Can we please give Obama a second NPP?
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Tuesday reveals his plan for winning the 8-year-old war in Afghanistan, embarking on a mission to sell skeptical Americans on the need to put thousands more troops in harm's way and to spend additional billions of taxpayer dollars.
Obama formally ends a 92-day review of the war in Afghanistan Tuesday night with a nationally broadcast address in which he will lay out his revamped strategy at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.
He began rolling out his decision Sunday night, informing key administration officials, military advisers and foreign allies in a series of private meetings and phone calls that stretched into Monday.
Obama is setting in motion a strategy that may represent a defining decision of his presidency. At least one group of U.S. Marines will be in place by Christmas. Larger deployments wouldn't be able to follow until early in 2010.
Obama will try to sell a skeptical public on his bigger, costlier war plan by coupling the large new troop infusion with an emphasis on stepped-up training for Afghan forces that he says will allow the U.S. to leave.
The president faces stiff opposition in Congress, where lawmakers control spending for the war effort and many fellow Democrats oppose expanding or even continuing the conflict. This displeasure was likely to be on display when hearings on Obama's strategy get under way later in the week on Capitol Hill. A briefing for dozens of key lawmakers was planned for Tuesday afternoon, just before Obama heads to West Point.
While specifics of the new policy have been closely guarded by the White House, others inside the administration have said that Obama has signed off on a step-by-step addition of as many as 35,000 more troops.
And comments Monday by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs indicated that Obama will be forward looking in his speech before an audience of cadets, many of whom will soon be headed to fight in Afghanistan.
He will focus on the need to protect Afghans from the brutal Taliban insurgency and to train the country's security forces for the day when they assume control of a land that has been at war for 30 years.
Obama is not expected to set a deadline for an American withdrawal, but Gibbs stressed, "This is not an open-ended commitment."
Obama formally ends a 92-day review of the war in Afghanistan Tuesday night with a nationally broadcast address in which he will lay out his revamped strategy at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.
He began rolling out his decision Sunday night, informing key administration officials, military advisers and foreign allies in a series of private meetings and phone calls that stretched into Monday.
Obama is setting in motion a strategy that may represent a defining decision of his presidency. At least one group of U.S. Marines will be in place by Christmas. Larger deployments wouldn't be able to follow until early in 2010.
Obama will try to sell a skeptical public on his bigger, costlier war plan by coupling the large new troop infusion with an emphasis on stepped-up training for Afghan forces that he says will allow the U.S. to leave.
The president faces stiff opposition in Congress, where lawmakers control spending for the war effort and many fellow Democrats oppose expanding or even continuing the conflict. This displeasure was likely to be on display when hearings on Obama's strategy get under way later in the week on Capitol Hill. A briefing for dozens of key lawmakers was planned for Tuesday afternoon, just before Obama heads to West Point.
While specifics of the new policy have been closely guarded by the White House, others inside the administration have said that Obama has signed off on a step-by-step addition of as many as 35,000 more troops.
And comments Monday by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs indicated that Obama will be forward looking in his speech before an audience of cadets, many of whom will soon be headed to fight in Afghanistan.
He will focus on the need to protect Afghans from the brutal Taliban insurgency and to train the country's security forces for the day when they assume control of a land that has been at war for 30 years.
Obama is not expected to set a deadline for an American withdrawal, but Gibbs stressed, "This is not an open-ended commitment."
