Obama drops hints on Afghanistan policy during China visit
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Weighing a decision on what to do next in Afghanistan, President Obama gave a few hints to his thinking when he spoke today in Shanghai to future Chinese leaders.
In his answer to a question, Obama stressed that it was important to stabilize Afghanistan and reminded his listeners in China -- and at home -- that the U.S. mission needed to be more than just a question of soldiers.
“Ultimately I think in trying to defeat these terrorist extremists, it’s important to understand it’s not just a military exercise,” Obama said. “We also have to think about what motivates young people to become terrorists, why would they become suicide bombers.
“So part of what we want to do in Afghanistan is to find ways that we can train teachers and create schools and improve agriculture so that people have a greater sense of hope,” Obama said. “That won’t change the ideas of an Osama bin Laden, who are very ideologically fixed on trying to strike at the West, but it will change the pool of young people who they can recruit from. And that is at least as important, if not more important over time, as whatever military actions that we can take.”
Obama is weighing a military request for as many as 40,000 U.S. troops in addition to the 68,000 already authorized in Afghanistan. NATO has committed about 40,000 troops and the administration is hoping to get the organization to step up its role. Obama signaled today that the new aid could be in the form of trainers to help the Afghan forces improve enough to take on the resurgent Taliban.
“I think that it is possible -- working in a broader coalition with our allies in NATO and others that are contributing like Australia -- to help train the Afghans so that they have a functioning government, that they have their own security forces, and then slowly we can begin to pull our troops out because there’s no longer that vacuum that existed after the Taliban left,’ Obama said in a hint of a possible broader strategy to extricate the United States from the war, now in its ninth year.
The United States went into Afghanistan to curb the Taliban, which was giving sanctuary to Al Qaeda. One of the key policy questions is what will be the U.S. relationship to the Taliban fighting an unpopular government in Kabul. Obama seemed to separate the Taliban from Al Qaeda.
“The reason we originally went into Afghanistan was because Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan, being hosted by the Taliban,” Obama noted. “They have now moved over the border of Afghanistan and they are in Pakistan now, but they continue to have networks with other extremist organizations in that region.’
No date has been given for when Obama will give his decision on how many troops to send to Afghanistan. The White House has said the president is weighing options with different numbers up to the full force requested by the military.
-- Michael Muskal
Related: What’s real price tag on war in Afghanistan?
