Obama to announce his Afghanistan plan from West Point – not the oval office

obama_snobThe narcissist in chief will even use this December 1st “announcement” of troop deployment to Afghanistan as a photo/video op. Instead of acting like an actual PRESIDENT, Obama has decided he will trot off to West Point this coming Tuesday night to announce that he will “ok” 34,000 or so more troops to be deployed, far less than the 80,000 requested by McChrystal’s top plan, and even undercutting the half-assed plan of 40,000. The Washington Post has “preview” of his speech:

Obama’s prime-time address, tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, will begin the White House effort to sell his revised war plan — one leading scenario calls for sending 30,000 additional U.S. troops — to powerful skeptics within his party, reluctant allies abroad and an Afghan public uncertain whether international forces or the Taliban will win the war.

Administration officials say the speech will outline a modest endgame for Afghanistan that would allow U.S. forces to leave and set a general time frame for achieving that result. The remarks will last about 40 minutes, officials said, roughly twice as long as then-President George W. Bush took to outline his Iraq “surge” strategy nearly three years ago.

Obama’s speech is expected to include an appeal to NATO allies, which the president alluded to Tuesday, saying that “one of the things I’m going to be discussing is the obligations of our international partners in this process.”

“I’ve also indicated that after eight years — some of those years in which we did not have, I think, either the resources or the strategy to get the job done — it is my intention to finish the job,” Obama said during a news conference with visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. “And I feel very confident that when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we’re doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals, that they will be supportive.”

What is emerging from White House discussions is a plan favored by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that would deploy between 30,000 and 35,000 additional U.S. troops and call on NATO allies to contribute another 10,000 soldiers. That would bring the total number of new allied troops to about 40,000, the number sought by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. There are currently 68,000 U.S. troops there.

Gates is asking for help at a time when the European public, even more than Americans, opposes any military escalation in Afghanistan, and Obama has in the past told Gates that he doubts that NATO leaders will agree to send additional forces, according to White House officials.
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But Gates’s proposal has won powerful advocates within the military and the administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. It appears to be the most widely supported option, although Obama’s advisers say he has yet to make known his final choice.


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November 25, 2009 · Filed Under Afghanistan

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