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August 17, 2009 2:16 PM
Obama: Afghanistan War Is "Fundamental"

The war in Afghanistan is "fundamental to the defense of our people," President Obama said Monday, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars conference in Phoenix, Ariz. -- but the fight will not be easy.

"The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight. And we won’t defeat it overnight," the president said. "But we must never forget. This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9-11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans."

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Obama 'realism' faces Afghan test
By: Ben Smith
November 29, 2009 07:04 AM EST

As President Barack Obama prepares to make the case for sending more troops to Afghanistan, some allies are urging him to return to a line of argument little heard since the Bush years: the United States has a moral obligation to protect the Afghan people, particularly women, from the Taliban.

Obama ran on a promise to restore cold-eyed calculations of national interest to American foreign policy, a reaction against President George W. Bush’s tendency to cast a confrontational foreign policy in terms of the freedoms it would achieve for nations that did not have them. And he has governed without the public appeals to human rights that marked American foreign policy ventures from Kosovo to Iraq.

But realism has proved, at times, a hard political sell. Bloodless talk about “engagement” has left the Obama administration without a compelling story to tell or argument to make. And its emphasis on process has only increased the pressure for more tangible results.

In Afghanistan, the White House was reluctant to play up the Taliban’s excesses and the plight of Afghan women while it considered withdrawing from an active role in the country’s governance. But as Obama moves toward sending additional troops – reportedly more than 30,000 more – to the country, supporters of the policy are urging him to stress human rights in an effort to revive support for an increasingly unpopular war.

“The audience that has gone sour on the war the most is his own liberal domestic base, and those people are the most susceptible to the argument that we should be in Afghanistan for reasons that go beyond simply national security and homeland defense, but to include trying to do things to help the Afghan people,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who led Obama’s first Afghan review earlier this year.

Riedel said that the White House initially chose to focus on the national security case for war, but for the last three months has avoided talking about human rights in Afghanistan “because they didn’t want to box themselves in by raising issues that might have restricted their room to maneuver.” .....................>>>>..................>>>>.............http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29922.html

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Troops, Families Mixed Over Obama's War Plan

Many say they support the surge as long as it helps to end the eight-year-old conflict, but shake their heads at president's announcement of 2011 troop withdrawal date.


JACKSONVILLE, North Carolina -- Battle-weary U.S. troops and their families braced for a wrenching round of new deployments to Afghanistan announced Tuesday by the president, but many said they support the surge as long as it helps to end the eight-year-old conflict.

As President Barack Obama outlined his plan to send 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan -- while pledging to start bringing them home in 2011 -- soldiers, Marines and their families interviewed by The Associated Press felt a tangle of fresh concerns and renewed hopes.

"All I ask that man to do, if he is going to send them over there, is not send them over in vain," said 57-year-old Bill Thomas of Jacksonville, North Carolina, who watched Obama's televised speech in his living room, where photos of his three sons in uniform hang over the TV.
...........................>>>>.....................>>>>....................http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/02/troops-families-mixed-obamas-afghan-surge/

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President Barack Obama delivered the best speech George W. Bush ever gave in his life
By William Rivers Pitt
Created Dec 2 2009 - 12:03pm

On Tuesday night, President Barack Obama delivered the best speech George W. Bush ever gave in his life. Mr. Bush, if he was watching, would have recognized virtually every facet of Obama's speech, for it was the Bush administration that hammered out the template used by Mr. Obama to deliver the news that he is doubling down on the war in Afghanistan.

Obama's eloquence was far superior to anything Mr. Bush could have ever hoped to achieve - for the first time in the 21st century, the United States has a president who can pronounce "nuclear" correctly - but at the end of the day, it was the same script all over again.

