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White House: US Will Be Out of Afghanistan... by 2017
WASHINGTON - The United States will not be in Afghanistan eight years from now, the White House said on Wednesday, as President Barack Obama prepared to explain to Americans next week why he is expanding the war effort.
A U.S. soldier of 2-12 Infantry 4BCT-4ID Task Force Mountain Warrior takes a break during a night mission near Honaker Miracle camp at the Pesh valley of Kunar Province August 12, 2009. REUTERS/Carlos Barria After months of deliberation and fending off Republican charges that he was dithering on Afghanistan while violence there surged, Obama will address the nation on Tuesday on the way forward in the costly and unpopular eight-year war.
He is expected to announce he is sending about 30,000 more troops as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy that will place greater emphasis on accelerating the training of Afghan security forces so that U.S. soldiers can eventually withdraw.
It appears highly unlikely Obama will offer a specific troop withdrawal timetable, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president would stress that the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan was not open-ended.
"We are in year nine of our efforts in Afghanistan. We are not going to be there another eight or nine years," Gibbs told reporters. "Our time there will be limited and that is important for people to understand," he said.
He said Obama would use his prime-time televised speech to stress the "sheer cost" of the war, explain to Americans why their military was still in Afghanistan, and press Afghan President Hamid Karzai to improve governance after being re-elected in a fraud-tainted vote in August.
"The American people are going to want to know why we are here, they are going to want to know what our interests are," Gibbs said.
The White House has estimated it will cost $1 million per year for each additional soldier sent to Afghanistan. With the U.S. deficit hitting $1.4 trillion and fuelling Americans' concerns about high government spending, sending more troops to Afghanistan could be a politically risky move for Obama.
Obama's fellow Democrats, who control the U.S. Congress, face potentially difficult midterm elections in November 2010, with Republicans eager to exploit Americans' unease about the country's ballooning deficit and high unemployment.
Two veteran Democratic lawmakers have already called for imposing a "war tax" to pay for the troop increase.
"VERY, VERY, VERY EXPENSIVE"
Gibbs said Obama would meet with key lawmakers to brief them about his plan ahead of his Tuesday speech. Key committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate will hold back-to-back hearings next Wednesday and Thursday with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen.
Gibbs said the financial cost of the conflict -- which reached $6.7 billion in June alone -- and the physical toll it had taken on the U.S. military made the war unsustainable in the long term.
"It is very, very, very expensive," Gibbs said.
Obama will again press Karzai to improve the performance of his corruption-plagued government. Karzai's legitimacy was tarnished after a fraud-riddled election in August that saw millions of ballots favouring him thrown out.
"As the president has told President Karzai, there has to be a new chapter in Afghan governance and that is something the president will talk about on Tuesday," Gibbs said.
Obama has spent the past three months reviewing the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, where a resurgent Taliban has driven violence to its highest levels since U.S. forces invaded in 2001 to oust the militant Islamists for harbouring al Qaeda leaders responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States.
The president has drawn fire from Republican critics for the time he has taken to reach a decision, but the White House has countered saying the former Bush administration neglected Afghanistan and allowed the security situation to deteriorate.
Obama's address to the nation at 8 p.m. EST on December 1 (1 a.m. British time December 2) from the West Point military academy in New York state will mark the end of a long process of deliberation that was characterized by a slow drip of leaks about the various options he was considering.
Angered by the leaks, which some analysts saw as an attempt by some in the administration to influence the president's thinking, Obama threatened to make them a firing offence.
(Additional reporting by Adam Entous; editing by Patricia Wilson and Eric Beech)
95 Comments so far
Show AllObama wants out of Afganistan by 2017...(before his oldest daughter, Malia Ann, born in 1998, will be old enough to be drafted...how convenient)
so..$6.7 Billion so far...plus say 100,000 troops at $1 million each per year for the next 8 years.....
I dont think the USA has sufficent credit rating to afford this...China may cancel your Federal Line of Credit and reposses your country.
"so..$6.7 Billion so far...plus say 100,000 troops at $1 million each per year for the next 8 years....."
Don't forget to add to that fuel that costs around $400/gallon because a lot of it has to be delivered by helicopter...
The calculation of this spurious withdrawal date should not have taken so long.
Obviously, going on the assumption (!) that Obama wins a second term in 2012, it will be the job of his successor . . . to stall the withdrawal beyond 2017.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president would stress that the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan was not open-ended.
Well, hooooooray! Give Obama the 2009 Vile HorseShit Prize along with the Nobel. The former he actually deserves. His Excellency will be defeated in 2012 and then the Republicans can keep this lucrative criminal enterprise going forever.
