Word: evens
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Just nine months later, Obama needed a bigger stage. Only 36% of Americans now think even more troops will improve the American position in this war, according to a recent CBS News poll, including just 17% of Obama's Democratic base. So the President's aides needed to upgrade the setting, interrupt the networks' prime-time lineups and tug a bit harder at the nation's patriotic heartstrings. (Read the full transcript of Obama's speech...
...Some NATO officials, though, say that even getting to 5,000 extra troops could be hopeful. That number may include troops that were already deployed as reinforcements for Afghanistan's presidential elections last August. And many NATO countries, struggling with a deeply skeptical public, have already indicated they want to scale back their military involvement in Afghanistan...
...Even the E.U.'s reconstruction efforts have fallen short. Europe has committed $12 billion in aid to Afghanistan over the past eight years to help projects like rural development, governance, health, mine removal and human rights. But it is still struggling to deliver the 400 police trainers it committed to deliver years ago. "More troops are not the solution. The highest priority is not military, but civil development," says Thijs Berman, a Dutch member in the European Parliament and head of its Afghanistan delegation. He says the best way the international community can help is to fight corruption...
...what the Taliban offer their fighters. Like many Afghans, many of the new army recruits are uneducated and illiterate, so it will be difficult to develop the capabilities that are essential for effectively running an army or a police force, such as seamless logistics planning, accurate weapons training or even clear police reports...
...month timeline came as a shock to many Afghans, who had hoped for - and who had believed in - previous statements by world leaders that the international community was in it for the long haul. Even if development projects continue long after, fear is rife that the Taliban will simply wait out the surge, only to return re-energized and triumphant once the numbers of international forces have dwindled, even if it is only a return to present numbers. As for those Afghans sitting on the fence, they now see less security in joining the government's side, which may once...