US PRESIDENT Barack Obama said yesterday he intended to “finish the job” in Afghanistan, as it became clear that he is poised to announce – perhaps early next week – the deployment of up to 35,000 more troops to the troubled region.
Mr Obama told reporters at a White House press conference for his meeting with Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh that his review of the next phase of the Afghan war, to end with an address to the country probably next Tuesday, had been “comprehensive and extremely useful”.
“After eight years, some of those years in which we did not have either the resources or the strategy to get the job done, it is my intention to finish the job. I feel very confident that when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we’re doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals, they will be supportive.”
The president is expected to make a primetime speech from the Oval Office. The contents of the announcement will be crucial, not only to the war in Afghanistan but also to Mr Obama’s sliding popularity with US voters.
Anonymous briefings with several US news outlets all placed the outcome in the same rough area: he is expected to have decided to send between 30,000 and 35,000 more troops to the war zone, focusing their firepower largely on the politically crucial regions of eastern and southern Afghanistan.
Mr Obama is likely to build into the plan an exit strategy that will allow for a staged withdrawal of US troops if prospects of the US-led military operation fail to improve.
The likely outcome brings Mr Obama’s position closely in line with that of Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US military commander in Afghanistan, who incurred White House criticism by going public with his preferred option of about 40,000 extra troops. Gen McChrystal will be among key military and administration figures who will face questioning from the House of Representatives and Senate immediately after Mr Obama’s address.
Others who will answer for the new policy to congressional committees include secretary of state Hillary Clinton; defence secretary Robert Gates; and Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, who has put forward a contrasting opinion to Gen McChrystal’s – that no more troops should be sent to Afghanistan unless Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s government can show it is fighting corruption.
The hearings will be important in rallying political support for the troop deployment. As the military operation against a resurgent Taliban has faced setbacks and US casualties have risen, popular backing for the war on Afghanistan has diminished, reflected in growing unease among Democratic politicians in Congress.
In a recent ABC News poll, confidence in the Obama administration’s handling of Afghanistan had fallen by 10 percentage points in a month to 45 per cent.
The president will hope to assuage some anxieties about the war’s progress by including a clear statement that he does not intend the military engagement to be bottomless and endless. His spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said the strategy was “not just how we get people there, but what’s the strategy for getting them out”.
In his final meeting with the war council on Monday night, Mr Obama requested a briefing from military leaders on how an exit strategy might work. Presenting Americans with a double-headed policy, in which extra troops is coupled with talk of exiting Afghanistan, is likely to test Mr Obama’s political skills. – (Guardian service)