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The President had an interview with NBC White House Correspondent Savannah Guthrie, and in a released excerpt, he talks about whether the decision on increasing troops in Afghanistan could occur before the end of the runoff election for President in that country on November 7. Obama said that “it’s important to understand the landscape and the partner we may be dealing with,” but was entirely noncommital on the question:
It is entirely possible that we have a strategy formulated before a runoff is determined. We may not announce it.
It would be presumably difficult to make the decision prior to a runoff election that could exhibit the same kind of violence and fraud, if not more, than the first round back in August. Obama is certainly hedging his bet here.
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The announcement of strategy and additional troops is a stick that POTUS has to discourage additional fraud etc. in the upcoming election. He would be foolish to announce anything prior to the election.
True, but I seriously doubt his plans will change, regardless of the outcome of the runoff election. I think he decided long ago to go all-in, but decided to delay announcing his decision because he didn’t like McChrystal’s public pressure and wanted to make him wait.
I doubt Obama cares if Karzai is corrupt. He just wants him to be more discreet in the future.
I saw some guy (I think he was the Afghan FM) being interviewed on the BBC about a week ago and he said that the Afghans need foreign troops to stay in Afghanistan b/c they wanted to show them that the sacrifices they’ve already made in blood and treasure weren’t in vain.
I’ve been a big opponent of staying in the Graveyard of Empires, but his comment struck me as being genuinely sincere — a side of the argument I hadn’t considered before.
The (unfortunate) bottom line is, good intentions aside, we simply cannot afford this war — we’re broke and a trillion-plus dollars in debt to Communist China, for godssake.