"...a resurgent Taliban has driven violence to its highest levels since U.S. forces invaded..."
This could be reworded as such: "A resurgent U.S. invasion has driven violence in Afghanistan to its highest levels...having sent 17,000 troops and an equal number of private contract forces during Obama's presidency."
You know you are living in fascist regime when the sychophants for war say and I quote: VERY,VERY EXPENSIVE. So what do they propose? Raise taxes! Absolutely no discussion of: WHY ARE WE DOING SOMETHING THAT IS VERY,VERY EXPENSIVE? No that is not important, what is important, is how to pay for the killing of our military and the occupation of a foreign country that wants us to leave them alone! But wait, there is more...we have an exit strategy in 2017. And if you believe that, I have a bridge somewhere in Alaska I would like to sell you!
Given the fact that the Government feels the situation on the ground today is that they must keep troops in Afghanistan until 2017 in order to "Complete the Mission" and "win the war on terror" it should be obvious to anyone that 2017 as a date is meaningless.
If Conditions on the ground warrant keeping troops there for 9 more years , then when that date comes the Government of the time can use the same cock-eyed rationale to justify another 20 years.
If , on the other hand, the withdrawal date firm NO MATTER The Conditions on the ground (And NO One can predict what they will be 9 years into the future) then there no LOGICAL reason not to withdraw them today.
At first I was a little worried that America has chosen an equally disastrous, if less comical leader in Obama. My fears were groundless. The Democrat's sense of humour is only now getting into gear. 2017? Why not make it an even 2020? And for that matter, when can we expect the US to begin reducing its CO2 levels? Will the Americans sign on to a global warming treaty that kicks into effect, say in 2050? (...or 2049, if Bangladesh agrees to fund US research into clean coal technology.)
Isn't that wonderful? We will only kill and maim until 2017. Perhaps Obama will win another nobel peace prize for this announcement.
I must be getting senile;the very idea that they would even say this is mind numbing.Have the corps and mic come to a deal and said we will not steal any more after this date.What bullshit!!!Tony
By 2017 the US will be out... of *money*.
At the present rate of unemployment and financial implosion, the US will be bankrupt by the end of next year. I would be willing to wager there will be no money in the bloated budget to bring the soon to be 100 000+ troops home. At least the Russians could walk home when they were abandoned by their government.
genicon
" A long process of deliberation" that not for one minute included any option of just getting out. The only deliberation was on how to make escalation sound like the only thing we can do.
Can't wait for the eloquent, "I don't really want to do it but we have no choice" speech
This may be the first speech Obama will make to be looked at critically by America, and not be universally lauded for its "eloquence" alone. Obama's political capital is running out.
There was another thread where the blogger suggested that instead of making the speech at West Point, Obama should make it at Arlington with the tombstones in the background. That location would be more in line with what he is doing.
How long did we take to get out of Japan or Korea after those wars?
I cannot believe anything that our lie based government says.
I rather think we will have a Fascist Dictatorship by 2017.
Fascist government *by* 2017?
You had one immediately after George W. Bush was declared President by the US Supreme Court in 2000...
Lots of good comments so far by others... My two cents worth:
Not an open-ended war? Staying depends on Karzai's behavior? If we are in Afghanistan because it is truly to protect ourselves from the "bad guys" (Al Qaeda or Taliban depending on what day it is), then why are we setting a timeline to leave? Why wouldn't the "bad guys" be a threat in 2017 as they are now? What is so special about 2017? Why not pull out now? This is the problem with Obama and fellow Democrats using the neoconservative talking points to justify why we are there now. If Obama isn't going to be honest about why we are there, at least be consistent. Of course, MSM won't challenge him on the twisted logic.
"Why wouldn't the "bad guys" be a threat in 2017 as they are now?"
The US media is going to say " Bad on you Obama, you are giving the bad guys hope. The dreaded Taliban will wait you out until 2017"
...meanwhile in Taliban central command in southern Florida(disneyland division)...
Omar- OK, everybody, listen up! Pack your kit, we are heading back to the caves of Afghanistan.
Sharif- But Omar, you said we could fight them here rather than there?
Omar- Yes, yes but now it is no longer necessary, the infidels have given us hope, they are cutting and running...
Sharif- But we have already paid for our "fun time florida getaway packages with included stay at the magic kingdom"...
Omar- Sharif!, I find your fanaticism lacking!
We are creating enemies faster than we can kill them.
A tired expression but still true.
So the timeline will keep extending further and further into the future, until we decide to get our own house in order and strive to become a healthy, self-sufficient society.
