91Èȱ¬

Last night, Barack Obama formally announced he would be sending an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Commentators discuss the merits of the plan.

The the President's delay has cost lives and his announcement of extra troops is late but welcome:

"At last, President Obama appears to have learnt the lesson of the 2007 surge in Iraq. To get out, the US must first be prepared to get farther in."

The that France and Germany have not announced any extra troops. This is seen as further proof that an EU army would never get off the ground:

"The idea of an EU army was always a bad - if frightening - joke. Today, it is simply laughable. France and Germany should hang their heads in shame."

Afghanistan is more important than Americans think and calls this Obama's Churchill moment:

"The troop increase of 30,000, which will take the total number of US soldiers over 100,000 for the first time, is surely the most fateful decision of his presidency thus far, and its success or failure will go a long way toward determining his place in history."

Also in the what Obama failed to mention is what happens if Afghanistan's President Karzai fails to run a functioning government:

"That may signal a lowering of the bar on what defines success, the US satisfied perhaps with an Afghan government that can survive on its own. But even that's a challenging objective.
For now, a war-weary US is braced for more flag-draped coffins and deeply scarred loved ones returning home."

The the US commentators' reactions. Elsewhere on their site the Obama's time-frame unrealistic if the US is really going to leave a stable nation behind:

"Which means that the U.S. forces will either have to remain in Afghanistan for many, many years to come - with Washington being forced to send even more troops and increase it economic assistance to Afghanistan - or that the rising costs of the American occupation will ignite more opposition from the American public and lead to a humiliating U.S. withdrawal a la Vietnam that could prove to be detrimental to U.S. and Western interests."

Links in full

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•