Obama meets with Afghan president

Obama meets with Afghan president

www.msnbc.msn.com

KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama met Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul on Sunday, Reuters reported, the second day of a visit to Afghanistan that is meant to bolster the senator's foreign policy credentials.

Obama has previously criticized Karzai, who has led Afghanistan since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the hardline Islamist Taliban in 2001, but said the purpose of this trip was to listen rather than deliver strong messages.

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I may be confused, but it sounds like Barack Obama plans to withdraw troops from Iraq, and then re-deploy them to Afghanistan.

Is this really an improvement over the situation we have right now? Will this stop the rising death toll among our troops, or lessen the economic burden of this war on our country? all it appears to be is a re-shuffling of personnel to me? No change whatsoever.. It's the same war, just in a different wrapper.

www.msnbc.msn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by LLoyd45

Is this really an improvement over the situation we have right now? Will this stop the rising death toll among our troops, or lessen the economic burden of this war on our country? all it appears to be is a re-shuffling of personnel to me? No change whatsoever.. It's the same war, just in a different wrapper.

You have to be kidding......wasn't the "war on terror" supposed to be IN Afghanistan? Did you forget the "faulty intelligence" that got us in to Iraq?

The Iraq war is a illegal war being waged under false pretenses for profit of a few. Someone, regardless of who created it, will have to clean it up. We are spending a vast amount of our military resources playing world police.

The United States has about 27,000 troops in Afghanistan, of which about 15,000 are in the NATO force and the rest conduct missions ranging from counter-terrorism to training Afghan forces.

source.

....and then Iraq

Currently there are 141,000 troops in Iraq, including 120,000 Army soldiers. Those soldiers are divided among 15 Army combat brigades plus other support units.

source.

I have no problem with an immediate and complete withdrawal from Iraq. Apparently they do not either:

– A large majority of Iraqis–71%–say they would like the Iraqi government to ask for US-led forces to be withdrawn from Iraq within a year or less. Given four options, 37 percent take the position that they would like US-led forces withdrawn “within six months,” while another 34 percent opt for “gradually withdraw[ing] US-led forces according to a one-year timeline.”

source.



[edit on 25-7-2008 by Grafilthy]

The whole purpose of withdrawing the troops from Iraq was to bring them home, not re-deploy them to Afghanistan. Russia got it's butt kicked and left, so should we.

Why continue spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a neverending war? That money could be put to much better uses like rebuilding our country's aging infrastructure, revamping our manufacturing base, and investing in renewable energy sources.

At least O(bs)ama is finally meeting with a leader he has something in common with.

And as far as how the military looks at O(bs)ama, he'll have even less respect than Clinton or Carter did. Be luck if they even pay attention to him. For that reason, I see more danger of a "coup" with O(bs)ama as president than I ever did with Bush.