Hamster
"We are creating enemies faster than we can kill them." A most accurate statement which rests on the back of my car.
My bet is that the US will be kicked out way before then....
Horrified
The fervent hope is that your prediction will soon come true.
"The world is drenched in mutual slaughter... Held to be a crime when committed by individuals, homicide is called a virtue when committed by the state."-Saint Cyprian [3rd century], Carthaginian bishop and early Christian writer
I totally agree. The Afghans themselves will kick us out.
Yup, peace will come when either the Afghans themselves kick us out by 2017, or the US renders vast parts of Afghanistan sterile of human life by 2017. That's peace too.
Why do those born in the usa constantly equate themselves to their government? even progressives on this site keep writing as if they and the government were the same...
Theres still a lot of patriotism imbedded in enlightened circles (and I mean the flag waving kind of patriotism), how come you guys keep adding the "we" and "us" to the endeavors of the ruling class?
Language is much more powerful than we usually believe...
Excellent point!
The American "I" gets lost after the Pledge of Allegiance; "We The People" take over.
(How can these people take such promises seriously when their government ignores similar in the form of treaties?)
The nicest Americans I know aren't.
Correct ... They are really just our "Rouge Public Servants".
Then there is the American Dream of "This Land is Your Land and Our Land".
It is in possession of the Big Banks right now... When they go broke again maybe we can repossess.
Well said.
"how come you guys keep adding the "we" and "us" to the endeavors of the ruling class?"
...because the endeavors of the ruling class (executive branch) are fueled and funded in most part by the blood, guts and gold of the other branches of US...perhaps better named "the roots and trunks of US". And we'll all (even the Leafs) be better off once the Tree of Society (in this case US/We) has a more effective and functional distribution of nutritional resources. Right now, if the Leaf is considered the Executive (ruling class), then the Leaf is receiving 95% of nutriants and pleasure of bloom...take a road trip through the US City and US Farmland and it becomes clear that the Roots, Trunks, Boughs, Branches, Stems, and Flowers recieving only 5% of distribution is not functionally healthy or viable.
But the surviving and change to thriving won't come from the rugged individualism (mythic construct used by the Leaf because of weak thinking [need of covering ones ass] and disassociation from the Rest of the Tree) of the "I" brought up accompanying commentary here. Search out history and you'll find that the survival of human society(s) (whether named US, We, USA, Russia, USSR or other) was the result of marriages and commerce between/amoung what were once differing US's and WE's...but still functioning within a, and reformulation of, an US or WE.
So this Progressive who uses US and WE does so because I still don't think WE need to burn down the orchard just yet to get at the best of what can be had....and that the best includes humans like us who are currently acting in the Executive Branch...even if that includes the rotten fruits of the Becks and Cheneys...they're rotteness is in part due to the schzoid distribution process We're all subject to. A schzoid process spread through out at least US society and expressed through it's Idolatry of the Cortex and beloved neuroplasticity (the seat of the ego I function)...all at the expense of what the tactile receptors of the finger tips and entire skin, the proprioception of bones, the harmonizing ability of the heart, etc....bring to the Tree -- the WE, the US function -- the ultimate function for human surviving and thriving.
May We all have peace, and may peace always be with US.
Perhaps like Richard Nixon, when he declared during the 1968 campaign that he had a "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War, Obama too has an [alleged] secret plan to somehow end the occupation by the date that he has given. What Obama has not said is how sending even more soldiers into war torn Afghanistan will somehow bring a halt to the fighting. What Gibbs and others in the administration will never acknowledge is that sending in more military personnel into Afghanistan is only adding more kerosene to an already raging fire as well as being the best recruiting tool the Taliban could hope to have.
Perhaps the Obama's administration Orwellian motto should be:
Waging war in order achieve peace.
2017? So soon? Only eight more years? The change makes your spin!
Eight more years of profiteering courtesy of the Afghan occupation! Awesome! And by 2017, how many years will the U.S. have been at war in Venezuela? More profits!! Go Team!!
How much does it cost to build a 500 pound bomb, and how much do the taxpayers shell out for it? Horrible pun intended.
No we won't....be out of Afghanistan in 2017...we will have military bases established there and we will have done to them what we have done to the indigenous people's here in our own nation which (is not ours...but which we occupy) and that is to have infected their culture with our "way of life" and empowered those with money and education (that we approve of) to run the country as WE see fit. Slowly, the people there will lose their culture and will become as "socially-dead" as our masses are...whose lose touch with their history and culture.
I feel that we need to reject our government for what they are doing in OUR name! Silence is complicity and violent in nature!
