President Obama’s long-delayed decision on what his goals and strategy in Afghanistan will be:
Gibbs: Security team gets new Afghan policy
As Obama prepares to address the nation, officials given marching orders
NBC News and news services
updated 11:39 a.m. ET, Mon., Nov . 30, 2009WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama delivered official orders Sunday night to members of his national security team for a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, according to a White House official.
Obama met with military commanders in the Oval Office last night at 5 p.m. EST, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Obama is preparing to announce the new strategy to the public on Tuesday, including the addition of thousands more American forces, a clarification of the mission and a path toward disengagement. It will likely be one of the toughest sales jobs of his presidency.
He began the rollout on Sunday, the White House said, talking first with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton by phone and then informing other key administration advisers such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates in the evening Oval Office meeting.
It was at that time, said Gibbs, that Obama’s order for the military to go ahead with the new deployments became official. The goal of the president’s revamped approach is to train Afghan security forces to eventually take over from the U.S., and Obama will say Tuesday that he doesn’t plan an open-ended U.S. commitment, the spokesman said.
Immediately after the Sunday session, the president called Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, his top commander in Afghanistan, and the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry. On Monday, Obama also began a series of calls to foreign leaders, starting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, to be followed later in the day by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The leaders were getting an overview of the new policy, but not specific troop numbers, Gibbs said.
I’m not going to start sniping at it now, because we still don’t have the details.
I haven’t decided to watch this yet. My feeling this will be a Viet-Nam pull the rug out and tell the enemy our exact plans. This way, like North Viet-Nam, the Taliban will pull back and wait, then come in to slaughter the supporters of us. This man has not shown the stomach to do anything hard or difficult, except fly around the world, and throw parties.
He’s dodged any heavy lifting on Healthcare by farming it out to Co-President Pelosi and Hairy Reed.
Yorkshire moans:“I haven’t decided to watch this yet.”
Rather keep your head buried in the sand, correct Yorkshire?
I understand very well by now, that no matter what Obama does, you folks will “snipe”, for ideological purposes. That’s human, I suppose, but not rational, therefore not good for our country.
I don’t know if I’ll watch it, either, but I almost never watch these things; I prefer to read what has been said than listen.
Perry:
I understand very well by now, that no matter what Obama does, you folks will “snipe”, for ideological purposes. That’s human, I suppose, but not rational, therefore not good for our country.
Now you finally understand how we felt about the Left for the previous 8 years.
he REAL Reason I won’t watch tonight. It’s a protest:
President Barack Obama …
… is slated to deliver a prime-time address on Tuesday night in which he’ll lay out his plans for the American war in Afghanistan.
The address before the United States Military Academy at West Point on Tuesday night will not only be used to announce the immediate order to deploy roughly 30,000 more troops, but the administration will also use the occasion to convey how it intends to turn the fight over to the Kabul government, the New York Times reported.
But the administration may also face an unforeseen enemy as it lays out its long-awaited plans. And they are loud and they are legion: We’re talking about preschoolers and their parents.
That’s because ABC-TV was scheduled to present its annual screening of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” at 8 p.m. tomorrow night. And we don’t know about you, but that show is pretty sacrosanct around our house and not to be trifled with lightly.
A call to the White House may be in order here. We hear it’s pretty easy to get through these days …
I didn’t know you fully supported the Bush-43 policies, Yorkshire. I don’t think too many folks, even Repubs, did, otherwise we would not have had the election results we had in 2006 and 2008.
Incidentally, I think the Bush Presidency, ironically, changed for the better once he replaced Rumsfeld and stopped listening to Cheney. It is quite telling that Bush refused to pardon Cheney’s cohort Scooter Libby!
Oh, it’s competition with Charlie Brown which is the reason; now I do understand!
Perry:
Oh, it’s competition with Charlie Brown which is the reason; now I do understand!
I mean, like, I mean, this is heartbreaking news. How can I ever watch TV again?
Damn, I was all behind Obama until he decided to pre-empt “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” This is just plain un-American! I demand an investigation. Alan Grayson, get on it!