Word: afghanistan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...less than ideal." Indeed, over the past few months, I've heard members of the Administration make cases for and against each of the decisions the President has made. There is no completely convincing argument that 30,000 - or 40,000 - more troops will turn the tide in Afghanistan; you can make an argument, nearly as plausible, that they will make a bad situation worse - Afghans have, historically, not reacted well to tens of thousands of armed foreigners on their turf. (Which leads in turn to a counter-counterargument: we're not conquerors; we come bearing schools and wells, with...
Discussions about tactics and strategy in Afghanistan do have a tendency to go on, and on, swirling ad infinitum. One thing the President has guaranteed by his deliberations of the past few months is that he has sampled all the dishes on the menu of unappetizing options. Every decision he has made can be meticulously defended. So can every decision he didn't make. (See pictures of Fort Irwin's Theater...
...already had been built in Helmand; it seemed too late to turn the supertanker around. Obama kept sending plans back to the Pentagon, seeking a faster launch for his "extended surge." The military still isn't entirely sure that it'll be able to move 30,000 troops to Afghanistan by August. "We'll push in every way possible to get the forces on the ground ASAP," a senior military official told me. But the President clearly believes that the speed and vehemence of the new offensive will be its greatest assets...
...their own lives," he told us, in closing, at lunch. Then he diluted the power of the speech by detouring into a recitation of his concerns about the recession, even linking them to the time limit he has placed on the war: "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." (See a graphic of the troop count and war funding in Afghanistan...
...friends and neighbors on Sept. 11, people who represent the purest manifestation of evil in the world. You have to be part of this effort, and no, merely mouthing platitudes in support of the troops is not enough. We all need to sacrifice.(See pictures of the battle in Afghanistan's Kunar province...