RESIST AND TEACH EACH OTHERS HOW TO STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE WITH LOVE IN OUR HEARTS....READ YOUR HISTORY AND PRESERVE YOUR CULTURE....THAT IS MY WISH FOR EVERYONE TODAY!
without love we have nothing, i really wish we could all see that it, is the most powerful tool we have and i'm sorry for naming it a tool but really there is no other name for it but love
love your neighbor (or at least go over and say hello) and SEE what happens!
hurray we're alive and human prone to mistakes but brainwashing us to believe we should hate and kill each other is not our true nature and not why we are here
if we all could just open our hearts for once and stand united we could accomplish anything!
(all the above is true), (time for all of us to come home at last)
peace
Butt, Obama'll be gone by 2012.
I don't recall Obama ever talking in terms of a four-year term. It was always eight years. I used to think what arrogance. In an article a few weeks ago he made a statement about not handing off the wars to his successor. Arrogance. I would be interested in hearing others on how Obama might be re-elected.
Well "baby killer" bush got reelected if he managed to do that "baby killer" obama is a sure shot.
Democracy is as dangerous to a country with imperial ambitions and such a dumbed down populace as plastic explosives armed and ready to blow in the hands of a teenager.
The "war-time President strategy" worked for GW Bush. It'll work for inspirational speech-maker Obama, too - no matter how many lives are pointlessly lost. The war doesn't have to make sense, but it does have the effect of uniting unfocused, ill-informed, frightened voters.
People forget the war atrocities of Bill Clinton, and yet Clinton was reelected. It's the same scenario. We'd have more hope if third parties had made a strong showing in the last Presidential election, but they scored around two percent. People are highly ignorant when they vote for Dem/Repug candidates. The Dem Party, like its Repug partner, is funded by corporations and has initiated many pointless wars.
This is all about corporations making money. Would Obama's campaign get more or less corporate funds if he withdrew the troops?
-TIA
This is about the speed that the ice glaciers are melting.
One would think that other countries, if they had any semblance of a conscience, would be sending in their soldiers, either out in the open or by clandestine means, to aid the Afghans in fighting against their American occupiers.
At this point there is just nothing to say anymore. Obama's chosen to live in an echo chamber, and all of us who thought he would act rationally are living in our own echo chamber. Obama and the Democrats haven't the guts to kick the Republican asses and idiots and loudmouths out of the arena, haven't got the sense to see the bullshit they're wading in, and haven't got the balls to deal with the real problems the country and the world are facing, and those problems don't include what amounts to a few terrorists killing a few people, relatively speaking. Instead Obama and his crew of militaristic clowns are going to throw away valuable resources we can't afford at a problem we made up. There's nothing the big fool can say Tuesday to make it right. And there's nothing we can say out here to make him listen. He didn't hear what the 2008 elections said, and when he went to D.C. he turned off his hearing aids.
"Obama and his crew of militaristic clowns are going to throw away valuable resources we can't afford at a problem we made up." - A perfect one line summary of the Afghan war from the US perspective.
The Afghan perspective is of course much more tragic.
"Obama will again press Karzai to improve the performance of his corruption-plagued government."
A kinder and gentler crook? This ought to be rich. Hey, can you be a little less of a gangster? Make the American people think their money isn't going to expand the international rich crook neighborhood in London?
Let's hope Obama has better success with reforming that crime family than he had reforming Pharma. Congress asked for a $14B reduction in costs from them. Obama cleverly negotiated it down to $8B, and then pharma went out and raised prices $10B. With negotiating skills like that, we ought to be able to eventually leave Afghanistan for less than $3T, tops.
Obama makes me retch. This president and the rest of the lying whores elected continue to betray us. Escalating war and bailing out corporations are not the change we voted for.
Unless and until the leftists in America becomes as radicalized as the fascist right, things will only get worse.
I guess that's how long it will take to build the pipeline and protect it. Kind of why like Chavez is a bad guy because he is arming Venezuela because America is building more and bigger bases in Colombia to steal the oil in the region.
"The men and women who enlist in this country's military [should] be told the truth that they are not protecting the United States, they are and always have been protecting corporate interests."
Chante Wolf
"[The ruling elites] know who their enemies are, and their enemies are the people, the people at home and the people abroad. Their enemies are anybody who wants more social justice, anybody who wants to use the surplus value of society for social needs rather than for individual class greed, that's their enemy."
Michael Parenti
The 20 year War.
Does anyone remember such talk circa 2001/02?
I realize news-speak and the professional elite class today tell us the Bush Administration fouled everything up for 8 years (which reinforces the current Administration's political line). But well into 2004, such heads shaping current events told us the Bush Administration was doing quite well in Afghanistan. Interesting to witness the shift.
