Word: war
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...leaks and speculation are anything to go on, President Barack Obama will deliver a number of different messages in his Tuesday-night speech about the war in Afghanistan. He will announce plans to send some 30,000 additional troops to the war zone. He will lay out benchmarks that the government of Hamid Karzai will be expected to meet. He may even sketch a timetable for an eventual U.S. withdrawal. At some point, he will likely describe the conflict in Afghanistan as a war of necessity...
...mere fact that Obama has reached a decision on Afghanistan, coupled with the speech's West Point backdrop and the President's oratorical gifts, will probably boost public support for the war effort in the short run. But it is unlikely to convince most Americans that a war that has already lasted more than eight years is worth fighting indefinitely. Even if Obama sets a target date for leaving Afghanistan, he'll still be asking the public to sign on to a major escalation that will see many more Americans killed and wounded, and will cost hundreds of billions more...
...higher purpose. At Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln vowed that the Union would complete "the great task remaining before us" yet made it clear that the goal was not just to defeat the Confederacy but to ensure "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom." During World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt tacitly agreed to postwar Soviet dominion over Eastern Europe in part to secure Moscow's support for an invasion of Japan. But to the public, FDR couched the war against the Axis as nothing less than a fight to "build a world founded upon four essential...
...war in Afghanistan is not nearly as vital to America's global interests as World War II was - and the Taliban's tyranny pales in comparison to that of the Third Reich. But while it's too simplistic to focus solely on the moral imperatives of the Afghan campaign, it would be just as shortsighted for Obama to ignore them altogether. History shows that Americans are far more willing to support a war that they believe is worthy of their ideals. If Obama hopes to rally the American people behind his strategy, his speech needs to convince them that...
Read about paying for the Afghan war...