OK, we already have 30,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan. NATO has about 7,500 more, and now Obama wants to put in another 17,000.. and in the meantime the Pakis cut a deal with the Bad Guys for a sanctuary in the Swat Valley.
And deploying a Stryker Brigage to Afghanistan? Talk about an RPG "target rich environment" for these semi-armored monsters. MRAP's didn't work in Afghanistan and Strykers won't either. Someone send Obama a copy of "Charlie Wilson's War" and see what can happened to Russian BMP's back in the 80's.
The only thing that makes sense is that Obama is putting US forces over there to invade the Northwest Tribal Areas. Its not designed to secure Afghanistan.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama has approved adding about 17,000 U.S. troops for the flagging war in Afghanistan, administration, defense and congressional officials said Tuesday.
The Obama administration is expected to announce on Tuesday that it will send one additional Army brigade and an unknown number of Marines to Afghanistan this spring and summer. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the official announcement.
About 8,000 Marines are expected to go in first, followed by about 9,000 Army troops.
The new forces represent the first installment on a larger influx of U.S. forces widely expected this year. Obama's decision would get several thousand troops in place in time for the increase in fighting that usually comes with warmer weather and ahead of national elections in August.
The additional forces partly answer a standing request from the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, who has sought as many as 30,000 additional U.S. forces to counter the resurgence of the Taliban militants and protect Afghan civilians.
The United States has slightly more than 30,000 troops in Afghanistan now.
The new units are a Marine Expeditionary Brigade unit from Camp Lejeune, N.C., and an Army Stryker brigade from Fort Lewis in Washington state.
Ahead of his first foreign trip, Obama told a Canadian news organization that the United States will seek a more comprehensive, diplomatic approach to Afghanistan, where the U.S. has been engaged in war since 2001.
"I am absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region solely through military means," the President said in a White House interview with Toronto-based Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090217/D96DJ2V80.html
The government announced Monday that it would accept a system of Islamic law in the Swat valley and agreed to a truce, effectively conceding the area as a Taliban sanctuary and suspending a faltering effort by the army to crush the insurgents.
The concessions to the militants, who now control about 70 percent of the region just 100 miles from the capital, were criticized by Pakistani analysts as a capitulation by a government desperate to stop Taliban abuses and a military embarrassed at losing ground after more than a year of intermittent fighting. About 3,000 Taliban militants have kept 12,000 government troops at bay and terrorized the local population with floggings and the burning of schools.
The accord came less than a week before the first official visit to Washington of the Pakistani army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to meet Obama administration officials and discuss how Pakistan could improve its tactics against what the American military is now calling an industrial-strength insurgency there of Al Qaeda and the Taliban militants.
The militants have also made deep gains in neighboring Afghanistan, where the United States is sending more troops.
Pakistani government officials insisted the truce with the Taliban and the switch to the Shariah, the Islamic legal code, were consistent with the Constitution and presented no threat to the integrity of the nation.
But the truce offered by the Taliban, and accepted by the authorities, rebuffed American demands for the Pakistani civilian and military authorities to stick with the fight against the militants, not make deals with them.
Under the terms of the accord, the chief minister of the province, Amir Haider Khan Hoti, said that Pakistani troops would now go on "reactive mode" and fight only in retaliation for an attack.
Announced by the government of the North-West Frontier Province after consultation with President Asif Ali Zardari, the pact echoed previous government accords with the militants across Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal areas in North and South Waziristan.
Those regions have since become a mini-state for Qaeda and Taliban militants, who are now the focus of missile strikes by remotely piloted American aircraft. On Monday, what was thought to be a drone strike in Kurram, a separate area close to the Afghan border, killed 31 people, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
Analysts are now suggesting that the drone strikes may be pushing the Taliban, and even some Qaeda elements, out of the tribal belt and into Swat, making the valley more important to the Taliban.
Speaking in India on the last leg of his trip to Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, the Obama administration's special envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, did not address the truce directly but said the turmoil in Swat served as a reminder that the United States, Pakistan and India faced an "enemy which poses direct threats to our leadership, our capitals, and our people."
Pakistani legal experts and other analysts warned that the decision by the authorities would embolden militants in other parts of the country.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/17/asia/17pstan.php
/
Obama gives up on Afghanistan.. apparently wants to invade Pakistan.
