will outline Tuesday his intention to send an additional 34,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, according to U.S. officials and diplomatic sources briefed Monday as Obama began informing allies of his plan.

The new deployments, along with 22,000 he authorized early this year, would bring the total U.S. force in Afghanistan to more than 100,000, more than half of which will have been sent to the war zone by Obama.

Obama also plans to ask NATO and other allies to contribute 5,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, officials said. The combined U.S. and NATO deployments would nearly reach the 40,000 requested last summer by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander in Afghanistan, as part of an intensified counterinsurgency strategy.

The new troops are to be sent in stages beginning in January, with options to delay or cancel deployments, depending on the performance of the Afghan government and other factors. Defense officials said that, beyond Marine units deploying next month, no final decisions have been made about specific units or the order in which they would be sent.

Details of Obama's plan emerged on the eve of his prime-time address from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He will use the Tuesday speech to explain his Afghan strategy to an American public that is increasingly pessimistic about the war after eight years and rising casualties.

Even as he escalates U.S. involvement, Obama will lay out in his speech what amounts to an exit strategy, centered on measures to strengthen the Afghan government so that its security forces can begin gradually taking control of their own country. He is expected to specify benchmarks for Afghan progress on both the military and political fronts, according to U.S. and allied officials who spoke on condition of anonymity about the strategy.

more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/30/AR2009113002012.html?hpid=topnews

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." Albert Einstein.

[endless october]

2. i read this today :

"American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new."

[dflprincess]

3. "Vietnamazation" of the war

"..what amounts to an exit strategy, centered on measures to strengthen the Afghan government so that its security forces can begin gradually taking control of their own country. He is expected to specify benchmarks for Afghan progress on both the military and political fronts.."

I heard Nixon give this speech. I'm sure Obama will make it sound better, but it's still the same old song.

What I really want to know is, will he insist this escalation be "deficit neutral"?

[inna]

4. darn.

kr

[TexasObserver]

5. Those who were in grade school during Vietnam are condemned to repeat it.

I'm so disappointed in his fumbling in the mideast.