Zbig Brzezinski, a great champion of Obama as supporter and political advisor, in fact, praised Bush's handling of Afghanistan with even a certain self-congratulatory citation of sorts when he referenced his good old friend (some say, protege), Zalmay Khalilzad as instrumental to Afghanistan's restructuring under American power at the time. Early in 2008, Zunes argued his own indirect support for Obama, by partially citing Brzezinski's support of Obama as a rationalization to select Obama as the better of the two. Zunes' point was to draw a distinction between Holbrooke/Clinton and Brzezinski/Obama. (Remind me, what do we have today?).
I believe the methodology Obama will put forth in his strategy to control Afghanistan/Central Asia will come with stylistic differences. Talk about implementing "America Houses" and a new "Voice Corps" filled by idealistic youthful American recruits who will descend across the "Muslim World" (as phrased by Obama, W Wilson Center Speech) as the "light of hope in the sky" will be pandered by Obama to the progressive interventionalists out there ...Presumably to channel a positive image of Americana as counter to the negative image Islamic fundamentalists pander to the masses of the "Muslim World"(Consequently such stylistic propaganda ties into the Obama Administration's decision to make KSM's trial public).
Obama's new strategy will largely be a return to the original direction Bush began to carve out between 2001-2005, a time when the talk of "the long war" was being repeated. The idea of a 20 year war was very common, right up to the point where the US turned all its focus on Iraq in 2005.
What does Obama bring beyond a window dressing? Curtains on the window change from cowboy burlap to eloquent velour, but the world view stays the same. Journalists prattle 2017 as the goal, but who do they kid? The US time line is framed as such: 1) 2-3 years of hostilities (largely US led NATO v Taliban/al Qaeda). Followed by 2) 3-4 years of transition over to Afghanistan National Army/Police. Followed by 3) 3-5 years of US/NATO withdraw. At the earliest, 2017. But that's a politician for you, always selling us the rosy scenario.
When talk surfaced about The Long War/20 year War back in 2001/02, this was reference to preexisting models of ________?
Why not 2010? Just get out. If you want to declare "peace with honor" fine, just get the hell out.
"Our time there will be limited and that is important for people to understand," Gibbs said.
--See, we just don't understand. They now call a war "limited" if it continues ONLY 16 or 20 years. And of course by 2017 all bets are off anyway. That's EIGHT years from now, when anything they say about the limited time we'll spend destroying Afghanistan to save it will be worse than meaningless. In 2017 whoever is our criminal president will assure us we'll only be there another 5 years, tops. This can go on indefinitely, in our amnesiac culture.
"The American people are going to want to know why we are here, they are going to want to know what our interests are," Gibbs said.
--This means we'll be treated to a new raft of lies, most of them recycled from the arch-criminal Bush era, where "our interests" are perennially the same they've always been: bringing freedom and democracy, establishing the rule of law, deafeating the "terrorists" (pure projection, since the whole world outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., the Pentagon, and 10 Downing St. KNOW that WE are the terrorists), and turning Afgh/Pak into a US outpost for further projection of all these Norman Rockwell values throughout the Middle East. In other words, lies piled on top of deceit, buried in duplicitous chicanery and a hellhole of deeper lies.
"...sending more troops to Afghanistan could be a politically risky move for Obama."
--Yah think? This asshole will be lucky to make it thru ONE term. He needs to be in the same docket of an international war crimes tribunal as Dickhead and Bushbaby. I know, dream on.
"It is very, very, very expensive," Gibbs said.
--Oh well, what isn't that's worth as much as conquering Afghanistan for the Forces of Good and the Salvation of Our Unassailable Values? It's hideously expensive if we expect to defeat Islam, steal all the oil in the region, fatten the profit margins of US oil companies, force Arabs to forget Allah and worship Jesus and the Bibilical God, and make themselves fat and unhealthy be eating McDonalds garbage, shopping at Wal-Mart and driving Hummers. Oh, and don't forget, no price is too high when we're talking about Protecting Americans. That's what Obysmal will be telling us Tuesday, that it's all about Protecting Americans, because if he doesn't "finish the job" no one has EVER been able to achieve (subduing Afghanistan), then the Taliban and al-Qaeda will be on our doorstep in a week, burning down our churches, raping our women and children, forcing us to convert to Islam or die. Surely it's worth bankrupting the country (we're already bankrupt, but more lies can keep Americans from believing it) to prevent that nightmare!
"Angered by the leaks ... 0bama threatened to make them a firing offence."
He can start with the fool who leaked this: "GITMO to close within one year . . ."
Bingo!