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Obama to withdraw from Afghanistan in second term
The United States would start withdrawing its thousands-strong troops from Afghanistan before 2013, well beyond what US President Barack Obama had promised.

Briefing a group of US lawmakers on his battlefield assessment, General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that the drawdown would be attempted at "sometime before 2013," Reuters reported on Saturday.

The military official was being questioned on his suggestion of boosting the roughly 68,000-strong US contingent by 40,000 auxiliary servicemen. The US forces are aided by nearly 42,000 international forces.

Meanwhile, Obama is expected to present a new strategic outline, during a nationwide address on Tuesday, which he says would "finish the job" in Afghanistan. The new strategy could involve committing as much as 35,000 more troops to the Afghanistan-based contingents. Washington has also been pushing its Western allies to make generous troop contributions in an apparent attempt to satisfy the 40,000 benchmark.

This is while, during his campaign trail, Obama had repeatedly promised to end the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and "bring home our soldiers" within 16 months of taking office.
Incorrect, Presstv.ir: Obama never promised to end the intervention in Afghanistan since he and his party saw that war (at the time) as a 'good war'. Of course with Bambi, every promise -- every promise -- has an expiration date.
General McChrystal's revelations, however, suggest that a troop withdrawal would not even begin until Obama has completed his first term as president.

Now the prospect of a more troop deployments has prompted notable domestic and international opposition. A CNN-commissioned poll recently showed that 49 percent of Americans objected to further troop deployments.

Over eight years of US-led counterinsurgency operations have left many thousands of Afghan civilians as well as Nearly 800 American troops dead.

Violence, meanwhile, has reached its high water mark despite the presence of some 110,000 forces, who invaded the country with the motto of "fighting terrorism" and bringing "peace and stability."
Posted by: Fred 2009-11-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=284475