Obama Afghanistan Speech on December 1 : West Point Speech

By jayita, Gaea News Network
Wednesday, December 2, 2009

New York- The White House has released President Barack Obama’s speech at West Point Tuesday night. Addressing the audiences at the United States Military Academy, President Barack Obama gave the first speech calling for war in his young career.

Obama, in his speech of 35 minutes, announced his decision to deploy an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. He also intended to begin drawing down U.S forces within the next three years.

I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home

said American President.

Obama said they do not seek to occupy Afghanistan or to target a religion or an ethnicity. Obama explained that he wants to rid Afghanistan of the terrorist cancer in its culture and cause the country to become a partner with the industrialized World.

Obama also gave a picture of a region that’s producing terrorist enemies who try to enter America at a regular rate. Obama wants to go to the source of these terrorist attempts and stop it.

Throughout this period, our troop levels in Afghanistan remained a fraction of what they were in Iraq. When I took office, we had just over 32,000 Americans serving in Afghanistan, compared to 160,000 in Iraq at the peak of the war. Obama cited this, as one of the reason behind building up additional troop.

Obama has vowed to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for al-Qaida boss Osama bin Laden and his terrorist organization.

We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s security forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan government and, more importantly, to the Afghan people that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country

Obama said.

Obama’s Tuesday evening speech to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., to be broadcast nationally, ends three months of exacting deliberations, that won praise from supporters and criticism from opponents.

The war in Afghanistan has been highly unpopular in the US. Many people seemed to be tired off sacrificing their sons and daughters far away from the US on the pretext of war on terror.

The US President’s announcement to start withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan in 2011 merely a year after deploying record number of troops too has been called as unrealistic.

Discussion

Mark Sulzen
December 4, 2009: 11:08 am

Looks like this is what Debbie was talking about. It also looks like change and the audacity of hope is hard to implement. 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

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