Recent reports from the Washington Post announced on Monday that “President Barack Obama has a "winning" strategy in Afghanistan and enough forces on the ground to achieve U.S. goals despite advances by the Taliban” (Reuters). President Obama had authorized 21,000 new troops for Afghanistan since taking office in January 2009 and not all of them were on the ground yet.
White House spokesman Bill Burton discloses:
"The president's strategy hasn't fully been implemented just yet. But we do believe that with the strategy that we have, with assets that we're putting on the ground, that we are going to be able to achieve the goals that we're trying to achieve.”
By the end of 2009, Washington plans to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan to 68,000 and may submit more if needed. **Please not that there were 32,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan at the end of 2008.
America has been trying to get out of this war ever since it started back in 2001. Why don’t we pull out now before the war escalates even more than it already has? Washington plans on more than doubling the number of troops from 2008 by year’s end, and if this strategy doesn’t work then how many more troops do we have to send in and how many soldiers have to die? Their strategies are all trial and error, not knowing what the actual outcome will be. When can we draw the line and say enough is enough?
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I know that for many American’s the thought of sending more troops to Afghanistan is a bad idea and will not be supported by many. However, it is a known fact that both the number of foreign fighters and severity of fighting has increased dramatically over the past months in Afghanistan. An increase in the number of troops to Afghanistan is believed to be a possible solution to the problem because it will nearly double to number of boots that are on the ground which is believed will help put things quiet down. For example, an increase in the number of troops will allow for an increase in the number of patrols in areas that are known to be Taliban strongholds. An increase in the number of troops will also allow for troops to cover more terrain in the search for enemy forces while on these patrols. While the troop increase is known not to be very well known, a fact is that it tends to work. One such example can be seen with the war in Iraq. In 2007, former President Bush increased the number of troops by 20,000 in response to an increase in insurgent violence. In the months following the surge, the number of attacks seemed to drop drastically against American forces and it is because of that surge that we hardly hear of American casualties in Iraq today. Lastly one important thought to take into consideration is that following the events of 9/11 many people were in favor of military action being taken against the Taliban in response to the attacks. To this day we are still fighting the same enemy in Afghanistan that we were fighting when we initially began the “War on Terror”. If this is the case, does now seem like an appropriate time to withdraw?
ReplyDeleteI agree with doug. I would also like to iterate a second point. Currently the government in Iraq depends heavily on the US. They virtually draw their legitimacy from US presence. Leaving right now would put Iraq in the exact same state it was in when we came there. I support Obama's decision to increase the number of troops stationed there. It will curb the insurgent violence and hasten the achievement of our goals.
ReplyDeleteI agree... but i feel that since we already started sending more and more troops, to pull out pre-maturely would cause an even worse situation then before. No that there are currently so many troops in Afghanistan, we can only continue to do are job and gradually leave. i agree with Tyler that leaving now would cause even more violence and be retrogressive. Not only are we spending unnecessary amounts of money but we are killing off American soldiers. hopefully we can get this thing finished up and bring our soldiers home.
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