Mr. Obama's speech contained all the well-worn Bushian touchstones, one above all: sharing a stage with soldiers in uniform - and how heartbreakingly young were the faces in that room; one could hear a pin drop throughout in that roomful of children whose lives will be directly affected by the decision that was announced - as a means of political defense and to augment his martial profile. Mr. Bush pulled this sickening stunt more times than can be counted, and it burned like acid to see another president defile their service by using them as props in a bit of political theater.

It took exactly 130 words for Mr. Obama to invoke the attacks of September 11, which is just about how long it usually took Mr. Bush whenever he unleashed one of his linguistic muggings upon the populace.

Mr. Obama blessed the calamity of Iraq as a success - "We have given Iraqis a chance to shape their future, and we are successfully leaving Iraq to its people," said the president - which was a favorite habit of Mr. Bush, no matter how brazen facts to the contrary happened to be.

Mr. Obama likewise blessed the recent fraud-riddled election in Afghanistan as a positive thing, despite the cancerous effect that farce of a vote has had on the confidence of the Afghan people. In this, the president echoed Mr. Bush once again, as it was often Mr. Bush's practice to fete Iraqi elections that were controlled by Iran and riven with violence as successful steps towards democracy.

Mr. Obama re-introduced the American people to the menace of weapons of mass destruction, a favorite note of Mr. Bush. Obama did not go so far as to say that Afghanistan is in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 missiles to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program, as Mr. Bush did during another memorable prime-time speech, but the call to dread was there all the same. The threat of "loose nukes" is indeed real enough, but it was a kick in the stomach to see the Bush Handbook on Fear put into play once again.

Mr. Obama acknowledged in his speech that America's war in Afghanistan has lasted eight long years, and even tipped a wink at America's share of responsibility for helping to shape the bleak and battered history of that nation. But then, as Bush so often did with Iraq, Mr. Obama threw the responsibility for putting the pieces of that shattered nation back together squarely on the shoulders of the Afghan people. In effect, the occupier demanded that the occupied shape up and fly right. The Hebrew word for this is "chutzpah," and it fits the situation like a glove.

Mr. Obama never used the words "Coalition of the Willing," but his high-flown rhetoric about NATO and an international alliance to deal with Afghanistan stood in stark contrast to reality. Hardly anyone in the international community appears to have much interest in sharing or increasing the burden of continued warfare - a few of those hesitant nations have personal experience with that region in their history, none of it positive - leaving Mr. Obama and the United States pretty much on their own going forward. This may change, but not by much.

Where Mr. Obama departed from the well-worn script of Mr. Bush was in the realm of the rhetorical. He weaved a tapestry of interconnected American interests - economic, social, diplomatic - to explain why the war in Afghanistan must not just go on, but grow. Take this gem, for example:

But as we end the war in Iraq and transition to Afghan responsibility, we must rebuild our strength here at home. Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy. It taps the potential of our people, and allows investment in new industry. And it will allow us to compete in this century as successfully as we did in the last. That is why our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended - because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own.

Indeed, it was all wonderfully phrased and brilliantly delivered. But in the end, Mr. Obama simply told us what we have been hearing for too long already: we must beat our swords into ploughshares by using swords. Mr. Bush never said it so well, but he said it all the time nonetheless.

Mr. Bush was proud to call himself a war president - "I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind," he famously boasted to Tim Russert with that signature smirk on his face. On Tuesday, Mr. Obama was nowhere near as blunt, but nonetheless, the torch has been passed. Whether or not his strategy for Afghanistan will be successful remains to be seen, but he sold it to the American people in exactly the same fashion as his predecessor. There was a little more sugar to make the medicine go down, but the taste of it remained all too terribly familiar.

At the end of Mr. Obama's address, the cadet corps of West Point stood and applauded. They had to; here was the commander in chief, and they are required to stand whenever he enters and exits. One wonders, however, what they really thought about what they heard. After all, it wasn't anything new; they, and we, have heard it all before.
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About author
William Rivers Pitt [1] is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence. His newest book, House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation, will be available this winter from PoliPointPress.

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HOW do we get out ? might be a better question.