Word: nato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...tapped. His National Security Adviser will be retired Marine General James Jones, who thereby becomes the new President's closest foreign policy aide. Jones is held in high regard inside the Pentagon for his stewardship of the corps as its commandant and for his final uniformed posting as NATO's military chief. Obama's top intelligence pick is retired Navy Admiral Dennis Blair, widely regarded as whip-smart. He'll serve as Director of National Intelligence, overseeing the nation's sprawling spy bureaucracy. Obama is also keeping on Bush's Defense Secretary, Robert Gates. Even his pick for Secretary...
...commanders on the ground for more troops, and the Pentagon has tentatively agreed to send as many as 30,000 more U.S. soldiers to the country. That will nearly double the number of American troops on the ground, and bring the total number of foreign soldiers, including those of NATO nations, to about 92,000. (Iraq, which is smaller in both size and population, had 162,000 troops even before the surge...
...self-defeating. Terrorists cannot be wiped out if the factors that lead to the creation of new terrorists - indoctrination, fear, poverty and lack of education, foreign influences and sanctuaries across the border - are not also eliminated. Despite a steady increase of troops in Afghanistan from both the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban insurgency, all but defeated in 2001, has grown in strength and capacity. More of the same is not going to be enough: the year 2008 was the mostly deadly for foreign soldiers since the war began, despite the record number of troops...
...widespread corruption." And former ambassador to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke, who will serve as Obama's envoy for Southwest Asia, said last year that the Afghan government "is weak; it is corrupt; it has a very thin leadership veneer." And it's not just the Americans. On Sunday NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer wrote in the Washington Post that "the basic problem in Afghanistan is not too much Taliban; it's too little good governance. Afghans need a government that deserves their loyalty and trust; when they have it, the oxygen will be sucked away from the insurgency...
...Allied Commander in Europe, a job that since the Cold War's end has been as much about diplomacy as about war-fighting. That's how he came to be in Obama's office in early 2005, giving the new Senator a "wave top" briefing on Russia, Africa and NATO's troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The conversation lasted an hour. Jones impressed Obama with his "broad view of U.S. national-security interests, from classic military power to training missions, energy security and diplomacy," says an aide who attended the briefing. Obama struck Jones as a "very, very good listener...